Джек Макдевитт - Chindi

With about nine hours to go, they finished everything they could do and sat back to wait for the other ships. “So this is what a comet looks like,” Alyx said, kicking at the frozen surface. “It’s not much of an oort cloud. I don’t see anything else out there at all.”

“You wouldn’t if you were back home in our oort cloud either,” said Hutch. “The rocks tend to be spread out over a pretty wide space.”

The chunk on which they stood was probably several billion years old, left over from the formation of the planetary system. “We’re lucky,” Hutch said. “This thing is in close. It’s right where we needed it to be.”

“How far out is the one at home?”

“The oort cloud? About a light-year away from the sun.”

“And this one?”

“A few light-days.” Hutch kept looking at the time.

“I wonder why that is,” said Alyx.

Hutch shrugged. She didn’t know the details. “Oort clouds form at all kinds of different distances. It seems to be dependent on the number, size, and location of the planets, as well as solar mass.”

“Let’s get to details,” said Alyx. “When the time comes, who’s going to cut the cable?”

“I’m hoping we can find a qualified volunteer on one of the other ships.” Hutch, of course, would be aboard the McCarver. They needed three people on the Longworth.

“You really think you can find somebody?”

“Probably.”

“How about me?”

“You’re not experienced outside.”

“I beg your pardon, Priscilla, but where did you think we are at the moment? Where have we been several times over the past few weeks?”

“I know you’ve been out, Alyx. But you’re still new at this. We’d like to have some experienced people.”

“Look. I can do this. It’s not exactly complicated. Anyway, you’ve already admitted there probably isn’t anybody else.”

“I know. I was going to ask you.” Hutch looked down at the icy surface.

“It’s just a matter of cutting a cable, right? I already know where to make the cut. And the laser seems simple enough to operate. What else do I need?”

“You need to know how to run the go-pack.”

“Why?”

“In case you fall off.”

“So show me.”

“Now?”

“What else do you have to do for the next couple of hours?” Alyx looked deep into Hutch’s blue eyes. “Listen, I’m part of this. As much a part as you are, or anybody else. I want to help. And I’m ready, willing, and able.”

Hutch turned shining eyes on her. “Thanks, Alyx,” she said.

They embraced, briefly. On the periphery of her vision, Alyx noticed a flash, something barely glimpsed, but gone when she tried to focus on it. Starlight and passing ice, she thought.

“The Longworth has just completed its jump into the area,” said Bill. “ETA fifty-six minutes.”

THE LONGWORTH WAS enormous. It dwarfed both the Memphis and Dogbone. And it turned out they had plenty of help. Half a dozen volunteers, some familiar with e-suits, and some apparently learning, piled out and joined the effort to secure the rock to the two ships.

They brought substantially more cable. People in shorts and shirts emblazoned with university slogans swarmed over the ice, stringing lines, connecting links, drawing a web around the rock. Unfortunately, they had no push-button devices that would allow them, when the time came, to separate the cables from the ships. They’d have to do that manually.

Mogambo surprised Hutch by seeking her out, introducing her to two people he wanted to take with him on the McCarver. He was trying to be friendly, but he had to work at it. He wanted so desperately to get to the chindi that she suspected he’d have a stroke if the tactic didn’t work and they failed to catch up with it.

His two aides were a physicist and an engineer, a woman and a man, both old enough, she thought, to know better than to board the chindi. But they complimented her on her “ingenuity,” and thereby won her over. Hutch knew she was a sucker for a few words of praise, but then who wasn’t? She advised them to stay away from the chindi, but otherwise let it go.

Mogambo asked whether she had arranged for him to be taken on board the McCarver. “Brownstein’s being a horse’s ass. He doesn’t understand how important this is.”

Hutch had forgotten the request.

She had no social connection with the captain of the McCarver. But the pilots usually accommodated one another. “I’ve been a little preoccupied, Professor. Let me see what I can do.”

“You won’t forget?”

She nodded wearily. “I’ll do what I can, Professor.”

The McCarver reported in. She had materialized on the far side of the uncertainty envelope, but she was en route and would make the rendezvous within two hours.

HUTCH SUPERVISED THE completion of the web. She stayed as close as possible to Bill’s design. But there were areas that created problems, particularly a set of sharp-edged ridges along what would become the rear of Dogbone. The ridges looked capable of cutting through the lines, so they went after them with lasers, but gave up because it was taking too long, and instead redesigned the net.

When they were satisfied it was strong enough, they ran lines up to the Longworth and secured the rock to her underbelly. Bill rotated the Memphis on its long axis and eased her in along the opposite side of the asteroid. Lines were exchanged in both directions, secured, and tightened. The asteroid was now supported between the undersections of the two ships by a network of cables sixty or so meters long.

There followed an uncomfortable hour while they waited for the McCarver. Too long. It was taking too long.

If everything worked, they were still going to have to go hunting for the chindi. And time was becoming desperately short.

Hutch took advantage of the delay to open a channel to Brownstein.

“I don’t like him,” Brownstein said. He had an accent she couldn’t quite place. Eastern Europe, probably.

“As a favor,” Hutch persisted, turning on the old charm.

She was standing beneath the Longworth’s hull. It was an ungainly-looking craft, long and blocky, a series of boxes of different dimensions stuck together like a child’s puzzle. Symmetry seemed to be the only concession to aesthetics.

He gazed at her, and she knew he would make the accommodation. “Suppose something happens to one of them?”

“You’ve no liability. I have it in writing.”

After a long pause: “All right. I’ll do it for you.”

“Thanks, Captain.” She shifted tone. Old friends, just between us. “Was there a problem?”

“He forgot to ask. He started telling me he would come aboard and I would do so and so.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll have him make the request again.”

“It’s all right. You want him along, he comes.”

She also talked to Tor, told him the operation was on schedule, assured him everything looked pretty good. “We’re coming,” she said. “Just stay put.”

Stay put. She regretted the remark almost before she’d said it. But it was too late to call it back.

“THEY’RE HERE,” HUTCH told Tor as she watched lights move through the sky. The McCarver, the Mac, was little more than a yacht.

“Okay,” somebody said. “Let’s roll.”

The Mac went to reverse thrusters, aligned itself with the other two ships, and drifted between them to take her place on the asteroid. Unlike them, she touched her hull to the rock.

The McCarver was less than half the size of the Memphis. Dogbone was considerably bigger than she was.

The work crew tied her down.

Her main hatch opened while Hutch and Yurkiewicz were giving the web a final inspection. Brownstein appeared, waved, and descended to the surface. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.