Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

She closed her eyes, and a smile touched those austere lips.

Bingo.

“I haven’t thought about that cup for more than thirty years. Don’t tell me you have it?”

“It has come to our attention, yes.”

“Really? Where was it? How did you connect it with me?”

“That’s a long story, Ms. Cable.”

“It would be nice to have it back,” she said. “Are you planning to return it?”

“I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are. We’ll check into it.”

She indicated he shouldn’t go to any trouble. “It’s not a major issue,” she said. “If it can be returned, fine. If not, don’t worry about it.”

“If I may ask,” he said, “were there other objects in the house like it? Other antiques?”

She thought it over. “Not that I recall. Why? Is it valuable?”

Alex would have liked to avoid getting the corporation into the middle of a legal dogfight. “It might be,” he said.

“Then I would most certainly like to have it back.”

“I understand.”

“How much is it worth?”

“I don’t know.” Market values on objects like that tended to fluctuate.

“So how do I get it returned?”

“Easiest way, I suppose, would be to get in touch with your local police. We’ll make a report on this end.”

“Thank you.”

I didn’t feel comfortable with the way this was playing out. “You’re sure there was nothing else around the house like the cup?”

“Of course I’m not sure. I was seven or eight years old.” She didn’t say idiot, but it was in her tone. “But I don’t recall anything else.”

“Okay.” Alex pushed back in his chair, trying to ease the tension. I didn’t especially like the woman and would have preferred to let Amy keep her prize. In fact I was already regretting that we’d stuck our noses into the business at all. “Your parents, I understand, died in an avalanche in 1398.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you have any idea where they might have gotten the cup?”

“No,” she said. “It was always there. As far back as I can remember.”

“Where did they keep it? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Their bedroom.”

“And you’re sure you don’t know where it came from originally?”

She bit her lower lip. “I had the impression,” she said, “that they brought it back from one of their trips.”

“What kind of trip?”

“One of their flights. They worked for Survey at one time. Used to go together on exploratory missions.”

“How sure are you? That it came back on one of the flights?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t want to bet on it, Mr. Benedict. Keep in mind that was all pretty much before my time. I was about two years old when they left Survey.”

“That would have been-?”

“Around 1392, I guess. Why? What has any of this to do with anything?”

“Aside from the Survey missions, were there other flights?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “We traveled quite a lot.”

“Where did you go? If you don’t mind my asking?”

A love seat appeared, and she sat down in it. “I don’t know. Not anywhere special, I guess. Middle of nowhere. I don’t think we ever made landfall.”

“Really.”

“Yes. It always seemed odd. We’d go to a station. It was pretty exciting stuff for a kid.”

“A station.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know which one?”

She was getting annoyed again. “I have no idea.”

“You’re sure it was a station.”

“Yes. It was off-world. What else could it have been?”

“How big was the station? How busy was it?”

“Too long ago,” she said. “Anyhow, I don’t think I ever left the ship.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I suspect my memory’s playing tricks on me. I wanted to leave the ship.

But they-” She stopped, trying to recall. “It’s odd. I never understood, to be honest.

They told me it wasn’t a good place for little girls.”

“You’re right. That is odd.”

“That’s the way I remember it. I’ve always thought it didn’t really happen that way.

Makes no sense.”

“Did you get a look at the station?”

“Oh, yes. I remember it. It was a big long cylinder.” She smiled. “It looked scary.”

“What else can you remember about it? Was there any unusual structure anywhere?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Did you dock in a bay?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about the lights? Could you see lights anywhere?” Some stations advertised hotels and other services on marquees that were visible on approach.

“It had lights, Mr. Benedict. Spots playing across the station.”

“Okay.”

While they were talking, Alex was looking through the family information that Jacob had made available. “You were with them at the time of the avalanche, isn’t that right?”

“Yes. I was lucky. We were at a ski resort, in the Karakas, when there was an earthquake and the mountain came down. Couple hundred dead.”

“Must have been a terrible experience for a little girl.”

She stared off to one side. “There were only a handful of people at the hotel who survived.” She took a deep breath. “The burglary you’re talking about happened about a year before we left on that trip.”

I looked at the data screen. After the accident, she’d gone to live with an aunt on St.

Simeon’s Island. “Ms. Cable,” Alex said, “what happened to your household possessions? The stuff your folks owned?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “I never saw any of it again.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe that’s not precisely true. My aunt Melisa, she took me in, salvaged some odds and ends. Not much, I don’t think.”

Alex leaned forward. “Can I persuade you to do me a favor?”

“What do you need?”

“When you have a chance, take a look at your older possessions and see whether you have anything else remotely like the cup. Anything with English characters. Or anything at all that doesn’t seem to belong.”

“All right.”

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Benedict, there’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“I remember my mother telling him, telling my dad, once when they were getting ready to go outside, over to the station, when they thought I was not close by, that she was scared.”

I ran a search on the Wescotts. Adam had earned a degree in mathematics at Turnbull, a small western college, then gotten his doctorate in astrophysics at Yulee. He declined going into academia and opted instead for a field career with Survey. A fair number of postdocs take that route. It means they’re less interested in making a reputation for themselves, or in doing serious work in their fields, than they are in simply getting up close to stars and visiting worlds that nobody has ever seen before.

You don’t usually think of scientific types as being romantics, but these guys seem to qualify. I spent two years piloting Survey ships, and I met a few of them. They are unbridled enthusiasts. Normally a mission is assigned a section of maybe eight to ten stars. You go into each system, do a profile of the central sun, get more information about it than anybody’s ever going to care to read, then run a survey of the planets if there are any. And you look especially close at worlds in the biozone.

I looked at Adam’s graduation picture from Turnbull. He was twenty-two, goodlooking, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a confident smile. This was a kid who might or might not have been bright, but he himself had no doubt he was going to be top of the class.

I dug out whatever else I could. Adam Wescott doing grunt work at Carmel Central Processing Lab. Wescott entering the Lumley, the first time he’d gone on board an interstellar. I found him as a thirteen-year-old accepting an award as an Explorer, smiling as if recognizing it would be only one of many. He looked good in the uniform, everything tucked neatly in place, beaming while an adult, also in uniform, handed him his plaque. He turned and I got a look at the audience, composed of about fifteen other boys, all brushed and sharp in their uniforms, and maybe three times as many adults. The proud parents of the little group of Explorers at, according to the banner strung across one wall, the Overlook Philosophical Society, which apparently sponsored the corps.