Jack McDevitt - POLARIS

When we’d filled Belle ’s storage area, there were still some decent items left over. Not great stuff, but okay. We could have come back to get them, made another flight, but Alex said no. “It’ll be part of the bequest to Survey.”

By God he was a generous man.

“We’ve got the pick of the merchandise,” he continued. “Survey will send the rest of it around to every major museum in the Confederacy. And they’ll be representing us. Everywhere they go on display, Rainbow will be mentioned.”

As we slipped away from the platform, Alex asked what I made of the corpse.

“Left by a boyfriend,” I suggested. “Or a husband.”

Alex looked at me oddly, as if I’d said something unreasonable.

The Urge to Empire We left the Shenji outstation just after breakfast on the tenth day. We used nine hours to charge the quantum drive, so we were back in the home system in time for a late dinner. Of course, we needed another two days to travel from the arrival point to Skydeck, the Rimway orbital station.

I was in favor of calling a press conference to announce our find, but Alex asked me coolly who I thought would come.

“Everybody,” I said, honestly surprised that he didn’t see the advantage in culling maximum publicity out of the discovery.

“Chase, nobody cares about a two-thousand-year-old space station. You do, for obvious reasons. And a handful of collectors. And maybe some researchers. But to the general public, it’s not sexy. It’s just a piece of leftover junk.”

So okay. I gave in, grumbling a bit over a lost opportunity to talk to the media people. I confess I enjoy the spotlight, and I love being interviewed. So while we cruised into the inner system, I contented myself by putting together an inventory and writing a cover letter detailing what we’d found. Alex changed the emphasis here and there, and we transmitted it to our assorted clients and other possibly interested parties, and also to most of the major museums on Rimway. It described a dozen or so of the objects we’d brought back, advising prospective buyers to get in touch if they wanted to see the complete inventory. So when we docked at Skydeck, nobody was there, and no bands played. But we already had a few bids.

And that evening, back in Andiquar, we had a celebratory dinner at Culp’s on the Tower.

By morning we’d had more than a hundred responses. Everybody wanted details, most inquired about starting negotiations, and others wanted to know when they could see specified objects. I referred the money issues to Alex, while I arranged to have the merchandise shipped down from orbit.

Rainbow had always been a profitable venture for him, and it had provided a good situation for me. It paid better than running around in an interstellar bus, it was less disruptive to my personal life, and in fact I loved the work.

It’s an odd thing about collectors. The value of an artifact tends to be in direct proportion to the proximity the object would have had to the original owner, or at least the degree to which it could have been seen or handled by him. That’s why dinner plates and glasses are so popular, why a collector will pay good money for a panel board, while turning thumbs down on the recycler or generator that it controlled.

If Alex had been one of those people given to framing an epigraph and hanging it on the wall, it would have read, THE PAYOFF ’ S IN FLATWARE . People love dishes and cups and forks and, if the historical background is right, they’ll pay almost anything to own them. Especially if a ship’s seal is present. The truth about our customers was that none of them was going to show up at the bargain store. In fact, it had become obvious to me that, unlike standardized goods, antiquities tend to become more sought after as the price goes up.

The routine work took several days. By the end of the week money had begun to come in, and we were shipping off the first Night Angel objects. Although we hadn’t communicated directly with Survey, they’d learned of the find, as we knew they would, and the director got in touch with Alex. Where was the outstation? Was there any chance they could see it? Alex said he would try to arrange something. It was, of course, the signal for us to demonstrate our munificence. “How did you want to handle it?” I asked.

“ You take care of it, Chase. Go see Windy.”

“ Me? Don’t you think you should do this personally? Give it to Ponzio himself?

You’re making a pretty big donation.”

“No. I’d have a hard time containing myself. If we’re going to get maximum value out of this, humility is the way to go.”

“You’re not good at that.”

“My thought exactly.”

Winetta Yashevik was the archeological liaison at Survey, and an old friend. We’d gone to school together. She didn’t approve of Alex because of his profession.

Turning antiquities into commodities and selling them to private buyers struck her as grossly incorrect. When I’d gone to work for Rainbow twelve years earlier she told me it was a sellout.

But she listened carefully while I described what we’d seen. She gazed at the ceiling with a help-me-stay-calm-Lord expression when I told her we’d taken “some” of the artifacts, and finally nodded solemnly when I announced the gift.

“Everything you couldn’t carry off, I presume?” We were sitting on a love seat in Windy’s office. Old pals. It was a big office, on the second floor of the Kolman building. Lots of pictures from the missions on the paneled walls, a few awards.

Winetta Yashevik, employee of the year; Harbison Award for Outstanding Service;

Appreciation from the United Defenders for contributions to their Toys for Kids program. And there were pictures of dig sites. I recognized the collapsed towers at Ilybrium, but the others were just people standing around excavations.

“We could have gone back,” I said. “We could have stripped the place clean.”

She stared at me intensely for a moment, then relented. Windy was tall, dark, send-in-the-cavalry. She’d trained originally to be an archeologist, and had some field experience. She had a lot of good qualities, but she wasn’t someone I’d have put in a position that required diplomacy and tact. “How’d you find it?” she asked.

“The archives.”

A water clock in a corner of the room made a gurgling sound. “Incredible,” she said.

“There’s something else,” I said. “We found a corpse. A woman.”

“Really? You mean an old corpse?”

“Yes. It looked as if she was left behind when they cleared out.”

“No idea why? Or who she was?”

“None.”

“We’ll look into it when we get there. Maybe we can turn up something. I don’t suppose you brought it back with you?”

I hesitated. “We put it out the airlock.”

Her eyes closed, and she stiffened. “You put what out the airlock?”

“The corpse.” I wanted to say, hey, it wasn’t my idea, it was Alex, you know how he is. But I didn’t want her going after my employer and saying how I’d pointed the finger at him.

“Chase,” she said, “you didn’t. ”

“Sorry.”

“Hell of a time for you two to get a conscience.”

The windows began to darken. Storm coming. It seemed like a good time to change the subject. “Alex thinks there are a dozen more of them out there.”

“Corpses?”

“Outstations.”

“As far as we can tell, the Shenji built a lot of them.” People had started establishing outstations almost as soon as they’d left the home world. “Listen, Chase: