Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“Name it.”

“I’m going to shut down the engines in a moment. When I do, pick out one of the cases and load it with the heaviest artifacts we have.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t visible yet through the viewport. But the picture on the monitor was getting bigger.

“Belle,” I said, “take the helm until I come back.”

“I have it, Chase.”

I released my harness and collected a tether and a pressure suit, which I took back to the common room, where Alex was shoving artifacts into a box.

“Here,” I said, “I’ll take over. You put this on.”

“Why?” he asked, puzzled. “Am I going outside?”

“Talk later,” I said. I finished packing the case and secured it. Alex got into the suit, and I shortened the tether, cut it back to about a meter and a half, and connected it to his belt.

“Six minutes,” said Belle.

“Okay,” I told her. “Kill the gravity.”

She shut it down and I picked up the case. “Let’s go.”

I opened the airlock and he went inside. I passed the case to him.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“We’re going to use it to save our necks.”

I closed the hatch, went back to my seat, and buckled in. There was a glow up ahead.

“That’s it,” said Belle. “Engines are still firing.”

“Okay.”

“Five minutes.”

“Alex, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Start depressurization.”

“I already have.”

“Good. Use the tether to secure yourself to one of the handgrips. We don’t want you going out the door.”

“Hang on a second.”

I watched the glow getting brighter. “Come on, Alex.”

“How’s this thing work?”

“It’s just a clip.”

“I think it’s defective.”

“Just knot it if you have to.”

“Four minutes.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“Give it a good yank. Make sure it’s secure.”

“It’s fine.”

My instincts were all telling me to hit the brakes. “All right. Air pressure will be zero in another minute.”

“Okay.”

“When it is, when the green light on the outer hatch comes on, open it.”

“All right. I know you’re not about to tell me we’re going to hit it with the artifacts.”

“How do you like breathing?”

“It’s still on collision course, Chase,” said Belle.

“Didn’t we have something else we could have thrown at it?”

“We could probably have used a sink if we’d had more time.”

“Two minutes.”

“Belle, power to the main engines. Let’s be ready to move out.”

“Pressure’s zero,” said Alex.

“It is still on collision course,” said Belle.

“One minute, twenty, Alex.” The tracker was still braking.

“Opening the outer hatch.”

The airlock was on the port side. “When you push the case out, try to be gentle. Don’t shove it.”

“Okay.”

“We want it, as much as possible, to continue ahead on our present vector.”

“Okay.”

“Just lay it out there. Let me know when it’s done.”

“All right.”

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Do it.”

I heard him grumble. Then: “Okay. It’s gone.”

“Very good. Don’t try to close the hatch. Just hang on. Turn in ten seconds.”

“Okay.”

“Nine, eight…”

The one serious risk was the one Alex had alluded to, that the tracker might guess what I was doing, or possibly even react quickly enough to change its course. But I doubted that was possible. More likely was that I’d cut it too close and would slam into the damned thing on my own.

“Four, three…”

Its engines were still firing, still trying to decelerate.

“… Two…”

I fired the port-side thrusters, turning hard to starboard. The tracker’s starboard thrusters fired as it tried to match the move, but it was too late. We soared past, and the case of artifacts caught it right on the nose at a combined velocity close to two thousand kilometers per hour.

The sky lit up behind us. Alex complained that he couldn’t believe he’d actually done that. Had to have been a better way. Now that there was time to think about it, I realized we might have filled the container with water. But I let it go.

We did a series of long- and short-range sweeps to assure ourselves nothing else was coming our way.

Orbits, vectors, and intersections. When you understand them rightly, all becomes clear.

- Korim Maas,

In the Lab, 1411 The next order of business was to clean the lenses. It was delicate work and I left it to Alex, who’s the expert. When he was satisfied he’d done the best he could, we showed them to Belle. “What do you think?” he asked her.

We watched lights playing through them. She commented that, considering their age, they were almost in decent condition.

“Can you reproduce the images?” asked Alex.

“I think so. Put one into the reader and let’s see what we have.”

We retreated to the common room, and I loaded the first lens.

“That’s good,” said Belle. Lights dimmed. We were looking at a field under a starlit sky. Dark trees crowded in on our left. In the foreground, two people stood by a gate in a wooden fence. A little girl, and a woman who seemed to be her mother. Beyond the gate were a lawn, a tree with a swing, and a house. Beyond the house lay a river.

Everything was somewhat blurred. “Hang on,” said Belle. “I see the problem.” The picture cleared, and the VR effect took hold. We were standing in the field. On the far side of the river, in the darkness, a ring of light glittered.

“A city, I think,” said Alex. “Where are we, Belle? Can you tell? Is it Earth?”

“I don’t know. It could be anywhere.”

The child was about nine. She wore a blue jumpsuit and a matching bow in her long auburn hair. She was looking directly at us, smiling, waving her hand. The mother’s eyes were also fixed on us. She was dressed in khakis, her head canted, smiling selfconsciously, patiently waiting for the picture-taking session to end.

I could feel rain coming. And the wind whispering in the trees. A yellow glow in a cloud-filled sky suggested the presence of a moon. The girl wanted to run toward us, to embrace us, but I suspected she’d been instructed to pose, and so she did.

“Okay?” Alex asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Next, Belle.”

Same two people. Standing on the front porch of the house. The house looked lived in.

The front steps didn’t fit quite right into the porch, and the post light leaned at an angle. The roof had some torn shingles, and one of several large windows needed its frame repaired. This wasn’t the kind of place you used to impress friends. But there were lots of flowering bushes out front. And it looked comfortable.

The clouds had backed off a bit, and we could see the moon. It was full and bright, a fraction larger than Rimway’s satellite. Light spilled through the windows. The woman was laughing now, more at ease, and seemed to be in the act of reaching down to catch the child in her arms. She was attractive. Her hair was like the child’s, auburn tinged with red. She looked happy, a woman without a care in the world. She wore a white blouse and dark slacks. “I wonder who they are,” Alex said.

I shrugged. “Maybe she became the captain of the Seeker,” I said.

“She doesn’t look like somebody who’d be piloting interstellars. She’ll have her hands full with the little girl.”

“I was talking about the little girl,” I said.

“It’s not Earth,” said Belle.

The voice seemed to come out of a patch of trees. “How do you know?” asked Alex “It’s not Earth’s moon.”