“It’s okay,” White told him. “You’ll get another chance.” From this range, the explosion hadn’t occurred yet, was still forty minutes away, and the researchers were able to set up and wait for the event to happen again. Klassner swallowed his disappointment, and commented that his daughter wouldn’t be a bit surprised when he told her what had happened. Boland understood that Klassner had no children.
From their present range, Delta Karpis would normally have been a relatively small disk. But the disk was gone, replaced by a yellow smear twisted into the shape of a pear.
Nancy White was sitting with a notebook, recording her impressions, as if she would one day publish them. Her reputation had come from creating and moderating a series of shows, Nancy White’s Fireside Chats, in which she talked science and philosophy with her audience; and Time-Out, a panel discussion that allowed her to sit each week with simulated historical figures ranging from Hammurabi to Adrian Cutter to Myra Kildare to discuss the issues of the day. The show had never been enormously popular, but-as the producers liked to say-the people who counted loved it.
Urquhart talked quietly with Mendoza. Dunninger had opened a book but wasn’t really paying any attention to it.
They counted down, and it all happened again. Except at this range it was less painful to watch. The pear buckled, and the light coming through the viewports alternately brightened and darkened. And finally subsided into a hostile red glow.
It was odd, living through an event twice. But that was what FTL did for you.
When you could outrun light, you could travel in time.
Within two hours, Delta Karpis was gone, and the light in the solar system had gone out. Only a blaze of luminous gas, and the bright golden ring around the dwarf, remained. They watched while the neutron star proceeded quietly on its way.
II.
Rondel (Rondo) Karpik was chief of the communications watch at Indigo Station, near the outer limits of Confederate space. His title, chief, was largely nominal since, except during major operations, he was the only person on the watch. The Delta Kay mission had ceased to be a major operation. Sensor packages had been laid at strategic points, data from the three ships had been relayed and stored, the on-station experts had expressed their admiration for the efficiency with which the researchers had carried out their assigned tasks, but they were predicting it would be months before we knew what we’d learned. There had been a journalist with the Sentinel, reporting to a pool. The pool had filed stories that went on about the majesty of it all until Rondo thought he was going to throw up. Then the fleet had announced its homebound schedule, and the experts and journalists had retired down to Cappy’s gumpo shop, and he hadn’t seen them since.
There was still some tracking data coming in, and a few other odds and ends, but the excitement was clearly over. Well, he had to admit he’d never seen a star blow up before, at least not from close by.
“Indigo, we’re ready to make our jump.” Bill Trask’s image gazed at him from the center of the room. Bill was captain of the Rensilaer and, in Rondo’s view, the biggest horse’s ass among the assorted skippers who passed through Indigo. He had no time for peasants, and he let you know exactly how you rated. He was big, ponderous, with white hair and a deep, gravelly voice, and everybody was afraid of him. At least all the communications people. “We estimate timely arrival Indigo. Keep the stewpots warm.”
The message had been sent fifteen hours earlier. Trask signed off, and his image vanished.
Rondo opened a channel but kept it audio only. “Acknowledge, Rensilaer, ” he said. “We’ll be looking for you.”
All three ships would, of course, stop there before proceeding to Rimway. Indigo was a cylinder world, orbiting Planter’s Delight, which had been settled less than thirty years before and already boasted 17 million inhabitants. Indigo had almost half a million more.
The past few days had been historic, but it was hard to get excited. He was up for a department manager’s job, and that was all he cared about at the moment. Events like this were a hazard. They were no-win situations. Handle them right, and nobody would notice. Screw up somewhere, say the wrong thing to one of the journalists, and it would be bye-bye baby. So he concentrated on maintaining a professional attitude.
Keep the experts happy. And make sure the assorted hyperlight transmissions were received in good order, made available, and relayed to Rimway. It was simple enough. All he really had to do was to let the AI handle the details, be on his best social behavior, say good things about everybody, and keep close in case of a problem.
He watched the Rensilaer ’s status lights, and when they went blue, he informed operations that the ship had made its jump, and he gave them its ETA.
Ten minutes later, the Sentinel ’s captain appeared, Eddie Korby, young, quiet, studious. Look at him and you thought he was timid. The last person in the world you’d think would be piloting a starship. But he always had an attractive woman on his arm. Sometimes two or three.
“Indigo,” he said, “we’ll be departing in four minutes. I hope you got to watch the show. Delta Kay literally imploded. The passengers seem pretty happy with the mission. See you in a couple of weeks. Sentinel out.”
Next up was Maddy. “Coming home, Rondo,” she said. “Departure imminent.”
Behind her, on his operational screen, the dying star gave her an aura. She looked positively supernatural, standing there, silhouetted against the conflagration. A firstclass babe, she was. But there was something about her that warned him don’t touch.
“ Polaris out.”
He took another sip of his gumpo, which was an extract from a plant grown on the world below, and to which he’d long since become accustomed. Lemon with a sting, but when it settled, it provided a general sense of warmth and well-being.
Sentinel ’s status lamps went blue. On her way.
He passed it on, not that anyone in Ops really cared, but it was procedure. He checked the logbook, made the entry for the Sentinel, and waited for Polaris ’s lights to change.
The lamps showed white when the ship was in linear space, and they would go to blue when she’d made her jump. Twenty minutes after Maddy said they were ready to leave, they were still white.
That shouldn’t be. “Jack,” he told the AI, “run a diagnostic on the board. Let’s make sure the problem’s not at this end.”
The systems whispered to one another, status lamps winked on and off, turned yellow, turned green, went back to white. “I do not detect any problem with the system, Rondo,” said Jack.
Damn. He disliked complications. He waited another few minutes, but the lamp remained steadily, defiantly, unchanged.
White.
He hated problems. Absolutely hated them. There was always a big hassle, and it usually turned out that somebody had fallen asleep. Or hadn’t thrown a switch.
Reluctantly, he informed operations.
“ Polaris twenty-five minutes after scheduled jump. Unaccounted for.”
Rondo’s supervisor, Charlie Wetherall, showed up a few minutes later. Then one of the techs, who’d heard what was happening. The tech ran tests, and said the problem was at the other end. At forty-five minutes, the first journalists arrived. Heard something was happening. What’s wrong?
Rondo kept quiet and let Charlie do the talking. “These things happen,” Charlie said. “Communications breakdowns.” Sure they do.
What Rondo couldn’t figure was why they hadn’t heard from Maddy if she’d been unable to jump.
“Busted link,” said Charlie, helpfully, using his expression to suggest that Rondo not say anything alarming to the journalists. Or to anyone at all.
“Then you don’t think they’re in trouble?” one of them asked. Her name was Shalia Something-or-other. She was a dark-skinned woman who’d sulked for weeks because they hadn’t made room for her on the mission.