Infinity Beach

“Sure.”

“Okay.” She removed the plastic from the microship. Following her lead, he took hold of one side of the vessel, she the other, and they lifted. “All the way,” she said. They raised it shoulder high and then got it over their heads.

All counted down the seconds. “Okay, folks. We have a light. We are being sca

She imagined she could feel the tingle of the probe passing through the three floors of the Mac, passing through her, locking on the Valiant.

“This is not going to be productive,” said Matt. “It feels like a religious ceremony.”

“It is a religious ceremony.” She juggled it, tried to lift it higher, and almost lost it.

“Careful,” said Matt.

“Still sca

Kim, remembering the scan had been ru

“I hope so.”

She got to nineteen.

“Marker’s out,” said Ali. “That’s it.”

They lowered the Valiant and laid it back on the roof.

“Kim.” Ali’s voice again.

“Yes?”

“It went twenty-six seconds.”

Matt looked around, maybe to see whether lights had materialized among the stars. But the skies showed no change. “Might as well go back inside,” he said. “Nothing more we can do out here.”

Kim struggled to sit down beside the Valiant. The suit was exceedingly awkward. “I’m going to stay out for a while,” she said.

“Kim—”

“I’m okay. I’m just not ready to quit yet.” The air-lock door stood open. Light spilled out onto the roof. “Once we go back in, it’s over.”

He came and stood close to her.

She looked out into eternity, past the great ringed globe, past the scattered diamonds of individual stars, past the rivers of light. And she thought of Emily, dead at the moment of triumph.

Ali’s voice: “We have movement.”

Terri Taranaka was watching the screens in the mission center. “Kim,” she said, “we’re getting something!”

Kim struggled to her feet. “Not the Dauntless?”

“Negative,” said Ali, sounding excited. “The Dauntless is still in our rear.”

“Which way? Where?”

“Bearing zero six zero,” said Ali. “Up about thirty degrees.”

She had to look back to the air lock to reorient herself to the front of the ship. Up here it was hard to tell.

“It just appeared? he continued. “I don’t know where it came from.”

Even though it lay behind the planet, Alnitak’s glare was still harsh. Matt held a gloved hand over his visor and peered in the indicated direction. “Don’t see anything, Kim,” he said.

Neither did she.

“We’re getting an anomalous reading,” said Ali. “Configuration keeps shifting. I don’t think it’s a ship.”

“What else could it be?” Sandra’s voice.

Kim’s pulse began to pick up. “Not shape-changing?” she asked.

“Dauntless is on the circuit, Kim. I think they’re getting a little excited over there.”

“How far is it? The thing with the shifting configuration?”

“About eight kilometers. And closing. I can’t understand how it could have gotten so close without our picking it up earlier.”

“Kim.” Eric’s voice. “We’re getting a visual.”

“Text message,” said Paul. And then he let out a shriek. “It’s from them.”

And Maurie: “You sure? That’s English.”

Kim heard applause, but it quickly died away.

Eric again: “I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Uh-oh,” said Mona.

“What does it say?” demanded Kim.

“It says, Where are they?”

“Where are who!” asked Matt.

A chill felt its way up Kim’s spine. “I think,” she said, “they want to know what happened to the crew of the Valiant.”

“Kim.” Ali’s voice. “That thing out there does look like a cloud. It’s coherent. Moving with purpose.”

“I hear you.”

“I think it’s another shroud. You better get inside.”

“Matt,” she said. “You go. Close the air lock and do not open it unless I tell you to.”

“Not a good idea,” said Terri.

“Kim, I want you both inside. And hurry it up. It’s only a couple of minutes away.”

Matt went quickly to the air lock and stood in the patch of light, waiting for her. She looked down at the Valiant and out off the starboard side, about a third of the way up the sky. And saw nothing.

“Come on, Kim,” Matt said. “We can’t do anything out here except get ourselves killed.”

“Kim.” It was Maurie. “I think you’re right. They want to know about the crew. What do we tell them?”

Crunch time. “Tell them they’re dead. We’re sorry, but they were killed. Accidentally.”

“We do not have ‘dead’ or ‘killed’ in the vocabulary. Or ‘accident.’”

Ali again, his voice a command: “Kim, get inside. We’re out of time.”

“Matt—”

Matt shook his head no and pushed the door shut. Then he turned and came back across the roof.

“That was dumb,” she said.

“I won’t leave you out here alone.”

She was trying to recall the vocabulary. They had lots of words like stone and grass, tree and leaf, water and earth, light and dark. They had cloud and sun, starship and engine. They even had colors. How to convey death?

“Tell them ‘Their engines are stopped. They have gone dark.’”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Maurie.”

“Okay. Doing it now.”

“We need a way to express regret. Anybody have any ideas?”

Mona said: “‘We wish it had not been.’”

“We have,” said Gil, “no word for ‘wish.’ Or for syntactical complexities.”

Kim had not taken her eyes off the patch of sky from which the shroud was approaching.

The debate over how to address the celestials descended into a frustrated silence. “Defective vocabulary,” said Terri.

“We did what we could,” replied Eric. “You have to get the fundamentals down before you can do philosophy.”

The sky rippled. Several stars disappeared.

“It’s here,” Kim said.

“Kim.” Ali sounded angry. “Why are you still out there?”

“Eric.” Sandra was speaking. “Try ‘The leaves on our trees fall to the ground.’”

“Yes,” said Kim. “That’s good.”

“We should have brought a writer,” said Paul.

She could see the cloud approaching, could see stars through its veils.

“How about, ‘Our plants become dry’?”

“Yes. Good. Send it too. Can’t have too much regret at a time like this.”

Kim and Matt stood side by side, not moving. The shroud looked very much like the creature from Severin, except that this one seemed to be smaller. “Same basic model,” she told Matt.

But no eyes this time.

Nevertheless she knew it could see her. Or was aware of her in some ma

“‘Our life is now dark,’” she told Maurie while she resisted an urge to back away. Matt, to her surprise and his credit, stayed with her.

“We don’t have any way of expressing time, Kim. No word for ‘now.’”

“Send it without the ‘now,’ Maurie.” Heart pounding, she picked up the Valiant.

The shroud opened, blossomed, as had the one at the lakefront before engulfing its victims.

She held out the microship.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Ali.

Kim could barely move at all. Her suit felt claustrophobic.

“We’re getting a reply,” said Tesla.

And Eric: “It says: ‘We are you.’”

“Makes no sense.”

“What are they trying to say?”

“‘We’re of one mind,’” suggested Matt, his voice shaking. “Maybe they understand what we’re trying to do.”

“You really think so?” asked Tesla.

Kim sincerely hoped so.

Ali’s voice: “You guys okay out there?”

She felt a tug at the Valiant. She let go, watched it begin to fall, but slowly, still in gravity’s grip. The mist swirled across its polished hull, embraced it, and the shroud gathered it in.