I noticed all eyes turning toward me.
Oh. Everyone else had already thought it through. Part of me still floated, buoyed by visions of a brilliant future. Another part sank as I worked it out for myself, a three-step process.
One: Before reaping our unjust rewards, we had to stake this claim, an immediate priority with a discovery of this magnitude. Otherwise, RE specialists might lack time enough to squeeze maximum value from the artifacts before… other interests arrive.
Two: Global Council policy demanded a “Vigilant,” a person constantly remaining within seven hundred meters of a find until a title was officially registered. Some legal cheating by one of RE’s competitors, the Finnish-Japanese conglomerate Draaki Oyj, inspired this recent rule change. Draaki had exploited the original radio beacon dibs-on-this statute by burying inactivated beacons, thousands, on newly opened worlds wherever sites held a shred of financial promise. They’d let other companies do the actual work to find any goodies, and then activate the buried beacons to finalize a claim. This stunt had also inspired the adjacent-acres rider.
Three, where our lightning stroke of mutual luck carried an edge of personal discomfort: Stardancer equals scouting ship. We weren’t expected or prepared to find anything this valuable. And it takes six people minimum, three to a shift, to safely operate a twistship of any size. No insulation yet discovered prevents the Twist from affecting onboard electronics. So constant attention and frequent recalibration is the price for making the light-speed limit irrelevant. By both Council and RE’s internal laws, eight people are the minimum crew for any twistship, two for backup.
And who happened to be on top of our totem pole, in the sense of providing our crew the least support? Me.
I did some mental calculations and didn’t savor the result. Even with the Twist’s temporal contraction paradox, it would take almost two weeks for Stardancer to return home, a few days at best for RE to dispatch a claim fleet, and another brace of weeks for those ships to arrive here. I’d be on my own here for at least a month…
“Cards,” I said quietly. “I realize the finger of fate is giving me the finger. Might I ask a question at this point?”
“You’ll never get a better chance, Poet.”
“What if the… beings that left all their toys behind come back?”
He grunted dismissively. “Not gonna happen. Look how the stuff is lying all, uh, helter-skelter. No orderly retreat here, kid—they were gettin’ the hell out, and didn’t plan on returning.”
“Uh-huh. Still, what if they do? And here’s something that strikes me as relevant: Why do you suppose they left in such a rush? Think that might be something for me to worry about?”
He shook his head, more in sadness than anger. “Poet, you’re too damn sensitive and worry too much. We’ll set a cam or two aimed here, and if they do come back—which they won’t—just stay out of sight, keep an eye on ’em, and record everything they do.” He glanced again at the artifacts. “This site would have a… different kind of value in that case, and Global would send out a contact team and cut out ER, but we’d still get a fat payday. Got it? When your relief comes, we’ll have ’em park their shuttle far enough away so any ETs around won’t be likely to notice.”
His words seemed as vacuous as empty space yet densely self-serving.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” I pointed out. “And, again, since you ignored the question, what made the ETs cut and run?”
“Could be anything. Maybe they can’t breathe here, and something went wrong with their air supply. Maybe they’ve solved ultra-distance comm and got an emergency ‘rush home’ message. Maybe they got cold. Who knows? But look around. Artist’s right. There’s no life here. None. Sure, you’ll be alone for a few days, but we’ll ferry down the equipment you’ll need, and you’ll have company before you know it. Hell, you’re always bitchin’ you don’t have enough time to write. Here’s your chance.”
During one shipboard group meeting where we were required to air our complaints, I mentioned how frustrating it was to be on a good roll with a poem and get interrupted. Hadn’t brought it up again. No one dared contradict Cards out loud, but Archer, Dancer, and Piano skewered him with sharp looks, which failed to register on their target. You couldn’t accuse Cards of being oversensitive.
Before sunset, Moose had gone and come and gone. I inflated my new photovoltaic home close to the lake, inflated my new bed and furniture, and set up equipment, connecting everything electronic to the battery built into my new roof.
My final human contact had been with Archer.
“You know,” I’d said, “I’m willing to trade places with you if you’re up for a nice vacation.”
He chuckled. “Haven’t you watched any of those old space operas, Poet? The black guy always dies. But thanks for the offer.”
I swung an arm around, gesturing at the terrain. “Main danger here is death by boredom.”
“Yeah. Don’t envy you much.” He hugged me tightly for a moment. “When the smoke clears, we’ll all have pockets brimming with cash. Just remember that, and take care of yourself, Ross.”
Having him use my real name despite Stardancer traditions touched me more than the hug.
The first two days weren’t bad. Some wonderful surprises manifested, including sunsets that J. M. W. Turner would’ve sold both legs and maybe one arm to paint. Also, enormous bubbles rose from the lake occasionally as evanescent domes, clearly preserved for a time by more than mere surface tension. When they appeared during sunsets, they seemed to have all the magic of the best soap bubbles in a convenient circus-tent size. I wished I had someone to share these things with.
In addition, I had my virtual entertainment system to keep me virtually entertained, and spent much of my time working out with water-filled kettlebells, digging a latrine with a muscle-powered shovel from our geology gear, listening to music, and catching up on movies I’d missed. Archer had insisted on loaning his fancy bow to me, another touching act, and it provided surprisingly authentic feedback when firing virtual arrows at virtual targets. But despite my awards in ski archery, I hadn’t retained much interest in such toys. Evenings, I watched the lightshow until the stars, distorted by the atmosphere’s icy window, emerged to twinkle outrageously as if winking at private jokes.
Sure, I worked to refine my latest poem and tried to compose another, but the muse had deserted me along with my team. By the third day, numbness reigned supreme.
That afternoon, a herd of clouds galloped in, and despite my shelter’s all-frequency converters, my battery juice took a hit. Priorities. To preserve heat, maintain a radioed trickle of energy to those cams at the alien campsite, keep my Vigilant location monitor happy, and power my water desalinator/purifier, I put aside electronic fun for that evening and the entire next day.
I tried to keep busy. But running in big circles, always within seven hundred meters from our treasure, lost its appeal after a few hundred laps, and the kettlebells failed to call to me like mythical exercise sirens. At least my dehydrated food and coffee could heat itself, and I should’ve blessed the existence of exothermic reactions. But an emptiness filled my spirit, not forceful enough to be labeled depression. “Malaise” fit the bill nicely. When night settled in, I felt grateful. Sometimes sleep is the best way to surf time.
But my snores got interrupted by rattling sounds on the domed ceiling above me, so I wasn’t shocked when I awoke the fifth day, squeezed through my shelter’s entrance membrane, and found the gifts nature had brought me. Small and slippery icy pellets coated the ground. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” I muttered, a line from an antique movie I’d watched days ago. The temperature hugged Fahrenheit at the thirty mark, and it seemed wise to stay indoors until the mess thawed somewhat, likely a matter of only a few hours, assuming the usual mid-morning equatorial heat wave of merely chilly air.