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  His only child Lyra shared his taste for the exotic, although she tended to discount the notion of ambassadors from other civilizations. Nevertheless, she had won her father’s heart by becoming an exoarcheologist.

  Nick had never been off-world, which is to say, he’d never gotten beyond Earth orbit, until Lyra was posted to Pinnacle, where she was poking among the million-year-old ruins of that ancient world. On a whim, Nick had spent a small fortune to go out and visit her. They’d strolled together among the upended columns and collapsed roofs of the ancient sites, and she’d taken him to see some of the reconstructed public buildings. (“We had to do some guesswork here, Dad.”) They were beautifully rendered structures, every bit the artistic equal of the Temple of Athena.

  They’d watched a virtual alien religious service, and he’d gotten a sense of what it must have been like on Pinnacle when the first humans were just showing up around their campfires.

  He spent a month there. Lyra showed him pottery estimated at eight hundred thousand standard years old. “Glaze it,” she explained, “and it lasts forever.”

  He looked at the progress they’d made with translation, which was extensive when one considered the few samples they had to work with. And there’d been ancient roadways and harbors, invisible now save to the instruments. “Right here,” she’d said, while they stood in the middle of a desert that ran absolutely flat in all directions clear to the horizon, “right here the crossroads met between the two most powerful empires of the Third Komainic.” There had been a wayfarer’s station, and a river, and possibly a landing pad.

  “What were their names?” he’d asked. “The empires?”

  She didn’t know. No one knew.

  It was only a few hours later that the message came from Hockelmann. THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE THIS MAY BE IT, it concluded. MEET US AT THE OUTPOST.

  Sure. Meet me at Larry’s.

  OUTPOST WAS A service and supply center on the edge of human expansion. It was located just beyond the rings at Salivar’s Hatch, which was about a billion kilometers out from a class-B blue-white star. Hutch wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting in her funeral-director passenger, probably someone somber and methodical. Nick was about average size, loose-limbed, with black hair, amiable gray eyes, and a guileless smile. Not the sort of man she pictured wandering about the funeral home reassuring friends and relatives. George had hurried off the ship and hugged him when he appeared at the foot of the ramp. He brought him back like a long-lost cousin. “Hutch,” he said, “this is Nick. He will never let you down.” He chuckled at his joke, while Nick sighed.

  They shook hands, made small talk, and then Hutch asked about Tor, the sixth passenger.

  “He’s out on 21,” said Nick, looking surprised. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” she said. “What’s 21?”

  “One of the moons. He was supposed to come in this week to be ready, but he’s in the middle of something and, well”—looking at George—“you know how he is.”

  George apparently knew, and he glanced over at Hutch as if she should have foreseen something like this would happen. Everybody knows how Tor is.

  Hutch sighed. She’d known a Tor once. “Bill?” she said.

  “It’s coming in now,” said Bill. “Going out to 21, departure time looks like a little over seventeen hours.”

  “Seventeen hours?” said Hutch. She turned toward George. “I’m going to strangle this guy.”

  “He wouldn’t have known it would take so long,” said George. “If he’d known, he would have been here. He’s an artist.”

  He said that as if it explained everything. It was funny though, her Tor had been an artist, too. Not a good one. At least not a successful one. But they weren’t the same guy. This was Tor Kirby. The one she’d known was Tor Vinderwahl. Not even close.

  “Okay, folks,” she said. “We won’t be leaving until about 3:00 A.M. This is a good time to tour the station.”

  TOR KIRBY’S BACKGROUND was unclear. Hutch’s data package stipulated only that he was an heir to the Happy Plumber fortune. What he might be doing at Outpost was left unstated. Did they really bring in a plumber from the NAU to keep the water flowing?

  The gas giant that was home to Outpost was the sole world in the system moving within a relatively stable orbit. Everything else had been scattered, planets ejected, moons hurled across vast distances. The station had begun as a mission trying to learn what had happened, why everything else had gone south while the big planet had retained its rings and a large family of satellites. Theory held that there’d been a close encounter with another star some twenty thousand years earlier. But finding the candidate had proved more difficult than expected. Nick arranged a simulation of the event for George and his team. The experts thought they had it all down: what the alignment had looked like at the time of passage, how long the event had taken (three years), where the intruder had been. Four of the worlds had been ejected altogether, but they’d been found, drifting through the interstellar void, exactly where they were supposed to be. The others were rattling around the sun. The Hatch had survived intact because it was on the far side of the sun during the height of the action. Their inability to find the other body led to the suspicion that it had actually been a neutron star or possibly even a black hole.

  Hutch had seen the demonstration before, and was about to duck out when her commlink vibrated. “Captain Hutchins?” A woman’s voice. “Dr. Mogambo wishes you to stop by his office if you’ve a moment.”

  She was surprised to hear that Mogambo was at Outpost.

  “He’s directing the geometric group,” the voice explained. Not that she understood what it meant.

  Hutch went up to the main deck and turned into the admin area. “Second door on the right,” said the voice. Its owner was waiting for her when she entered. Olive-skinned, dark-haired, wide liquid eyes. Arab blood dominant, thought Hutch.

