Seeker (33 page)

We pulled alongside. Alex was already climbing into his suit. I asked whether we wanted to take a packing container with us.

“Let’s just go look,” he said. “See what we have.” He was still subdued.

I picked up a laser, and we made the crossing. There was a possibility the enclosed sections of the station were still holding air pressure, and that turned out to be the case. We went through one of the bays and had to cut our way through a bulkhead. There were no human remains this time. For which I was grateful.

We moved into a dark passageway, a bit more relaxed than we had been on the
Seeker
. But we didn’t engage in our usual hunt for artifacts. To be honest, there wasn’t much lying around.

Nor was there debris floating through the dark. We found an observatory, a maintenance station, and a galley. There were two boarding tubes. Both had been brought inside and retired to their cradles.

We went back out onto the dock, where, we assumed, the
Bremerhaven
and the
Seeker
had once tied up.

“How’d they do it?” asked Alex.

The ships would have dwarfed the station. We found tethers. They were thin, and it was hard to imagine either of the behemoths secured by them. “The dock has magnetic skirts,” I said. “They just locked it in and tied it down.”

“I’d have expected to find something broken,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“Maybe I’m wrong. But I’ve assumed the
Bremerhaven
would not have been operational after they removed the parts we saw in the
Seeker
.”

“I don’t really know for sure, but that’s almost certainly right.”

“So what happened to it?”

I looked at the retracted tethers. Everything was in order. “They released it,” I said.

“Why?”

“Maybe they didn’t want the dock wrecked.”

“Chase, the dock got thrown a long way. You seriously think they didn’t know that was going to happen?”

“I have no idea, Alex.”

He touched one of the tethers. It had lost its flexibility. “Why bother releasing a ship that couldn’t go anywhere?” he said.

“I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want to have it come down on their heads during whatever it was that was happening. So they got rid of it.”

“Maybe.” He looked at me for a long minute, although I couldn’t see his face inside the darkened helmet. “It doesn’t
feel
right.”

Belle called: “
We have a candidate for the moon
.”

As soon as we got within range, we saw that it was the satellite from the holograms. There was no mistaking the craters and the ridgeline and the mountain range.

Belle usually had a hard time understanding the vagaries of human behavior. She thought the discovery was reason to celebrate, so she showed up dressed in a black off-the-shoulder gown, looking like a model from
Sand and Sea
. She held both fists over her head while her bosom heaved, and she showered us with congratulations. But the mood on the ship remained gloomy.

Like the
Seeker
, and the dock, the former moon had gone into solar orbit.

“Circumference at the equator is thirty-five hundred kilometers,”
Belle announced. Big for a moon, even by the standards of Rimway’s oversized satellite.
“I do not detect any indication of catastrophic damage.”

You’ve seen one moon, you’ve pretty much seen them all. This one was heavily cratered on one side, the side we’d seen in the hologram. The other was relatively smooth, the product of an ancient lava flow, I supposed. We went into orbit around it and began looking for anything that might tell us how it had gotten there.

Alex took pictures, and we mapped the object. We measured it and scanned it. We hoped to find signs that someone had walked on it. A base, a monument, a wrench dropped in the dust. Something. But if it was there, we didn’t see it.

“Orbital period approximately seven hundred thirty-five years. It is now inbound midway between aphelion and perihelion.”

“We’ve got a dock and a moon,” I said. “We might be able to use them to figure out where and when the event happened.”

He nodded. “Do it.”

My chance to shine. “Belle,” I said, “track the orbits of the moon and the dock back nine thousand years. Do they at any time intersect?”

“Working,”
said Belle.

“That’s good, Chase,” said Alex. “You may have a future as a mathematician.”

“That would be a step down,” I said.

Belle was back. “
No. They do not intersect. But there is a close approach
.”

“How close?”

“They come within two point three million kilometers on March 3, 2745, in the terrestrial calendar.”

“Fifty-five years after they’d first touched down,” said Alex.

“Let’s see what it looks like, Belle. Show us the biozone, too.”

She dimmed the lights. Gave us the sun. Drew a wide circle around it to indicate the biozone. She added a bright yellow arc. “
This is the dock
.” And a second arc, passing well to one side of the dock. “
The moon
.” The approach took place on the inner edge of the biozone.

“Belle,” said Alex, “show us where the terrestrial world was on that date.”

“It’s hard to be certain, because the planetary orbit might have been different prior to the event.”

“It
would
have been different, Belle,” I told her.

“Then what am I looking for?”
She sounded annoyed.

“Assume the terrestrial world originally had a standard orbit inside the biozone, near its inner edge. Where would it have been?”

“One moment, please.”

Nobody said anything.

A blinking marker appeared a hand’s width away from the moon. Farther from the dock.

“Not exactly an intersection,” said Alex.

We will interrupt the ideological nonsense, whether it be political, religious, or social, that flows from generation to generation. We will begin anew, in a new place, with a new approach. We will learn from history, and we will discard the doctrines that have kept the human race anchored firmly to a cacophony of discord and confusion. We have always known the potential for greatness, because we have seen what can be done when individuals throw off the shackles of conformity. Now we will demonstrate what can happen when an entire society prizes, above all else, free minds.
— Harry Williams,
Remarks at the Freedom Day Celebration in Berlin, March 3, 2684 C.E.

We were still orbiting the moon when Belle reported that she’d located the
Bremerhaven
. “The final piece,” I said.

“We’ll see.”

It was smaller, leaner, and longer than the
Seeker
. No blown engines this time. No sign of damage except dents where it had probably been struck by drifting rock and ice. It carried the same flag, and a more fluid style of lettering on the hull.

We saw no signs of human remains inside. There were some pieces that would have looked good on Rainbow’s inventory, but Alex decided, without explaining why, that we would take nothing from the
Bremerhaven
. “Leave it for Windy,” he said.

