“Kim—”
“Let it go.”
He settled into a chair. “They’re scared, Kim. You really can’t blame Woodbridge. He’s just taking your advice.”
The great star-clouds glowed in the night.
“Don’t put this on me,” she said. “I’m tired of that game. He has as much information as I do. He knows what happened at Mount Hope. He knows what the Valiant crew did.”
“But he has more responsibility than you do. If you’re wrong, well, maybe we lose a ship. A few lives. If he gets it wrong, there could be a catastrophe. God knows what it could bring down on our heads. We haven’t really done a study to determine what contact would mean. Despite Beacon, despite all the missions, we never really thought through the potential consequences.” The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “Let it go. In the long run, we’ll be better off.”
“You really believe that, Matt?”
From the adjoining corridor she heard the bleep that accompanied the scan marker. The whatever was looking at them again. Making sure they hadn’t changed course. She wondered what they made of the warships. The presence of the fleet, if it provided comfort to Ali and some of her colleagues, was as likely as not to scare off anything in the neighborhood.
“You know,” she said, “if we don’t get it right this time, we may not get another chance.”
“We do what we can.”
Kim looked out at the stars, at Matt, sitting now with his eyes closed, absorbing pain, doing what he’d always done, trying to make the best of things. In the long run, we’ll be better off. He’d left the door open, and she could see down the passageway, which ultimately led back to the Institute. “I don’t understand,” she said, “why they haven’t responded. I’d think they’d want to talk about the Valiant, if nothing else.”
He shrugged. “Who’s to say? Maybe they think we’re looking to grab another one if it shows itself. Or maybe just transmitting pictures doesn’t convey the message.”
“What would?”
“I don’t know. What’s the message?”
“Hello,” she said. “We’re sorry.”
“Then maybe they need to be informed we have the Valiant with us. They don’t really know that—”
“Yeah.” She thought about it. “You might be right, Matt. All we’ve done so far is send—”
“—A lot of images. Maybe we need to show them the ship.”
She opened a channel to the captain. “Ali, when’s the next scan due?”
“We just had one.”
“It’s still running at sixty-three minute intervals?”
“That is correct.”
“How much time have we left before the good captain arrives?”
“Hour and a half, give or take.”
“There’s still time,” she said.
“Time for what?” asked Matt and Ali simultaneously.
“To go outside. Ali, can you arrange things so that when the next probe comes, we’re in the shadow of the planet? We’ll need whatever shelter we can get from the sun.”
Matt didn’t like it, but he could not withstand her determination. “I go with you, though,” he said.
“You ever been outside one of these things?”
“Have you?”
At the other end of the corridor, a staircase ascended to an air lock. Kim and Matt took the Valiant from its display case. They set it on the floor and Kim wrapped it carefully in plastic.
Ali, speaking from the pilot’s room, tried to dissuade her.
Neither of you has any EVA experience, he argued. It’s dangerous. It’s pointless. I’d prefer you not do it.
Kim thanked him for his concern. “Have to try,” she said. “It’s all we have.” They carried the microship up the stairs into the air lock, selected a pair of p-suits and dressed.
Ali came to make sure they had everything right. He lectured her some more, but ended by telling her he’d do the same thing if he were in her place. “Might as well,” he said. “We aren’t going to get to come out here again.”
Then he retreated onto the landing and Kim began depressurizing the lock.
“It’s good timing, if nothing else,” he told her, speaking now through the suit radio. “Next scan is due in eight minutes. What do you expect to happen out there anyhow?”
“We hope,” she said, “to shake hands with a celestial.”
The air lock’s outer door opened. Kim and Matt stepped through. It was like going onto a rooftop at night.
This upper section of hull was flat and rectangular, bordered by a waist-high handrail. They were still within the ship’s artificial gravity field.
Kim put the Valiant down, walked to the edge of the roof and looked over the side. It was dizzying. She felt as if she stood atop an infinitely high building whose foundation was lost in the void. The gas giant, with its system of rings and moons, lay off to her left, shielding her from the sun. “What happens if I fall off?” she asked Ali.
“Nothing,” he said. “You won’t fall. But you would float away. So it’s probably a good idea not to go too close to the edge.”
Matt stayed in the center of the roof with the Valiant.
“One minute to the next scan,” said Ali.
Kim walked over and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. He looked lost. “You want to help?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” She removed the plastic from the microship. Following her lead, he took hold of one side of the vessel, she the other, and they lifted. “All the way,” she said. They raised it shoulder high and then got it over their heads.
All counted down the seconds. “Okay, folks. We have a light. We are being scanned.”
She imagined she could feel the tingle of the probe passing through the three floors of the Mac, passing through her, locking on the Valiant.
“This is not going to be productive,” said Matt. “It feels like a religious ceremony.”
“It is a religious ceremony.” She juggled it, tried to lift it higher, and almost lost it.
“Careful,” said Matt.
“Still scanning,” said Ali. “It’s going long this time.”
Kim, remembering the scan had been running at three seconds’ duration, began counting. “I think we got their attention,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She got to nineteen.
“Marker’s out,” said Ali. “That’s it.”
They lowered the Valiant and laid it back on the roof.
“Kim.” Ali’s voice again.
“Yes?”
“It went twenty-six seconds.”
Matt looked around, maybe to see whether lights had materialized among the stars. But the skies showed no change. “Might as well go back inside,” he said. “Nothing more we can do out here.”
Kim struggled to sit down beside the Valiant. The suit was exceedingly awkward. “I’m going to stay out for a while,” she said.
“Kim—”
“I’m okay. I’m just not ready to quit yet.” The air-lock door stood open. Light spilled out onto the roof. “Once we go back in, it’s over.”
He came and stood close to her.
She looked out into eternity, past the great ringed globe, past the scattered diamonds of individual stars, past the rivers of light. And she thought of Emily, dead at the moment of triumph.
Ali’s voice: “We have movement.”
Terri Taranaka was watching the screens in the mission center. “Kim,” she said, “we’re getting something!”
Kim struggled to her feet. “Not the Dauntless?”
“Negative,” said Ali, sounding excited. “The Dauntless is still in our rear.”
“Which way? Where?”
“Bearing zero six zero,” said Ali. “Up about thirty degrees.”
She had to look back to the air lock to reorient herself to the front of the ship. Up here it was hard to tell.
“It just appeared? he continued. “I don’t know where it came from.”
Even though it lay behind the planet, Alnitak’s glare was still harsh. Matt held a gloved hand over his visor and peered in the indicated direction. “Don’t see anything, Kim,” he said.