  “This way please.” She rose from her desk and opened an inner door. Mogambo, seated in a padded armchair, signaled a welcome and switched off the wall lights, leaving the room lit only by a small desk lamp.

  Maurice Mogambo was a two-time Nobel winner, both prizes stemming from his work on space-time architecture and vacuum energy. Hutch had been a virtual private pilot for him at one point in her career.

  He was extraordinarily tall. Taller even than George. Hutch looked up at him, and said hello to his signature ribbon tie. He wore a close-cropped beard, unusual in a close-shaven age. His skin was bright ebony. He had an athlete’s body and a violinist’s long fingers. Hutch recalled the intense daily workouts and his passion for chess.

  The smile lasted while he indicated the chair she should take. She eased herself into it, waiting for him to switch the congeniality off. Mogambo saw the world as his own personal playing field. He was brilliant, and generous, and could charm when he wanted to. But she had seen his ruthless side, had seen him ruin jobs and careers when people had failed to meet his expectations. Does not tolerate fools, one of his colleagues had once remarked to her, meaning it as a compliment. But she had eventually concluded that he defined fool as anyone lacking his own brilliance.

  “It’s good to see you again, Hutch.” He filled two glasses, came around the front of the desk, and passed one to her. It was nonalcoholic, lemon and lime with a dash of ginger.

  “And you, Professor. It’s been a long time.” Almost eight years. But she hadn’t missed his company. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  They exchanged pleasantries. He’d been on Outpost for two months, he explained. They were sending missions into several areas dominated by ultradense objects, where measurements of time and space were being taken. “It appears,” he said, “that the physical characteristics of space are not uniform.” He made the remark with his eyes closed, speaking perhaps to himself. “It’s not at all what we’d expected.” The smile faded.

  Hutch knew quite well that Mogambo hadn’t invited her up to discuss physics. But she playe
d his game, asked a few questions about the research, pretended she understood the answers, and explained that yes, the Deepsix venture had been unnerving, that she’d been scared half out of her mind for the entire ten days, and that she’d never go near anything like that again.

  Finally, he changed pace, refilled her glass, and remarked, a little too offhandedly, that he understood she was going out to 1107.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “To determine whether there’s anything to the Benjamin Martin transmissions.”

  “Yes.”

  He placed his elbows on the desk, pressed his fingertips together, and leaned forward, not unlike a large hawk. “Eleven-oh-seven,” he said.

  She waited.

  “What do you think, Hutch?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If there was something out there when the Benny passed through, I doubt it’s there now.” She suspected he knew about the recent reception, but he wouldn’t know whether she’d been informed or not. And she had no intention of telling him anything she didn’t have to.

  He studied her for a long moment. “My thought exactly.” His brow wrinkled. She thought he was going to say something else, but he apparently thought better of it and settled for toying with his glass.

  Hutch looked around the office. There was some cheap electronic art on the walls, images of gardens and country roads. As the silence dragged out she leaned forward. “Are you thinking about going out there to take a look? We’d be happy to have you on board.” Actually, she wouldn’t. And she knew he’d not accept. So it was safe to make the offer.

  “With the Contact Society?” He grinned at her. You may have to travel with them, but I have more important things to do. “No. Actually, I’m quite busy.” He showed her a row of strong white teeth. “It’s a fanatic’s enterprise, Hutch. But not one without possibility.”

  She knew exactly where he was headed, but she was not going to help. “One never knows,” she said.

  Something rumbled deep in his throat. “I would like you to do me a favor.”

  “If I’m able.”

  “Let me know if you actually find anything out there. I’ll be here for a couple of weeks.”

  It was obvious how that would play out. Yes, we’ve got an alien transmitter! Mogambo would gallop onto the scene and grab all the credit. George would never know what hit him. “I’m not sure I can do that, Professor.”

  He looked hurt. “Hutch, why not?”

  “The contract stipulates that Mr. Hockelmann controls the reporting.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it might have been. “I can’t do what you ask, as much as I’d like to.”

  “Hutch, this means a great deal to me. Listen, the truth is, I’d be there with you if I could. But it’s just not possible. I’m loaded up with work here. I can’t just go running off. You understand. What’s it take to get out there from here? A week?”

  “More or less.”

  He gave her a pained expression. “I just can’t manage it.” He touched a control, and the lamp brightened. Its light filled the room. “I need this, Hutch. I’d consider it a personal favor, and I’d appreciate it if you could find a way.” She started to reply, but he held up a hand. “Do this for me, and I’ll see that you’re rewarded. I have contacts. I’m sure you don’t want to spend the rest of your life running back and forth between Sol and the Outpost.”

  She rose quietly and put her glass, half-empty, on the edge of his desk. “I’ll pass your request on, Professor. I’m sure George will want to comply with your wishes.”

  TOR KNEW SHE was coming.

