Текст книги "Explorer"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

And what could he do? Initiate the plan he’d been building for over twenty years, with two junior and necessarily inexperienced translators who hadn’t finished their educations…

Ramirez, hesitating and hesitating, asking himself how much of this meeting he could now keep out of record, how much of his resources he could keep the Guild authority from laying claim to, if he brought them into the question and entered something of their activity on record…

Like the Guild snatching Jase and Yolanda onto Reunion, grilling them for every detail of that encounter, and finding, perhaps—clues that led under other doors.

The Guild appropriating twenty years worth of preparation into the Guild’s hands, with its demonstrably isolationist theories.

Ramirez would find his precious program stopped. His ideas quashed. Twenty years tossed down a black hole. The Guild never had released what it laid hands on. If Ramirez engaged Jase and Yolanda in a contact he wasn’t ready to pursue, the Guild might then take them and never let them go—or not let them go until they were thoroughly Guild, on a Guild mission. A senior captain who’d invested twenty years in a project knew he didn’t have another twenty years to rebuild from scratch, and wouldn’t have the resources to get ahead of the Guild. He had to get through this, lay his plans, try a second time.

Guild—and ship. Two authorities running human affairs.

Guild—and ship. One wasn’t necessarily the other, but ship depended on Guild—and hated its dependence on the Guild for fuel, the lack of mining ’bots. Ramirez wasn’t independent. He couldn’t make a total break from the Guild’s authority.

But in this system he had his fuel source and he had a green world—if he could have used it. He’d flirted with alien contact—so Sabin said—maybe before this. He hoped to break out of Guild control. He hoped to get a source not dependent on the Guild.

But here the aliens confronted him.

So what was prudent?

Sit still. Hope it didn’t notice?

It noticed. It waited.

Awaited contact? Wanted some gesture? Theoretically a civilized entity ought to realize the signals under such circumstances wouldn’t be congruent—but grant atevi and humans, highly civilized, had very clearly botched their own contact well into the process, and nearly killed themselves before they straightened matters out.

Ramirez left. Ramirez had left the confrontation. That was the conclusion of the affair. That was the one rock on which he could build a theory. Whatever his surmises about Ramirez’s reasons and Ramirez’s thought pattern and what a civilized entity on the other side ought to expect—the fact was Ramirez had unilaterally broken his freeze-state, and left in a vector other than Reunion.

That redirection hadn’t fooled the aliens for a minute. Had it? So they had an idea where he came from. They’d been watching.

Silence. Then a deceptive vector.

Touching off, perhaps, as Jase said, emotional responses—those sub-basement responses and assumptions that clouded thinking, those gut-level conclusions that were beneath clear thought.

If he put himself as, say, ship-human , in the aliens’ position—how would he react to seeing an intruding ship pull out without responding? He had no clear idea.

If he put himself as Mospheiran in that situation—he’d—well, he’d find a superior and give a report. And if he was President of Mospheira—he’d call his ally and ask what his ally Tabini thought. He’d get a committee together. He’d fund a study. He’d be paralyzed until the committee report came in. A Mospheiran had a thoroughly despairing view of official decision-making. On the other hand, the average Mospheiran tourist could be an incredible fool.

If, next thought, he put himself as atevi in that situation—

He thought he knew what he’d do if he were atevi. He thought he knew what responses would follow, acted-upon and otherwise. But he had the opportunity to ask someone whose nervous system had those other answers. He called in the least warlike ateva on staff. He called in Jeladi.

“What would one believe that meant?” he asked, having explained the situation, “if the stranger ship left, under those circumstances?”

“It went to its associates,” Jeladi said, “by a devious route.”

“And, nadi?”

“It will return with weapons, nandi.”

He was not particularly surprised. Several thousand years of atevi experience led to that conclusion. He gathered himself up, in his bathrobe, and went to Banichi and posed the question. Jago arrived, and he repeated it. “What would you expect?” he asked them collectively.

“A lure to an ambush,” Jago said.

“We would not take that bait,” Banichi said.

Atevi were not the most peaceful of species. Hadn’t been, even before the petal sails dropped down. There was a reason the Assassins’ Guild mediated the law, a civilizing force in the society.

There remained a third source of information. “I shall dress,” he said to Narani, and began to do so, thinking of begging the dowager to receive a petitioner, no matter that none of them were at their mental best.

But before he had quite donned his coat, a message cylinder arrived.

