Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

I saw an inland area on one of the island continents. Other than that-?

Shara tried to enhance. Alex waved me closer to the viewport. Get a better angle, look, down there.

The jungle seemed to have been cleared away and there was a cluster of straight lines.

Near a large lake.

“A city?” I said.

“And there,” said Alex. More lines, farther north. Embracing a river.

I’m not sure what I saw in his eyes at that moment. Usually, when we find a new site, he assumes his modest genius appearance. Sometimes, if it’s been a long hunt, he doesn’t bother, and there’s simply a sense of triumph. But I don’t know what it was that time. Delight. Sadness. Wistfulness. Exhilaration. All wrapped together.

“More,” Shara said. Along the southern coastline, but still in the terminator. We counted five clusters.

“Nothing on the other big island,” said Alex.

“That’s because it’s in direct sunlight,” said Shara. “It’s too warm. Everything we’ve seen is in the twilight zone. That’s where the weather would be most comfortable.”

We passed over and lost them. The Lotus didn’t have a telescope that could look down to the rear. Alex confronted Shara with a huge smile. “So much for the tidal waves and tornadoes,” he said.

She was frowning. “Shouldn’t have been possible.”

“Sure it was. They rode it out in orbit. In the Bremerhaven. They stayed there until things calmed down.”

“For forty years?” Shara and I both blurted it out. Nobody was buying that story.

“Yes. That’s why they needed the greenhouses. Look, they needed to get the Seeker under way as quickly as possible, so it could get to Earth and, they hoped, trigger a rescue effort. They expected there’d be some survivors on Margolia. But they probably didn’t trust the Seeker. It was their best shot, but they weren’t sure. They knew Balfour would eventually become livable and that conditions on Margolia would be extreme. So, before cannibalizing the Bremerhaven, they used it to bring some people here. Then they stripped it and sent the Seeker on its way.

“The Balfour group stayed on board. In orbit. Forty, fifty years. Whatever it took.

When conditions settled down on the ground, they were able to go down and establish themselves.”

“That’s why there was no lander,” I said.

“Right. It’s below us, somewhere.”

“How many you figure there were?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Not many, I’d think. As few as they could get away with. Only a few hundred, probably. Maybe not that many. The fewer they had, the better their chances.

What’s the minimum number you’d have to have to allow safe reproduction?”

Nobody knew.

Shara stared at the blue world. “Pity,” she said.

“Why? What do you mean?” I asked.

“The cavalry’s a little late.”

Suddenly there was ocean before us again. Behind us, the dwarf-sun sank toward the rim of the planet. The sea was blue and polished and quiet. We rushed toward the darkness.

“That one area,” said Shara, “is probably the only piece of real estate on the planet that has comfortable temperatures. I’ll tell you what I think-”

We never found out because she broke off and squealed and pointed at the screen.

Something in the ocean.

“Can you enhance it?” she asked. “It looks-”

Like a ship.

It wasn’t much more than a wake. The object leaving it was too small to make out.

“Might be a large fish,” said Alex. I tried to get a better picture but it went fuzzy.

“Damn this thing,” he said.

Confirmation came from the Gonzalez, which was, as it approached, able to use its telescopes. I’ll never forget Brankov’s first words: “My God, Alex, they’re alive down there.”

Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island in infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.

- John Stuart Mill,

Three Essays on Religion, 1874 C.E.

Who would have thought?

The Gonzalez ’s sensors and telescopes keyed on the planetary surface, and they picked up images that were relayed to the Lotus. Cities. Bridges and highways.

Harbors and parks. Something that looked like a train arced across a canyon. And I thought I caught a glimpse of an aircraft.

Brankov called again: “There’s an electronic cloud. They’re talking to each other!”

We heard cheering in the background.

I don’t know how to describe the exhilaration of those moments. It almost wiped out my discomfort over the events of the preceding hours. It was a good time. I took a moment to congratulate Alex, to kiss him, and hang on to him in the way sometimes we try to hang on to a special moment, hoping it will never end.

A tidal wave of news broke over us. The Gonzalez picked up video signals, music, voices. I tried to get some of it directly using the yacht’s equipment. The sky was filled with traffic.

Alex was ecstatic. Shara pronounced herself dumbfounded. “They’ve been isolated out here more than half of recorded history,” she said. “These people could not have survived.” She literally glowed.

A few hours later, the Gonzalez came alongside, and we crossed over to handshakes and claps on the back. Have a drink. How’d you guys ever figure this out? They’ve got satellites! Look at this over here: A ball game. With three teams on the field. How long did you say they’ve been out here?

They were throwing the incoming images across banks of monitors and relaying some of it back to Survey.

Alex looked happier than I’d ever seen him. He accepted congratulations from everybody. Shara and I got smooched by every guy on the ship. They weren’t fooling anybody. But what the hell, how often did something like that happen?

Shara’s eyes were bright with emotion. When things calmed down a bit she came over.

“You did good, Chase,” she said.

“It was Alex,” I told her. “I’d have let it go a long time ago.”

“Yeah. But I think you deserve a large piece of the credit.” She grinned. “My buddy.”

Those first minutes were filled with images: a tower that had to be part of a radio transmission network, a beach loaded with people, a park with fountains and broad lawns and children. “I guess the lesson,” one of the researchers said, “is that we’re tough little monkeys. We don’t go down easily.”

Brankov stood erect and beaming like a conquering hero. “Biggest discovery in human history,” he said. They raised their cups to Alex, the Margolians, Shara, and finally to me. As I write these words, I’ve a picture of that glorious moment on the wall at my right hand.

We found additional cities. They were all located along the terminator, where weather would be most accommodating. Some had tall needle towers like the City on the Crag, some had vast parks, a couple seemed simply to have spread out haphazardly. One resembled a vast wheel. In each of these places, the inhabitants had beaten back the jungle, literally walled it off.

We saw more aircraft.

And listened to radio broadcasts. “Can’t understand any of it,” said a frustrated Brankov. “I wonder if they know we’re here.”

The AI was assigned to acquire a translation capability.

Brankov had undergone a transformation. The formality and reserve were gone. He stood revealed as a collection of enthusiasms. Loved his work. Loved being out in the field. Loved being on hand when things were happening. Loved his lunch. I’m not sure I ever knew anyone maintain so high a level of exhilaration through so prolonged a period. That first night he tried to talk Shara into his bed. She ducked, and he tried his luck with me. “It would be a way to celebrate,” he told me. “A way to make the event unforgettable.” As if it weren’t already. While he waited for a response, he added, “This seems like a moment when anything is possible.”