Midway through, strange noises come from upstairs. Shrieks. Groans. Unearthly cries. Two of the boys decide, incredibly, they will investigate. Only in the sims, Digger thinks. But he wants them to stay together. The boy in the lead is tall, good-looking, with a kind of wistful innocence. The kid next door. Despite the silliness of the proceedings, Digger’s heart is pounding as he and his companion climb the circular staircase, while the tempo builds to a climax. As they arrive at the top, another shriek rips through the night. It comes from behind the door at the end of the hallway.
The door opens, apparently unaided, and Digger sees a shadowy figure seated in an armchair facing a window, illuminated only by the flickering lightning. The second boy, prudently, is dropping behind.
Stay together. Digger shakes his head, telling himself it’s all nonsense. No sensible kids would do anything like this. And if they did, they’d certainly stick close to each other.
And he found himself thinking about the hedgehog. They’d overlooked the obvious.
“WHAT WOULD IT be doing way out there?” asked Jack.
Digger has used a cursor to indicate where he thought the object could be found. “We assumed the cloud and the hedgehog were a unit. Where one goes, the other follows. But here, we’ve got a cloud that has thrown a right turn.
“The cloud’s been turning and slowing down for a long time. Maybe over a year. But there’s no reason to assume the hedgehog wouldn’t keep going.”
“Original course and velocity?” said Jack.
“Probably.”
“Why would it do that?” asked Winnie.
“Why any of this? I don’t know. But I bet if we check it out, we’ll find it where the cloud would have been if it hadn’t decided to go for a walk.”
Kellie’s dark eyes touched him. Go to it, big boy.
“Why not take a look?” he asked. “It’s not as if we have to be anywhere tomorrow.”
THEY FOUND IT precisely where Digger had predicted. It was moving along at a few notches under standard omega velocity. As if the great cloud still trailed behind.
LIBRARY ENTRY
The discovery of escort vehicles with the omegas reveals just how little research has been done over the past thirty years on this critical subject. What other surprises are coming? And how many more lives will be sacrificed to bureaucratic inertia?
— The London Times
March 23
chapter 13
On board the Heffernan, near Alpha Pictoris, 99 light-years from Earth.
Friday, April 4.
THE PICTORIS HEDGEHOG made it six for six. They all have one.
It was twenty-eight thousand kilometers in front of the cloud. Its diameter was the standard six and a half kilometers. “Report’s away,” Emma said.
Sky didn’t like going anywhere near the damned thing. But they’d asked for volunteers, told him they’d probably be okay, but to be careful, don’t take any unnecessary chances, and keep your head down. Emma had said not to hesitate on her account, and the Heffernan was the only ship in the neighborhood.
Ordinarily Sky loved what he did for a living. He enjoyed cruising past ringed giants, lobbing probes into black holes, delivering people and supplies to the ultimate out-of-the-way places. But he didn’t like the clouds. And he didn’t like the hedgehogs. They were things that didn’t belong.
They were far enough away from Pictoris that the only decent illumination on the object was coming from their probe.
“Its magnetic field matches the signature of the other objects,” said Bill.
“Ajax is ready to go,” said Emma.
There was no known entry hatch anywhere, so Drafts would have chosen a spot at random. Which is what the Heffernan would do.
Emma and Sky were looking forward to celebrating their sixteenth anniversary the next day, although they hadn’t been married precisely sixteen years. Participating in experiments with the new hypervelocity sublight thrust engines had alternately speeded them up and slowed them down, or maybe just one or the other. He’d never been able to figure out relativity. He just knew the numbers didn’t come together in any way he could understand. But it didn’t matter. He’d had a lot of time with Emma, and he was smart enough to appreciate it. She’d told him once, when they were still a few months from their wedding, and were eating dinner at the Grand Hotel in Arlington, that he should enjoy the moment because the day would come when they’d give anything to be able to return to that hour and relive that dinner.
It was true, of course. Everything was fresh and young then. They hadn’t yet learned to take each other for granted. When he was tempted to do so now, he reminded himself that the life he had wouldn’t be forever, and if he couldn’t go back to the Grand Hotel when his romance with Emma was still new, when the entire world was young and all things seemed possible, it was equally true that he’d remember the hedgehog, and how they’d stood on the bridge together, watching it come close, a piece of hardware put together by God knew what, for purposes no one could imagine. A bomb. But it was still a moment that he savored, because he knew that, like the Grand Hotel, he would one day give much to be able to return.
Sixteenth anniversary. How had it all gone by so quickly?
“Relativity.” She laughed.
“Recommend Ajax launch,” said Bill.
“Okay, Bill. Keep in mind that we want it to snuggle up very gently. Just kiss it, right?”
“Just a smooch,” said Bill. He appeared beside them, wearing a radiation suit and a hard hat. Protection against explosions. His idea of a joke.
“Okay,” Sky said. “Launch Ajax.”
Warning lamps blinked. The usual slight tremor ran through the ship. “Ajax away. Time to intersection: thirty-three minutes.”
“Okay, Bill. Let’s leave town.”
THEY ACCELERATED OUT. Sky directed the AI to maintain jump capability, which required firing the main engines throughout the sequence to build and hold sufficient charge in the Hazeltines.
It was the first time in all these years that he’d been in this kind of situation, not knowing well in advance whether he’d have to jump.
“Out of curiosity—” she said.
“Yes?”
“On the jump, can you override Bill? If you had to?” The jump engines couldn’t be used until they were charged. That usually required twenty-eight minutes off the main engines. Any attempt to do a jump prior to that risked initiating an antimatter explosion, and consequently would be refused by the AI.
“We could do a manual start if something happened to Bill.”
“You know,” she said, “I suspect that’s what the hedgehog is loaded with, too.”
“Antimatter?”
“Yes. That would explain the magnetic field.”
“In what way?” asked Sky.
“Containment envelope. It’s probably what happened to Drafts. He did something that impaired its integrity.”
Sky shook his head. Who’d have expected anything like that out here?
EMMA WAS AN astrophysicist. When he’d warned her that marrying someone who took a superluminal out for months at a time might not be a smart move for her, she’d said okay, that she’d really wanted a tall blond guy anyhow, good-bye. And he’d tried to recover ground, said he wasn’t entirely serious, didn’t want to lose her, just wanted to be sure she knew what she was getting into.
It had taken almost two years to get the joint assignment to the Heffernan, but it had happened, largely because the Academy had a policy of trying to keep its captains happy.
They were both on the bridge, sharing, after all these years, their first moment of danger. The danger was remote, fortunately, but it added a dash of spice to the experience.