Alex Benedict 9 - Village in the Sky, page 26
“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.”
25
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
—Samuel T. Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” 1798 CE
It would have been difficult to miss the arrowhead. It consisted of eight stars lined up almost perfectly, a projectile in the sky. A brilliant blue star was at the tip of the constellation.
Belle was taking more pictures in an effort to determine in which star systems the arrowhead would be visible. With all eight stars. Sometimes, Belle told us, only parts of it would be there. Sometimes only a single star would be missing. In one system, she said, there would have been an additional star. Ultimately we limited the number of possibilities to six.
The first one we went to had, as far as we could see, no planets at all. The second one had only a gas giant in its Goldilocks Zone. In the third one, two terrestrial worlds orbited inside the zone, one near the center, the other on the inner edge. We visited the one in the center first.
We needed another short jump to get close. We surfaced in a celebratory mood. Until Belle looked through the tele- scope.
The images that came up were mostly rocky surfaces, desert, and dust. There were no oceans, although rivers and small lakes were visible. And no sign of life. Clouds drifted through the atmosphere. There were two moons, but no indication anyone had ever set foot on either.
Gabe was on the bridge with me. I leaned over the microphone. “Anybody there?”
Belle repeated the question in the alien language. We got nothing.
“Damn it,” said Gabe. “Check the other world.” But he sounded discouraged. “Waste of time. They can’t be there. It’s too close to the sun.”
“It’s in the zone,” I said.
“Just barely.”
We were on the allcomm, so we could be heard in the passenger cabin. Alex said, “Let’s just take a look. These people have super tech. Eliminate the possibility. We don’t want to have to come back.”
* * *
We made another jump to get within range. When we turned the telescope on it, we got a jolt: there were cities. And oceans. And a moon with a ground station. But the station was dark.
“Talk to them, Belle,” I said.
The transmit light came on. “Hello,” she said in the alien language. “Is anyone listening?”
Again, we got no response. We passed over the moon and a few hours later settled into orbit. Other than a few animals wandering around, there was no visible movement anywhere, no land vehicles, no aircraft, nothing. The cities appeared to be empty. The forests looked gray and dying. The oceans were small.
“Okay,” said Alex. “Now we know why they were on the move.”
Gabe growled. “So where’d they go? There were only a few hundred with Daylok and Szola.”
Cities and towns were everywhere. They encompassed a wide variety of lavish architecture. We were looking down at minarets, fluted spires, pagodas, cupolas, obelisks, and a range of structures unlike anything I’d seen before. Two cities even had pyramids. The styles were generally confined to geographical areas. Some cities had minarets, some had towers that would not have looked out of place in Andiquar, other areas resembled luxurious suburbs, or would have if there weren’t so many open spaces. But nothing moved anywhere.
“It looks dead,” said Robbi Jo.
“We getting any radio?” asked Alex.
Belle reported negative. She was still transmitting, speaking in what should have been the local language. “Hello, your people are in trouble. We need your assistance to help them. Is anybody there?”
Apparently nobody was.
“Why not send the whole Arinaka package?” said Robbi Jo. “Put all the information out there. There’s no reason to hide any of it.”
“Do it,” said Alex. “I don’t guess it could cause a problem. Sure. Send it all. Make it a broadcast.” It felt like an act of desperation.
* * *
We caught up to and passed beneath the sun. We were out over a small ocean. Its north-south coastline was empty. There’d been no coastal towns anywhere, no boardwalks, no sign of support services. We saw several islands off to the north. They had towns, but again no sign of life. There were a couple of bridges that connected the towns, although it was hard to see why they’d been needed. Several kilometers inland we passed over a north-south walkway with buildings on its western side, and nothing but open ground on the east. “This is where the ocean used to be,” said Gabe. “What’s the temperature here, Belle?”
