Infinity Beach

She got some mocking applause when the broadcast finished. There was a sixty-second delay and it started again.

No one expected an immediate response, but Kim remained hopeful at the begi

The team members drifted idly through the ship, anxiously awaiting whatever might happen. Most congregated around windows, and Kim found Mona in one such location holding forth to Terri and Maurie.

“What happens here,” she was saying, “is that you get a better sense of the sky’s depth. It’s not like Greenway or Earth, where all you see at night are stars and moons, and it could all be just a shell with holes poked in it. Here you look out and you see those clouds and you know they go on forever. It would have to have a radically different impact on a developing civilization.”

“If there were one,” said Maurie.

“That’s right,” said Terri. “And there isn’t. You wouldn’t get any local lifeforms out here. Too much UV.”

“It wouldn’t have to be orbiting Alnitak,” said Mona. “It could be parked up there anywhere. Just give it a little distance, and it loses the radiation and keeps the view.”

They were seated in a circle. Kim sank into a chair.

“I wonder,” Maurie said, “what kinds of societies would have developed if Earth had had skies like this?”

“Religious fanatics,” said Kim.

Terri chuckled. “They got that anyhow.”

Mona shook her head. “I’m not sure you’d get religious zealotry under these kinds of conditions. I think it would be easier to see the mechanical aspects of the environment, which aren’t so obvious at home.”

“Kim.” Ali’s voice, from the pilot’s room. “Message for you.”

“On my way,” she said.

When she got there, the heading was onscreen:

TO: GR 717 Karen McCollum

FROM: SOA

SUBJECT: Artifact Personal for Dr. Brandywine

SOA was the Secretariat for Off-World Affairs. “Run the text, Ali.”

“You can read it in your quarters if you like, Kim.” He looked worried. “Is this their reaction to your dealings with Woodbridge?”

“Probably.” She smiled. “It’s too late for them to do much now. Run it.”

Dr. Brandywine:

If you have the object with you, be aware that failure to deliver it immediately into official hands will result in prosecution. No further warning will be sent.

Edward was Woodbridge’s boss. The man who’d given her the Brays Stilwell Award.

“How does he expect us to do that?” asked Ali. “He knows where we are.”

“C.Y.A.”

“I’m not so sure.” His dark eyes were hidden in the half light.

“What else?”

“I think we’ll be having company.” He swung around to face her. “Do you really intend to give the microship back to its owners? Its original owners?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Easy. Once we find them.”

“Tell me how.”

“Just lean out the door and hand it to them.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? These are the same creatures who tried to kill you in the Severin Valley.”

“I think that was an anomaly. I think the thing that got stranded became deranged.”

“I hope they’re not all deranged.”

“They have to be rational, Ali. Or they wouldn’t be out here.”

She heard a sound deep in his throat. “Maybe,” he said. “But that sounds like an epitaph to me.”

They settled into a routine during the first few days, working on individual projects, watching the sensor screens. Maurie and Terri never tired of standing by the windows and looking out at the view. To Kim it seemed as if the emptiness looked back. Gradually the assumptions that had held sway throughout the flight—that contact was virtually inevitable, that the celestials would be waiting anxiously for the appearance of another giant ship—came to seem first unduly optimistic, then doubtful, and finally hopelessly naive. They began to speculate that the opportunity had been lost. Fumbled away by the clumsiness of the first expedition. Kim even overheard some comments that suggested she and Solly might have done better if they’d thought things out a bit.

The current situation, the silence that roared at them from the empty sky, was perceived as somehow her fault. If she had gone to them in January with what she knew instead of coming out here alone, they might have salvaged everything.

She saw it in their eyes, heard it in their voices. And as the days dragged on, and the gas giant came to fill their windows, their attitude toward the Valiant changed. If it had once been a unique artifact, a link with another civilization, it now became simply an oddity thrown up by the retreating tides of history, a symbol of human incompetence.

“At least,” said Paul, “we know now we’re not alone.”

“Maybe it’s just as well if we don’t find them,” said Maurie.

The remark brought frowns from everyone.

“Why would you say that?” asked Gil.

“How old would you guess their civilization is?”

Matt let his impatience show. “We’ve no way of knowing,” he said.

“They could easily be a million. Six million. What’s a civilization that’s been around that long going to look like? Do we really want to talk to them?”

“Why not?”

Maurie took a deep breath. “What could we possibly have to say to them that they’d be interested in?”

Kim was playing chess with Mona when Ali buzzed her. “Please come up for a minute.”

She left the game and climbed the stairs to the top floor. When she walked into the pilot’s room, he was wearing a strange expression. “We’re being sca

“By whom?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

“Where are they?”

“Don’t know that either. We can’t track it back. But somebody’s keeping an eye on us.”

“You think the fleet has arrived?”

“Maybe. But I doubt it’s any of our people. If it is, they’re pretty good. The scopes don’t show anything out there.”

The screens were blank. “So what are we saying? That we’ve found what we came for?”

“I’m only saying that the technology behind the scan is of a very high order.”

“Marvelous,” she said, clapping him on the back. “What can they learn about us?”

Ali propped his jaw in his palm. “Which way we’re headed, of course. What kind of engines we have. Maybe they’re able to do an analysis of light leakage. Hard to know what their limits might be. If it’s really celestial. This is where it would have been helpful to have dissected the microship.”

Kim ignored the implication. “Is there a chance they can see into the ship?”

“I don’t think anything we have, or anything anybody could devise, could penetrate this kind of hull. Mac’s hull. It’s designed to survive in high-energy environments. We could take her in pretty close to Alnitak, if we wanted, without frying the help. So no, they wouldn’t very likely be able to do that. But they’re probably able to get a sense of our electronic capabilities, of armaments or lack thereof, of engine architecture, that sort of thing.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Anything else?”

He shrugged. “Listen, don’t get so carried away with this that you forget they have a tendency to bite. Okay?”

She returned to the mission center, called everybody in, and passed the news. Somebody’s watching us. The reaction was mixed, a sense of exhilaration combined with a dash of disquiet. Paul recommended they begin broadcasting the second-phase package. The others agreed and Kim passed the instruction to Ali. A minute later he reported that transmission was underway.