On the bridge, we opened the panels and looked at disconnected power lines. And at empty spaces once occupied by control boxes. Alex clomped around in his magnetic boots and poked his lamp into every open space. “Chase,” he said at last, “answer a question for me. After they transplanted the black boxes to the
Seeker
, would this thing have been capable of going anywhere? Under its own power?”

“I doubt it.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“I’m not familiar enough with the ship. It’s possible, for example, there’s an auxiliary control center elsewhere on board.”

“All right,” he said. “Is it possible for us to make a determination?”

I remembered a set of
Bremerhaven
power relays in the
Seeker
’s engine room. “Let’s go look at the drive units,” I said.

I’ve remarked elsewhere I don’t know much about third-millennium technology. But you don’t have to if you’re just looking to see whether parts are missing and power cables are disconnected. I only needed a quick glance to know that the
Bremerhaven
wouldn’t have gone anywhere on its own.

We removed nothing. Mostly we just made a visual record. Then we went back aboard the
Belle-Marie
, and poured ourselves some coffee.

Alex was adrift somewhere.

“What?” I asked, finally.

He took a long pull at his coffee. “I think the jungle world is Margolia.”

“Even though the orbits didn’t match up?”

“Yes. I don’t know how, or why, but they’re buried on that world somewhere.”

There was no indication there had ever been a settlement. But of course, give it a few thousand years, and the heavy vegetation we were looking at would have buried Andiquar. We took the launch down and padded around a bit on the surface, looking for evidence. But there was nothing. Confirmation one way or the other would take specialized equipment.

“Chase?”

“Yes, Belle?” I was napping on the bridge while Alex looked over images from the surface.

“I’ve been examining the orbit of the
Bremerhaven
.”

“And—?”

“On March 3, 2745, it was thirty million kilometers away.”

“From this world?” asked Alex.

“Yes.”

We looked at each other. “How do we explain that?”

“For now,” he said, “let’s just call it an anomaly.”

In the midst of celebration are we overtaken by calamity.
— Kory Tyler,
Musings,
1312

We slipped back into our home system at the end of a flight that people would probably be talking about a thousand years later. We’d found our Atlantis, but it had been a disappointment on a scale so vast that it weighed down every other consideration. Had we guaranteed ourselves a great bottom line? Absolutely. Were we going to be celebrities? I pictured myself being interviewed on every show from
Round Table
to
Jennifer in the Morning
. Money would pour in. And I was already thinking about a book. Still, we had hoped for an Atlantis that would be, despite all odds, up and running. Or at least, visible.

“What will you call it?” asked Alex, referring to the book.

“Last Mission,”
I said.

He pressed his fingers against his temple and adopted the tone he might have used with a child. “I hope you’re not suggesting you’re going to retire. And anyhow, titles shouldn’t be about
you
.”

“It’s
not
about me. I’ve no intention of retiring, Alex. It’ll be about the
Seeker
. Trying to go for help, having a load of children on board, and the engines go down. No rescue possible within light-years. Everybody on board dies, and Margolia loses its only hope. It’s a tragic story.”

“Yes,” he said. “It sounds like a downer. I think you need some daylight in there somewhere.” He was sitting in the common room, in front of a chess problem to which he paid no attention. When I asked how he planned to announce the discovery, he looked uncertain. “I haven’t decided,” he said. “What do you think?”

“We could call a press conference, jointly with Windy.”

He picked up the black king, studied it, and put it back. “I’m not anxious to do that. I don’t want to stir up Kolchevsky and the other morons. Why don’t we try to keep a low profile for now, and move our stuff as quietly as we can?”

“You know that’s not going to work, Alex. Once it gets out that we found Margolia, every journalist in the world is going to be beating down our door. We need to know what we’re going to say to them.”

We docked, made entry, and went in through the zero-gee deck because we had three containers filled with artifacts.

As we came out into the main concourse, a tall, young man was waiting for us. “Charlie Everson,” he said. “How was the trip, Mr. Benedict?”

“Okay.” Alex looked in my direction. Did I recognize him? I’d never seen him before. He had black hair and a conservative bearing, but something about him reminded me of one of those guys who are always trying to impress you with their positions in the world.

“Windy sent me,” he said. “She’s anxious to know how things went.”

“Tell her,” said Alex, “it was a productive operation. We’ll get over to see her first thing tomorrow.”

“Good.” He seemed pleased. “She’ll be anxious to hear the details.” I expected him to press us, to ask whether we’d found what we were looking for, but he shoved his hands into his pockets and said she’d been talking about throwing a dinner in our honor. “By the way,” he added, “we’ve arranged your passage on the shuttle.” He had large brown eyes, and they focused on the containers. “Compliments of Survey.”

“Well, that’s good of you,” said Alex. “Thanks.”

“It’s our pleasure. Are those artifacts in the cases?”

“Yes,” Alex said.

“Wonderful.” He smiled again. Looked at me and looked away. This was a guy on the shy side, I decided. Someone who rarely had a good time. “Congratulations, Mr. Benedict.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll let Windy know. And I’ll tell her to expect you tomorrow.” We all shook hands. “It was good to meet you both.” He started away, paused, and turned back. “Reservations are in your name, Mr. Benedict. The shuttle leaves at six.”

Alex thanked him again, and he went on his way. Had other business to take care of, he said.

We stopped to arrange shipping for the containers. I was carrying a few of the more fragile artifacts in a box, which I intended to carry aboard the shuttle. At first they told us there was no room for more cargo, and they’d have to go down on a later vehicle. Alex showed them some money, and they found space.

We had almost an hour to spare when we left the kiosk. Alex was looking hesitant. “What’s wrong?” I asked.