“I’ve requalified,” she said.
“I know. And I have complete confidence in you.” That comment irritated her more than the advice from Orion.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“That you haven’t kept up. You’ve done it all at Dawson.” That was the center in Ohio where pilots could requalify virtually. It made no practical difference whether you sat in the VR carrier or took something out to Vega, but you couldn’t always explain that to the world’s bureaucrats.
“So what are you telling me?” she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice.
“I was just passing it along.”
“Good. Fine. For the record, Matt, if Rudy wants me to walk away from this, all he has to do is say something and I will.”
“No. No, please. That’s not what I meant at all.”
“Then what—?”
“I just wanted to be sure you were comfortable.”
“I was.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. Now that we’ve got that out of the way: “Do you care which ship you run?”
“The Preston.” It was older. Like her. And more familiar.
“Okay. By the way, did you hear Antonio’s coming along again?”
“No,” she said. “Worldwide is going to let him do it?”
“He says nobody else wants the job. Big story or not, seven or eight months inside a ship doesn’t appeal to the other reporters. At least that’s what Antonio says.”
Jon reported progress on targeting. “On an initial jump, we’ll always miss our destination by a substantial amount,” he said, “because we’re covering such enormous distances. But we should be able to do a second TDI and get reasonably close.” The Transdimensional Interface was official terminology for a jump. “We’ll also have a hypercomm.”
He and Matt went out in the Preston, took it to Jupiter, an eye blink, and then to Uranus, another eye blink. In both cases they got within four hundred thousand klicks of the target. On short range it was as good as the Hazeltine. Actually, a bit better.
On a bleak, unseasonably cold day in early November, they sat down in the Foundation conference room to plan the mission. The walls were covered with star charts and pictures of superluminals gliding through starlit skies.
The Mordecai Zone was hidden behind vast agglomerations of dust, enormous clouds, some measuring in the light-years, orbiting the galactic core. For all they knew, the source of the omegas might be located in the center of a cloud. Or in a cluster of artificial modules. Who knew?
“We have a maximum range of about seven thousand light-years on a jump,” Jon explained. “Maybe a bit more. Again, it’s hard to be certain until we try. That means we’ll have to make some stops. We could just go in a straight line, or we could do some sightseeing en route.”
Sightseeing. That caught Rudy’s attention. “What did you have in mind?”
“We thought maybe the Wild Duck Cluster,” said Matt. “Lot of stars, jammed together. The skies would be spectacular.”
Jon nodded. “There’s a microquasar, too. It’s a little bit out of the way, but it might be interesting, up close.”
Rudy chuckled. “I don’t think you’d want to get too close.” He glanced at Hutch. “What about you, Priscilla?”
“Me?” She smiled. “There is a place I’d like to visit.”
“And where’s that?”
“It’s not out of the way.”
“Okay,” said Matt, inviting her to finish.
“It would be an opportunity to solve a mystery.”
“What mystery?” asked Matt.
“The chindi.”
“Oh, yes. You were part of that, too, weren’t you?”
She tried to look modest. “I’m still limping from that one.” The chindi was an automated sublight ship that moved from system to system, apparently looking for civilizations and God knew what else. Where it found a target, it left stealth satellites to observe and record. The ship itself was enormous, far and away the largest artificial object she’d seen (unless you counted omega clouds as being artificial). As well as constructing a vast communications network, it also collected artifacts and served as a traveling museum.
While they’d been examining it, the ship had taken off, with Tor on board, for a white class-F star whose catalog number ended in 97. She remembered that much. It was still en route to that same star, and was expected to arrive in about 170 years. “I don’t know whether you’ve kept up with this,” she said, “but the radio signals from the chindi satellites were tracked to a star near the Eagle.”
Rudy pressed a finger against his display. “Makai 4417,” he said.
“I vote we take a look,” said Hutch.
Rudy nodded. “I was going to suggest that myself.”
Matt shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”
“Where else do we want to go?” asked Jon.
Rudy was looking down at his notes. “There’s another old mystery out there.”
“What’s that?” asked Matt.
Rudy indicated one of the pictures on the wall. It looked like a university building, two stories, lots of glass, well-kept grounds. “This is the Drake Center, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Circa 2188.”
“SETI,” said Matt.
“The only place ever to receive a confirmed signal.” He was wearing a broad smile. “I think the guy in charge at the time was also named Hutchins.”
Matt and Jon looked her way.
“My father,” she said.
“Really?” Matt shook his head. Would wonders never cease? “No wonder you took up piloting.”
“He disapproved. But that’s another story.
“The signal came from Sigma 2711. Roughly fourteen thousand light-years out.”
“And they never heard it again,” said Matt.
“It came in sporadically,” Rudy continued, “for about fifteen years. Then it went quiet. We were able to translate it. Hello, Neighbor. That sort of thing.
“Sigma 2711 is a class-G star, somewhat older than the sun, and a bit larger. Even when FTL became available, it was still much too far to allow a mission. But we sent a reply. Hello, out there. We received your message.” He shook his head. “It’ll get there in about fourteen thousand years.”
Her father had always been an optimist.
“Okay.” Jon was enjoying himself. “Yes. Absolutely.”
That gave them two stops. They needed one more. Something at a range of about twenty-two thousand light-years.
“There’s a black hole.” Jon got up and showed them on one of the charts. “It’s about six thousand light-years out from the core.”
“Tenareif,” said Rudy.
“Why would you want to go to a black hole?” asked Matt.
Rudy was so excited he could scarcely contain himself. “I’ve always wanted to see one.”
Hutch couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Why?”
“Because I’ve never been able to make sense of the pictures. What’s it like when you’re actually there? I mean, what does it feel like? Does it really look like a hole in space?”
“Okay.” Jon sat back down. “Are we all agreed?”
“Sounds like a hell of a flight,” said Matt.
After she’d lost Tor, Hutch had gone into a funk for a time. There was always somebody at one of her presentations trying to connect with her. But she was emotionally played out. Maureen lectured her, told her she’d become antisocial, and wondered when she’d stop hiding under the bed.