The next morning, Kaley ensconced in her new home office, and with a portal com link scheduled to be installed during the day, I left her to rejoin Triple-S and IC in their myriad activities. I planned a quick trip to Ganymede and E2 to check on things, but Bobby ambushed me with a better offer.
“We’re close on finding the Bug home world,” he said. “I’ve had the project team on it for a couple days, but I wanted to take a shot today. If you could help me, it’d go faster.”
“I’ll need to talk to Overton. I haven’t made it to Ganymede in days.”
He grinned. “No need. I called him and told him I’m desperate for your help. An exaggeration, but not much.
“Anyway, he fell all over himself to make arrangements. Commander Callen will cover for you. He’s a good guy when it comes to doing the right thing.”
“Or what you think is the right thing,” I said. “Okay, I’m drafted. What now?”
“The exploratory portal is set up in the lab. All we do is, go over and start the search.”
Which sounded easy, as Bobby was going to take the lead. He was right about one thing; he did better at everything when I was in his corner. I think he felt more at ease with me as co-pilot. I had always been a steadying influence, and I guess that’s good.
Our lab is sort of drab and dark, the walls a dirty brown and the lights, bright LED clusters that make everything garish and stark when they’re all on. Now, with about two thirds of the lights extinguished, the lab was dim and quiet, as we’d moved all other research activity to a smaller lab facility on the bottom floor. Our compound, single-ended portal sat in the far corner, behind the normal portal we used for travel to IC and the out-worlds. Two special stools were set up opposite the protective outer portal cover. Through it, I could see a view of space, a random location, God only knew where, that had appeared on the display randomly when it fired up. The remote was on a table by the stools.
Bobby grabbed the remote and said, “Sorry for the stools. I felt we needed to stay alert today, so less comfortable seating made sense.”
“It’s okay, You get to pay for beer and burgers later at Billie Lou’s.”
“Seems only fair,” he said as we perched on the uncomfortable seats.
He manipulated the remote, and the view began to change. As it adjusted, I could make out Andromeda in the distance, so the perspective was correct.
“We’ve been zooming in on it,” he explained. “Problem is, as we zoom, we seem to slip off axis. The perspective alters, so we know we’re off track. We have to back up and zoom in again. It’s time consuming.”
“I get it. After all, there’s something like a few million stars in the field of view. Zeroing in will take time.”
He turned to give me a view of pearly teeth. “Yeah, but I’m getting better. The team thought this might take a few days, but I think we’re near pay dirt.”
“I hope you’re right. Let’s head ‘em up and move out.”
He hit the gas, and the picture began to zoom forward. Soon, we appeared to slew off to the right, as Bobby had mentioned. He backed up a few lightyears, give or take, and started again. This time, his aim was truer.
I noticed we were nearing a small, open cluster of stars. Not many, perhaps a few hundred or so. Something clicked.
“That cluster,” I said. “I remember something like it, off to the left of Andromeda in the frame. Right?”
“God, you’re right. That’s why I keep you around, Scotty. I remembered a group of stars, but not that it was a small cluster. We’re close now.”
He used the remote to back up again, then vector toward the right side of the cluster from our viewpoint. As we moved in, a star in the foreground, on the outer fringe of the cluster, began to grow into a tiny disk. A nice, G-type star similar to our own sol. Bobby began to steer directly at it, and the closer he got, the more excited we became.
Near the outer fringes of what made up the solar system of the star, we spied two gas giants and a couple of smaller planets. Other bright lights were planets across the ecliptic from our current position. As we meandered toward the inner planetary orbits, one orb in particular caught our eyes. We moved toward it.
“There’s a blue cast to part of that planet,” Bobby said. “Liquid water for sure. It’s Earth-type, though a bit larger.”
A metal orb flashed past us as we zeroed in. “Artificial satellite,” Bobby exulted. “This is it, Scotty. We found it!”
We continued to descend, until we encountered atmosphere. We passed into the night side of the planet, where I spied patches of light on the surface. Cities. Not just cities, but big, really big cities.
“Move down to the surface,” I told him. “Near a population center, in what corresponds to the city suburbs.”
“On it.”
We continued to descend.
“I think we’ve nailed it,” Bobby said, as he reached ground level.
He parked the portal far end along what appeared to be a road, bright city lights in the distance. Buildings nearby must be homes or apartments. Were they Bugs? Bobby began to skim the portal along the ground.
Ahead, a small vehicle appeared. On closer examination, it turned out to be an individual on what appeared to be this world’s version of a motorcycle. Bobby pulled to the side and halted our progress. In the dark, our portal would be almost invisible.
The rider and his contraption passed. It was a Bug.
“We got it.” Bobby exhaled the words.
He turned to regard me, face on.
“You are really my good luck charm.”
“And I’m handsome, too,” I added.
“Want to explore?” he asked.
I thought a moment. “No. We know where they live. We need to report to Overton, give him, McKissack, or the other big-wigs a quick glance. It’s up to them what to do. It was me, I might drop a few nukes via portal to send a message. Stay away from us and quit trying to dial in, or we’ll turn your home into a big, black cinder. However, that might be considered a bit extreme.
“Tell you what. Let’s back the portal up into space a few million kilometers. With all the diverse motions of their solar system, ours, the drift of star groups within our galaxy, the coordinates to get to Bugworld tomorrow will be different. Having the coordinates for a spot out in space will make it easy to get back to their world.”
“Good idea.” As he spoke, Bobby lifted the far end of the portal away from the surface, retreated into space, left the portal open end parked something like the Earth-Moon distance from the Bug planet.
“There,” he said. “I’ve noted the coordinates so tomorrow is no problem.”
“Looks good,” I agreed.
He killed portal power from the remote. “You know I hate interacting with the IC rulers. Call them for me and tell them.”
I gave him a grin. “No problem, pal. It’s always fun to give the big guys good news.”
I headed to my office to do just that.