Chindi

The Memphis transferred the remains of the Condor perso

Meanwhile, the moonbase scan results came back from Outpost.

They specified the chemical composition of the various hatches, instruments, shelves, and whatnot. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. But the age of the base was estimated at fourteen hundred standard years.

That widened everyone’s eyes. My God, it went back to the time of Charlemagne.

But the numbers fit with the estimates from the air samples defining when the nuclear explosions had taken place.

There was another surprise in the report: Whoever had taken a laser to the cargo door had done it roughly twelve centuries ago. Two hundred years later.

So apparently someone had survived.

PARK CALLED TO inform her he’d found the stealth satellite that Preach had been taking on board at the time of the incident. “Or, more accurately,” he corrected himself, “some of the pieces.”

“Be careful.”

“We will.” She saw that he shared her suspicion that the stealth had been involved in the destruction of the Condor.

“Are you sca

“We intend to.”

“Good. When you send the results to Outpost, ask them to check on the energy source. And we’d also like to know how old it is.”

GEORGE RARELY CAME by the bridge, unless something was happening. She sensed that he liked being in charge, and that the bridge put him at a disadvantage. But nevertheless there he was, standing uncertainly at the door. “I’ve been thinking about this place,” he said. “And I don’t understand what’s been happening here.”

“You mean what happened to the Condor?”

“That, too. Mostly I don’t understand who got to the moon two hundred years after the war. They must have all died during the war, right? I mean, who could have survived?”

“I don’t know. Somebody did.”

“That’s right. Somebody cut their way into the moonbase.” He leaned back against a console. “Who?”

“I’ve no idea, George. Nor have I any suggestion how to find out.”

“I might.” He broke away from the console, crossed the bridge, and sat down in the right-hand chair. The navigational screens, showing images from the ground at differing magnifications, caught his eye. “I think there’s a co

Hutch didn’t have an answer for that either.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I wonder how old the satellites are.”

“We’ll find out when the next report comes in from Outpost. But I assume they’re fourteen hundred years old. They have to date from about the time of the war.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Fourteen hundred years is a long time.”

That was true. The stealth at 1107 was still transmitting. That was pretty good for a piece of hardware fourteen centuries old.

“Have we looked to see whether there are other stealths in orbit around Safe Harbor?”

Hutch had considered the possibility, concluded there probably were, but didn’t see what could be gained by finding one. In fact, if there were any, she didn’t think she’d want to go near them. Damned things were dangerous.

George read her concern. “We can be careful,” he said. “But we ought to take a look. Poke it with a stick if we have to.”

“Why do we care?”

“Maybe it doesn’t end here,” he said.

“Maybe what doesn’t end?”

“Have you considered the possibility the locals didn’t put up the stealths?”

It was a thought. But if they hadn’t, who had? “You think somebody else was here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

THEY ASSUMED THAT the stealths would be lined up for ideal reception, which put them in an orbit whose plane was perpendicular to 1107.

“If that’s so,” said Bill, “it’ll look like this.” He drew a circle around Safe Harbor that varied thirty-seven degrees above and below the equator.

At the neutron star, there’d been a signal to track. Here, they were looking at the receiving end of the system. That meant they had to go in close and try visually to find the satellites. In this, they had the advantage that the stealth methodology was far less effective than a lightbender would have been.

The problem was to guess the altitude of the orbit. Where had the stealth been when the Condor intercepted it?

They needed almost two days, with everyone watching the screens, before Alyx saw what appeared to be, as she described it, “some reflections.”

Hutch looked carefully at it and saw a small patch of sky that seemed a trifle darker than its surrounding area. Furthermore, two stars appeared to be duplicated. They moved closer and aimed the Memphis’s lights at the anomaly. The beams seemed to twist.

“What do we do now?” asked Tor. “If it’s booby-trapped, we don’t want to go near it.”

“Let’s whack it and see what it does. Bill—”

“Yes, Hutch?” I

“Send something over to give it a shove.”

The AI’s features snapped onto her comm screen. “Probe away,” he said.

The probe was a communication-and-sensor package of the type usually dropped into hostile atmospheres. She watched it go, powered by its thrusters, steered by the AI.

“Looks good,” she said.

Bill appeared beside her. “One minute.”

George’s people were making bets on the result. She wondered what it said about the human race that the odds were six to one for an explosion. She expected one herself.

The package closed on the disturbance.

The Brandeis watched from a safe distance.

At Bill’s command, the package angled left and ran directly into the stealth. It struck the vehicle dead center, in the middle of the diamond, and wobbled off.

Nothing happened.

Bill brought the unit around, hit the satellite a couple more times, and then sent the package into one of the dishes. It had by then become less than fully responsive and it hit too hard. The dish broke off, popped into visibility, and drifted away, trailing cable. At about twenty meters, the cable drew taut and the dish began to drag behind.

“Satisfied?” Bill asked.

“Yeah. That’s enough.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Park.

“Have a closer look,” she said. “I’m going over in the lander.”

“Why?”

Why? She wasn’t sure. She wanted to find out what had killed Preach. She owed him that much. And she felt she could do it in relative safety. Forewarned, she was sure she could take a look without setting the damned thing off. “To find out whether it’s a bomb,” she said.

“That’s not a good idea, Hutch.”

“I know. I’ll be careful.”

When she got down to the lander, Tor was waiting. “I’ll go along,” he said, “if you don’t object.”

She hesitated. “Provided you do what I tell you.”

“Sure.”

“No debates.”

“No debates.”

“Okay. Get in.”

Park was still trying to talk her out of it. “The fact that the explosion happened while they were examining the damned thing can’t be a coincidence,” he insisted. It didn’t take a genius. “Let the bomb people come out and look at it.”

“That’ll take forever.”

So the Brandeis stood by while she set off in the lander. The stealth floated out there, not quite visible, but its presence was betrayed by a twisting of light, a sense of movement, a place that was alternately bright and dark for no apparent reason. It was like a ghostly presence in a dimly lit room.

Tor looked down into the atmosphere. They were crossing the largest of Safe Harbor’s continents, passing above a mountain range.

She still couldn’t see the object itself, and was dependent on Bill for navigational assistance.

Park kept giving her advice.