Odyssey

He listened, at first merely frowning, but gradually she watched his features darken. Had it been Mac, who often looked irritated, it would not have meant so much. Mac was accustomed to dealing with liars. But Eric, easygoing, amiable Eric, was different. He was not simply angry; he was hurt.

He struggled to respond. And she wondered what there was for him to say after she’d played them all for idiots. It’s okay, Valya. No hard feelings. I understand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Then just sat there.

He looked past her. At the bulkhead. At the open hatch to the bridge. At the spot where the Athenian dancing girl and her Spartan captain had stood against the Persians. “Thanks for telling me,” he said.

He seemed frozen to his seat.

“If you want, Eric, I’ll let you off at the station. Hutch knows. She’s sending another ship as soon as she can find one. To relieve us. If you don’t mind waiting around, you’d be able to go home with them.”

“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He stared down at her. “I’m not the one you’re going to have to answer to.”

The air in the room felt warm and close. “I’ve written my resignation. I’ll be lucky if Hutch doesn’t press charges.”

He got up and started for the passageway. “I wasn’t talking about Hutch,” he said.

VALYA HAD NEVER seen a moonrider. She’d seen pictures, supposedly taken live, but she knew how easily those could be generated. She simply didn’t believe the moonriders existed. Call it denial. Call it provincialism. To her, it was a question of accepting her instincts. She no more expected to see aliens in superluminals than the eighteenth-century explorers expected to find Pacific island natives in capital ships.

The current mission — presumably her last — was an exercise in futility, but it had been assigned, so she’d do what was required, as she always had. Almost always. In any case, she was in no hurry to go back.

They rode through the void in strained silence. Eric had remained only a few minutes in his cabin before apparently thinking better of his reaction. He returned to the common room and tried to behave as if he hadn’t walked off on her. But there was no getting around the abysmal cloud that occupied the middle of the room. “I take it,” he said finally, “there’s no threat. Was Amy bought, too?”

That scored a direct hit. “I never took a cent,” she said. “I did it because I thought it was something that needed to be done.”

His features were rigid. “Tell me about Amy.”

“I don’t know anything about Amy. I wasn’t there. For all I know, it really happened.”

“Can I believe you now?”

“I don’t lie,” she said.

“Of course not.” He picked up his reader and began paging through it, trying to behave as though she wasn’t there.

“Eric,” she said, “I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry you got involved. There was nothing personal in it.”

“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter much one way or the other.”

When he pretended to bury himself in his reading, she went up onto the bridge.

WHEN THE SALVATOR got within range of Origins, she reactivated the sweep. “Look for asteroids,” she told Bill.

“There will be no asteroids here, Valya,” he said. “It is no small matter to find even a dust particle. This area was chosen for the Origins Project for that very reason.”

“Do the sweep anyhow, Bill,” she said. “Let me know if you see anything.”

She felt like a damned fool. Eric never looked up. She walked past him and went below to conduct an inventory of the breathers Hutch had sent along. She counted eight, some with a two-hour air supply, most with four.

What had Hutch expected her to do with eight units? There were almost two hundred people at Origins.

She stayed below more than an hour. When she was finished with the inventory, she opened the hatch to the lander and slipped into the pilot’s seat. The cargo bay was dark and quiet. She sat staring at the launch doors. Finally, the tears came, and the emotions she’d been holding back overwhelmed her. My God, she thought, what have I done?

The launch doors beckoned. She could instruct Bill to take Eric to Origins. She pictured herself adrift in the lander, air ru

She tried to steel herself to do it. Get it over with. It was a way to show that, despite everything they thought about her, she was an honorable woman.

Mac also probably knew the truth by now. There was a guy who would know how to forgive. She could imagine him looking at her with those belligerent eyes and shaking his head. And walking away from her.

Never darken my door.

She was close to doing it. At least she thought she was. She actually closed the hatch and sat trying to find the words to tell Bill to depressurize the launch section.

But she’d promised she’d check for asteroids.

What a laugh.

Was there a chance, any chance at all, that monsters would come out of nowhere on a vector for one of the towers?

Still, she’d said she would do a sweep.

She desperately wanted a reason to prolong her life. And it was all she had.