We have heard your question , Ilisidi said—God, how did she manage? Even my great-grandson has an opinion in this case. One should not follow, except with superior force. One should lie in wait. My great-grandson believes we should blow it up immediately and fortify against general invasion. His greatgrandfather would have concurred .

Go to bed. We order it.

Bren stood there with his limbs wobbling, half-dressed and chilled, thinking—well, now he needed not call on Ilisidi. Now he should call Jase with his multi-sided answer and inform Jase how provocative Ramirez’s apparently prudent actions could seem.

He should call Jase—when he had a brain. And when it wasn’t the middle of Jase’s night. Jase was still asleep. At the moment, he thought, sleep in his own case might produce more intelligence than study would.

He didn’t want to fly his theories past Sabin until he had his wits about him.

He undressed as meticulously as he’d dressed, thinking, thinking—how the ship had gone off its direct track home. But the aliens hadn’t wasted time. They’d known where the human base was.

One assumed an advanced civilization wouldn’t be mindlessly, pointlessly violent.

One assumed that, based on humanity’s rise from the caves. Based on atevi’s general progress—toward television and fast food. On the whole it tended to be true, for these two species. Any two points made a straight line. But a third—felicitous third—wasn’t guaranteed to be anywhere on that line, was it? Not at all.

He was losing his train of thought. Points that didn’t lie in a straight line.

Aliens had gone straight to the station. What they’d done before they hit it, what the station had done—no record.

Ramirez had left the encounter. That didn’t say, on the other end, what the station had done. Or not done.

He lay down in bed. Thinking.

Did the ship observe a pattern in the three blinks from the alien craft? A variation of color, of duration? No information on that score. No image.

One assumed , humans being sensitive to visual input, that Ramirez would have recorded any such anomaly in the signal– if he hadn’t tucked all the really useful notes somewhere outside the official log.

But then, if Ramirez had known enough to take the right notes, he’d have stood a chance of taking the right actions. Wouldn’t he?

Eyes were already shut. Brain drifted toward dark.

He felt the give of the mattress. Felt a familiar warmth, smooth skin against his.

“Jago-ji.” He’d been thinking back and forth in Mosphei’ and Ragi. At the moment he didn’t know which he spoke.

“Have you reached a conclusion, Bren-ji?”

“Not that I trust.”

“Ramirez’s actions were peculiar,” Jago said.

“Not for a human,” he murmured. Senses were leaving him. He settled against Jago’s warmth, still trying to think through Ramirez’s actions and beginning to suspect his thinking had gone off the edge of reason.

He felt Jago’s hand on his face. Felt a caress on his shoulder. He tried desperately to reconstruct his train of thought. Everything was dark, dark and the touch of a familiar hand, the whisper of a familiar voice: “Rest, Bren-ji. Rest now. You try yourself too much.”

He did sleep. He was sure he slept, because, “ Bren ,” the intercom said, Jase’s voice, in the middle of his night, and he had to wake. He groped for the side of the bed, momentarily forgetting that he was in a steel and ceramics world, where words were sufficient. He thought he was in the tall bed in his own apartment in Shejidan, and was shocked to meet the floor sooner than he expected.

“Lights,” he remembered to say, and thoughtlessly blinded himself and Jago. He held a hand up to shield his eyes. “Two-way com.—Jase? What’s up?”

“ Looks like we’re finding an interface ,” Jase said. “ Not certain yet, but take this for a warning. Whether we’re there or not is always a question, but the navigators think this should be a straightforward entry .”

“Thanks,” he said, muzzy, out of breath. “Thanks.” And tried to organize what he knew. “We’re not done yet. Jase, I’m not done. I’ve learned things—”

“ I’ve called the senior captain. My chief navigator estimates one to three hours, big give-or-take .”

“Have you got an answer yet out of that tape?”

“Makes no sense,” Jase said. “No sense.”

“I have theories—at least about the contact.”

“We’ll have to solve those questions on the other side. Drop’s going to happen whether we’re ready or not. It’s in progress. You’ve got leave to be here just as soon as we make entry. Get ready. You may have a very small safe window to move.”

“Understood,” he said, rattled, and translated that in more detail for Jago. Jase was thinking in ship-speak at the moment, not Ragi, and small wonder. They were going in and he and Jase weren’t ready. But the navigators guessed… hoped … this would be it.

And God knew what they were about to meet.

“Advise Narani, nadi-ji,” he said to Jago. “Advise Cenedi. I’ll advise the dowager myself.” He dragged his chilled limbs off the bed and flung a robe about him as Jago hastened about her orders.

