“Then, a couple of days later, she learns that somebody saw Cermak's skimmer outside her house. She can't very well change her plan without compromising herself, so she decides to brazen it through. 'My husband,' she tells the police, 'never came into the house that night.' She didn't know what had happened to him.”
“And,” I said, “she got away with it.”
Five hours and fifty-two minutes after the initial contact, we sat in the Belle-Marie and watched the Firebird fade away. “My best guess,” said Alex, “is that it's surfaced about a thousand times.”
I'd figured it to 1,071 appearances.
“If it always stays roughly six hours-”
“There's very little onboard passage of time while submerged.”
“Maybe none at all.” He looked out at the background of stars. Looked at where the last glow from the Firebird had been.
“Well, if we need it again, we'll know where to find it. If we can't figure out the password for the notebook, it might still be possible, at least, to see what adjustments Robin made to the drive unit. On the whole, Chase,” he added, “I think we did pretty well.”
“It's depressing, though-”
“I know-”
“I'd hoped we'd get the long shot,” I said.
“Find Robin on board? And bring him back alive and in good health?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too, Chase. Me, too.”
THIRTY-THREE
There is no virtue more admirable than courage. And no defect more unsettling than a lack of prudence. Yet it is a curious fact that they are essentially one and the same quality.
We sent the notebook to Shara immediately. She went absolutely delirious. We'd surprised ourselves by finding the password on the way back: It was brane. The notebook was filled with numbers and sketches that might have been tracking data, but it was impossible to be certain. There were pages of equations that meant nothing to either of us. One section was titled time-space variables. It consisted of line drawings, arcs, and more equations. There was all kinds of data on starships, the mass of various models, the drive types, details on general hull design.
There were also, without explanation, between sixty and seventy pages listing galactic positions, like these: a: 22:14:38 dec: +22.31 S 0611/4322 a: 21:10:41 dec: -17.33 N 1222/6319 a: 19:21:35 dec: -19.27 N 0303/9312 a: 23:32:17 dec: +14.12 N 0914/8711
The eight-digit number seemed to be a date, given in the terrestrial calendar. If that was correct, some of them went back thousands of years.
“So what do you make of it?” Alex asked Shara.
“Give me a chance to look at it,” she said. “But I'd say it's just what we were hoping for.”
They were huddled in the dining room when I came in next morning. Shara was so excited, she could have been walking on the ceiling. “The basic problem,” she told me, “is that we've never known where the black holes really are, except for a few. So nobody ever put all this together. What Robin's done is to mark the launch sites of vehicles that went missing. Then he went looking for later sightings, something that would, if not confirm, at least suggest, that these were Sanusar events. In some cases, he was able to show that no other reasonable explanation existed. Some of these events date all the way back to the third millennium. He's also been able to give us the tracks for black holes that we didn't know existed. Still don't, officially. The only evidence for their existence derives from lining up Sanusar events. But now we have a sense of where the danger areas are. Places where you don't want to be if you're aboard a given type of ship and you're about to make a jump.”
She took a long swallow of her coffee. “All of this will need confirmation. But, unless he was making up the numbers, and even some of the events-we haven't been able to find them all yet because he didn't list his sources-I don't think there's much question that we have a major breakthrough here.”
I glanced over at Alex. He was just finishing a plate of scrambled eggs, but his eyes were on me. “Why,” I said, “didn't he mention this to somebody? Why-?”
“Don't be too hard on him,” said Alex.
Shara nodded. “I'd guess he was gathering data and getting ready to publish. It's the way the game is played. You don't go out there with this kind of thing until you can show reasonable evidence.”
“So where are we now?” I asked. “I assume we're going to try to find the Alpha Object.”
“We only have one ship,” said Alex. “Remember the butterfly.”
“What's the butterfly?” asked Shara.
“Chase thinks the measurements aren't sufficiently exact to enable us to find these things.”
“They aren't,” I said. “And the playing field is getting bigger. Some of these ships only show up every couple of centuries.”
“Well, that's not quite a valid statement,” said Shara. “They are only observed every couple of centuries. Actually, though, we have exact times on the last two appearances. So we should be in good shape with the Alpha and Antares Objects.”
“I'm glad to hear it,” I said. Shara continued talking about the value of Robin's notebook while I collected some toast and coffee. I went back to the table and pretended to listen while she went into some detail about what happens when time and space are subjected to the presence of a black hole. I waited for the appropriate moment and asked the question that had been on my mind from the beginning: “Do we have anything on the Capellat Do we know when it'll be back?”
Alex looked at Shara.
“We have to wait,” she said, “until somebody sees it. Once we have a sighting, we can match it to the launch, and that will tell us where and when we can find it.”
The problem was that it might never happen. Probably wouldn't, as a matter of fact. It could show up every few days, but if it was out in the pit, nobody was going to notice.
The Alpha Object would be up first. It had last been seen 178 years before by a deep-space monitor.
“Its previous known appearance before that,” said Shara, “was again 178 years. And we're pretty sure this thing left Cormoral 2,331 years ago. That's divisible by 178, or nearly so.”
“But the jump,” I said, “could also be eighty-nine. Or 44.5. Or anything at all that's divisible into 2,331.”
Shara nodded. “That's correct. But it doesn't matter.”
“What do we do,” I asked, “if we find survivors?”
“We'll take them off,” said Alex. “If we can.”
“The Belle-Marie doesn't have much carrying capacity, Alex. Suppose there are fifty of them? Or a couple of hundred?”
“We're hoping that won't be the case,” he said.
“Hoping?”
Alex's eyes clouded. “Chase, what do you think would happen if we went to Star Corps with this? And asked for a fleet of ships to accompany us?”
“They'd ask for some specifics.”
“And-?”
“Some proof you know what you're talking about,” said Shara.
“We have pictures of the Firebird.”
“I don't like it, Alex.”
“Neither do I, babe. Right now, our best bet is to get some hard evidence, and next time it appears, a serious rescue force will be on hand.”
“Alex, you're talking almost two hundred years.”
“No. I'm talking how much time will pass inside the ship.” He seemed frustrated. “If there are a couple of hundred people on board, we wouldn't have time to get them off no matter how many ships we take. Let it go. If we can prove we know what we're doing with this one, next time we ought to be able to get some help.”
I looked at Shara. “He's right,” she said.
“I've ordered a few extra pressure suits,” Alex said. “One for Shara, if she wants to use it. And seven for survivors, if we find any. Beyond that, we'll have to make it up as we go.”
As we got ready to leave on the Alpha mission, a storm rolled in. The Coyote had been delivered the night before. I remember standing with Shara out on the front deck, waiting for Alex, watching the rain wash over the new lander. We were excited at the prospect of taking it up to the station. Finally, he came out just as a bolt of lightning crackled across the sky. He looked up for a moment. “Anybody here believe in omens?”