The Long Sunset Page 8

  “You want me to ignore the message until you’re gone?”

  That would get her in trouble. “Give us a couple minutes. Then try to relay it. Meantime, we’ll have a communications breakdown.” He turned to Hutch. “How long before we can make the jump?”

  Across the bay the launch doors were opening. “Derek, we’ll need thirty minutes after we get out of here.”

  “That’s not good. What happens if we just make the jump as soon as we get clear of the station?”

  “We’d probably melt the drive unit.”

  “Okay. Just get us moving. But keep the radio off. We’re having a breakdown until we get clear.”

  “Derek, I can’t do that.”

  “If you answer, it puts the thing on record. We’d have to go back.”

  “If we block communications, there’s a possibility of a collision with an incoming vehicle.”

  “What are the chances of that?”

  She began wondering again if she was on the wrong side of this. “Unfortunately, there is a possibility. I’m sorry, Derek. But we can’t do it.”

  “I’ll take the responsibility if anything happens.”

  “If anything happens, we’ll all be dead. They probably don’t have the word yet, anyhow.”

  “Eiferman, this is comm-ops. You are clear to—wait one.”

  “They’re getting the shutdown now, Derek. But there’s nothing incoming.”

  “Then go. Disconnect and go.” He produced a frustrated grunt, the kind that suggests the world is full of idiots. He switched back to Janet. “You might as well pick it up, kid. We can’t shut the comm system down.”

  “Okay, Derek. The mission is cancelled.”

  Hutch broke in: “But there’s no traffic, Janet?”

  “Negative, Captain.”

  • • •

  Hutch directed everyone to belt down. She disconnected from the magnetic clamps that locked them to the pier, and released the Eiferman to the station, which assumed control, eased the ship away from the dock, angled them toward the launch doors, and took them forward.

  “Why are they doing this?” said Derek.

  “They’re probably a little nervous about changing course inside the bay. Or maybe they’re just not good at communicating with one another. There’s nothing coming in, so if I have to, I can assume control and take us outside.”

  Nothing changed and they cleared the station. Somebody, probably Wally, shouted “Yay!” as they began to accelerate.

  “Incoming message,” said Hutch.

  Derek was on the bridge with her, seated in the copilot’s chair. “Don’t touch it,” he growled.

  “It’s okay. It’s from Clay.”

  “Oh, Lord. Okay, put him on.”

  Hutch pressed the button.

  “Hey, guys. What the hell’s going on? You left without me?”

  Derek took it. “Sorry, Clay. We ran out of time.”

  “You said nine. It’s only a little after eight.”

  “I can’t explain now, Clay. I apologize, but we had no choice. You’ll be reimbursed. And I’ll see that you get some compensation.”

  “Great. Thanks a lot, Derek.” He broke off.

  Derek grumbled something. “Those idiots will never know,” he said, “how much trouble they’ve caused.” He didn’t explain which idiots he was referring to, but it wasn’t hard to guess. “Priscilla, we need to get clear as quickly as we can. When can we make the jump?”

  “It’s still thirty minutes, Derek.”

  “All right. Just go.”

  “Ops is tracking us. But they released control to us. Janet seems pretty good, by the way.”

  “She’s only a staff assistant. I don’t think we pay her enough.”

  “I suspect you’re right. Oh, one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “We need to talk about the cabin arrangements.”

  • • •

  They sat watching the moon approach on their port side. “I hate this,” Derek said. “The real problem here is that some of the politicians got involved. Nobody really listens to physicists, but when the politicians started talking about alien invasions, everybody got nervous. Hard to believe they could do this. Where are we now?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  Barry began blinking. “Incoming transmission, Captain. From the Collier Center.” That was the administrative offices of the WSA.

  “Don’t pick up,” said Derek.

  Their eyes locked. “I can’t do that,” Hutch said.

  “Are we going to go through that again? We don’t have a choice.”

  “If I ignore it, we’re talking about my career.”