When you depressurize, you can hear it at first. Hear the air getting sucked out. After a couple of minutes the sound goes away because there’s not enough air to carry it. She wiped her eyes and wished there were a way to make everything right.

People like to say they’re not afraid of dying. Valya was. The time in daylight is so short, so marvelous. She hated the thought of plunging into the night. Of taking that final deep dive into a

It would have been easier if she were leaving behind an admirable record. If she could believe Mac would stand at night and look at the stars and remember that she had been part of his life. If Hutch would regret the loss, even a little, and the Academy, or maybe a small group of friends, would hold a service for her, where someone would cry.

SHE WAS STILL hours away when she braked, co

The preliminary sweeps, as she knew they would, revealed only empty space in all directions. Eventually the Salvator drew within visual range of the East Tower. Abiding by procedure, she sent an audio-only report to Mission Ops: “We read negative 6.5 million kilometers out. Assuming maximum approach velocity of twenty-five kps, predict no threat can materialize within next three days.”

The chance of finding a rock coming in faster than that was pretty much nil.

She could imagine Hutchins sitting in her office, amused at Valya’s being forced to turn her last mission into a wild goose chase.

AHEAD, THE EAST Tower floated in the dark. It was visible only as a circle of starless space. A transmission was coming in. “Welcome to the Origins Project, East Tower.”

“Hello, East Tower. Salvator requests clearance to dock.”

“Very good, Salvator. We’ll bring you in.”

“Buckle in, Eric,” she said.

He had made an effort to lighten the mood. Told her he wished her luck and changed the subject. But the atmosphere remained tense, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

Controlled by the complex of gravity fields. they eased into the dock, and a familiar voice came over the link. “Hi, Valya. I heard you were coming.” It was Lou Cassell. “We didn’t expect to see you back here so soon. Still chasing moonriders, are we?”

It was nice to hear an unstrained human voice again. Eric had completely lost the ability to talk with her. He sounded by turns sad, apologetic, accusing, deferential. But good old Lou was just the tonic she needed. “Actually, there’s some concern they might be coming here,” she said.

“That’s what we heard. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to it, Lou.”

“I’ll tell you, Val, if they were to show up here and start dropping rocks on us, I’m not sure what we’d be able to do about it.”

She laughed. “Relax, Lou. We’ve all gone a little bit crazy.”

Airlocks opened. She climbed out of her harness and walked back to the common room. Eric was back in his cabin, getting his gear.

Lou came through the hatch, and she told him how glad she was to see him. He looked surprised at the intensity of the embrace he got. His smile brightened the place and made her feel human again. “Good to see you both,” he said. At which point she realized Eric was back. “Anybody else on board? No? Well, come on in and make yourselves comfortable. Are you going to stay over?”

“For a day or two,” she said. “If you have room for us.”

They went out the hatch and strolled through the exit tube. “There really is talk about moonriders,” she said.

“I know.” Lou obviously thought the subject laughable. “Apparently, your people got in touch with Allard, and he let us know. We got a message from a reporter, too. Saying the same thing. Telling us to look out.”

“MacAllister?”

“Yeah. That might have been the name.”

That caused a twinge. “I assume everybody had a good laugh.”

He shrugged. “Tell you the truth, it shook us up a little. I mean, it sounds crazy, but if the Academy was taking it seriously, we were, too. I mean, that business at Capella was really strange.” He looked at her, then at Eric. “You want to tell me what all this is about? I understand you saw moonriders at the Surveyor site, but I don’t see how that would translate into an attack against us.”

“We didn’t really see them, Lou,” she said. “The monitor reported some dark objects moving around. That’s all we know.” That had surprised her when it happened. But she suspected there was a natural explanation.

Eric gave her a nod of approval. Yes, keep Amy out of it. “Anyhow,” he said, “they just wanted us to come by and make sure everything’s okay.”

This time they got to meet Mahmoud Stein, the East Terminal director. Stein appeared to be well past retirement age. He had black hair and brown eyes that never seemed to come quite into focus. He was smaller than she was, solemn, with perfect diction, enunciating each word as if it were being recorded for posterity. He shook their hands and said how pleased he was to meet them. But he also laughed about the moonriders. “Do you people really think we’re going to get attacked by little green men?”

“No,” she said. “I think the Academy is just being cautious.”