"… no relevance," she finished. "Go ahead, Bill."
"Hutch," he said, "we have a transmission from the Academy."
"On-screen, Bill."
Embry walked in as the fog blinked off and the message appeared:
TO: NCA HAROLD WILDSIDE
FROM: DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
SUBJECT: COURSE CHANGE
HUTCHINS, WENDY HAS FOUND RUINS ON DEEPSIX. DIVERT IMMEDIATELY. GET PICTURES, ARTIFACTS, WHATEVER YOU CAN. ESSENTIAL WE HAVE DETAILS ON ORIGINAL INHABITANTS. NO ONE ELSE WITHIN RANGE. YOU ARE APPOINTED ARCHEOLOGIST FOR THE DURATION. COLLISION WITH MORGAN IMMINENT, AS YOU KNOW. TAKE NO CHANCES.
GOMEZ
It had been a mistake. Hutch should have taken the transmission privately. She stole a glance at Nightingale but could read nothing in his face.
"Uh," said Scolari, "how far out of the way is that?"
"About five days, Tom. One way."
The chime sounded for Nightingale's meal. "I don't think I'm anxious to go," Nightingale said.
Hell. She didn't really have a choice. They'd sent her a directive. She couldn't argue it, if only because" a round-trip transmission would take several days. She'd been around long enough to know that ruins on a world thought uninhabited was a major find. And they were handing it to her. Had she been alone, she'd have been delighted. "I'm going to have to do this," she said, finally. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience. In the past, when something like this has happened, the Academy has compensated passengers for lost time."
Nightingale closed his eyes and she heard him exhale. "I assume they'll charter another ship for us."
"I don't think there'd be much point unless there's something nearby. If they have to send one from home, it'll take almost five weeks to arrive. By then, the project will be long over, and we'll be on our way back anyway."
"I'm tempted to sue," Nightingale persisted.
That was an empty threat. Potential travel diversions and inconveniences were written into everyone's contract. "Do whatever you think best," she said quietly. "My best estimate for the total delay is about three weeks."
Nightingale put down his knife and fork with great deliberation. "Outstanding." He got up and left the room.
Embry wasn't happy either. "It's ridiculous," she said.
"I'm sorry." Hutch tried a smile. "These things happen."
Scolari rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair. "Hutch," he said, "you can't do this to me. I've got a week booked in the Swiss Alps. With old friends."
"Tom." She allowed herself to look uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, but I think you're going to have to reschedule."
He stared right through her.
Hutch was by now striving to control her own temper. "Look," she said, "you've both been around the organization long enough. You know what this kind of discovery means. And you also know that they haven't given me an option. Please complain where it'll do some good. Write it, and I'll be happy to send it."
Toni, when she was told, sighed. "Not my idea of a fun time," she said. "But I can live with it."
Within an hour Hutch had realigned their flight path, and they were bound for Maleiva.
She kept out of the way for the balance of the day. If it couldn't be said that the congenial mood of the first few days returned, it was also true that the anger and resentment dissipated quickly. By morning, everyone had more or less made peace with the new situation. Embry admitted that the opportunity to watch a planetary collision might be worth the inconvenience. As to Scolari, he might have begun to realize that he was, after all, the lone young male with two attractive passengers.
Hutch judged the time was right to take the next step.
All except Nightingale were in the common room during the late morning. Toni and Embry were playing chess while Scolari and Hutch debated ethical problems served to them by Bill. The immediate issue was whether it was proper to pass on to others as certain a doubtful religious stance on the grounds that belief made for a more secure psychological existence. Hutch watched for the chess game to finish, then called for everyone's attention.
"Usually," she told her passengers, "there's a boatload of people on these flights, and half of them are archeologists. Does anyone have an archeological background?"
Nobody did.
"When we get to Deepsix," she said, "I'll be going down to the surface. Just to look around, see what can be seen, and maybe collect some artifacts. If anyone else would like to go, I could use some volunteers. The work's easy enough." She drew herself up to her full height. They looked at one another, then gazed at the ceiling or the walls.
Embry shook her head no. "Thanks anyhow," she said. "I'll watch from here. Hutch, that's the place where they lost a landing party back near the turn of the century. Eaten, as I recall." She picked up her queen and studied it. "I'm sorry. I really am. But I have no stake in this. If there was something here they wanted to look at, they had twenty years to do it. Now at the last minute they want us to go down and take care of their business. Typical."
"I'm sorry, Hutch," said Scolari, "but I feel the same way. Bureaucratic screwup, and they expect us to run out there and put our lives on the line." He looked past her, not wanting to meet her eyes. "It's just not reasonable."
"Okay," she said. "I understand. I'd probably feel the same way."
"You're supposed to take pictures," Toni said. "Do you have a scan?"
Hutch had a case of them, stocked in the supply compartment. That at least wouldn't be a problem.
Toni pushed back in her chair. She was watching Hutch carefully, but keeping her expression blank. Finally, she smiled. "I'll go," she said.
Hutch suspected that, had one of the others volunteered, she would have found a reason to stay behind. "There's no pressure, Toni."
"Doesn't matter. My grandkids'll ask me about this one day. I wouldn't want to have to say I stayed up here and watched it from the dining room."
The remark earned her a pointed glance from Embry.
As was his custom, Nightingale retired early to his quarters. He knew that the others were more comfortable in his absence, and he was sorry about that. But the truth was that the small talk bored him. He spent his days working on the book that he hoped would one day be perceived as his magnum opus: Quraqua and Earth: The Evolution of Intelligence. It was one of the supreme ironies that humans had traced the forces that had produced extraterrestrial intelligence in the known instances, but had not yet satisfactorily applied the lessons to their own species. At least until he had appeared on the scene.
He was content to spend his evenings with Harcourt and DiAlva, his great predecessors, rather than listen to the endless chatter that passed for conversation in the common room.
The people he was traveling with were simply not bright, and time was precious. He was coming to a fuller appreciation of that melancholy reality as the years slipped by. One doesn't live forever.
Tonight, though, he was too distracted to think of anything other than Deepsix. Maleiva III. The world with no future. Do you have any plans to write your memoirs? Scolari's intent had been uncertain. Had he been laughing at Nightingale? It was the sort of question asked of him again and again, with increasing regularity, as the Event approached, and people remembered. Aren't you the Nightingale who lost six people?
He would have liked some rum. But he knew from hard experience that when he got like this, he'd drink too much.
Soon it would be over. Once back on solid ground, he'd retire to the villa his agent had bought for him. It was situated on a promontory, out of the way, off a private road. No visitors. No neighbors. No one left to answer to.
If he'd been smart, he'd have gotten off Pinnacle years ago, before it all came front and center again. But he'd let it go, thinking that since he was no longer involved, people would have forgotten him. Forgotten he was ever there.