  “You worry too much, Priscilla.” She said nothing and kept her eyes on the moon. “Come on. It’s me they’ll come after.”

  “They’ll come after you too. But that would be your problem.”

  “We’re only talking about a transmission. We could claim we didn’t receive it. Communication breakdown.”

  “All transmissions are logged.”

  “You can change the log, right? Delete the damned thing?”

  She shook her head. No. “Put them through, Barry,” she said. “But block any visuals.”

  Derek folded his arms and glared at her.

  “Eiferman, this is WSA. Be advised your mission is cancelled. Return to Union.” It was a female voice. Not Janet’s.

  Derek held up a hand, signaling that he’d take it. “This is Blanchard,” he said. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “You know damn well who you’re talking to, Derek. Now shut that thing down and turn it around.”

  “It’s too late. We’re about to make our jump.”

  “Derek, I’m not going to say it again. Come back. Or you’ll face prosecution when you do get back here.”

  “I’m sorry, Anna. I can’t do that.”

  “Where’s Hutchins?”

  Hutch shut down the mike. “Who is she?”

  “Anna Capleton. My boss.”

  She reopened the channel. “This is Captain Hutchins, Ms. Capleton.”

  “Just for the record, Captain, I’m Doctor Capleton. Now turn around and return to the space station. Immediately.”

  “I can’t do that, Doctor.”

  “You don’t have any choice, Captain.”

  It was getting personal. “I have no idea who you are other than somebody on the other end of the circuit. I take direction from Dr. Blanchard. If you want me to go back—”

  “Hutchins, be aware that you will also be subject to prosecution. Now do as I say.”

  Derek was standing and watching her with a desperate expression taking over his face, signaling, No, please don’t cooperate.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor. My obligation is to Dr. Blanchard.” She paused a moment, making up her mind. And finally: “Eiferman out.” She signaled Barry to shut the comm system down.

  “Thank you, Priscilla,” said Derek. “I know that wasn’t easy for you. But you’ll be okay. I have friends in high places.”

  “Well, at the moment, I think you have one less.”

  UNIVERSAL NEWS NETWORK

  Wednesday, February 27, 2256

  BLIZZARD THREATENS NORTHEAST NAU

  Complete Coverage on The Weather Channel

  ZIENKOW SAYS IMMORTALITY NOT OUT OF REACH

  Two Species on Oracle III Apparently Live Indefinitely

  CONSERVATIVE DEBATES SEEK TO MEND

  PARTY FRACTURES

  Leah Aronda Hosts First Round

  RUSSIAN-INDIAN COLLABORATION HELPS

  ETHIOPIAN CHILDREN

  Brackov Humanity Awards This Weekend

  Thousands of African Kids Benefit from Electronic Schools

  A YOUNG WINSTON CHURCHILL FALLS INTO THE HANDS OF PROFESSOR MORIARTY ON

  THE WATSON FILES

  Tomorrow at Eight on Mystery Channel

  LOOK OUT, LOUIE STARTS NEW SEASON MONDAY

  Award-Winning Comedy Back for

  Sixteent
h Season

  WILLIAM CASTOR RETURNS TO SATURDAY NIGHT FOLLIES

  Repeats Iconic Role as First Gentleman

  DOSTOYEVSKY IN THE MODERN AGE

  Harry Corbin Stars in The Brothers Karamazov

  Twelve-Episode Series Starts Tomorrow

  LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS

  Science Wednesday Visits Teegarden III

  Say Hello to the Dragons

  DESTROY EARTH: TWELVE WAYS ALIENS

  MIGHT ATTACK

  Documentary on Black Cat Tonight at Nine

  EIFERMAN ON WAY TO CALLIOPE

  Effort to Cancel Deep-Space Mission Fails

  8.

  Granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power . . . Nearly all our associations are determined by chance, or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle.