Bren stumbled to the table that served as his desk and penned a quick paper note:

Aiji-ma, we may well have arrived at our destination. As ever, there is the possibility of imprecision, but I am proceeding to the ship’s central command immediately after arrival to assess the situation. One hopes for your approval as ever . He dimly remembered, on the other side of sleep, the dowager’s unlooked-for response to his query. One appreciates beyond expression your felicitous response to my question. One is grateful. I shall represent your interests with all my efforts .

He rolled it, slipped it into the cylinder, took the risk of omitting the seal, the reception of which informality depended on the state of Ilisidi’s nerves.

“To the dowager, Rani-ji,” he instructed Narani, who had appeared in the door to assess the state of affairs, and while Narani undertook that diplomatic errand, Bren headed for his shower, for a minute of warm steam and a dry towel, no waiting for the vacuum. He scrubbed violently, trying to rub sensation into his skin; he toweled his hair, hoping for clear thought.

Scared. Oh, he was that, no question. He attempted to finger-comb his hair, breaking through the snarls. He put on trousers and boots, trying not to show absolute terror.

“Haste, nadi-ji,” he told Asicho when she began to comb his hair. “We may be surprised by events. Never mind it pulls.” He would have welcomed a sharp pain, anything to define the space, the time, the event, some keen sensory input to sting him out of this foggy-headed limbo of the ship before space straightened itself out again and dumped them into a situation none of them could predict.

Bindanda and Jeladi both showed up to assist him. For the important event of their arrival, Narani had provided a shirt that had to go on with its coat, the lace so starched it could cut cake.

Asicho finished his pigtail with breathless haste. Narani arrived to supervise Bindanda and Jeladi and be sure of the lace. Banichi and Jago were, meanwhile, managing for themselves, he was sure, while he accepted the help a lord needed, all of them hurrying, accurate, calm in the way his staff had been calm dressing him for court warfare.

One assumed the cylinder had by now found its way to the dowager’s attention at such an hour; one very well knew Cenedi knew, and that courtesy was done. Handled. One thing of all the things on his agenda was done and nailed down tight.

A siren blew briefly. Space, that had held them in a mind-fogged grip for day upon day of perceived time, was about to unfold itself, taking them back into reality with it.

Not his favorite thing. God, no. A lot like landings in airplanes. Or space shuttles.

He was, however, formally dressed. Ready for whatever happened.

“ Fifteen minutes to drop ,” the intercom informed them.

He received a vexed message from the dowager. Could not the ship-aijiin arrange such events at a more civilized hour?

“ This is the captain speaking .” Sabin’s voice, not Jase’s, in dead calm, near monotone. “ We are beginning procedures for arrival. All non-essential crew to quarters. Take hold, take hold, take hold .”

Official, then. Sabin was in charge over their heads and crew, all the great majority of personnel that maintained non-critical stations and operations, was to tuck down and remain invisible and out of the way for the duration.

Jago arrived, dressed in her best—armed, though what good that did against their current situation he had no idea, nor, surely, had Jago. The weaponry was an expression of support, of professional attention to detail.

“One believes we should take our seats,” he said calmly, and settled down in a broad, comfortable, bolted chair, carefully arranging his coat tails. Jago took the other. The rest of staff had such accommodations in the security station, where Banichi likely sat; or in their own accommodations, where they could ride comfortably belted down in bed.

“ Stand by .” C1’s advisement, the calm clear voice of senior communications.

The slight muzziness of their days of transit increased, convinced the senses that the ship was sliding sideways, then forward.

His staff took it far, far better than he did. His stomach felt very queasy, and he didn’t want to shut his eyes: sense-deprivation only made it worse.

Boarding a plane. He was scarcely out of his teens. Scarcely out of university.

Coming in at Shejidan, ahead of a cargo of tinned fish and electronics, all the tiled roofs spread out below him. It rained, common enough in spring. The tiled roofs became more textured, more real, slicked and shining, while the surrounding hills veiled themselves in rain and cloud.

The Bu-javid sat on its hill, mysterious, indistinct in blowing rain. He’d live there one day. He hadn’t imagined it, then. But he’d have an apartment high on that northern wing, just that window…

Explosion of gunfire, amid golden fields. They were shooting at targets, and Tabini-aiji, tall, slender, skilled marksman, popping branches off a dead limb, while a novice human paidhi tried to figure why the unprecedented invitation, and trying to hold his own firearm steady and not shoot the servants. Illegal for him to have the gun, but the aiji invited him, and he asked himself what the motive might be.

