24
That which is lost is only forever gone when it has been destroyed or we have given up the search. Life is seldom good to those who are inclined to surrender.
—Aneille Kay, Christopher Sim at War, 1322
(These words also appear on the Christopher Sim Memorial on Dellaconda.)
It was time to leave. Alex picked up the book and said goodbye to Szola and Daylok. They embraced at the front door. Then all three walked down onto the roadway and started toward the lander. It was visible in the moonlight. They’d gotten about halfway when doors began to open in most of the houses. Arkos came out. Some stood on their porches watching, while a few came down to the roadway, raised their hands, and shouted. Belle informed us they were saying “Good luck” and “Thank you,” and “We will never forget you.”
Alex waved back. “I should confess,” said Daylok, “that in the message I sent to the town, I told them I was optimistic. That you didn’t actually have any specific information about the location of Sovol, but that I thought you’d be able to find it.”
“That was exactly the right thing to do,” said Szola. “They needed some good news. Something to hope for.”
“I thought,” Alex said, “that they were keeping a safe distance from each other to prevent the virus from spreading.”
“It looks,” said Daylok, “as if they are willing to take their chances to say thanks.”
Alex’s first comment to Gabe, when he got back into the lander and closed the hatch, was: “We have got to make this work.”
“I know.”
“First thing we should do is send a message home. Get a rescue mission started as quickly as possible.”
“That would take a while,” said Gabe. “At the rate they’re dying, I doubt there’d be anybody left by the time Skydeck could get out here.”
“It doesn’t hurt to try.”
“The Arkos might have the hypercomm technology,” said Robbi Jo. “Maybe these guys just don’t know about it. Let’s send a few hypercomm transmissions out near the star cluster. We might get lucky.”
A few minutes later we received a message from Alex that he wanted relayed home. It described the medical problem, including as much information about the aliens’ regulator organ as he could manage. Which wasn’t much. I wonder if we have any doctors who would be willing to come out here and take this on.” Robbi Jo bit her lower lip. “If everything goes perfectly, it’ll be six weeks before a rescue vehicle gets here.” I fired off the transmission and we sat staring at one another. “Good luck to us,” she said. “And to the Arkos.”
“How do we find Sovol?” I asked as we gathered on the ship. “Everything else aside, we’ll run out of food, oxygen, and fuel before we can come close to checking out those stars.”
“The arrowhead,” said Alex. “It’s very likely a view from their home world. Find an area where the stars line up like that and we’ll probably be in business.”
I asked Belle if she could locate a world with that kind of sky. She sounded annoyed. “Does anyone have any idea how to narrow the field? That is a big sky out there.”
“Belle,” said Gabe, “an arrowhead ought to be fairly easy to pick up.”
There was an unusual silence while we waited for a response. “Gabe,” Belle said finally, “I don’t have a three-dimensional perspective of the sky. If the arrowhead is a constellation, we need to be in the home world’s system, or at least reasonably close, to see it. To work it out from a distance, I’ll have to measure the range between us and a load of individual stars, which I can do, although even that will take time. And fuel. I’ll also have to determine their distance from each other.”
“Not encouraging,” said Gabe.
Alex took a deep breath. “I don’t see that we have any other option.”
“This is beginning,” I said, “to feel like a mission to nowhere.”
Gabe smiled. “Sounds like a good title for the memoir.”
“I hope not.”
Alex focused on me. “Head for the cluster. Set for ninety light-years.” He took another deep breath. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Gabe shook his head. “I wish I had a better idea.” He started back into the passenger cabin. Robbi Jo got up and asked Alex where the astronomy book was.
He looked back into the cabin. “It’s in one of the seats.”
She followed Gabe inside and Alex sat down beside me.
I activated the allcomm. “Thirteen minutes until we leave orbit. Everybody belt down.”
We had nothing to work with other than what Daylok and Szola had told us. So I aimed us just off to the right of the star cluster and submerged for a four-and-a-half-day ride. There’s been a lot of talk recently about an FTL system that would allow views of the outside world. Most physicists think it’s impossible, but it would certainly be helpful on long flights. Especially like that one. As it was, we’d simply travel until we reached the time limit and then surface and see where we were.