  —John Ruskin, “Sesame and Lilies, I,” 1865

  They were adrift in the unbounded jet-black night that was the natural realm of the Locarno drive. No stars, no light of any kind, not even a sense of movement. The windows were dark with no impression of depth, no suggestion that they were traveling through a vacuum with any hope of arriving somewhere. The void simply seemed to wrap itself around the Eiferman. When Hutch turned on the navigation lights, they did not penetrate as far as they should have. The darkness seemed more than simply an absence of light. It was a tangible force.

  She saw no reason to sit on the bridge for extended periods, although that was where she felt most at home. But it separated her from everyone and would have suggested she was antisocial. That wasn’t at all true. There was, however, no way the others could have understood. In fact, it made no sense to her. Except that it was her station, and even though she could have easily controlled the Eiferman from the galley or the workout area, the bridge was her assigned post. The technology had changed over the years, and she had no doubt that pilot training was different now. She suspected the instructors were no longer especially concerned about where the command officer was located.

  The most numbing effect, as far as Hutch was concerned, was the utter lack of movement. When you rode the Locarno, you went nowhere. The drive put out a barely audible murmur. And you were in a vehicle that simply floated in the dark. In fact, it didn’t even float. Rather, it was fixed on a foundation. The Hazeltine system, which the Locarno had replaced, which they’d been using for the better part of a century, had at least provided a sense of going somewhere. You drifted through starless skies, but you passed through mist. And you knew you were in a ship. It had been no big deal, but now it seemed like a much better way to travel. She could have been sitting in an office building. The Locarno would never appeal to tourists. Except that it gave the flights a radically shorter duration.

  After about twenty minutes she joined the others in the passenger cabin. They’d released the chairs from their magnetic clamps since there was no longer a concern about movement, and put them in a circle. They were talking mostly about the mission, discussing what they should do if they arrived at Calliope and found a fleet of interstellars filling the sky. Turn around? Try to talk to them? “Invite them in for dinner,” said Beth, with no indication she was joking.

  “Lots of interstellars?” said Derek. “These people, whoever they are, whatever they are, had lights in the sky when we were still living in caves. I’d be surprised if we don’t find them with a Dyson sphere around their sun, scooping off all that energy instead of just watching it get wasted the way ours does at home.”

  “You actually think,” said Wally, “that’s possible?”

  “I’m not aware that it would violate any of the basic laws of physics.”

  Hutch couldn’t imagine it would ever be possible to erect that kind of structure, but physics wasn’t her strong suit. She was reacting strictly from her gut. And she knew how much she could trust that.

  “I was sorry we had to leave Clay behind,” said Wally. “He was pretty excited about the mission.”

  Hutch also felt uncomfortable about the decision. They all did. “He would have been the right guy to have around if we have serious trouble,” she said.

  “Maybe,” said Ken, “if nobody has any pressing business, we should have some breakfast.” That sounded like a good idea, something to change the mood. They followed him into the galley and discovered a broad selection of eggs, potatoes, waffles, French toast, pancakes, hash brown casserole, country ham, muffins, strawberries, and apples. It was the first time any of them had seen the menu.

  They sat down at the table, ordered from Barry, and waited for the bell to ring. Derek thanked everybody for their response to the shutdown attempt. “In the end,” he said, “they’ll be glad we did this.”

  “Let’s hope we find something,” said Ken.

  Hutch became aware that Derek was watching her with concern. Was she okay?

  She nodded. I’m fine.

  Barry announced that the coffee was ready. Everybody took a cup, and they commented on how good it smelled. And tasted. They struggled to find a subject other than the mission, which, at that moment, had a dark side. They talked about the comfort of their cabins, the layout of the workout room, the shows and books that were available through the library. And finally, the bell dinged. They got up and collected their breakfasts at the server. The food looked good, so it became the center of discussion.

  Life in a Locarno interstellar, completely cut off from the outside world, quickly becomes a bubble. For Hutch, who had been through this before, twenty-six days suddenly seemed like an extraordinarily long time.