Shot in the dark, in the spring night, with a shadow outside the blowing draperies and the smell of djossi flowers on the heavy air.

A very foolish, very young human interpreter diving out of bed and behind the unlikely cover of the mattress.

Banichi had found him there. Found him, and traded guns with him, and covered what might have been a deep secret among atevi lords.

Keep him safe, Tabini had ordered Banichi and Jago, and who could have known they’d one day be guarding his life this far from home?

Keep him safe. Was ever a man luckier in his associates?

Breakfast on a balcony, in a thin coat, freezing, drinking burning-hot tea before it chilled to ice. Breakfast with the dowager, who hadn’t needed a coat.

Breakfast and a broken arm.

And an end of all easy assumptions, all confidence in what humans believed about atevi intentions and the atevi’s choices for their future.

That breakfast had led him here, wherever here was beginning to be.

Down, now, increasingly down, an illusion of falling through space faster and faster, weightless for a moment.

Then here.

Here.

Suddenly at rest, when intellect knew they weren’t: that the ship was still going faster than a planet-bred imagination easily grasped.

But down felt down again, as if it had never been different—at least a planet-habituated stomach felt very reassured by the current state of affairs. The safe universe had fractured and someone had fixed it. Very nice, very reassuring.

That meant they had arrived. Space had straightened itself out. And he had to move. Quickly, by Jase’s advisement.

He got up, and Jago got up.

“We’ll go up to the bridge,” he said, as if he proposed a trip down the hall at home. Thoughts were suddenly easier. He remembered things. One didn’t have to nail every thought to the wall.

But now he wasn’t sure any of his prior reasoning about the log records made thorough sense.

Jago tugged her jacket smooth. He adjusted his coat. They went out to find Banichi. Staff had turned out into the corridor, too, understanding that events would flow rapidly in this arrival.

“ This is the senior captain speaking ,” the intercom speakers said suddenly. “ Early indications indicate arrival in Reunion System. General crew will stay in cabins until further notice .”

They had arrived. Banichi met them at the security center, where Asicho waited, ready to take up her watch at the boards. Narani had accompanied them down the corridor. So did Bin-danda and Jeladi. They all gathered outside the security station, all his household, all awaiting information and instructions on which their safety might depend.

All relying on him.

And in the same instant he grasped that distressing thought, the dowager’s apartment door opened and the dowager exited her rooms– with Cajeiri in tow. In court dress. It was not a casual expedition.

Ilisidi, Cajeiri, Cenedi. One of the senior staff carried a fair-sized packet wrapped in a tablecloth—lunch, one greatly feared.

They had notions where they were going.

Cajeiri, too, had a small wallet tucked under his arm, which Bren feared was not lunch.

And had he somehow implied, in his general muzziness, that the senior captain had cleared them to come up? There was nothing that stopped a tidal wave or the aiji-dowager once assumptions had gone this far. She was dressed. She was in motion.

And, granted Sabin was going to have the proverbial litter of kittens, the dowager was a resource the paidhiin could well use close at hand if things came unhinged.

“Go,” Ilisidi said with an impatient wave of her cane, as if she were not the one arriving late. “Go, go, nadiin. For what do we wait?”

“Nandi.” Bren stood aside to prefer her and Cajeiri, and both their bodyguards folded in behind.

Chapter 5

The senior captain would be too busy to lodge strong objections, Bren said to himself, watching the lift level indicator flick numbers past. And the captain did expect him, and expected help.

“The ship-aiji believes we have indeed arrived at our destination, aiji-ma,” he said as the lift rose. “One isn’t quite sure how they know, but one supposes they find familiar indications.”

Ilisidi gave an indelicate snort. “High time.”

The lift stopped at its appointed level. The doors opened and they walked out into that neck of the lift foyer that had no view of the bridge, only of the administrative offices beyond.

So far, so good.

Jase stood in view, beside the short screening wall. The lift noise had not gone unnoticed. Whatever his opinion, Jase kept perfectly deadpan, poker-stiff as they walked toward him, beyond that curtain wall and into full view of the bridge. Captain Sabin, in those narrow aisles of techs at consoles, stood there, watching over the situation, occupied, at the moment, at a console in the middle aisle.

“Four jump seats to your right,” Jase muttered in Ragi. “Emergency cabinet is next to them. Go there if alert sounds.”

