"Hard to put a number on it. It's a safety device that we won't need unless we need it. If you follow me.
But my opinion doesn't matter. The regs require us to head back."
"Who'd ever know?"
"I would. We die out here, it'd be my responsibility." He took a deep breath. "It's not the end of the world, Kile. There'll be another day."
"Yeah." Tripley glared at the engine as if it had deliberately betrayed him. "Okay, what do we do now?"
"I need a few hours to work on it. Make some temporary repairs. We'll get out of hyper and do the job.
When I'm finished, we'll jump back in and head for home."
"They have to get out of hyperspace," Solly explained, answering the question he saw in her face, "in case something goes wrong. It's a precaution against getting stranded."
"Bingo," said Kim. "This is where the encounter happens."
"Home?" Tripley said. "Why not St. Johns? Why go all the way back home?"
"It's a major job. Not the kind of thing they do out there. They'd do what I'm about to, put together a patchwork solution. But to get recertified for flight, we need Sky Harbor."
Emily gazed up at Tripley. "I'm sorry, Kile." She made a sympathetic face.
"Okay," he said. "Do it. Goddammit."
Kane opened a channel to the AI. "Hunter, abort TDI. Take us out."
"Wait a minute," said Kim. "Are they near a star?"
"Don't know," said Solly. "Depends how you define near. If you mean inside a planetary system, I'd say it's real unlikely."
"Then this isn't right. They have to go sight-seeing. They have to decide to come out near one of the seven stars."
Solly shook his head. "It's not going to happen."
She watched Tripley leave the pilot's room, watched Emily and Kane belt down. The AI counted off the minutes, and then they sailed out of hyperspace. They were in a heavily populated area of Orion, and the sky was filled with great clouds of stars. She couldn't see enough of it to determine whether there was a nearby sun.
They fast-forwarded. Kane used two hours to make his repairs. Then he alerted the others they were ready to go, and they began the acceleration toward the jump. Twenty-five minutes later they slipped uneventfully back into hyperspace and started the long journey to Sky Harbor.
The eastern sky was beginning to brighten, and a brisk wind rattled the windows. "I just don't believe it,"
she said.
He shut off the computer, glanced meaningfully at her, slid back on the sofa, and closed his eyes. "Looks like it was all a false alarm," he said.
Her commlink woke her. "Kim?" It was Matt's voice. Flat. That set off alarms. "Where are you?"
"In Salonika," she said.
"Were you planning on checking in any time soon?"
"I assumed you'd call if you needed me, Matt." She kept it on audio.
"I need you."
She sighed. "Okay. What are we doing?"
"A delegation of physicians and surgeons is coming in tomorrow. We've offered them a tour of the Institute."
"Okay. I'll be there. What time?"
"Ten."
"I'm on my way."
"It's an opportunity to do some good public relations. Media will be here. And Johnson."
World's leading cosmologist. Guarantees lots of attention.
"We're going to spring for lunch. I'd like you to accompany the tour and talk to them over the salad."
She listened, said she'd take care of it, and started to disconnect.
"I'm not through yet."
"What's wrong, Matt?"
Solly knocked softly and stuck his head into the room. She waved him in.
"Have you been nosing around Sara Baines? Asking questions?"
"Sara Baines? Who's Sara Baines?" She looked desperately at Solly.
His lips formed the words Deny everything.
"Tripley's grandmother, for God's sake. We got another complaint from him. Says somebody was out to interview his grandmother for a book. She can't remember the title. But I don't guess Tripley trusts you very much. He showed her your picture."
"And?"
"She says no. But Tripley thinks it was you. Was it?"
"I guess I did it, Matt."
She heard him let out his breath. "Kim, what am I going to do with you? Are you determined to lose your job? We've been through this before, and it's not going to happen again. You will keep away from Tripley. Do you understand me?"
"I understand you."
"Don't take that tone with me. This is your career you're playing with. If there's a third round of this nonsense, I'm going to be forced to put you out on the street."
"Matt, I don't really have a choice-"
"You damned well do, Kim. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but your sister's a long time gone. Ease up, okay? For everybody's sake."
She was staring up at the imager. "Matt, we may have found one of Yoshi's shoes in Tripley's villa. At Severin."
That got a long pause. Then: "You got a DNA match?"
"No. All we have is that it's her size. But it's a grip shoe."
She could hear Matt thinking it over. "That sounds like lawsuit country. Kim, we're talking about something that happened a long time ago. You're grasping at straws."
"I know," she said. "See you tomorrow."
"He's right," Solly said.
She looked at him. "We need to find the body," she said.
"Yoshi's? How do you plan to do that?"
"It might not be all that hard. She wore gold."
12
And I would have, now love is over, An end to all, an end: I cannot, having been your lover, Stoop to become your friend!