Once we got moving, I tried to read, but I kept seeing Daylok and Szola wishing Alex good luck while the other aliens, who had spent most of the day in their houses, waved at us and squeezed the shoulders of their kids.
Alex instructed Belle to put together another package of directions that would inform a rescue unit how to find the world we’d just left, Arinaka. He laid out the nature of the problem, how many people there were, the medical issue, and the need to move quickly. He added that they were the people who’d recently left Sovol for a different world and had been forced to move to the present one.
It was going to be a long flight. Four and a half days with nothing outside the windows and no sense of movement can be difficult under the best of circumstances. But with the survival of the Arkos hanging over our heads, it looked to be seriously stressful.
Gabe tried putting Ed Carnova on the HV. Carnova’s probably one of the funniest guys we’ve ever seen. At least we were all in agreement on that. I went back and joined them. But nobody laughed, and after about ten minutes we turned it off. Usually when we’re submerged I spend a substantial amount of my time in the passenger cabin and just participate in whatever idle talk or anything else that’s going on. But not on this occasion. After we shut down Carnova I went back to the bridge and sat for almost an hour staring at the blackness.
I decided a shower might help. When I passed through the passenger cabin, Alex was sitting with his notebook on his lap, but he was staring at the back of the seat in front of him. Gabe was on the other side of the aisle with a crossword puzzle to which he seemed to be paying no attention. Robbi Jo had taken a seat in the rear. The astronomy book was open beside her. I thought at first she was asleep, but her eyes opened as soon as she heard me. All three looked my way and delivered bogus smiles. I returned them. They all nodded, but no one spoke.
I’d just arrived at my cabin when Gabe called my name. “I’ve got a surprise,” he said. “I’d planned to save this for the flight home, but I guess we need something now.” He got out of his seat and went to his cabin. When he came back, he was carrying two packets in one hand and a book in the other. “I made a minor discovery on Ilyanda. There’s a hardcover bookstore, like the one your boyfriend has, Chase. One of the books was only a century old, but it had been part of a collection owned by Jorgina Epcott. She’d spent a lifetime traveling throughout the Confederacy, looking for books of historical value. This one is an account of a game that was apparently pretty popular at one time.”
“A game?” asked Alex.
“They called it ‘bridge.’ I suspected it might be helpful on a trip like this.” He held the book where we could all see it. The title was Play the Hand You’re Dealt. He sat down, opened one of the packets, and showed us some cards.
I’d seen pictures of playing cards before, but I’d never actually encountered any. A “deck,” I remembered they were called.
“You get any details on how old the game is?”
“It goes all the way back to ancient times. Probably four or five thousand years.”
Robbi Jo asked for the book and opened it. “Does it give us the rules?”
“I think I’ve got it figured out. If you guys would like to try it—”
We set up the table in the workout room. It was a tight fit, but we were all able to squeeze in. Gabe passed the cards around so we could all take a look. He explained the rules and the terminology. We went through the cards. These were aces and those were queens. The game was divided among four suits. Alex, of course, had a lifelong passion for antiquities. We drew cards to determine partners. I got Gabe. I was hoping it could get us thinking about something other than the arrowhead. It worked with the guys, but neither I nor Robbi Jo could manage any enthusiasm. We lasted a couple of hours, then folded our hands, and talked about how interesting the game was, and returned to the passenger cabin for snacks. We never got back to the table.
Robbi Jo and I spent the evening on the bridge, trying to find something other than Sovol to talk about. But we didn’t get far from the trail. We wondered why Tokon hadn’t gotten back. Whether Alex had in any way been at risk from the virus. How pushing a button had moved Szola’s town from Korella to their new world. Arinaka, right? We were getting too many names to remember.
Mostly we just sat staring out at the sky. Except, of course, that there was no sky. Just darkness. I’ve tried a number of times to read what physicists have to say about Armstrong space, what it is, why it exists. Why it’s a necessary part of the cosmos. That without it we wouldn’t have a functioning universe. That it was the reality for what physicists used to call dark matter. And I’ll admit here that I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. It’s all beyond me. I understand that we’re lucky it exists. And it makes interstellar travel possible. Which is good, but whatever else you can say about it, it absolutely defies my monkey brain.
