Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

Kim put a hand in her pocket to assure herself the two replacement disks were still there. She’d labeled them in the manner of the two disks that had been on display: 376 VISUAL LOG, JUNE 17, 531 and 376 SYSTEMS DATA, JUNE 17, 531. It was one of the most celebrated dates in Greenway’s checkered history.

There was material here that had not been in the original exhibition, mostly parts from the interior of the 376 and other ships involved at Armagon: lockers and chairs, a replica of a captain’s quarters, an array of mugs carrying the insignia of the various vessels, uniforms, copies of letters sent by the Council to the families of those killed in action.

Kim mentally waved it all aside and concentrated on finding the logs.

“Can I help in any way, Dr. Braddock?” asked Wilma.

“Call me Jay,” Kim said. She realized she had not been mistaken about her effect on the woman, who smiled at her invitingly. She knew the museum aide would not know where anything was: she’d had trouble just finding the cage. Best was to avoid calling her attention to the disks. “No,” she said. “That’s quite okay. I believe I can find everything.”

Wilma backed off a bit and Kim saw a package wrapped in plastic with a sticker marked LOGS. It was the right shape, and it was on top of a worktable that was identified as having once been in the 376 tactical display center. Kim rummaged among other materials until Wilma looked away, and then she picked up the package and peeled off the plastic.

Two disks.

VISUAL LOG and SYSTEMS DATA, JUNE 17, 531.

At the same moment she heard the whine of the lift. Coming down.

Wilma looked toward the sound and Kim dropped the disks into her pocket and brought out the substitutes.

The lift stopped and doors opened.

There were voices.

Mikel. And a woman.

Tora.

“Oh,” said Wilma, gratified. “That’s Dr. Alaam now.”

The meeting must have broken up early. “He knows I’m here?”

“I left a message.”

Kim pretended to examine the substitute disks, then quickly rewrapped them and put the package back on the worktable.

Mikel and Tora were at the gate, both looking surprised. “What’s going on?” asked Mikel, glancing from Wilma to Kim. “Is this Braddock?”

“Yes,” said Wilma.

“I assumed you were waiting upstairs.” He looked carefully at Kim, and her heart stopped while she waited for recognition to come. “Do I know you ?” he asked.

“We’ve met once or twice,” she said, speaking in a low register. “Professor Teasdale is still working on her history of the period, and I’ve been gathering materials.”

“Yes,” he said. “I recall. Well, good to see you again, Braddock. We’re happy to cooperate, of course. I’d suggest in future though that you let us know in advance that you’re coming.”

“They did,” said Wilma. “He has a letter from us.” Diplomatically, and fortunately for Kim, she did not say, “from you .”

“Oh.” Mikel was pondering the comment when Tora Kane assumed center stage. “I wonder if we can get on with it.”

“Yes,” said Mikel. “Of course.”

Kim smiled politely. “Well,” she said, “I think I have everything I need.”

“Already?” asked Wilma. “That was quick.”

“We only wanted a couple of verifications.” She nodded to Tora, who was standing with her arms folded, pretending to be interested in a navigational console. Kim could barely suppress a grin: they were waiting for her to leave so they could pocket the disks.

No. More likely, Mikel knew nothing. Tora was playing the same game Kim had. She wondered what kind of story she’d told the director. Or whether she had simply bought him off without explanation. In either case, nothing would happen while she and Wilma were in the neighborhood.

Kim made her farewells and, accompanied by the aide, slipped into the elevator. Wilma was clearly inviting Jay to make a move. When he didn’t, she looked briefly disappointed and got off at the main floor. Kim rode up to the roof.

Tora’s Kondor was parked in a bay off the taxi pad. Kim wandered over to it, removed the microtransmitter, climbed into a cab, and rose into the sunlight in high good humor.

She inserted the visual log and instructed Shep to run it.

The wall over the sofa changed texture, the flatscreen appeared, and she was looking at the Hunter pilot’s room. A technician was working and his shoulder patch was visible:

ST. JOHNS MAINTENANCE.

The date, translated to Greenway time, was February 12, 573.

Specialists came and went, calibrating sensors, checking subspace communications, and performing a myriad other tasks.

The sequence was identical with her recollection of the version she had taken from the Archives. She fast-forwarded. The technicians raced through their tasks, then left, and the picture blinked. The timer leaped ahead more than two hours and Kane appeared.

She switched back to normal play. Kane turned and looked into the imager, directly out of the screen at Kim. His jaw was set, his mouth a thin line. He ran through a checklist, got out of his chair, and disappeared. The imager shut off. Sixteen minutes later, ship time, it blinked on again.

“ Hunter ready to depart, ” he told St. Johns control.

“ Hunter, you are clear to go. ”

Kane warned his passengers they were thirty seconds from departure, and his harness locked in place.

Kim watched it all again: The launch of the Hunter , Kane’s warning to Kile during the early minutes of the flight that the vessel would need a general overhaul when it got back, the jump to hyperspace. She watched the passengers come forward one by one and she listened to the now-familiar conversations. She hastened through the periods when Kane was alone in the pilot’s room.

The Hunter team talked about what they hoped to find in the Golden Pitcher. The Dream.

Nothing else mattered.

Tripley’s recurrent assertions, “ We’re going to do it this time, Markis; I know it, ” took on special poignancy.

She saw again Kane’s infatuation with Emily. And hers with him.

She watched moodily, not expecting the record to deviate from the one she remembered until Hunter arrived off Alnitak. And probably even then it would not happen until just before they encountered the celestial. She was wrong.

It was almost three A.M. on day six when Kane, wearing a robe, appeared in the pilot’s room with a cup of coffee. He sat down, checked his instruments, looked at the time, and activated his harness. “ Okay, everybody, buckle in. ”

Voices broke in over the intercom.

Yoshi: “ Would somebody please tell me what’s going on? ”

Emily: “ We have a surprise for you. ”

Yoshi: “ In the middle of the night? ”

Tripley: “ Yes. It’s worth it. ”

Yoshi: “ So what is it? Markis, what are we doing? ”

Kim froze the picture, sat back in her chair, and stared at Kane’s image in the glow of his instruments. In the doctored version, this hadn’t happened.

No surprises for Yoshi.

And she knew now why Walt Gaerhard, the Interstellar technician, had been reluctant to talk about the jump engine repairs to which he’d signed his name.

There had been no repairs.

There’d been no damage.