  He’d spent a few evenings with Hutch four years ago. A couple of shows, a couple of dinners, drinks at Cassidy’s one night overlooking the Potomac and the Mall. A walk along the river. A Saturday afternoon horseback ride through Rock Creek Park. And then, on a Wednesday evening in late November, she’d told him she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore, she was sorry, hoped it wasn’t a problem for him, but she’d be on her way out again to someplace he couldn’t pronounce, that idiot world where the Noks were killing one another in large numbers, fighting a war that apparently went on forever. “I just don’t get back to Arlington very often, Tor,” she’d said, by way of explanation.

  He had known it was coming. Didn’t know how, something in her manner all along had told him that it was all temporary, that the day would come when he’d revisit the same places alone. He didn’t tell her any of that, of course, didn’t know how, feared it would only push her farther away. So he’d called for the bill, paid up, told her he was sorry it had ended as it had, and walked off. Left her sitting there.

  He was Tor Vinderwahl then, the name he’d been born with, the name he’d changed at the suggestion of the director of the Georgetown Art Exhibit. Vinderwahl sounds made up, he’d said. And it’s hard to remember. Not a good idea if you want to go commercial.

  He hadn’t seen her since. But he hadn’t forgotten her.

  He’d started any number of times to send her a message. Hutch, I’m still here. Or, Hutch, when you get back, why don’t we give it another try? Or Hutch, Priscilla, I love you. He recorded message after message but never hit the transmit button. He’d gone up to the Wheel a few times when he knew she was due in. Twice he’d seen her, beautiful beyond reason, and his heart had begun pumping and his throat clogged so he knew he wouldn’t be able to speak to her but would just stand there looking silly, saying wasn’t it a big surprise running into each other like this.

  It was a ridiculous way for a grown man to behave. The adult thing to do would have been to seek her out and talk to her, give her a chance to change her mind. Women did that all the time. Besides, he was successful, his work had begun to sell, and that had to count for something.

  Once, he’d seen her in a restaurant in Georgetown, had actually sat across the room from her, while his date kept asking whether he was okay. Hutch had never noticed him, or if she had she’d pretended not to. When it was over, when she and the man she’d been with—frumpy and dumb-looking, he’d thought—had gotten up and left, he’d sat churning, glued to his seat, barely able to breathe.

  In the end, he never called, never sent a message, never let her hear from him again. He didn’t want to become a nuisance, thought the only chance he had to win her over demanded that he keep his pride. Otherwise—

  His career had turned around when he started doing off-world art. In the beginning, he simply holed up in a holotank and switched on the view from Charon, or of a yacht passing an ocean world bathed in moonlight.

  Some of those had sold. Not for big money, but for something. Enough to persuade him that he could do art at a sufficiently high level that people would pay to put it on their walls.

  “Kirby’s work reflects talent,” one reviewer had commented, “but it lacks depth. It lacks feeling. Great art overwhelms us, absorbs us into the painting, makes us experience the dance of the worlds. As good as Kirby is, one never quite feels the illuminated sky rotating.”

  Whatever that meant. But it revealed a truth: Kirby had to get out into the planetary systems he painted. To capture the rings of a gas giant on canvas, he needed to get close to them, to see them overhead, to allow himself to be caught up in their majesty. So he began finding ways to visit his subjects. It was intolerably expensive. But it had paid off.

  He did not ascend to the top rank, of course. He’d have to be dead thirty years before he could accomplish that. But his work showed up in the elite galleries, and it commanded substantial prices. For the first time in his life, he had experienced serious professional success. And the money that came with it.

  He had by then given up on any chance of recovering Priscilla Hutchins. It was in fact a bitter side effect of his situation that, because he had changed his name, she had no way of knowing that he and Tor Kirby were the same.

  He saw no easy way to correct the situation. Until he read an article about George Hockelmann, the Contact Society, and its substantial contributions to the Academy. Hut
ch’s employer.

  Tor had never maintained a steady interest in the world around him. Of the Contact Society’s questionable reputation among the professionals who did the field work, he was utterly innocent. He knew only that the names of their major players showed up periodically on the Academy data streams available to anyone who wanted to look.

  It was his chance. He contributed a painting of the Temple of the Winds at Quraqua, an underwater archeological site. It was his best work to date, the temple illuminated by sunlight filtering down through the sea, a submersible descending gradually toward it—it was quite apparent the vehicle was going down—escorted by a pair of Quraquat kimbos, long, flat, wedge-shaped fish, and something like a squid. The painting was auctioned off and brought so much money that Tor regretted having made the donation. His picture and name—both names—made the Academy news links. But even as he looked at the stories, and thought how generous and talented they made him appear, he understood they would not be enough to convince her to call. She probably wouldn’t even see them.

  A few days later he caught commercial transportation out to Koestler’s Rock, a dazzling world of cliffs and angry seas orbiting a gas giant. Tor was painting the rings, depicting them rising out of a rough sea, when the message came from George. MAJOR DISCOVERY PENDING. He wasn’t interested at first, until he heard the comment, Academy pilot.

  He replied, hardly daring to hope, asking questions about the duration of the mission and the nature of the signals and several other issues in which he had no interest, using them to disguise the one question he cared about. “By the way, do you know the pilot’s name?”