Looking back now, I can’t recall having done anything of significance during that flight. I tried reading, tried watching shows, tried sitting down with someone and just talking, but there was nothing to talk about except that we had no idea where we were going. And the question that hung over all our heads was what we would do if we arrived at the star cluster and couldn’t find anything. Go back to Daylok and Szola and watch them all die? Or go home and hide?
Mostly I sat on the bridge with a book on my monitor, reading words without following the context. Alex joined me near the end of the second day. “Depressing, isn’t it?” he said. “What are you reading, Chase?”
The page had been on the display for probably a half hour. “It’s a Grover Clayborn collection.”
“Who’s Grover Clayborn?”
“He was a critic. Didn’t like anybody. Says ninety percent of us are idiots. And that’s the women.”
“Guys have a better average?”
“Worse. Ninety-five percent of males.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes. Been gone almost sixty years. I’ve always enjoyed his work. He didn’t think we’d had a decent piece of theater during his entire lifetime. Didn’t think marriage was a good idea. Disapproved of both political parties, religion, professional sports, you name it.”
“Sounds like exactly the guy we could use to get through these next few days.”
Gabe wondered if we’d missed an opportunity with Larry. “They might have gotten inside the pilot’s head—I forget his name—Tokon, do I have that right?—and gotten a sense of where they came from. Maybe we should have stopped there and talked with them.”
“We asked about that,” said Alex. “They said they didn’t know.”
“There’s a possibility they knew more than they were aware of.”
“It’s a bit late now,” said Robbi Jo.
“You think anybody’s going to believe that story?” I asked. “About the intelligent forest?”
“I doubt,” said Robbi Jo, “the whole forest was conscious. Probably just the more advanced life-forms.”
“Which included the trees.”
“Of course.” Robbi Jo put down the piece of pork roll she was about to eat, folded her hands, and used them to support her chin. “Is a vegetable brain possible?”
Alex smiled. “I suspect we’ll get a lot of people going there to find an answer to that.” It was the first time I’d seen him look amused since we’d left orbit.
The next two days dragged by, and we were all delighted when Belle informed us, as we sat in the passenger cabin trying to find something to occupy us, that we were approaching our destination and would be leaving Armstrong space in thirty minutes. We’d known we were close, so there wasn’t much we had to do. Just belt down.
I went up front and checked the numbers. We were good on fuel, and everything else was fine. I looked at the black windows and thought how even a vacuum would be an improvement.
Robbi Jo came up a few minutes later and took the right-hand seat. “Good luck to us,” she said.
Eventually Belle told us to secure ourselves, and we felt the tug on our stomachs that normally precedes a transition. I expected to see a cloud of stars off the port side. It was there, but it looked just as far away as it had. The thing was a lot farther than we’d expected. Daylok had given us the impression they were just next door to it. But that was irrelevant. Their home world was out here somewhere. A million stars glittered across a hazy sky. “Belle,” I said, “start taking pictures. Look for the arrowhead.”
“This is impossible,” said Alex. “There are too many stars.”
We didn’t know where we were going other than a very general direction. We took pictures in all directions, made a short jump, and took more pictures. All we had was the arrowhead, and I saw no hope whatever. We didn’t even know which direction to go.
We continued taking pictures of stars and leaving Belle to compare them, but we were getting nothing. After a couple of days, Robbi Jo was beginning to look distracted, as if she were somewhere other than with us. “You miss Chris?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I expected to be home by this time.”
“I think we all did.”
She raised her left hand, fingers spread. “I told him we’d be about three months.”
“I’ve lost count, but I suspect we’re close to that now.”
“It’s okay. He’s gotten used to it.” She rearranged herself in the seat. “Though I’ve never been gone this long before.”
“Sounds like a serious relationship.”
She smiled. “I didn’t think it was when I first got on board for this. But I’m surprised at how much I miss him.” She looked at the black windows. We were in Armstrong space. “We might as well be searching in here for Daka.”
