Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [123]
“Did they? Who knows? Maybe they were taken. Maybe something else went back.” He made a scary face and hummed a few notes from the old horror series Midnight Express. She laughed. But a chill ran through her nevertheless.
Shortly after dinner they settled into Hunter’s orbit, which was roughly equatorial, varying only a few degrees above and below the line.
The rings dominated the sky, a vast shining arch beneath which the copper-gold clouds rolled on forever. Lightning bolts cruised through the depths and occasionally they saw the fiery streak of a meteor.
It seemed a place of infinite serenity and beauty. One might almost conclude it had been designed specifically to please the human eye and mind.
It was, she thought, a reason in itself to pursue starflight. Even if we were truly alone the mere existence of this kind of world and its magnificent star-clouds should be enough to summon the race from its ancestral home. There was something decadent in what was happening now, in the general retreat back to comfort and routine and familiar surroundings. In the lack of interest in all the things that had once been counted as noble and worth accomplishing.
We had begun to lead virtual lives.
No one had to work, so few did anything more than pursue quiet leisure. Kim had always thought herself ambitious. Yet during her entire life she had never felt an urge, even when the opportunity was there, to move beyond the home worlds. People complained about long weeks locked up in spartan accommodations, at getting ill during the jumps, at the expense of interstellar travel. And they settled for imaginary images, lovely little technological fireworks displays, created in the warm comfort of their living rooms. Throw a log on the fire and visit Betelgeuse.
She started to explain to Solly how she felt, looking at the star-cradles glowing in their windows, at the Horsehead, at the rings. The presence of another intelligence seemed not quite as important as it had a few hours before.
“Welcome to the club, Kim,” he said when she’d finished. “Those of us who make a living out here have known that for years. It really doesn’t matter all that much whether there are celestials in Orion. There’s just too much to see to complain about the details. And if it does turn out that we’re the only part of the universe able to see what’s around us, that’s okay.”
She’d always felt that Solly tended to neglect the more intellectual aspects of life. He didn’t read as much as he should, and he’d seemed to be too interested in the practical and the mundane, a man who seldom considered the philosophical issues. He’d surprised her several times on this trip, particularly with his remarks about the slow lightning. Ask Solly what the purpose of existence was, and he could be expected to reply that it’s a good lunch with good friends. Or a good woman.
She’d had a confused notion that life had something to do with expanding one’s intellectual horizons. And with achievement. Now she looked out the window and decided that whatever her purpose was, she’d fulfilled it when she arrived here.
And if she could choose a place to meet another intelligence, this would surely be it.
Below her, the upper atmosphere caught the light from the distant sun. It looked warm down there, and it was easy to imagine broad oceans and continents lying beneath those shimmering mists. In fact the temperature at the cloudtops was a terrestrial -17°C, the heat generated internally. Not all that bad if you could breathe hydrogen and methane.
Solly concentrated the scanners along the arc of the orbit, but he maintained a full search bubble out to more than six thousand kilometers. That took about 30 percent off the range and definition of the main search, but it was a price he was prepared to pay to avoid being surprised. Kim didn’t argue the point.
They were circling the planet every hour and twenty-two minutes. It had gotten late but no one showed any inclination to retire.
During the third orbit the alarm went off.
“Organic object ahead,” said the AI.