Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“With celestials. It’s true. It happened. In fact, there’ve been two events.”

Now she had them. They blurted out questions but Kim waved them aside. She described the Hunter and Hammersmith discoveries, and told them what had really occurred at the Culbertson Tunnel. She told them that the Council was determined to maintain secrecy for the time being, and that was why no one had been able to explain anything in advance. She showed them the Valiant but would not allow them to inspect it. “You can do all that later,” she said. “What you need to know now is that we hope to reestablish communication, that we hope to compensate for the mistakes made twenty-seven years ago, and that we know almost nothing about what we face. We’re pretty sure they are now hostile, and we can assume they will not hesitate to destroy the McCollum . We’ll be out there alone. Consequently you might want to reconsider whether you want to come.” She turned to Ali. “Anyone who wishes to leave has an opportunity now to do so. Once we get underway, you’re committed.”

“ How dangerous?” asked their anthropologist, Maurie Penn.

“You know as much as I do now. I’d say substantially .”

“Count me in,” said the mathematician. “A chance to talk to another species? Hell, yes.”

There was no real debate. For one thing, they were out of time. For another, the prize was simply too bright. Those who might ordinarily have been reluctant to put their lives in jeopardy for any reason, like the AI specialist Gil Chase, were overwhelmed by the possibilities of the situation. They would all stay. Certainly, they were saying, what else would you expect?

The formal meeting broke up. The seats swung back to acceleration positions, and Ali made for the pilot’s room.

Maurie Penn sat down beside her. “This is not the way I’d have wanted to do this,” he said. “A mission like this. There should have been some preparation.”

“Conditions don’t permit it,” she said.

Ali’s voice alerted them that departure was imminent. The cabin lights dimmed.

The seats in the briefing room had individual monitors that could be keyed into any of the visual inputs from the external imagers. She switched over to a view of Greenway and looked down at Equatoria. The northern snows had given way and the entire continent was now green. The Mandan archipelago trailed off to the west, over the rim of the world.

The skyhook, long and arcing as if a heavy wind were blowing against it, dropped down and down into the cloud banks where it faded from sight.

Kim felt a slight push.

“Underway,” said Ali.

Forty-some minutes later, without a word from the Patrol, they slipped into hyperspace and Kim breathed more easily.

The Valiant came under immediate scrutiny. After the initial wave of euphoria, some members concluded that Kim had dragged them along on a frivolous—and deranged—mission. But Flexner’s reputation held the day. Matt was solid, down-to-earth, not one to be swept off his feet. There might therefore be something to the story.

Eventually, after everyone had had a chance to look at the microship, she cautioned them against attempting to take it apart, and secured it inside a glass case in one of the unused rooms on the top floor. Reluctantly, she activated an alarm system.

“Not a good idea,” Matt told her, “to signal that you don’t trust your people.”

She knew that. She apologized to them but explained that she knew they were scientists and that the temptation might be overwhelming. “We need it intact,” she said. And then she explained the real purpose of the mission. “We’re going to give it back to them.”

Eyes widened and people started to argue. Tesla Duchard, the biologist, looked as if she were going into shock.

But Kim defended her view, and to his credit, Matt supported her. “The Hunter mission did a lot of damage,” he said. “If we can rectify that, and establish a constructive relationship, we’ll come away with far more than a busted ship.”

There was some grumbling, but in the end they bought it.

Sandra Leasing, who designed and built star drives, concluded that the Valiant used a transdimensional entry system that was in no way different from their own. “Probably,” she said, “there is no other way to manage things.”

“The real question for me,” said Mona Vasquez, a psychologist, “is the missing propulsion tubes. How does it travel in normal space?”

“Only one way I can think of,” said Terri Taranaka, a physicist, “if you’re not throwing something out the rear, you have to throw something out the front , something to pull you along.”

“And what would that be?” asked Maurie.

“A gravity field. You create a gravity field along the intended course, just as we create one in here. And you fall forward into it.”

“Do we have that kind of capability?” asked Tesla.

“We do,” said Matt. “But we couldn’t generate a strong enough field to make it practical. In time, though, it’d be a good way to go. If only because you wouldn’t have to take along a load of reaction mass.”

Kim ran the Hunter logs for the team and enjoyed hearing them gasp when the celestial pilot appeared. “ Cho-cho-san, ” said Terri. “Butterfly.”

They discussed the Hunter’s reaction to its unexpected find and began considering what might await them, and how best to respond.

She decided also that it would be necessary to tell them about Woodbridge’s effort to seize the Valiant . When they reemerged into realspace in the vicinity of Alnitak, they’d undoubtedly receive an official message demanding return of the artifact. And she had to inoculate them against that. Especially, she had to win Ali over.

But she waited for the right time. They passed the midway point of the journey on a Thursday, and marked the event by throwing a party. This group turned out to be big on parties, and Kim liked that. The atmosphere in the ship remained festive and there was a lot of talk about being at the intersection of epochs. That was Gil’s terminology. Gil was aloof and formal, and quickly earned a reputation for being cooler than the AIs he created and serviced. Kim had known him for years, and he seemed to her to be a particularly selfish man, dedicated exclusively to advancing his own priorities. But it happened, on this occasion, that his priorities were in sync with hers.

Toward the end of the party, Paul McKeep commented that it was a good thing the Institute had kept the existence of the ship quiet. “The government’s too conservative,” he said. “They’d never have allowed us away from the dock.” Paul was their mathematician.

Kim threw a sidelong glance at Ali to make sure he was listening. Then she raised her voice slightly: “There’s something you folks ought to know.”

“Something else ?” laughed Mona.

“Yes,” she said. “We didn’t quite succeed in keeping a lid on the Valiant . Woodbridge found out about it and tried to take it from me.”

“How’d you manage to keep it out of his hands?” asked Ali.

“I gave him a duplicate.”

That brought a round of laughter.

But Ali never cracked a smile. “You know what that means,” he said.

“Yes.” Kim looked directly into his dark eyes. “When we make the jump, we’ll find a recall waiting for us.”

He frowned, turned, and left the room. The others fell silent. Kim looked at Matt, intending to follow him, and make sure he would resist pressure from home.

But Matt shook his head. No , he was saying. This is not the time.