They’d come on faith. Trusted Agostino, God help them.
She explained that she needed some time in her quarters. There were two more coming, and they should be along any moment. When they got here, she’d come back and tell them what all the mystery was about.
Then she excused herself and retreated to her room, asking Matt to let her know as soon as everyone was on board. Ten minutes later there was a knock at her door. She opened it and found herself looking into the smiling features of Ali Kassem, the ship’s captain.
“Kim,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Hello, Ali.” She made way, and closed the door behind him. “Nice to see you again.”
“You too. What’s all the secrecy?”
“How much do you know?”
“Only that we’re not going to Taratuba.”
“Sit down, Ali,” she said. “Are they giving you hazardous duty pay?”
“Should they?”
“Yes.”
“You’re serious.”
“Very.”
“All right. So fill me in.”
She encapsulated everything into a three-minute narrative, omitting Woodbridge’s effort to seize the Valiant. When she finished he looked shaken. “Are you still willing to go?” she asked.
“What do you do if I decide it is not for me?”
“I’ll be in some difficulty.”
The rest of the team arrived in good order. Other than Kim, Matt, and Ali, there were eight persons on board. They gathered in the briefing room, where Matt explained he had wanted to invite others, and in fact had invited others. Some had wanted specifics, others said they couldn’t come on such short notice. Eight, he said, was inadequate to the task, but it would have to do. Then he turned the meeting over to Kim. “We have only a few minutes before departure,” she said.
“So I’ll try not to waste anyone’s time.” She stepped up onto a raised section of floor. “We’ve made contact,” she said.
The room went dead silent. Nobody moved.
“With celestials. It’s true. It happened. In fact, there’ve been two events.”
Now she had them. They blurted out questions but Kim waved them aside. She described the Hunter and Hammersmith discoveries, and told them what had really occurred at the Culbertson Tunnel. She told them that the Council was determined to maintain secrecy for the time being, and that was why no one had been able to explain anything in advance. She showed them the Valiant but would not allow them to inspect it. “You can do all that later,” she said. “What you need to know now is that we hope to reestablish communication, that we hope to compensate for the mistakes made twenty-seven years ago, and that we know almost nothing about what we face. We’re pretty sure they are now hostile, and we can assume they will not hesitate to destroy the McCollum. We’ll be out there alone. Consequently you might want to reconsider whether you want to come.” She turned to Ali. “Anyone who wishes to leave has an opportunity now to do so. Once we get underway, you’re committed.”
“How dangerous?” asked their anthropologist, Maurie Penn.
“You know as much as I do now. I’d say substantially.”
“Count me in,” said the mathematician. “A chance to talk to another species? Hell, yes.”
There was no real debate. For one thing, they were out of time. For another, the prize was simply too bright. Those who might ordinarily have been reluctant to put their lives in jeopardy for any reason, like the AI specialist Gil Chase, were overwhelmed by the possibilities of the situation. They would all stay. Certainly, they were saying, what else would you expect?
The formal meeting broke up. The seats swung back to acceleration positions, and Ali made for the pilot’s room.
Maurie Penn sat down beside her. “This is not the way I’d have wanted to do this,” he said. “A mission like this. There should have been some preparation.”
“Conditions don’t permit it,” she said.
Ali’s voice alerted them that departure was imminent. The cabin lights dimmed.
The seats in the briefing room had individual monitors that could be keyed into any of the visual inputs from the external imagers. She switched over to a view of Greenway and looked down at Equatoria. The northern snows had given way and the entire continent was now green. The Mandan archipelago trailed off to the west, over the rim of the world.
The skyhook, long and arcing as if a heavy wind were blowing against it, dropped down and down into the cloud banks where it faded from sight.
Kim felt a slight push.
“Underway,” said Ali.
Forty-some minutes later, without a word from the Patrol, they slipped into hyperspace and Kim breathed more easily.
The Valiant came under immediate scrutiny. After the initial wave of euphoria, some members concluded that Kim had dragged them along on a frivolous—and deranged—mission. But Flexner’s reputation held the day. Matt was solid, down-to-earth, not one to be swept off his feet. There might therefore be something to the story.
Eventually, after everyone had had a chance to look at the microship, she cautioned them against attempting to take it apart, and secured it inside a glass case in one of the unused rooms on the top floor. Reluctantly, she activated an alarm system.
“Not a good idea,” Matt told her, “to signal that you don’t trust your people.”
She knew that. She apologized to them but explained that she knew they were scientists and that the temptation might be overwhelming. “We need it intact,” she said. And then she explained the real purpose of the mission. “We’re going to give it back to them.”
Eyes widened and people started to argue. Tesla Duchard, the biologist, looked as if she were going into shock.
But Kim defended her view, and to his credit, Matt supported her. “The Hunter mission did a lot of damage,” he said. “If we can rectify that, and establish a constructive relationship, we’ll come away with far more than a busted ship.”
There was some grumbling, but in the end they bought it.
Sandra Leasing, who designed and built star drives, concluded that the Valiant used a transdimensional entry system that was in no way different from their own. “Probably,” she said, “there is no other way to manage things.”
“The real question for me,” said Mona Vasquez, a psychologist, “is the missing propulsion tubes. How does it travel in normal space?”
“Only one way I can think of,” said Terri Taranaka, a physicist, “if you’re not throwing something out the rear, you have to throw something out the front, something to pull you along.”
“And what would that be?” asked Maurie.
“A gravity field. You create a gravity field along the intended course, just as we create one in here. And you fall forward into it.”
“Do we have that kind of capability?” asked Tesla.
“We do,” said Matt. “But we couldn’t generate a strong enough field to make it practical. In time, though, it’d be a good way to go. If only because you wouldn’t have to take along a load of reaction mass.”
Kim ran the Hunter logs for the team and enjoyed hearing them gasp when the celestial pilot appeared. “Cho-cho-san,” said Terri. “Butterfly.”
They discussed the Hunter’s reaction to its unexpected find and began considering what might await them, and how best to respond.
She decided also that it would be necessary to tell them about Woodbridge’s effort to seize the Valiant. When they reemerged into realspace in the vicinity of Alnitak, they’d undoubtedly receive an official message demanding return of the artifact. And she had to inoculate them against that. Especially, she had to win Ali over.