Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“Not now,” she said to it. Then: “Chase, let me see what you have.”

I passed the disk over. She put it in the reader and darkened the room. “Can we assume it probably happened during the final mission?”

“That’s a good place to start.”

She directed the AI to bring up a projection of the search area for the 1391-92 flight.

The office vanished, and we were adrift among the stars. “I’ve blanked everything outside the subject area,” the AI said. “There are thirteen hundred eleven stars in the field.” Most were yellow G-types. One, near the bookcase at the far wall, brightened.

“That’s Taio 4776, where they made their first visit.” A line grew out of it and connected to a second star, a half meter away. “Icehouse 27651.” It angled off to a third, near the desk lamp. “Koestler 2294.” And up to a star near the overhead. From there it skimmed along the sofa, touching two more, and turned sharply to cross the room. In the end we were looking at a glowing zigzag. “Distance across the field is thirty-two point four light-years. Total distance covered by the mission is eighty-nine point seven light-years. Ten stars visited.”

“Mark.” Shara was addressing the AI. “Keep this same field. I want you to show us which stars are near the end of their hydrogen-burning cycle. Say, stars in which helium burning would begin during the next half million years. Blank everything else.”

“I will require a moment, Shara.”

“Take your time.”

“Shara,” I said, “wouldn’t someone have had to visit these systems earlier for Adam to know which suns were at the end of the cycle?”

“Not at all. Spectrographic analysis would provide everything he’d need to plan the flight.”

“Ready, ” said Mark.

“Okay.” The stars were beginning to wink out. “Let’s see what we have.”

We were left with about thirty target stars, including the ten visited by the Wescotts.

The track of the Falcon was bright and clear.

“Store the pattern,” she said.

It winked off.

“Okay, Mark. Now I want you to plan a flight to the same ten stars, using minimal total travel time. Start from the same star the Falcon mission used. Taio Whatever.

When you have it, put it up.”

Taio 4776 grew bright, and the line came out of it again, moved to Icehouse, then to the star near the lamp. When it had finished all ten, the zigzag pattern floated in front of us. “Looks like the same one,” I said.

“Let’s find out. Mark, shrink the pattern and let’s see the first one again. Overlay them.”

He moved the patterns until they were side by side. Then he merged them.

Identical.

“Try the previous mission,” I said.

We found it in the 1386-87 flight.

The patterns were almost identical. Again, the mission had visited ten planetary systems. But this time, it had not used the most-fuel-efficient route. The deviation came at the sixth star.

Tinicum 2502.

It wasn’t a major change, but it was enough to tell us something was wrong.

We sat looking at it. Had they remained consistent to the pattern, they would not have gone to Tinicum.

“Okay,” I said. “Which star should they have visited? Which one fits with the rest of the pattern?”

Shara put the question to the AI. “Assume,” she said, “that after Tinicum 2502 they returned to the original track.”

“Here,” said Mark, brightening a nearby star.

Tinicum 2116.

“Brilliant, Shara,” I said.

She smiled. “I have my moments.”

I took her to lunch. It seemed the least I could do. We went to the Hillside, got a table by a window, ordered drinks, and sat back to talk about lost interstellars.

“Tinicum’s planetary system will probably have a diameter of about eight billion klicks,” she said. “But the sun’s gravitational influence will reach out several times that far. If the Seeker ’s orbiting one of the planets, you should have no trouble finding it.”

“But if it’s in solar orbit-”

“-You’re going to want to pack a few meals.”

Yeah. That was the next order of business. It would take the Belle-Marie, which had only basic navigation equipment to conduct the search, a long time. Maybe years.

“Can Survey help?”

“I can let you have a piece of hardware, a telescope, that should move things along nicely.”

“Shara,” I said, “you’re a warm, wonderful human being.”

“Right. What do I get in return?”

“I’ll pay for lunch.”

“You’re already paying for lunch.”

“Oh.” I thought about it. “You want to come along? Be there when we find it?”

She made a face as if I’d just offered a plate of chopped squid. “I don’t think so. I know it’s historically big stuff, but I’m just not an enthusiast. Not enough to spend that much time on shipboard. You’ll probably be out there a month or two.”

The food came. Sandwiches and drinks. There was a guy at a window table trying to catch Shara’s eye. She seemed not to have noticed. “When you find it,” she said, “you publicly share credit with Survey-”

“Done.”

“-And agree to give us access to the discovery. Which is to say you and your boss don’t strip the ship before we get there.”

“We’ll want to take some stuff. Just a bit.”

“Keep it modest. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

She looked at me. “I mean it, Chase.”

“I know. It won’t be a problem,” I said.

“Okay.” She tried her drink, but her mind was elsewhere. “The truth about Survey,” she said after a hesitation, “what we don’t admit publicly, is that our prime interest is finding another civilization. That’s not official, of course. Officially, we want to inventory what’s out there. Each system goes into the catalog. Physical details about suns and worlds. Characteristics and arrangements of the planets in each system. Any odd features, and so on.

“But the people in the ships know that most of the information they bring back goes into File and Forget. I mean, who really cares about the surface temperature of one more gas giant?”

“So you’re telling me-?”

“-Inspection of gas giants is generally done at long range and tends to be hit-and-run.

Ditto, worlds too close in, or too far out. The ships are required to survey everything in the system, but we generally will not go in close. You know that. You used to work for us. That means, if the Seeker is orbiting a planet, the planet would most likely be in the biozone. So you want to start there.”

“We don’t even know for sure it’s in the system.”

“That’s what makes it a challenge.” She took the first bite out of her sandwich. “Good stuff,” she said. “I love this place.”

“Tell me about the telescope.”

“Okay, we’ll need to coordinate getting it for you.” She spotted the flirt and looked bored. “When are you leaving?”

When I got back to the office, I reported the conversation to Alex, who pumped a fist in the air. “I believe we’re in business,” he said.

I also told him about Windy’s call.

“Ollie Bolton.” He made a face. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I don’t think there’s much we can do. Short of physical assault.”

“I don’t, either.”

“You don’t seem all that annoyed.”

“It’s part of the business,” he said. “We got outsmarted.”

“It’s not part of the business. It’s bribery.”

“Let’s not worry about it for the moment, Chase. We have bigger things to think about.”

The Belle-Marie didn’t have a mount for the telescope, so there was a delay of several days while a cradle was prepared and installed on the hull.