Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“No,” he said. “Nothing that I know about. She had an accident once playing wraparound. Had to get a couple of her teeth capped.”

“I don’t think there’s anything there we can use. Okay, Sheyel. I’ll see if I can find another way. In the meantime, if you think of anything, give me a call.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Kim. I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

She switched off, poured herself a drink, glanced at a code she’d written on a piece of paper, and punched it in.

“Hello?” Mike Plymouth’s voice. She left the visual off.

“Hi, Mike.” She made her voice as soft as she could.

“Hello, Kay. I thought I’d hear from you.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I can’t make it tonight.”

“Oh. Well—You are all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Another night, maybe?”

She’d pushed Solly out of the room. Now she wished he were there. “I don’t think so. There’s really no point.”

“Oh.” He was fumbling for something to say. Something to retrieve the situation. Or save his pride.

“I’m sorry.” She thought about making up a story. Something to spare his feelings. I’m already committed. I was cheating yesterday. But she let it pass. “I’m just really tied up right now.”

“I understand.” The room grew still. “Goodbye, Kay.” Then he was off the line and she was staring at the link.

“Goodbye, Mike,” she said.

They arranged to have the hotel deliver some cheese and wine and settled back to watch the Hunter logs. Kim put the disk into the reader, set it for the screen, sampled the cheese, and turned to Solly. “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded and she started the program.

Titles appeared, identifying the ship, setting the time and place, listing commercial cargo (“None”), and describing the general nature of the flight. The date, translated to Seabright time, was February 12. Date of departure from St. Johns.

The early visuals were from the outstation, depicting technicians and maintenance staff working on the Hunter . Solly described what they were doing, these checking life support maintenance, those topping off water supplies.

“We’ll get two sets of records,” he explained. “One will be the data flow from the various shipboard systems, life support, navigation, power plant, and so on. The other will be a visual record of what’s happening in the pilot’s room. The imagers will only record movement. If the room is empty, or if the pilot’s asleep—” he held out his hands, palms up, “—nada.”

“How much work is there for a pilot to do, Solly?”

“It’s a tough profession, Kim. It takes a high level of intelligence, extensive knowledge, great reflexes—”

Her eyes closed. “Solly—”

“Trade secret?”

“Go ahead. You can trust me.”

“You could jettison the pilot at any time and be perfectly safe.”

“Really?”

“Sure. The pilot does three things: he talks to the ground, tells the AI where to go, and takes over if the AI blows up. Which never happens.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. And the AI can talk to the ground.” He fast-forwarded past the technicians. They whirled through their tasks, and then disappeared and the screen went blank. The clock leaped forward two hours. The next sequence gave them Markis Kane coming into the pilot’s room.

This was Kane more than forty years after the war, but there was of course no physical difference between the man who sat in the cabin of the Hunter , and the man whose image was prominently displayed at the Mighty Third Memorial Museum. This later version might have been a little less lean, and his features might have been a trifle harder. Otherwise, he was the same person.

He wore a blue jumpsuit with a shoulder patch depicting the Hunter orbiting a ringed planet, with the motto PERSISTENCE. His black hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven. He had a natural youth and vitality that rendered him quite attractive, Kim thought. He was a war hero, and he had the soul of an artist. Quite a resume.

The pilot’s room was not radically different from the one she’d seen during her inspection of the Hunter . The two chairs were different, the carpeting was lighter, the walls darker. But the instrument layout did not seem to have changed.

Kane sat down in the left-hand chair and picked up a notepad. Kim watched him go methodically through a checklist. The procedure lasted about ten minutes. When he’d finished, he got out of his chair and left the room. She recalled the layout of the Hunter , and knew that the pilot’s room opened onto the upper level of the rotunda. The imager stopped recording. The clock jumped ahead sixteen minutes and Kane reentered, eased into his seat, and began touching blinkers.

“ Hunter ready to depart. ”

“ Hunter, you are clear to go. ”

He touched a stud on the chair arm. “ We are thirty seconds from departure, folks. Buckle in. ” His own harness came down over his shoulder and locked in place. The chair moved to face forward.

At the time of the Hunter flight, St. Johns was on the edge of known territory. That was still true. No deeper outpost existed. Several hundred missions had gone beyond, but that was a trivial number spread against so vast a region. There was an ongoing argument among the Nine Worlds about who should bear the financial burden of maintaining the outstation. Traffic had fallen precipitously, and the station no longer supported itself. There was talk of closing it down.

The Hunter edged forward. Kim watched the umbilicals detach. The dock began moving past on the overhead screen and in the windows, moving quicker, and then it dropped away. The acceleration pressed Kane back into his chair. He spoke briefly with the operations people, and noted for the record that the ship was clear, on course, and all conditions were nominal.

Solly moved the record forward. Kane remained alone in the room, watching his instruments, occasionally talking to the AI. Then, about a quarter-hour into the flight he spoke into his intercom again: “ We are going to initiate acceleration to jump status in five minutes. Emily and Kile know about that. Yoshi, once it begins you won’t be able to move. It’ll last roughly twenty-five minutes. Anything you need to do, this is a good time to take care of it. ”

“The jump engines feed off the mains,” Solly explained. “Most systems require almost a half hour of steady one-gee acceleration before they can lock in enough power to make the jump to hyperspace.”

Kane got on a channel that was probably private and told Kile Tripley that Hunter should be scheduled for a general overhaul on her return. Kim fast-forwarded the record until a bank of green lamps lit up the console. “ Going hyper, ” Kane said.

Lights blinked, dimmed, brightened, blinked again.

Kane looked at his instruments and, apparently satisfied, told his passengers that the jump was completed. He asked each of them to check in, and informed them they were free to walk about as they liked. He got up, stretched, and left the room. The imager shut down.

The clock ran off seven minutes and he was back in with Tripley. The mission leader had been rethinking the destinations, and was considering going here instead of there . A larger number of old class Gs in one area, too much radiation thrown off by nearby young supergiants in another. Here was a new order of places he’d like to visit. They’d still go to their initial series of targets. But after that he wanted to make the adjustment. Could Kane manage it without undue difficulty?