Bren spotted the seats and the access—the takehold cabinet was, in effect, the curtain wall itself, and their party certainly exceeded the safety seating.

Then Sabin passed a cold glance over the atevi invasion, and strode toward them.

“Mr. Cameron.” The voice of doom.

“Additional opinions, ma’am. A valuable point of view.”

“The kid is a point of view?”

“I assure you there’ll be no disturbance, Captain.” Bren fervently hoped so, and said, in Ragi, “One must wait in patience, aiji-ma. There are seats over there for you and the young gentleman, should you wish, and one advises their use. This may be hours in progress.”

“We shall undoubtedly avail ourselves of the chairs, paidhi-ji.” Ilisidi leaned on her cane and looked about her. There was no general image view, except one small screen forward, which was uninformatively black, and Ilisidi scanned it, and the general surrounds. “So. Hardly more than a security station. And where will Reunion be?”

“Far distant, nand’ dowager,” Jase said, interceding. “Even so the ship is going very fast in the direction of the star, about which one will find three very large planets. Reunion orbits the one nearest to the sun.”

“There are no persons on these planets, is this so, Jase-nandi?”

Ever so careful of the protocols: a considerate honor from the dowager in Jase’s native territory—to which Jase gave an ever-so-little bow, Ragi-style. “The dowager is of course correct. They’re hardly more than balls of natural gas and nitrogen.”

“Fertilizer.” The dowager gave a wry laugh. “So. So. Let us not interrupt your work, ship-aijiin.”

“Nand’ dowager.” Correct address for a great lady no longer his lady: Jase used the remote, not the personal ma —and drew aside to continue, as Sabin did, a slow patrol of the aisles among the four rows of technicians.

Everything was going well. Very well. They were still alive. Sabin had, with a baleful stare, accepted their help. But there was noise from the lift nearby, unregistered in the moment.

The lift had gone down: not unusual. The car resided in mid-levels. But now it ascended a second time, opened its door and let out, God help them, Ginny and her chief engineer, Jerry; and one now had to ask how many they could cram into that emergency cabinet if the ship had to move.

“What’s this?” Sabin had stepped into line of vision, too, and confronted the Mospheirans. Jerry had also brought, one saw, a sack lunch—like Mospheirans on holiday, Bren thought, the pernicious national habit. Dared one say it lent a very surreal feeling to the moment?

“Moral support,” Ginny said. “And advice, where needed.”

“Hell,” Sabin said sharply, gave Bren a withering look—I didn’t was the gut-level response, but he kept that useless protest behind his teeth, and Sabin forbore to order the lot of them off the bridge. “Keep it quiet. And keep out of my way.”

“Takehold shelter,” Bren advised the newcomers quietly, with a gesture toward the cabinet. Ginny and Jerry took a look and had that information.

So they were all represented here aft of the bridge—all there but the residents of the ship, the run of the crew who ran the systems that didn’t have to do with conditions outside the hull.

The ones Ramirez had lied to so early, the last time they’d made this approach.

One wondered if there was, this time, a live video feed belowdecks—or—so basic was the supposition that what one saw on the monitor was real—one had to wonder if what was up there at the moment in front of the bridge crew was real.

Jase would know. Surely Jase would know.

And one reminded oneself that Sabin, with all her other faults, had taken a stand in favor of truth. At least she had advertised that to be the case.

She wouldn’t possibly lie about that.

Would she?

“Mani-ma.” Whisper from Cajeiri. “May one see the screens up close?”

“One certainly may not, great-grandson.”

“What are they doing, mani-ma?”

“What the ship-aiji bids them do, young sir, and a wise young sir would leave them to do it undistracted before they crash this ship.”

“One would never distract them, mani-ma. One only—”

Thump! went the ferrule of the cane against the deck. Ginny and her companion jumped. Technicians jumped. Both captains turned to look.

And, meeting utter atevi and Mospheiran propriety, the two captains turned back to their work. The technicians never had looked away from the screens and instruments, not a one.

Bren took a deep breath.

“Is everything all right?” Ginny asked.

“Oh, ordinary,” Bren said. “The young aiji would like to see the view.”

“So would we all,” Ginny said.

Presumably the image above them was indeed valid as it shifted… magnified, became centered on twin points of light.

A star? A planet?

They stood in silence a lengthy period of time, Cajeiri fidgeting with his pockets, and his parcel, and finally receiving a reprimand.

