He didn’t need to say who. For many years, Limperis had been McAndrew’s closest friend and champion at the Institute. All the same, it was a curious opening. Limperis possessed all the social skills that McAndrew lacked. He was not one to plunge straight into business.
“It went badly?” I took my cue from him. “The trip to the solar focus didn’t work out the way it was supposed to?”
“Not at all. The trip went very well. It is going very well.”
It took me a second. “You have an expedition out there right now. And McAndrew’s not on it?”
“That is correct.” Limperis led me away along the corridor — in a direction, I noted, opposite to McAndrew’s office. “There has been some — er, some disagreement with the Director. Some unpleasantness.”
“What did he do?”
“It’s more what McAndrew refused to do. Do you recall the name of Nina Velez?”
“Oh, Jesus. Is he mixed up with her again?”
Nina Velez was the daughter of President Velez, and for a while — until, in fact, they had been marooned together for weeks in the three-meter life capsule of the prototype balanced drive — she had been infatuated with McAndrew. Enforced intimacy had put an end to that. It was all years ago, and I really thought that he had learned his lesson.
Limperis nodded. “I’m afraid so. Ms. Velez, as you may know, now has a senior position with AG News. She somehow learned, by means unknown to us, that an expedition was planned to the solar focus. She offered money for permission to send a representative with the expedition, and for exclusive media rights.”
“Sounds reasonable to me.”
“And to Director Rumford. I should mention that the money offered was, by Institute standards, most considerable.”
“But she wanted to be the representative, and McAndrew refused to take her.”
“Not at all. She wanted her new husband, Geoffrey Benton, to go on the expedition. Benton has scientific training, and has been on half a dozen expeditions within the Solar System.”
“I know him. Tall, good-looking guy.”
“Then you may also know that he has a fine reputation. Savvy, experienced reporter. McAndrew was all agreed. Then something happened. I think Mac met with Benton — just once — and afterwards went to the Director. He said Benton would go on an expedition with him, McAndrew, over his dead body.”
“But why?”
“That’s something I rely on you to find out — he won’t tell me or anyone else. Director Rumford said, rightly in my opinion, that McAndrew’s attitude left him little choice. In these days of shrinking budgets, we need the funds. Paul Fogarty would lead the expedition to the solar focus instead of McAndrew, and Geoffrey Benton would go with him. That is exactly what happened. It has not left McAndrew in the best of moods, and I wanted you to know that before you meet him.”
He paused. “And, of course, although this is strictly speaking no concern of mine, I would like to know what is really going on.”
Shrewd old Limperis. A razor-sharp mind lay behind the innocent, pudgy black face. He sensed, as I did, that there had been a set-up. On questions of theoretical physics, McAndrew sits among the immortals. On matters involving human motivation and behavior, he is an innocent — and that’s being kind.
“Let me talk to him,” I said. “Is he in his study?”
“There, or more likely in the communications center.” Limperis hesitated. “I should mention that Fogarty and Benton have reached the solar focus, and they are obtaining spectacular findings concerning the supernova. McAndrew’s mood is… hard to judge.”
I knew what he meant. McAndrew should have been experiencing one of his big thrills in life, the rush of data on a new scientific phenomenon; but instead of being on the front line, he was getting it all second-hand. To someone like McAndrew, that is like being offered for your dining pleasure a previously-eaten meal.
He was in the communications center. I approached him uncertainly, not sure what his mood might be. He looked up from a page of numbers and gave me a nod and a smile, as though we had just seen each other at lunch time. And far from being out of sorts, he seemed delighted with something.
“Here, Jeanie,” he said. “Take a listen to this. See what you think.”
He handed me a headset.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Report from Fogarty. He was heading for the solar focus, but the media asked him to put on a bit of a show for them, just to demonstrate what the Hoatzin can do. Of course, he couldn’t resist. They went zooming all the way out past three hundred billion kilometers, horsing around, then wandered in again toward the focus. I want you to hear what they picked up on the way back. It came in a while ago, but I only just got round to it.”
“Shouldn’t I—”
“Listen to it. Then we’ll talk.”
McAndrew!
I put the headset on.
“We are on the way in again, approximately two hundred and eighty billion kilometers from Sol.” Paul Fogarty, his voice young and slightly nasal, spoke in my ears. “We are heading for a solar focus point appropriate for receipt of radiation from the Cassiopeia supernova. The Hoatzin is performing perfectly, and we normally turn off the engine during flight only for observations and sampling of the local medium. However, anomalous signals received in our message center are prompting us to remain longer in this vicinity. We are picking up a message of distress from an unknown source. We have travelled to various locations, but we are unable to discover a message origin. We will keep looking for another twenty-four hours. After that we must proceed toward our original destination of the solar focus. The received message follows.”
I listened, wondering who could possibly be sending a call for help from so far away. Two hundred and eighty billion kilometers, sixty times the distance of Neptune, way south of the ecliptic and far beyond normal Solar System runs. No cargo or passenger vessel ever ventured in that direction, or so far out.
Help, help, help. The standard Mayday distress signal was the only clear part of the message. “… limited chance for transmission… every year or two…” The voice was thin, scratchy, and distorted. “We transmit when we can, aim at Sol…” Help, help, help. “… we’ll keep sending as long as possible. We have no idea what’s happening outside… are trapped… except for this chamber. No control of resources except this unit…”
Help, help, help. The automated Mayday signal bleated on, over and over. I heard nothing more from the desperate human voice.
McAndrew was watching me closely as I removed the headphones. “Well?”
“It couldn’t be clearer. There’s a ship out there in bad trouble, even if we don’t know what kind of trouble.”
Mac said, “Not a ship.”
“What, then?”
“I’d guess it’s one of the Arks.”
That made me catch my breath. The Arks were part of history. Before McAndrew and I were born, seventeen of the great space habitats had been launched by the United Space Federation. Self-contained and self-supporting, they were multi-generation ships, crawling through the interstellar void at a tiny fraction of light speed. Their destinations were centuries away. But even at minimal speeds, they ought by now to be well on their way to the stars. They should be far beyond the place where the signal had been picked up.
McAndrew’s suggestion that it was one of the Arks seemed unlikely for another reason. “I don’t think it can be,” I said. “As I recall it, none of the Arks was launched in a direction so far south of the ecliptic. And I don’t believe they were capable of significant changes of direction.”
“Perfectly true. They could start and stop, and that was about all.” McAndrew gazed at me blank-eyed as the Sphinx. He knew something he wasn’t telling.