Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“Why?” I asked.

“Find the brown dwarf and that gives us its mass, current position, and velocity. From that we can work out its path through the Tinicum system. Then we can put together a decent estimate where we might find your missing world.”

“Shara, haven’t we just moved the problem around? How do we find the brown dwarf?”

She was looking at something over my shoulder. “Don’t turn around,” she said.

I waited a few seconds, and saw a waiter leading a tall male in a dark jacket past us to a corner table. He looked pretty good, and his gaze swept across Shara, and held.

There was an exchange of nonverbals and he moved on. Shara grinned at me as he passed out of her field of vision. “Target of opportunity.”

Maybe she hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought. “The brown dwarf,” I said.

“Yeah.” She was still distracted. “Well, the good thing about all this is that it can’t have gone very far in nine thousand years. Certainly less than a light-year. It’ll be quite bright in the near infrared, say tenth or at worst fifteenth magnitude.”

A young woman cruised past, headed for the guy. Shara shook her head. “Pity,” she said.

“So we can find it?”

“It’ll cost.”

“What do we have to do?”

“Go hunting for it. First you’ll need to persuade Survey to let you have a ship.”

“Why?” I asked. “We have the Belle-Marie.”

“It can’t do the job. You’re going to need to deliver a couple of wide-field telescopes to the search area. A private yacht wouldn’t be able to handle that. Anyhow, Survey has ships already equipped to do this kind of thing.”

“I’ll talk to Windy.”

“They’ll want somebody from Survey to go along. It’s in the rules.”

“What actually would we need to do? How do wide-field telescopes work?”

“They come in pairs. We set them well apart and let them do a simultaneous survey of the sky. The brown dwarf will stand out.”

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me.”

“All right. Will the onboard AI be able to take care of things without my getting too much involved?”

“No,” she said. “You’ll have to provide some guidance. The ship will have the equipment, but this operation’s a bit different from what the AIs normally do.”

She explained the procedures. Dinner arrived. Vegetables with salads, and sliced chicken. We were both hungry. She dived in, but I was still trying to write down everything I was hearing. “I’ll never get all this straight,” I said.

“Sure you will. I tell you what, before you leave, I’ll give you a crash course.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be fine, Chase.”

“Is there anybody out there with the mission? Somebody I could ask, in case we have a problem? Who knows how these things work?”

“One or two, maybe,” she said. “I’m not sure. But don’t worry. The person Windy sends with you will know how to operate the gear.”

I wasn’t comfortable with the arrangement. It felt like one of those situations where we’d get out there and discover I didn’t know what I was doing. And the guy they’d sent along would look puzzled and comment how it had been a long time. So I took a plunge. “Listen, you said that Survey would want to send a rep with us.”

“I’m busy, Chase.”

“I’d appreciate it. I’d consider it a personal favor.”

She lifted a piece of tomato on her fork and stole a glance over her shoulder at the corner table. The guy was absorbed in his companion.

“I’ll never ask for anything again,” I said.

“I’m sure.” She tapped her fingernails on the side of the wineglass while she thought about it. “It’s not that hard, Chase.”

“This is a piece of history. Wouldn’t you like to be there?”

“I think the history’s already been made, Champ. I should have gone on the earlier flight.”

“Shara, Alex’s instincts are usually pretty good. There might be something more.

Something pretty big.”

She was already well along on the meal. I knew she’d be reaching for the dessert menu next. Shara was one of those irritating people who eats what she likes and never seems to pay a price. “We’re talking some serious time here, Chase. What about my social life?”

“We’ll party on the way.”

Getting a ship turned out to be complicated.

Shara was correct as far as it went when she said official policy required someone from Survey to be on the flight. But the someone had to be the pilot. “There are no pilots available,” Windy told me. “I can check to see whether anyone would volunteer to go. But it would be overtime. And I doubt we could find anybody anyhow.”

She went on to tell me who was currently on free time and why they would not be responsive to come back to work.

“How about me?” I said. “I’m licensed.”

“For Arcturus- class?”

I’d been piloting yachts and small commercial. “Not exactly,” I said. “But how complicated can it be?”

“It’s the rules, Chase. Sorry. I have no choice.”

Windy made some calls and, as predicted, both available people said no. Survey pilots are pretty well paid, and they don’t get a lot of free time at home. Had we been at one of the outposts, or on a station somewhere, we’d have had no problem. But in Andiquar, it was no go.

So Alex signed me up for an accelerated program. And that’s how I became qualified for the next level of superluminal. I have a Longstar license now, which is a level beyond Arcturus. I didn’t really want to get that one either, but that’s another story.

Three weeks after my conversation with Windy, I had my license, and she took me on as a temporary, thereby allowing her to classify me as an employee.

Shara in the meantime wondered what the fuss was about. “I’ll never figure out why anybody would pay large sums of money for antiques. I understand their archeological value. But in this case, even that seems problematical. All you can hope to do is find out how a few diehards spent their last days. To be honest, I think you’d pay them more respect by letting them be.”

I’d been empowered to offer her a third of any profits we might realize if the discovery were made and after Survey got its share. That got her attention. “How much are we talking?” she asked.

I provided a modest estimate, based on what the handful of Seeker trophies had brought. She was impressed. “The business pays enough to get by on,” I said.

“I guess. Well, okay, Chase. I can’t very well turn that down. But I still can’t imagine why the Margolians would try to get over to a world that’s going into the deep freeze.

I think this is wrongheaded all around. But all right. What’s to lose?”

Windy showed up a few minutes later, and Shara told her she was going with us.

Windy’s color changed. “I’d thought better of you,” she said.

So on a cool, windy day in late summer, in the year 1430 since the Foundation of Rimway’s Associated States, Alex, Shara, and I caught the shuttle to Skydeck, and boarded VHY-111. The Spirit. Within an hour we were on our way back to Margolia.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Society and Solitude, 1870 C.E.

The Spirit was twice the size of the Belle-Marie, with accommodations for eleven passengers. The life-support section consisted of the bridge, twelve compartments (one for the pilot), two washrooms, a compact storage area, an operations center, a workout center the size of a large closet, and a common room. The latter was considerably more spacious than the one Alex and I were accustomed to. That said, the Belle-Marie nevertheless made for easier living. The Spirit was strictly a vehicle to transport people from one place to another. There were no amenities.