The drive unit would require about forty minutes before they could actually do the transdimensional insertion. So she sat back to wait. “You ever run into anything like this before?” she asked Jake.
“Once,” he said. “But it was an automated vehicle. No life-and-death issue. I’ve never seen one where there were actually people involved. I hope that’s not the case here.”
She brought up the signal. They could hear nothing but static. The routine racket produced by stars. With 1 or 2 percent left over from the Big Bang. That always blew her mind. “I wouldn’t want to get stuck out here,” she said.
“No, Priscilla, me neither.”
There had been a few ships that had vanished over the years. Vehicles that simply went out somewhere and were never heard from again. It was, she supposed, inevitable. If you were going to travel to seriously remote places, you took your chances.
* * *
JUMP TECHNOLOGY WAS notoriously inexact. They jumped three more times to get readings on the signals.
Benny put a chart on the navigation display. He marked their initial position and drew a line from it indicating the direction from which the transmission had come. He showed their current location.
Jake brought some coffee back from the dispenser. “You want some?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Sorry it’s taking so long,” said Benny. “It’s difficult to sort everything.”
“It’s okay, Benny. No hurry.”
“I think we have it now.”
Priscilla kept her eyes on the screen. They were able to establish the course and velocity of the radio source during a period of about six weeks during which it had been actively transmitting signals. After that, there was nothing. The system had shut down.
“Range,” said Benny, “is slightly more than nine light-years. Continue the vector for the balance of the nine years, and the source should presently be—”
He showed them.
* * *
“MAYBE SOMEBODY GOT to them,” said Jake. “Let’s hope.”
“So what do we do?”
“You’re the captain, Priscilla. Call it.”
She wondered momentarily if, despite Jake’s denial, the signal was a plant. Part of the exercise. Maybe they were testing her judgment. “Benny,” she said, “do we have a record of any lost ships nine years ago?”
“The Forscher,” he said. “It was last reported at Talios in the spring of ’86. Carrying an exobiologist and an actor. Started home and was never heard from again.”
An actor? Priscilla’s heart rate began to pick up. “Jake, that would be Dave Simmons.” The ultimate action-hero vid star turned explorer. Simmons had turned out to be even bigger than the characters he portrayed. He’d financed scientific missions, founded schools in remote places, once famously challenged the African dictator Kali Anka to have it out man-to-man. Anka had declined and been driven from the country a year later.
“The exobiologist was Paul Trelawney,” said Benny. Trelawney had won the Cassimir Award the year before. “And, of course, there would also have been a pilot.”
The ship had sent a movement report when it left Talios. A long search had yielded nothing. “Why would they send a radio transmission?” she asked, before answering her own question: “The hypercomm must have gone down.”
Jake nodded.
It was hard to imagine the tall, lantern-jawed Simmons dead. The guy had been the epitome of the leading man, in charge, indestructible, always one step ahead of events. One entertainment commentator had remarked that his loss had “reminded us all of our mortality.”
“So what are we going to do?” she asked.
“Make the call, Priscilla.”
“Okay. We make a report, and then head for Caliban, right? We can’t do anything for the Forscher, so we just give the Wheel what we have and continue the mission.”
He nodded. “That’s by the book.”
She read disapproval in his eyes. Maybe another test of her judgment. “Jake, there’s no possibility here of anyone’s life being endangered. So we report what we’ve found and get back to what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“On the other hand—” he said.
“On the other hand, what?”
“We’re close. And our mission isn’t under time constraints. We can go have a look and send back additional details.”
“Do we really want to do that?” Priscilla was thinking about the shape the Forscher’s captain and passengers would be in after nine years.
He straightened and looked down at her. “There’s a code, Priscilla. We owe it to them.”
“Okay.”
“We don’t leave people adrift out here if we can help it. It doesn’t matter what the book says. We go over to the Forscher and take a look at the situation.”
* * *
WHEN THEY ARRIVED in the vicinity of the radio source, they did not find the ship. What they saw instead was a lander. It was a Voltar II, a later model of which rested inside the Copperhead’s own launch bay. “I wonder what happened?” asked Priscilla.
Jake shrugged and looked at the scattered stars on the display. “It explains why they used a radio.”
“They had to abandon ship.” The lander didn’t have a hypercomm.
It looked undamaged. Its registry number, VC112, brightened when the Copperhead’s navigation lights fell on it. Its ports were dark although there was still enough power to cause a flicker in the fore and aft warning lamps as they drew near. Priscilla turned her forward lights on the vehicle.
The pilot’s seat was occupied.
Jake climbed out of his harness and opened the storage bin. He took out a set of air tanks, the Flickinger gear, and a jet pack. Then he looked at her.
She had an obligation to go with him. It shouldn’t have been a problem. She’d done EVAs in training. But she wasn’t excited about what they were going to find in the shuttle’s cabin. “I’m coming,” she said.
* * *
FLICKINGER FIELDS HAD long since replaced the cumbersome pressure suits. The generator provided an electronic shield against the vacuum. A passerby, had there been one, would have seen nothing like the astronauts of an earlier era. Rather, there were only two people wearing blue-and-silver uniforms.
They crossed to the shuttle and looked in through the ports. Only one body was visible. It was in the pilot’s seat. It appeared in much better condition than Priscilla would have expected after nine years. “The environment,” Jake explained. “In a case like this, you don’t get all the microbes and whatever else is involved in decomposition. A corpse is more likely to look a bit mummified.”
He opened the hatch, climbed into the air lock, and made room for her. She squeezed in beside him. She noticed he’d brought a laser. “Just in case,” he said. “You’re going aboard a vehicle that has very little power. You wouldn’t want to get trapped in the air lock.” He touched the control pad, and the outer hatch closed. Next, it should have begun to fill with air. But nothing happened.
“See what I mean?” He used the laser to cut a hole in the inner hatch. There was air pressure inside, and it quickly equalized. Then the hatch opened, and they floated into the cabin.
They turned on their wrist lamps. Jake went up front. Priscilla sniffed the air, told herself it was no problem, and joined him. She recognized the body immediately.
“Simmons,” they said simultaneously.
Priscilla stared. Somehow, even now, he was sprawled beneath the restraints in that easy charge-the-hill manner she knew so well. Good-bye, Dave, she thought. Growing up, she’d loved the guy. “What do you think happened?”