Jack McDevitt - Cauldron

“The clouds were produced millions of years ago,” Hutch said. “Whoever manufactured them is a long time dead.”

The crowd divided on that one; some supportive, many skeptical. The blond man wasn’t finished: “Can you guarantee that? That they’re dead?”

“You know I can’t,” she said.

Someone wanted to know whether she believed the theory that an omega had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Someone else asked whether the clouds were connected with the moonriders.

The moonriders, known in various ages as foo fighters, flying saucers, UFOs, and beamrunners, had, until modern times, been perceived as myth. But the Origins incident of two decades earlier had removed all doubt. More recently, a flight of the objects had been seen, scanned, recorded by a team of physicists. “We don’t know that either,” she said. “But it feels like a different level of technology. If I had to put a bet down, I’d say they’re separate phenomena.”

Did she know François St. John, the pilot of the Jenkins ? Or the Langstons? Or Eagle or Tolya?

“I know them all,” she said. “We’ll be glad to see them safely back.”

When it was over, she thanked her audience for their donations and for being receptive. They applauded. She stayed behind to answer more questions, signed a few copies of her book (actually written by Amy Taylor, a senator’s daughter who’d grown up to achieve a lifelong ambition to qualify as a star pilot only to find no positions available), and wandered out into the lobby. She was pulling her jacket around her shoulders when an extraordinarily good-looking young man asked if he might have a moment of her time.

“Of course,” she said. He was probably the tallest person in the room, with dark skin, dark eyes, leading-man features. The kind of guy who made her wish she was twenty again. “What can I do for you?”

He hesitated. “Ms. Hutchins, my name is Jon Silvestri.” He said it as if he expected her to recognize it. “I have something the Foundation might be interested in.”

They were standing in the lobby. Another man, a guy she thought she’d seen somewhere before, hovered off to one side, obviously also interested in speaking with her. “I don’t work for the Foundation, Mr. Silvestri. I’m just a fund-raiser. Why don’t you stop by the offices later today or tomorrow? They’d have someone available to talk to you.”

She started to move away, but he stayed in front of her. “I’m Dr. Silvestri,” he said.

“Okay.”

“They asked you about the Locarno.”

“And—?”

He moved closer to her and lowered his voice. “The Locarno is legitimate, Ms. Hutchins. Henry hadn’t quite finished it before he died. There was still testing to be done. A few problems to be worked out. But the theory behind it is perfectly valid. It will work.”

Hutch was starting to feel uncomfortable. There was something a bit too intense about this guy. “I’m sure, whatever you need, they’ll be able to take care of it for you at the Foundation offices, Doctor. You know where they’re located?”

He must have realized he was coming on a bit strong. He stopped, cleared his throat, straightened himself. And smiled. There was a tightness to it. And maybe a hint of anger. “Ms. Hutchins, I used to work with Henry Barber. I helped him develop the system.”

Barber had been working for years, trying to develop a drive that could seriously move vehicles around the galaxy, something with more giddyup than the plodding Hazeltine. “ Riding around the galaxy with a Hazeltine, ” he’d once famously said, “ is like trying to cross the Pacific in a rowboat with one oar. ”

The other man was checking his watch. He was maybe forty, though with rejuvenation techniques these days it was hard to tell. He could have been eighty. She knew him from somewhere. “Dr. Silvestri,” she said, thinking she shouldn’t get involved in this, “how much work remains to be done? To get the Locarno operational?”

“Why don’t we sit down for a minute?” He steered her to a couple of plastic chairs facing each other across a low table. “The work is effectively done. It’s simply a matter of running the tests.” A note of uncertainty had crept into his voice.

“You hope.”

“Yes.” He focused somewhere else, then came back to her. “I hope. But I see no reason why it should not function as expected. Henry did the brute work. It remained only to make a few adjustments. Solve a few minor problems.”

“He died last spring,” she said. “In Switzerland, as I recall. If you’ve an operational system, where’s it been all this time?”

“I’ve been working on it.”

“ You have.”

“Yes. You seem skeptical.”

He looked so young . He was only a few years older than Charlie. Her son. “Barber hadn’t been able to make it work,” she said. She looked back to where the other man had been standing. He was gone.

“Henry was close. He simply didn’t have all the details right. What we have now is essentially his. But some things needed to be tweaked.”

She started to get up. Just tell him to drop by the office. Maggie can deal with him.

“I’m serious,” he said. “It will work.”

“You sound uncertain, Dr. Silvestri.”

“It hasn’t been tested yet. I need sponsorship.”

“I understand.”

“I came here today because I wanted to make it available to the Prometheus Foundation. I don’t want to turn it over to one of the corporations.”

“Why not? You’d get serious money that way. We wouldn’t have anything to give you.”

“I don’t need money. I don’t want it to become a moneymaking operation. There aren’t many people left doing deep-space exploration. I’d like you to have it. But I’ll need your help to run the tests.”

It didn’t feel like a con. That happened occasionally. People tried to get the Foundation to back various schemes. They’d ask for a grant, hoping to take the money and run. The organization had had a couple of bad experiences. But this guy either meant what he said, or he was very good. Still, the possibility that he had a workable drive seemed remote. “You know, Dr. Silvestri, the Foundation hears claims like this every day.” That wasn’t quite true, but it was close enough. “Tell me, with something like this, why don’t you get government funding?”

He sighed. “The government. If they fund it, they own it. But okay, if Prometheus isn’t interested, I’ll find somebody else.”

“No. Wait. Hold on a second. I guess there’s nothing much to lose. How sure are you? Really?”

“Without running a test, I can’t be positive.”

An honest answer. “That wasn’t my question.”

“You want me to put a number on it?”

“I want you to tell me, if the Foundation were to back this thing, what would our chances of success be?”

He thought it over. “I’m not objective,” he said.

“No way you could be.”

“Eighty-twenty.”

“Pro?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of improvement could we expect over the Hazeltine?”

“Canopus in about ten days.”

My God. With present technology, Canopus was three months away. “You’ll need a ship.”

“Yes.”

“The truth, Dr. Silvestri, is that you’re here at the worst possible time. We just lost the Jenkins .”

“I know.”

“You probably also know I’m not authorized to speak for the Foundation.”

“I’m not sure about your formal position, Ms. Hutchins. But I suspect you have influence.”

“Give me a number,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

The Foundation routinely set up a green room at its fund-raisers. Guests were invited to drop by, bring friends, and meet the people behind Prometheus. When Hutch walked in, Rudy was cloistered in a corner with a group of Rangers. That was the designation given to contributors who met a given minimum standard. It seemed a trifle juvenile to Hutch, but Rudy claimed it made people feel good and brought in additional money.