-ARTHUR SYMONS,.
"After Love," 1910 C.E.
Kim caught the red-eye back to Seabright and addressed the physicians and surgeons at the Institute breakfast. That went well, but Matt remarked quietly that it was good to see her again. His tone was simultaneously worried and accusing. He was always good at making her feel guilty. She explained that life had got hectic, and got away before he could press her. Afterward she went directly to the station and took the first train to Wakonda, home of the University of Amberlain. Solly was waiting for her in the physics department, where he'd borrowed a handheld sensor unit that the technicians were configuring to scan for gold.
When asked by the lab people if she'd uncovered a vein, Kim nodded and observed that she and Solly were about to acquire some serious wealth.
The unit tested to a range of about thirty meters for the quantity of gold one would expect to find in a bracelet roughly equivalent to the one Yoshi had been wearing.
Afterward, they caught the Snowhawk, which connected a half dozen cities across the central tier of the Republic, from Seabright on the east, through Eagle Point, to Algonda on the west.
They retired into a first-class cabin and were back reviewing the Hunter logs minutes after the train left the station.
The sun was already down as they eased out of Wakonda Central, picking up speed until the landscape blurred and eventually faded into the darkness. Solly sprawled leisurely in a padded chair; Kim sat on a cross bench, her arms wrapped around drawn-up knees.
They went back to the point at which the Hunter had dropped out of hyperspace, and watched Kane work on the AFS.
They ran the segment again, slower this time.
Kane finished up, notified the AI, and disappeared offscreen. Forty minutes later, scrubbed down and in a fresh uniform, he arrived in the pilot's room. Emily came up and they surveyed the enormous star-clouds.
"In there somewhere," Emily said, dreaming of celestials.
"Maybe," said Kane. He was invariably more forthright with her than with Tripley. "But unless you're damned lucky, you'll need more than a single lifetime to find them."
She sat down in the right-hand seat.
"Eight minutes to jump," said the ship.
Kane pushed back and let his eyes half close. "We've been fortunate," he said. "This is the first serious technical problem we've had in, what, a dozen or more missions? That's not bad."
She looked across at him, her spirits visibly sagging. Emily did not want to go home. "A lot more than a dozen. Markis, how long do you think it'll take to make the repairs?"
He considered it. "They'll pull the unit and replace it. A couple of days. No more than that. But the ship needs some general maintenance too before it goes out again."
They continued in that vein while the AI counted down. The minutes ticked off and the conversation subsided while Kane turned his attention to the console. The power buildup that routinely preceded a jump became audible.
At thirty seconds, the main engines shut down and Hunter went into glide mode.
"There's nothing here," said Solly, somehow disappointed, as if they hadn't already seen the sequence, didn't already know nothing was going to happen. The jump procedure was now too far along to stop. If a celestial had pulled alongside and waved, they could have done nothing.
When the Hunter made its transition to hyperspace, Emily was staring out the window at the stars.
The Snowhawk was passing through a valley. Two of Greenway's moons were in the sky, drifting among wisps of cloud. Dark slopes rose on either side. Treetops swayed in the blast of the passing train. Away to the north she could see the glow of a town. "Can't really expect to hit it right away," said Markis. "You have to be patient."
"We've been patient."
"Okay," said Solly. "That does it for the celestials. Now we're just looking for a motive for murder." He looked at her. "You think if someone killed them, Yoshi and Emily, he wouldn't have taken the gold?"
"If it was a burglar, something like that, sure he would have. But Tripley's the prime suspect. You think he'd kill over some jewelry?"
"You really think Tripley did it?"
"No. But I can't bring myself to believe they were killed by a robber. Wherever Yoshi is, she's wearing her gold."
Kim and Solly fast-forwarded through more conversations, all routine, mundane, what they would do when they got home, how they would spend the unexpected time. Tripley made it clear that he planned to mount the next mission as quickly as time permitted, and that he hoped to retain the services of the current crew. They didn't hear him say it explicitly, but that the sentiments had been delivered beyond the range of the recording devices was apparent from the conversations in the pilot's room. Everyone planned to return.
All this took the edge off the frustration, particularly for Yoshi, who'd come as an intern and who must have been worried that she might not be invited back. The weeks passed, and the general morale recovered and was reasonably high when they returned at last and docked at Sky Harbor.
Yoshi told Kane that she would stay the night with Emily at the Royal Palms in Terminal City, and then spend some time with her family until they were ready to try again. There was no indication, no nonverbal signal, that she was not telling the truth.
Tripley promised to hustle the repairs along. He estimated a relaunch in about a month. Was that satisfactory for Kane?
It was.
Tripley informed him that he would receive a bonus for his performance. Then he left Kane alone in the pilot's room.
The captain spent a few minutes with the instruments, collected his sketchbook, and left. The imager blinked off.