Jack McDevitt: POLARIS

“No. I think we should be heading out.”

I looked down the corridor. Some of the lights were on, lending an appearance that was less romantic than it had been, and more dilapidated. I wondered what it had been like in its glory days, when the place was alive and the Kang were on the premises. What would a functioning AI from that era be worth? Which called to mind Alex’s idea about tracking ancient radio signals.

Ah, well. Let’s stay with the business at hand.

I could no longer hear Maddy breathing. She’d turned off the link. I slipped away from Alex and retreated down the corridor to the room in which we’d left her.

She was gone.

I let Alex know and checked the lobby. There was no sign of her.

“You’ve got her pistol?” asked Alex.

“Yes.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.”

The scrambler should have put her down for thirty minutes or so. We’d been gone less than ten. “Maybe her body is more resistant than normal,” he said.

Oh, damn. I should have realized. “It’s the pressure suit. It would have shielded her.”

Alex made an irritated noise deep in his throat. “Well, we got what we came for.

Let’s head out.”

“And quickly,” I said.

He picked up on my sense of urgency, asked no questions, and we hustled out of the lobby and back down the passageway. It was about three kilometers out to the airlock. That was not good news. I assumed that since we hadn’t seen Maddy’s ship, she’d been able to get the docking area working, and that was where she was moored.

Docking areas are always close to the living spaces. She would get to her ship long before we could reach ours. It didn’t help that Alex wasn’t the quickest creature on two feet.

“I’m going ahead,” I told him. “We need to secure Belle. ” I charged through the tunnel, wishing I’d kept in better shape.

Noncombat vessels aren’t armed, in the normal sense of the word. But they do carry the HCS, with its particle beam deflectors. The system is activated automatically when a rock approaches on a threatening vector, as had happened to us at Terranova. But it had parameters, preventing it from firing at an approaching vessel. There was, however, nothing to stop Maddy from rewriting the parameters.

She’d have to do that physically, have to poke the change in. That was a safety feature, to avoid inadvertent firing at the wrong target. But she’d only need a couple of minutes. Once she’d done that, she could blast Belle and leave us stranded.

It’s hard to run in a pressure suit. In zero gee. In a tunnel. Every time the tunnel turned, I hoped maybe I’d see her ahead, but I knew that wasn’t likely. And sure enough the passageway stayed dark and empty. Finally, gasping for breath, I was tumbling through the airlock, and there was the lander, about fifty meters overhead, above a field of elevated power collectors. I opened a channel to Belle.

“Hello, Chase,” she said.

“Belle, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you doing?”

“Never mind that. Do you see any other ship?”

“Yes. There’s one approaching from the port quarter.”

I looked and saw a cluster of lights above the horizon. Growing brighter. I’d been wrong. She hadn’t docked, but had succeeded in keeping her ship hidden among the orbiting debris. Now it was coming to pick her up.

The AI in the lander had been named Gabe, after Alex’s uncle. “Gabe,” I said, “I need the lander. Bring it in close.”

The station hatch was in a narrow gully, but the primary hazard to the spacecraft was the field of antennas surrounding it. Gabe eased the lander down among them.

“Could you hustle it up a bit, please?”

“The terrain in which you are located-”

“-I know that, Gabe. But we don’t have time at the moment for safety first.”

He made a noise that sounded like disapproval but brought the lander in quickly.

I got in, and we made for the oncoming ship.

The gas giant floated on the opposite side of the sky. It was sludge brown, with no features whatever except a disturbance of some sort in the northern hemisphere.

Probably a storm. I could see several inner moons, all crescents.

The planet and its satellites cast an eerie glow across the chopped surface of the asteroid. I saw Maddy, standing atop a ridge, watching her ship approach. I could make out Bollinger thrusters, and a boxy bridge. It was a Chesapeake, probably a 190.

A yacht, really, a dual hull, reduced-mass luxury runabout designed exclusively to travel among ports. It wasn’t intended for use elsewhere. Which was why Maddy had to bring it in close to board: It had no lander. Her back was turned to me, and she was utterly exposed. Whatever she might have been sixty years ago, she was homicidal now. I’d left the lander’s hatch open, and I thought seriously about using her own pistol to take her out. To finish it. The scrambler wouldn’t be adequate at this range, and if I tried to move in close enough to use it, she’d spot me. And the truth was I didn’t know whether she had a second weapon available. I didn’t want to take any more risks. Or maybe I just wanted to kill her and be done with it. I don’t know.

In any case I got as far as leaning out the hatch and drawing a bead on her. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I remembered lecturing Alex years before during the Sim business when he had a helpless Mute ship in his sights and was about to pull the trigger on them.

So I let her be. Instead, I arced around and came in over the Chesapeake. The area where Maddy was waiting was well off to one side of a collector array. It was relatively flat, and there was room for the Chesapeake to descend.

Its thrusters were firing, moving it in closer to Maddy, lining it up, and slowing it almost to a stop. The ship’s hatch began to open.

At that moment she spotted me. But I wasn’t interested in her just then. I was looking for the HCS, specifically the controller, the black box, without which the particle beams were useless. I spotted it as the ship snuggled in beside her. It was red and white, located on the hull just forward of the bridge.

Alex’s voice broke over the link: “Chase, where are you?”

“Back in a minute,” I said. “Keep in mind she’s listening.”

He spoke again, but this time not to me: “Maddy, give it up. Come back with us.

You need help.”

The Chesapeake drew abreast of Maddy, and she scrambled inside. But that was okay. I was within can’t-miss range. I leaned out the hatch, aimed at the black box, and pulled the trigger. “Bang,” I said.

It was an easy shot. The weapon bucked, there was a satisfying flare, and the black box disappeared in a belch of smoke.

The Chesapeake lifted into the night.

I was wondering about the extent of the damage as I put about and started back to pick up Alex. “I saw what happened,” he said. Then he was talking to the Chesapeake: “Maddy, are you okay? Do you need help?”

Thoughtful, considering that she’d tried to bushwhack us.

She didn’t answer. “She might just want to get clear,” I told him.

Then I got two voices at once: Gabe and Alex both yelled at me to look out.

The Chesapeake was diving on me, trying to ram. I guessed that settled any questions about Maddy’s state of mind. I swerved to starboard.

Even though the lander is far slower, it’s much more maneuverable than a ship, even a small one like the Chesapeake. She made a second pass before I got back to the airlock where Alex waited, but she never had a good shot at me. I took it down among the antennas, and she backed off.

Alex looked dismayed as he climbed in. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

“She’s not going to let us ride the lander out to Belle, ” I said.