When we surfaced later, she asked if we could turn the telescope on the cluster we’d followed out there. I was surprised that she’d want to divert the telescope. Belle was using it full-time, but it didn’t seem as if it would matter. “Sure,” I said. “But just a couple of minutes, okay?”
Belle complied and put the cluster on the monitor. It was a vast swirl of stars, adrift in a mixture of red, green, and blue gasses. Robbi Jo copied the image on her notebook. “Thank you.”
“Need anything else?”
“No. I’m good.” She was looking at the cluster. “I’ve seen that before,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yes. I think it’s the Orion Nebula.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“You okay, Chase?”
“I’m okay.”
“Alex looks ready to give up.”
“He’d like to get his life running again. But if we have to abandon those people, it’ll kill him. He’s inclined to play the role of a realist. What happens, happens. He can live with it. But he’s not really like that.”
“I know. I hate to think what the flight home will be like if we can’t do something. Some of the people I’ve worked with, if they’d run into a situation like this, they’d have just thrown up their hands, wished Daylok good luck, and said goodbye.”
We continued moving among the stars, taking pictures while Belle looked for the elusive arrowhead. Nothing changed. We wandered across the sky, unsure whether we were getting closer or moving farther away. The prime question was becoming whether we should return to the alien world, give them the bad news, and watch them all die, or just return home. I suspect you can guess which choice I’d have made.
Eventually Robbi Jo came back onto the bridge. Her incandescent blue eyes locked on me. “There might be a way to find them,” she said.
“What way is that?”
She was carrying the astronomy book. Her finger was inserted between a couple of the pages.
“You got something?” I asked.
“Maybe.” She opened the book. “You recognize this?” She showed us a picture. It resembled a dark animal’s head outlined against a luminous sky.
“It looks familiar.” I’d seen the picture before. Not only in that book but in astronomy volumes back home. “It’s the Horsehead Nebula.”
She flipped a few more pages, and we saw another cluster of red, green, and blue gas filled with stars. “This one’s the Flame Nebula.” She looked as if she expected some excitement, but I had no idea where we were going. Neither, obviously, did Alex, who’d come in behind her.
She turned to another picture. It looked like swirling stardust. When neither Gabe nor I showed any sign of recognition, she said, “It’s the black hole in the Carpathian Cluster.”
“Another cluster,” Alex said.
“It’s okay. We won’t have to go there.” She turned more pages. “This is the supernova explosion a thousand years ago in the Markham Cloud.” She turned more pages and pointed at another picture. “I know that one,” said Alex. “It’s the Crab Nebula.”
“That’s good, Alex.” Robbi Jo looked impressed. “It’s in Taurus. I didn’t know that one, but I knew I’d seen it before.” She showed us another picture. “This one’s the spiral nebula in Coma Berenices.”
Alex was looking as if he thought she’d lost her mind. “Okay. You recognize a lot of this stuff. Can we get to the point?”
“These pictures were taken through a large telescope. The Horsehead, the Orion, and the Flame are all relatively nearby. There’s an outside chance that whoever was taking the pictures rode out there in an interstellar and actually got close-ups, but it’s much more likely they were taken through a telescope.”
Gabe had joined us. “Okay,” he said. “So how does that help us?”
“I think,” Alex said, “I see where this is going.”
Robbi Jo smiled. “The photos very likely show us how these things appear from the home world that we’re looking for. Assuming they have a super telescope. Which they would certainly have to get close-ups of all this stuff. We don’t have a telescope that would allow us to see these things, but Belle should be able to work out the angles in each of these photos and figure out which direction the telescope was located. Somewhere the six lines will coalesce.”
Gabe shook his head. “Those numbers will be too big. No way we could put those angles together and follow them to an intersection point.”
Robbi Jo held up a hand, fingers spread. “You’re right, of course. They obviously won’t come together at one point, but they’ll give us a neighborhood. Instead of looking all over the sky for the arrowhead, we should be able to limit the search to a relatively small area.”
