Джек Макдевитт - Odyssey

“Distance between units is four kilometers.”

The first one passed.

“Antennas are pointed in our direction,” said Rob.

And the second. They blinked quickly past, one every couple seconds. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over, and the line pulled well ahead of him. He watched them settle back into their vee.

“Phenomena of this type,” said Rob, “have been reported here and in several other locations over the past two years.”

“We have everything on the record?”

“Yes, Jerry.”

Ahead, the globes were becoming hard to see. He got on the allcom. “Anyone on the port side will have seen unidentified vehicles passing. I don’t know what they were, but they are gone now. However, I’d like you to stay belted in for the moment.”

Moonriders. So named because they’d first been reported as dark shadows moving among the moons of Pollux IV. That had been forty years ago.

They were gone now. Like the tour ship, they seemed headed toward the Sungrazer. Sightseers from somewhere else?

Wherever it is dark, there will always be strange lights. In primitive times, the luminescences were fairies. Then they became departing souls headed for paradise. Then UFOs. Now they’re moonriders. It doesn’t seem as if we ever grow up. Those imaginative souls reporting alien vessels circling the Pleiades cannot bring themselves to believe the anomaly might be anything so prosaic as a reflection. Or perhaps not enough ice in the Scotch.

— Gregory MacAllister, “Down the Slippery Slope”

Wolfgang Esterhaus squinted at the man at the bar, compared him with the picture in his notebook, and approached him. “Mr. Cavanaugh?”

The man was huddled over a beer. The glass was almost empty. He threw Esterhaus a surprised look, which quickly morphed into hostility. “Yeah? Who are you?”

“Name’s Wolfie. Can I spring for another round?”

“Sure. Go ahead, Wolfie.” His voice had an edge. “What did you want?”

“I’m with The National.”

“Ah.” The irritation intensified. “And what would The National want with me?”

“Just talk a bit.” He signaled for two fresh glasses. “You work for Orion Tours, right?”

Cavanaugh considered the question, as if the answer required serious thought. “That’s correct,” he said. “But if you want to ask me about the moonriders, do it. Don’t stand there and screw around.”

“Okay.” Wolfie was too professional to get annoyed. “I’m sorry. I guess you get hassled a lot these days.”

“You could say that.”

“So tell me about the moonriders.”

“I doubt I can add anything to what you’ve already read. Or seen.”

“Tell me anyhow.”

“Okay. There were nine of them. They were round. Black globes.”

“They weren’t carrying lights of any kind?”

“Didn’t you see the pictures?”

“I saw them.”

“What did you see?”

“Not much.” Wolfie hunched over the bar and looked at his own image in the mirror. He looked like a guy who could use some time off. “And they were in formation.”

“Went past us one after the other, then lined up into a vee.”

“You didn’t see them again?”

“No.” Cavanaugh was on the small side. Black hair, dark skin, carefully maintained mustache. Dark eyes that concentrated on the beer.

“How did the passengers react?”

“Only a couple of them saw anything. At the time it was happening, I don’t think they thought anything about it. Only afterward, when I told them what it was.”

“They didn’t get scared?”

“Afterward, maybe. A little bit.”

“How about you?”

“If I scared that easily, I’d find another line of work.”

Esterhaus had always assumed that people who saw moonriders were lunatics. That the visual records they came back with were faked. But Cavanaugh looked solid, unimaginative, honest. Utterly believable.

Still, it was hard to account for the images on the record. Dark globes in formation. Furthermore, they’d been seen since by others. Reginald Cottman, on October 3, while hauling cargo out to the Origins Project, halfway between 61 Cygni and 36 Ophiuchi. And Tanya Nakamoto, on another Orion Tours cruise, had seen them at Vega. A construction crew, four or five people, had reported a sighting a couple weeks ago at Alpha Cephei.

Physicists had been trying to explain them away without invoking extraterrestrials. The general public was excited, though of course it doesn’t take much to do that. It was why The National was interested. Gregory MacAllister, his editor, didn’t believe a word of it, but it was a hot story at the moment. And a chance to cast ridicule, which was what The National did best.

The reality was that this was a bad time for interstellar flight. Several bills were pending before Congress that would reduce funding for the Academy and other deep-space programs. The World Council was also talking about cutting back.

Meantime, the number of moonrider sightings was increasing. MacAllister suspected Orion Tours had tricked the passengers on Cavanaugh’s ship, had put together an illusion, and he’d hired an ex-pilot to demonstrate how it could be done. It was, after all, only a matter of running some images past a scheduled flight. How hard could it be?

“Could it have been rigged?” Wolfie asked.

Cavanaugh finished his beer. “No. I was there. It happened just like I said.”

“Jerry, how long have you been working for Orion?”

He looked at the empty glass, and Wolfie ordered more. “Sixteen years this November.”

“Just between us, what do you think of management?”

He grinned. “They’re the finest, most upstanding people I’ve ever known.”

“I’m serious, Jerry. It won’t go any further.”

“They’d stab one another for the corner office. And they don’t give a damn for the help.”

“Would they cheat?”

“You mean would they pull off something like the moonriders if they could?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Sure. If they thought it would help business, and they could get away with it.” The beers came. Cavanaugh picked his up, said thanks, and drank deep. “But there’s no way they could have made it happen.”

“Without your help.”

“That’s exactly right.”

…Yet there is palpable evidence for the existence of moonriders. There are visual records available to anyone who wants to look. It might be time to get serious and make an effort to find out what these objects are.

— The Washington Post, Monday, February 16, 2235

We have spent a half century now poking around the local stars. What we have found is a sprinkling of barbarians, one technological civilization that has never gotten past their equivalent of 1918, and the Goompahs, of whom the less said the better. Mostly what we have discovered is that the Orion Arm of the Milky Way is very big, and apparently very empty.

We have spent trillions in the effort. For what purpose, no one seems able to explain.

The primary benefit we’ve gotten from all this has been the establishment of two colonies: one for political wackos, and the other for religious hardcases. It may be that the benefits derived simply from that justify the cost of the superluminal program.

But I doubt it. Jails or islands would be cheaper. Education would be smarter.

Today, as we consider pouring more of the planet’s limited wealth into this financial black hole, maybe we should pause to ask what we hope to gain from this vast investment. Knowledge? Scientists say there are no privileged places in the universe. If that is so, we are now in position to calculate, as the fanatics like to say, what’s out there.