The view shifted again, and the points of light became larger, and resolved into a disc and a dimmer point, dimmer, flickering, and resolving, and resolving again as Sabin and Jase moved routinely from station to station.

The next resolution shut out the brighter object entirely. The smaller light source became very likely a space station, rotating, showing one great dark patch.

“Is that where we’re going, nandiin-ji?” Cajeiri asked.

“One believes so, young sir,” Cenedi answered him.

“Is—”

“Hush,” Ilisidi said sharply, and added: “If waiting tires you, you may go sit in your room, young sir.”

“No, mani-ma.”

The image grew clearer, slowly, slowly. Jase drifted near in his patrol of the room.

“The crew is seeing this, nadi?” Bren asked in Ragi.

“One believes so,” Jase said under his breath. “One hopes so. What we’re seeing is what we hope to see at this point. The station doesn’t know we’re here, yet, unless there’s an alarm we don’t know about. They’ll respond soon, if there’s anyone alive, but we’re two hours sixteen minutes and some-odd seconds out from their answer, nadiin-ji. You’ll see a counter start to run on that screen once we know our initial signal has reached them. We have transmitted a focused signal, aimed tightly at them.”

Jase moved off. Bren translated for Ginny and her companion, quietly.

“The ship’s ten years late,” Ginny muttered to him. “No big surprise if whoever was listening is on tea break.”

“No big surprise,” Bren agreed, and translated the remark for the dowager and the rest, who thought it funny. Even Cajeiri got the joke, and wanted to know when the promised numbers would turn up.

“One will point it out,” Cenedi said, and just then the numbers did appear in the corner of the screen. “There. One has that long to wait.”

Cajeiri looked. And fidgeted.

“Will we do nothing else, nandiin-ji?”

“A small boy could go back to the nursery,” Ilisidi said sternly, and Cajeiri clutched his packet and stood stock still for a remarkable fifteen minutes before he heaved a sigh.

Another before the feet had to move.

The dowager’s cane came down gently on the offending foot.

“One regrets, mani-ma.”

“Good,” Ilisidi said sharply.

They waited. And waited. A quarter, then a half hour crawled past with no movement at all from the boy.

One hesitated to suggest again that the dowager sit. She was veteran of the court in Shejidan, where standing was a test of endurance and will. She had the boy for witness to any weakness.

But the cane was not all for show.

They stood another half hour and more. Bren tried to think of a courteous way to suggest again they rest, and found none.

Then Ilisidi lifted her cane and pointed to the jump seats against the takehold cabinet. “We shall sit, Cenedi-ji.”

“Yes,” Cenedi said, and certainly with relief. They moved to let down two of the jump seats.

Ilisidi sat down. Motioned to Cajeiri to sit. There were three other seats. “Paidhi-ji. Gin-nadi.”

Persons of equivalent rank might sit. Bren accepted the honor gratefully, and relayed the invitation to Gin, who sensibly did come and sit down, accepting her lordship, leaving Jerry to stand.

The numbers ran on the screen. Jase and Sabin continued their slow patrol of the aisles and C1 made a brief status report to the general crew: “ Situation normal on the bridge. Still awaiting response window relative to station. We have Reunion Station in long-view. Channel one is currently providing that image .”

They sat. Cajeiri’s packet proved nothing more dire than a book, which evidently the dowager approved—or accepted as a necessity for young nerves. Bren found himself trying to see the book title, trying to see any information at all to distract an information-hungry brain, but he couldn’t quite manage. So they all waited. Distances were large and information crawled over inconceivable dark spaces.

Jase and Sabin spoke together for a moment. The station image suddenly grew more distinct. No exterior lights showed, none of the navigational blinkers operating on the mast. A source of flicker showed as trailing debris from a massive dark area of destruction.

The clock ticked down toward the reply window. Anticipation on the bridge was palpable.

The clock entered negative territory; and time ran. Anticipation began to curdle.

“Is it not past time?” Cajeiri asked—having learned perfectly well to read human numbers. He had closed his book and held it against his chest.

“It is, indeed, young gentleman,” Ilisidi said. “Which may mean many things, including the possibility that we are too late to effect a rescue. Or that the one person on watch has decided to read a book. Hush, and listen.”

“What if—?”

“Hush.”

Cajeiri hushed, and with worried looks at the display, reopened his book and buried himself in it. The sentiment was much the same among the techs. And the captains. Gin Kroger frowned, saying not a word. Bren exchanged a worried look with Banichi and Jago.