  Hutch knew it was smart to eat slowly on extended missions. There was an inclination to eat too much, to put away a packaged meal and go after a second one. If she followed her instincts, she’d come home with an extra twenty pounds. “You know,” she said, “we get all these scientific advances, communication implants, life extensions, lightbenders, avatars, and I’m not sure what else. I wonder when we’ll get a breakthrough that lets us eat whatever we feel like without gaining weight.”

  When they’d finished eating, they returned to the passenger cabin and looked up at the display. They were all in the habit of watching news reports periodically through the day. “Sorry,” said Derek. “But we have a million shows.”

  They put on a comedy that everyone had enjoyed back home. But here, it didn’t work unless you could start with, say, the Jack Crispee Show. If you couldn’t get the latest report on the presidential election campaign, there was no way to avoid feeling isolated. “It makes me wonder,” said Beth, “how people managed at all before we got electricity. You know, in those days, the country could get into a major war and you might not know about it for weeks.”

  Hutch watched as the lead character discovered his highly touted blind date turned out to be his sister. The room stayed silent. “I’m reluctant to mention this,” she said, “but this is only Wednesday.” The first day.

  She normally read herself to sleep every night. She’d been saving Anthony Pagden’s classic analysis, The Enlightenment: and why it still matters, for the mission. She easily lost herself in it.

  • • •

  In the morning, Derek showed no sign of getting past his confrontation with Anna Capleton. “She’s been on both sides of this issue from the beginning,” he said. “She has a ton of political connections. Everybody’s scared of her.” Including, apparently, Derek. But he didn’t seem worried for himself. Rather, he was concerned about Hutch and Wally.

  “The truth is,” he continued, “that she doesn’t really care about anything except her career. She was all for going to Calliope when we first saw the waterfall. In fact, I think it was the music that actually got her curiosity aroused. But then some of the heavyweights jumped into it, and the president. She developed cold feet and started talking out of both sides of her mouth. The last few days she’s been telling people she tried to warn everybody right from the start that sending a mission out was a bad idea.”

  Wally jump
ed in. “I’m not so sure she doesn’t have a point. There’s really no way to know what kind of technology somebody out there might have.”

  “I know,” said Derek. “Maybe if they’d turned us loose, we might have been able to take some of that advanced tech home. Assuming we found some.”

  • • •

  Early on, Ken became entranced by a book he’d brought with him. Hutch wandered into the mess area Sunday morning, where he sat alone with his notebook propped up in front of an empty plate. “What are you reading?”

  “The Evolution of the Rational Mind. By Hal Carter.”

  “You say that as if you know him.”

  “I do. We went to school together.”

  “How is it? The book?”

  “It’s good.”

  “So, who gets the credit?”

  “Probably Plato and Aristotle. Hal tends to wonder how they would react to the modern world. That they are in large degree responsible for. He loves to think about how enjoyable it would be to go back in a time machine, bring them forward, and take them to the moon.”

  “That’s in the book?”

  “Oh, no. I’m talking about private moments. Before we left home, I had a chance to talk with him, and I asked where he thought those guys would come down on the starship debate.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That they both thought that curiosity is what life is all about. They would both have cringed at the thought of a society that had an interstellar and didn’t use it.”

  “They’d have accepted the risk?”

  “He doesn’t think there’s any question about it, Hutch. It’s curiosity that made us who we are. Unfortunately, we’ve been living pretty much since the beginning of recorded history in a world that has become increasingly dangerous. The downside of improving technology. And he says it loads us down with an excessive degree of caution.”

  “So we scare too easily?”

  “Correct. It’s why a few scientists or politicians can show up on the Black Cat and terrify everybody. Five years ago, most of the world was demanding that we get the interstellars moving, that we get out and look around. Wednesday, they had demonstrators waiting for us at the spaceport.”

  “Well, Ken, it’s certainly true people seem to be nervous.”