"Discipline is not punishment," she was saying when the screen went black and flashed her name.
SARAH. SARAH. SARAH. SARAH.
She shook her head in exasperation and reset the machine.
SARAH. SARAH.
"Oh, damn," she said. She pounded on the side of the screen.
HELP US, SARAH. HELP US.
The words were in boldface caps.
HELP US. HELP US.
She felt momentary panic, for in addition to the words on the screen there were images in her mind. Joshua and Sheba. David and Ruth. She leapt to her feet and turned the voice recorder off. A soft, musical chime announced that there was someone at the door. She touched the communicator on her desk.
"Yes, who is it, please?" she asked.
"My name is Vinn Stern," a pleasant male voice said. "I'd like to speak with Mrs. de Conde. I'm a friend of Sheba Webster."
"One moment," she said. She switched on the front door viewer, saw a rather handsome, well dressed man. She opened the front door.
"Sorry to bother you on a Sunday afternoon, Mrs. de Conde," Vinn Stern said. "I just wanted to know if you've heard from Sheba in the last few months."
"No, I haven't," Sarah said. "Do you work with Sheba?"
"I was scientific adviser on her last picture," Vinn said.
Sarah sighed inwardly. First the voice recorder goes crazy, she thought, and now this. "You'd better come in, Mr. Stern."
"Thank you."
"May I offer you something?" she asked, as she led him into the rather sternly furnished room which Pete called his audience hall. The chairs were hard and uncomfortable, the decor stark. It was a room designed to encourage callers to state their business and seek more pleasant surroundings.
"No, thank you," Vinn said. He sat on the edge of a hard chair. Sarah sat primly, knees together, hands in her lap.
"I had assumed that Sheba was either at her home on Selbel or working somewhere on another film," Sarah said.
"She stowed away on her brother's X&A ship," Vinn said.
Sarah laughed. "That sounds exactly like Sheba. Poor Joshua." She leaned forward. "But you must tell me all about it."
"We'd just finished the picture, The Legend Of Miaree. Captain Webster's ship arrived. They talked about your other brother and your sister, and your parents, of course, and Captain Webster told us that he was going out to look for them. When the ship left the planet where we'd been filming, Sheba disappeared, and I was pretty worried until I found a note pasted to the mirror in my bedroom stating that she was going to sneak aboard the Erin Kenner."
"You and Sheba were—" She left the question unfinished.
"Friends," he said. He grinned. "I had the brass to hope that we could be more." He brushed back a forelock of thick, dark hair. "Mrs. de Conde, I'm a bit anxious about her. It's been six months. The studio has not heard from her. I can't get much out of X&A, but they did condescend to tell me that the Erin Kenner was on routine exploration duty and, since she was in unexplored areas, there were no communication routes."
"It is my impression that when an X&A explorer goes into new territory it leaves blink beacons behind it," Sarah said.
Sarah, Sarah, help us. Come.
She shook her head quickly.
"Yes," Vinn said.
"Mr. Stern, I don't think there's anything I can do."
"Your husband is on the T-Town Board of Governors," Vinn said. "He could reach a higher source at X&A."
"Yes," she agreed. "Yes, I'll ask him to make inquiries. Are you staying in T-Town?"
He gave her the name of his hotel, rose. She offered her hand. "When I have something to tell you, I'll call you, Mr. Stern."
"I just hope that I'm not worrying you without reason," he said.
"No." She heard the voices, Josh's voice, Sheba's voice. We need you, Sarah. "It's time to be concerned, I think."
"Once again let me apologize for disturbing you on Sunday afternoon,"
Vinn said, as she walked him to the front door.
Sarah got lost twice in the labyrinthine corridors of X&A headquarters before she found the office of Staff Colonel Jefferson Watch. Pete's position and influence had secured an appointment quickly, but when she was shown into Watch's office by a polite Service rating she realized that Pete de Conde's request had not been given serious priority. Colonel Watch was a man in the middle fourth quarter of his life. Sarah knew enough about the Service to understand that she'd been steered to a man who was serving out his last few years before retirement, a man who had been pushed aside in the fierce competition for top command.
In spite of his wrinkles and white hair, Watch was an impressive man.
He rose from his desk, a smile showing that he'd availed himself of the finest dentures available.
"Did you have a pleasant trip from Tigian, Mrs. de Conde?" he asked, as he shook her hand.
"I abhor space travel," Sarah said, answering his smile. "But as it goes, it was a pleasant enough trip I suppose."
"I think you'll find that chair comfortable," Watch said. "Coffee? Tea?"
"Neither, thank you."
He sat down behind his desk and picked up a folder emblazoned with the seal of X&A. "I have been going over the information given to me by fleet control," he said. "You are concerned about the Erin Kenner, commanded by Captain Joshua Webster?"
"My brother, Captain Webster, went into space searching for other members of my family who have been missing for some time. It has been just over two years since my mother and father were last reported."
"Ah, yes, the Old Folks, Tigian registry."
"And the Fran Webster, owned by my other brother, David Webster, went missing in the same segment of space about a year ago."
Watch cleared his throat. "Actually, Mrs. de Conde, the Service does not consider either of those two ships to be overdue. As you must know there are vast distances and huge star populations involved in any exploratory venture away from the established route. Your parents' ship, for example, still has almost one year's supplies, not counting the space rations which would last, in an emergency, for some months."
"Colonel Watch," she began.
He cut her off skillfully, with a smile. "If any one of the ships about which you're concerned had filed a flight plan stating that it would arrive at some specific destination at some appointed time, then there would be room for concern. However, both Old Folks and the Fran Webster filed an exploratory agenda for an indefinite period of time."
She opened her mouth, but he held up his hand to silence her. "As for the Erin Kenner, I would be highly surprised to hear from her inside of two years from her departure from the U.P. Sector. It's her job to seek outthe lonely places."
"Isn't it Service policy to leave behind permanent blink beacons when an exploratory ship is charting new star lanes?"
"Yes, of course."
"And isn't it standard operating procedure for all X&A ships in the field to send back status reports once a month?"
"Under normal circumstances," Watch said. "In fact, Erin Kenner sent back her routine position reports, including one from a new blink beacon positioned in toward the core from the extragalactic route. We know, however, that it was Captain Webster's intention to search a given area for Old Folks and the Fran Webster. I don't know whether you understand the complicated nature of such a search, Mrs. de Conde. Let me give you an example. Let us say, since the search area is near the periphery of the galaxy, that it contains only a few hundred stars within, say, a radius of a hundred light-years. Many of those stars could be eliminated because of their size and nature. Say only a hundred of them were of the types known to spawn planets. The Erin Kenner could work for a year or more and not have examined all of them, since approaching each new star would require weeks of short jumps and careful movements. During such an operation, which is essentially local, the ship would not be laying down permanent blink beacons and, therefore, she would be out of communications with headquarters."