Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [104]
“We’ll be okay, Kim,” he said.
The push became more pronounced and the station slid off the screens.
Another new voice, female, irritated: “Hammersmith, this is Orbital Patrol. You are directed to return to port immediately.”
“Hang on,” said Solly. Acceleration was increasing.
“We better make our jump, right?”
“The jump engines feed off the mains. We need to build more reaction before they’ll kick in.”
“How much? How long are we talking?”
“About twenty-five minutes.”
“Twenty-five minutes?” That was ridiculous. “Damn Worldwide and its paneling. Solly, we don’t have twenty-five minutes.”
“Hammersmith, return to the station or we will take appropriate action.”
“Do they have any way of actually stopping us?”
“Short of blowing us up?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Only a Tursi field.”
“The damper.”
“Right. It would shut down our mains. But it’s a bluff.”
“How do you know?”
“Rev up an engine and then turn it off, just like that, you risk an explosion. Damn near a fifty-fifty chance. They won’t use it without getting permission first from the Institute. And that’ll take time. Anyway Agostino would never agree to it. He doesn’t want to lose a ship.”
The comm system was crowded with incoming voices: the Patrol warning them again to stand down; the supervisor at Marlin insisting they return; and, oddly, Webley, demanding what in God’s name did they think they were doing?
“Just relax,” Solly said, “and enjoy the ride. In the meantime, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tell me precisely where we’re going.”
“Zeta Orionus. Alnitak. Or rather, I want you to pick a spot twenty-seven and a fraction light-years from Alnitak.” She dug in her pockets and pulled out a data disk. “Here,” she said. “Put us anywhere on the bubble.”
“Alnitak,” he said. The easternmost star in the belt of Orion. “Why? A guess? Or do you know something you haven’t told me?”
“You remember asking if I knew how long the trip would take?”
“Sure. You gave me a fairly specific answer.”
“Forty days, seventeen hours, twenty-six minutes. It’s the total elapsed return-trip time on the Hunter logs.”
“The bogus ones?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t imagine any reason why they’d change the elapsed time from the originals. The time frame, if it’s correct, gives us Alnitak. And there’s something else.” She showed him a blowup of Kane’s mural. “See this?” She pointed at the Horsehead.
“Yep.”
“It’s visible from Alnitak.”
The Patrol moved into a parallel course on their starboard side, at a distance of only a few hundred meters.
Solly shut down the comm system and the voices died. “Makes me nervous,” he said.
“You think that’s a good idea, right now?”
“Depends on whether you want to listen to the threats.”
He set the timer to count down to jump status. Kim stared at it, willing the numbers to hurry along.
They were still several minutes out when the AI announced an incoming transmission from a new source. From one of the satellites. “From the Institute.”
“It’ll be Agostino,” said Kim.
“You want to talk to him?”
“No,” she said. “We’ll talk when we come back. When we have something to negotiate with.”
The patrol vessel was still there when power began to flow to the jump engines, and Solly took them out of their range.
17
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
—HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, Kavanaugh, XXI 1849 C.E.
Solly’s analysts thought the Hunter logs were accurate to the point where the vessel experienced engine trouble. Allow approximately a day or so for Kane’s repair work, and that puts Tripley and his party at Alnitak roughly February 17 or 18. Those estimates also fit with the timing of the return to Greenway. “If all that’s correct,” said Kim, “then getting proof should be easy.”
It was now January 28 in Seabright. Assuming February 17 as the base date for the event, for the contact between the Hunter and the celestials, and assuming further that radio transmissions would certainly have been involved, she had calculated precisely where the radio waves would be at this moment, and had