“This could take all day!”
“And tomorrow, too, young sir, but remember the ship is moving, no matter how it feels. We’re going there quite steadily. So the interval between question and answer grows shorter and shorter.”
“Astonishing, nandi.”
The dowager had thwacked that respectful courtesy into the young rascal.
“It is, young sir. Astonishing to us all.” He recalled his own boyhood, sitting through adult feuds, intimately involved in the outcome and unable to read the signals passing over his head. “Translation: matters with the station are going better than we expected. There are people on the station and they can talk to us. If we’re very lucky everything will be in order and we can do what we came to do and go home.”
“But I want to see the station first!”
The dowager boxed a young ear. Gently so, but sternly. “Your elders have more serious business to consider, young sir.”
“Yes, mani-ma.”
One could understand. The dowager herself likely shared the sentiment. The atevi delegation was on formal manners, sitting and standing. Ginny and her companion were uncharacteristically quiet and solemn.
“Going too well,” Ginny said, next to him. “Worries me.”
“If it goes this easily,” Bren said under his breath, “it’s the first time in this Guild’s history.”
Ginny cast him a look. She was Mospheiran. She knew.
He sat. He waited. Eventually a station response came in and Sabin queried back, giving little information, but asking for the condition of the mast where they would dock.
Jase came to them shortly after. “The captain is ordering up food and drink for the bridge. The shift is not going to change. Would you wish anything, nandiin?”
“Hot tea,” Ginny said.
“We have our own resources, ship-aiji,” the dowager said. “But one is grateful.”
“Nand’ dowager.” Jase bowed, and went back.
The galley order arrived in due time. Bridge crew ate at their posts. Atevi and Mospheirans opened up their small picnic lunches and ate, standing and sitting, in decorous quiet.
Information regarding the mast seemed to have come in: zenith mast was undamaged: one couldn’t say as much for the nadir.
“We go on routine approach,” Sabin said.
After so much, so long. Routine. That in itself was surreal.
Bren was thinking that when a technician moved suddenly and a red blinking quarter hit at least half the screens on the bridge.
Sabin leaned to look more closely at that intrusion; Jase did.
Bren stood up and in the same instant saw Sabin pass an order he couldn’t hear. He walked back across that intangible line, back into aisles where screens still blinked red without explanation.
Jase met him, while Sabin stayed in close conference with the senior navigator.
“Armaments have been called up,” Jase said in Mosphei’. “Something out there just pinged us. Not from the station.”
“Damn,” Bren breathed.
“Damn, for sure. Maybe a mining craft. But it could also be targeting. We’ve been spotted by something.”
Triple damn. He’d just been settling into the comfort of their success and now they might not exist another hour.
Not that he hadn’t asked himself for the last year what they ought to do if this happened.
“Any evidence of mining operations?”
“It’s a big solar system. We haven’t gotten any word from station about other activity. More to the point, the origin isn’t in a region where we’d expect mining.” Jase was scared too. It was in his eyes.
“Moving source, or something that’s been there, all along?”
“Seems stationary. Our wavefront apparently just reached round-trip, us to them, them to us. Whoever it is. We’ve got continual signal now, and it’s not showing motion.”
“Did we ping them back?” All the while he was thinking about Ramirez’s response, the dead-ship silence. “What’s Sabin ordered?”
“We’re waiting in silence,” Jase said, that damnable word, silence , that governed their whole situation. That governed the Pilots’ Guild’s approach to the universe.
Deep breath. “No. Broadcast a hail. Noisy as possible. No more tight focus.”
“Your advice is noted, Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said. She could come up silently. She had, almost at his elbow. “It’s one option. But we’re closer to station than to it. I’ve queried station. They’ll answer. We’ll brake early. If it’s a missile response we get, that creates a targeting problem.”
“Yes, ma’am, but I’d prepare a broadcast in the event we need it.”
“We can broadcast Mary Had a Little Lamb and whatever’s out there won’t know the difference.”
That happened to be true. On the verbal level. “Send a pattern response. Three blinks. As they did the first time they met Ramirez. Something that at last sounds like an attempt at communication.”
“We’ll consider that option. Meanwhile, gentlemen, we’re doing a take-hold.”
“It’s going to be evident when we brake, captain, won’t it, and maybe they’ll take it for a hostile act if the engines show activity…”
“We have to brake to dock, Mr. Cameron. They may want to critique our approach path, too, but in the meanwhile we hope station has an answer for us, what that noise source is. Advise granny, there. Siren will sound.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and walked back to the dowager. “One should prepare, aiji-ma, for a maneuver of considerable strength and suddenness. I would advise the safety cabinet at this time rather than the seats. Some other presence is out beyond the ordinary limits of station activity. One suspects a hostile presence.”
“Are we going to fight?” Cajeiri asked, rising.
“Hush, wretched boy.” Ilisidi leaned on her cane and rose stiffly, to take his advice. “Prudence should lead valor. Have you never heard that?”
“Gin,” Bren said. “Inside. We don’t know if there’s going to be emergency action, but they don’t want loose bodies flying about.”
“I’ll skip that experience,” Ginny said, and ordered Jerry into the L-shaped enclosure.
They still had a view: the screen at the end of the safety compartment, on a padded wall, showed the bridge, and in a window overlaid on that image, the image from space—the station. They likewise had audio, Sabin’s low voice, and the flow through C1.
“What are they saying?” Cajeiri wanted to know.
“The captain is giving technical instructions, young sir,” Bren answered, setting his back against the padded wall, hoping at the same time that their whole mission didn’t come to a sudden end.
Siren sounded.
Then Sabin’s voice overrode the chatter, loud and clear, on general address: “ We’re beginning a series of small maneuvers preparatory to station approach. Stand by .”
Lie. Damned lie . Bren drew a sharp breath, all but exploded out of the safety zone, out where, if they hit the brakes, he could go splat against the other bulkhead, or up on that nice big viewing screen, untidy objection quashed. But he stayed put. He didn’t go argue the point, on the bridge, in front of all the techs, that truth to the crew might be a good policy. It was reflex, was what it was. Given a situation, given a choice between truth and shading it—it was still the same choices.