Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“From 1390? I doubt it.”

“Would you check for me?”

“Hold on.”

She put the question to the AI. And we both heard the response: “Proposals are retained three years before being discarded.”

“That’s longer than I would have thought we keep them,” she said. “You think the Wescotts found the Seeker and falsified the report?”

“It’s possible.”

“Why would they do that? They’d get full credit.”

“But if they found the Seeker, could Margolia be far away? What would Survey have done if they’d announced their discovery?”

She thought about it. “Oh.”

“That’s right. You’d have assigned a small fleet to go looking for Margolia. So the big discovery would probably get made by someone else.”

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“That’s why it doesn’t go into the report, Shara. They wanted to be the ones who found Margolia. Biggest discovery ever. But to do that they had to keep quiet about the Seeker.” I became aware of voices in the corridor. “But the ship’s AI,” I said, “would record where the mission actually went.”

“Yes.”

“So you’d have to doctor that as well, if you were going to falsify the record.”

“Yes.”

“My experience is that it wouldn’t be that hard to make the change.”

“I wouldn’t think so. I’m sure Margaret Wescott would have known how to do it.

Penalties are severe if you get caught, though.”

“But they wouldn’t be likely to get caught.”

“Probably not.”

“Can we get access to the AIs from their missions?”

“No,” she said. “They get wiped periodically. Every few years. I’m not sure of the exact timing, but it’s nowhere near thirty.”

“What did you come up with?” Alex asked, when I’d called in next morning.

“Not much,” I said. I explained, and he said that was what he’d expected. “Alex,” I added, “maybe we’re letting our enthusiasm run away with us.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“We know which systems they looked at. Or at least, what the claims are.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do we know what the order of the star systems was on each flight? Where they went first, where next, and so on?”

I looked at the records and shook my head. “Negative.”

“It would be nice to know.”

“Why? What does it matter?”

“It always helps to have a complete picture of what happened.” He scratched his temple. “By the way, Fenn tells me they did find more burglary records. The Wescotts were among them. And the report included the cup.”

“So Amy will have to give it up.”

“I’m afraid so. But it tells us the Wescotts understood it was more than just a drinking cup.”

“But that still doesn’t lead to anything.”

“Maybe not.” He looked hesitant.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Amy called to tell me she’d talked with Hap.”

“She told him about what’s been happening?”

“Yep. I think she was taking a little revenge. Telling him how much the cup was worth so he’d eat his heart out.”

“And-?”

“Apparently he got annoyed. Started making threats. Against her and against us.”

“Against us? She told him we were involved?”

“By name. I doubt there’s anything to worry about, but I wanted you to know. Keep your security systems on.”

Next day was my day off, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of Margolia. I had an early breakfast and settled in to watch Sanctuary, which was a thirty-year-old thriller about the lost colony.

It was one of the Sky Jordan adventures, which were hugely popular in their time. Sky was played throughout that long series by Jason Holcombe, who always struck me as the sexiest leading man in the business. In this one, his ship gets too close to an alien device that sucks the power out of everything, and he’s rescued by Solena, a beautiful Margolian.

She’s played by a popular actress of the period. But I pulled her out, put myself in her place, and settled back to watch the action.

Solena patches up the battered hero, pulls him out of his dead ship, and, using a force shield that negates the power drain, heads for home.

Margolia is a world of gleaming cities and impossible architecture. Its citizens enjoy a life of absolute leisure. (How they’d stand it isn’t explained.) The place looks great.

The mountains are higher, the forests greener, the oceans wilder than anything you might see on Rimway. There are twin suns, which seem to move through the sky together, three or four moons, and a set of rings.

If the Wescotts had found anything like that, I would surely have liked to visit.

But this Margolia is under threat by Bayloks, a horde of malevolent aliens. It was the Bayloks who had planted the power drain. They come complete with lizard snouts and bursts of tentacles and malignant red eyes that glow when the lights go down.

Whatever evolutionary advantage accrued from this, I couldn’t imagine. But they were ugly and stomach-churning in the manner of most special effects monsters.

Despite their advanced technology, the Margolians, because they have been cut off from the rest of the human race for so long, have forgotten how to defend themselves.

They have no warships and no knowledge how to build any. They have nobody trained in the military arts. (At some point, they apparently decided that the armed forces had no place in an enlightened society.) And, to cap things off, they’re averse to killing.

There is also Tangus Korr, who is Solena’s boyfriend. Tangus becomes jealous of Sky and begins plotting against him.

Solena sees through his tricks and casts her lot with the hero, who is meantime providing engineering advice. The aliens are coming fast, and there is a race to put together a defense force. You get a tour of Sky’s new ship, which they name War Eagle. It’s small but of course it packs a wallop.

Solena meantime falls in love with Sky and takes him into her bedroom. It is the night before the face-off with the enemy, and Sky may not come back, probably will not come back. He wants her to stay out of harm’s way, but she won’t have it. In the end, tears running down her cheeks, she releases the clasps on her blouse, opens it wide and gives him a choice. “You want me,” she says, “then promise you will take me with you tomorrow.”

Well, what’s a guy going to do?

I might as well confess right here that my favorite part of these sims is watching myself get taken by the right leading man. I know women generally deny that, at least when there are men in the room, but there isn’t much that gives me a better ride than watching Jason Holcombe perform his magic with me.

Things run off the track a bit when Tangus turns out, incomprehensibly, to be in the pay of the Bayloks. He very nearly destroys the nascent fleet in dock, but after a desperate shoot-out and slugfest with Sky, the ships get safely launched.

What the audience knows, but the Margolians do not, is that the Bayloks can teleport over short distances. At the height of the battle they explode onto the bridge of the War Eagle.

So I’m sitting there, enjoying the action, when one materialized, screeching, fangs bared, directly in front of me. I shrieked and fell out of my chair.

“That’s unnerving,” said Carmen, the AI.

I sat in the middle of the floor, watching the battle rage around the living room. “We need a little more restraint,” I said, “by the people who make these things.”

I slept most of the afternoon, went out for dinner with a friend that evening, and got back just before midnight. I showered and got ready for bed, but paused to look out at the river and the sleepy countryside. I was thinking how fortunate I was, and all the things I was taking for granted. A good job, a good life, and a good place to live it. It wasn’t Margolia, but it had taverns and live theater. And if you bottled yourself up watching sims night after night, whose fault was it?