He arrived in good form, tumbling in, and if I'm making it sound as if it was a clumsy crossing, I don't mean to. It's hard to be graceful in zero gravity when you're wearing a suit. If you get where you're going, you've done pretty well.
I removed the tethers. Alex turned the lamp on the control pad. I pushed, and the outer hatch slid down while an overhead light came on. The status board began blinking, indicating that air had begun to flow into the chamber. “When we get inside, Chase,” he said, “don't remove your helmet. In case we have to get out in a hurry.”
We still couldn't be certain that the ship might not submerge ahead of schedule. The exit process, the fadeaway, took slightly more than two minutes. I timed the pressurization procedure, and suspected Alex was doing the same thing. When, finally, the hatch slid up, and we looked into the passenger cabin, two minutes and forty-three seconds had passed. Assuming the reverse process took as long, if the yacht started its jump while we were inside, we would not get clear.
“Is there a way,” Alex asked, “to keep both hatches open?”
“We'd have to depressurize the entire yacht,” I said.
“Let's do a quick inspection. We might not be here that long.”
The lights brightened for us. To our right, a passageway led back, dividing six sleeping compartments. Eight movable seats were distributed around the cabin. Beyond that lay the bridge.
It had been a luxurious setting when the yacht was new, but now everything looked worn. One of the seats was tilted slightly. Its reading lamp was on. Gravity was off. I checked the air. It was okay.
Alex looked around the cabin while I went up onto the bridge, sat down in one of the empty chairs, and examined the controls. “Anybody there?” I said, hoping to get a response from an AI. We'd been informed, of course, that the Firebird did not have an AI, but it was worth checking.
Nobody answered.
“Everything okay?” Belle's voice.
“Yes. We're fine.”
Alex floated in behind me. Looked around. Touched the panel carefully as if he might break something. “Let's get some weight,” he said.
“Good by me. You ready?”
“Do it.” He took hold of one of the chair arms and pushed his feet against the deck. I activated the generator. If you've ever been in a zero field when they turn on the gravity, you know it shows up gradually, allowing you to adjust while it builds to its normal onboard setting, which is usually about. 37 standard.
Alex didn't wait for the process to finish before he returned to the cabin. I got up and followed him. He stopped to open a storage cabinet. “That's strange,” he said. We were looking at a pressure suit. “These things aren't cheap.”
“No. It must be defective. Otherwise, they wouldn't have left it here.”
Except for the suit, the cabinet was empty.
Alex crossed the cabin, entered the passageway, and pushed against the door to the first compartment on his right. It opened. The interior was dark, but after a moment a light came on. A bunk was set well above the deck to conserve space. When in use it would be lowered. The compartment was neat and tidy. Unused.
I checked the compartment across from it. And got a shock: The bunk was down, and someone had slept in it recently. (And yes, I'm speaking relatively, but I don't know how else to say it.) And a message had been scrawled across the bulkhead with a black marker.
Eliot, don't know what happened.
Hope you're okay.
Radio wasn't much help.
The marker was crawling slowly up one bulkhead. “He's gone,” said Alex. “He gave up and walked out through the airlock.”
Each compartment had a storage cabinet. We opened it and found a shirt, a razor, and some toothpaste. One of the other compartments held the missing piece of luggage. And his notebook.
His notebook.
“We don't have him,” said Alex, “but maybe we struck gold anyhow.”
We tried to take a quick look, but couldn't get into it because we didn't have the password.
They'd set up a clock, and it was showing a total elapsed time of 272 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes. “So what this means,” I said, “is that during the forty years it's been out here, less than a year has passed on board. So the black-hole track becomes what-?”
“A shortcut through time as well as space,” said Alex.
“Incredible. I'm still not sure I believe it.”
We went back and looked again at the writing on the bulkhead. We took pictures. Then we returned to the bridge.
“Let's run a test,” Alex said.
“Okay. What's the test?”
“See if you can send a message to Skydeck.”
I sat down at the hyperlink. Ordinarily, I'd have directed the AI to make the connection. But the Firebird didn't have a functioning AI. So I set it up myself. And opened a channel. “Skydeck Ops,” I said, “do you copy? This is the Firebird.”
We had to wait a few seconds. Then we got a voice: “Firebird, this is Skydeck. I copy. What do you need?”
“Just running a test, Skydeck. Thanks. Firebird out.”
“He didn't use it,” said Alex, “because he didn't know how.”
“I'd say that's exactly right.”
“How about the radio? Does it work?”
I turned it on. “Belle, are you there?”
“I'm here,” she said.
“So why,” asked Alex, “didn't he call for help?”
“He's too far out. To reach Rimway, he'd have to have sent a directed transmission. If he didn't know how to make the hyperlink work, I doubt he'd have been able to aim a beam at Rimway.”
Alex looked around helplessly. “He just didn't get a break, did he?”
“I guess not.”
He sat down in one of the chairs. “All right. How were they managing this? How'd they hope to find the yachts?”
“I'd guess Robin knew how long they'd be under, or was able to control the duration. One way or the other.”
“Okay. So they'd come out here in the Breakwater.”
“They probably had the radio set to broadcast when it surfaced.”
“But they only set the radio for the one trip. On this last flight, my guess is that Robin wanted to see what it felt like to experience a passage through time. So he decided to stay. Cermak would come back in two weeks-Cermak's time-and, I guess, only a few hours, Robin's time. So maybe they reset it for one more flight.”
“I can't really tell what they did with it. But that's probably exactly what happened.” I got another creepy feeling. “Are we sure it was voluntary? That he wasn't just left here?”
“Chase, he brought his notebook and his bag over here with him. So he expected to be here awhile.”
“Alex,” I said, “what really happened that night? When Cermak went to Virginia Island? Do you know?”
“I know most of it. Some details are missing, but I think even there we can make a reasoned guess.
“Cermak was carrying on an affair with Elizabeth. Or she'd given him reason to think she might acquiesce. I can't be sure about the state of things. When Robin announced he was going to stay on the Firebird, it must have looked like a golden opportunity. Incidentally, as far as Cermak was concerned, it must have been a last-minute decision. And it probably was. Had Cermak known in advance, he'd have tried to set something up with Elizabeth.
“She must have gotten a jolt when Cermak showed up on Virginia Island. The last thing in the world she needed was to have a lover over for the night, especially one who came equipped with a skimmer that some of her friends might recognize.
“It might have resulted in a fight. Or, more likely, she just told him it wasn't safe. Maybe they'd set something up for the following night, off the island somewhere. So he goes home.
“Later, she finds out that Cermak is dead, and suddenly she has a decision to make. We can assume she wasn't passionately in love with her husband. She can get help out to him. Presumably she had some idea where he might be found. Or maybe not. In any case, she decides to sit tight. The family estate will come into her hands, and she won't need to lift a finger.