Alex glanced at me and then focused on Robbi Jo. “You run this past Belle?”
“Not yet.”
“Belle, you been listening?”
“Yes, Alex. I have location information on the Crab Nebula. We can see the Orion. And we also have the Flame.” She paused. “I also have the Horsehead. But not the others. It should be enough.”
“Okay.” Alex raised a fist. “Four should be enough. Assuming everything in the book used the same telescope. Or at least took the pictures from the same area.”
“I’d be shocked,” Robbi Jo said, “if the pictures didn’t all come from the same source.”
“Good enough.” Alex looked down at the microphone. “How’s it look, Belle?”
“You’re jumping the gun, Alex. Can you let me see the pictures in the book?”
Gabe held the book for her and turned pages so she could get a good look at the four pictures. It took only a few moments. “Okay,” Belle said. “I have them.”
“Can you locate the telescope?” Alex asked.
“I’m working on it now.”
Usually Belle performs her operations in seconds. This one took a while. “The nebulas are extremely large,” she said. “The numbers change depending on which part of it we focus on.”
“Go to the center of each object,” I said.
“Of course. But that still leaves ground to choose from. There’s some speculation involved.”
“Do what you can, Belle.”
“Just give me a few minutes.”
Robbi Jo looked delighted. I was thinking how fortunate we’d been that Larry had given us the book.
Gabe got up, said he was going to get some lunch, and suggested we all move back into the passenger cabin. We did and I went with Gabe into the galley. Alex and Robbi Jo had eaten earlier. I picked up a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee. Gabe got some chicken strips with a honey-mustard dip. We took them back out to the cabin and set them on trays. I was taking my first bite when Belle came back on the speaker: “The angles come together in a relatively small area close to where we are now. I cannot be certain, of course. But the telescope should be located there.”
“How far are we?” asked Alex.
“About seventy light-years.” Three days.
“Let’s hope,” said Robbi Jo.
“Are we targeting a single star system?” asked Alex.
“No,” Belle said. “Unfortunately, I can’t narrow it down to that degree. We are headed for an area with a diameter of approximately sixty cubic light-years with about twenty stars. It’s similar to conditions at home. I can’t guarantee a positive result. But the lines cross in the middle of the area, so the odds are favorable. The telescope should be in there somewhere.”
“And,” said Alex, “so should the arrowhead.”
The prospect of putting together a rescue mission and leading it back to the movable town seemed finally plausible, which turned us all on. I can’t recall feeling happier in my entire life. We walked around, hugged each other, and raised a few drinks to whoever had built the telescope.
I was talking with Robbi Jo when Alex brought us a fresh round of sherry. “So much for the pilot staying off the alcohol,” I said.
Alex smiled. “Chase, I wanted to say thanks.”
“For what?”
He glanced over at Robbi Jo. “For suggesting we bring her with us.”
“That’s very nice of you, Alex,” she said.
“I hate to think where we’d be without you.”
“On our way home,” I said.
Robbi Jo kissed his cheek. “It might be a good idea to wait and see whether it works.”
I hugged her. “I understand. But however it turns out, you’ve at least given us a chance.”
We settled in that afternoon and watched Tarana, a remake of the old-time classic Casablanca. I’ve seen it probably seven times. Never get tired of it.
Afterward we did our workouts, had dinner, and just sat around talking. Nobody was sleepy, so we eventually put on another film, a comedy about a bumbling agent working for the World Security Group (a made-up organization) who discovers that evil shape-changing aliens have infiltrated the government.
We surfaced three days later at about midnight. I don’t think anyone had slept much. We were all set up along windows and the wraparound when we emerged under another starry sky. Gabe was on the bridge with me. I saw no sign of a constellation that looked like an arrowhead. But that was no big deal. There were a lot of stars out there. If it was in the area, we’d probably need time to find it. Meantime it would help if we could pick up an artificial radio signal. Or maybe spot the telescope in orbit somewhere.
We’d been there about ten minutes when we heard Belle’s voice. “Got it,” she said.
I didn’t see anything new. “What? You got a radio signal?”
“No, Chase. But I have the arrowhead.”