Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [133]
“It was there,” she said. “It vanished when I put on the lights.”
“Like a reflection would have done.”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t a reflection.”
“No. It wasn’t. Couldn’t have been.”
There was egress to interior wiring and systems compartments through several access panels. But it would have required time to remove and then replace them. He looked at them, and they were locked down tight.
“I saw it.”
“I believe you.”
They went back up to their room, walking softly along the carpeted floors, and turned out the lights, returning the ship’s illumination to what it had been. Kim looked into the semidarkness, studied the row of tiny security lamps which came on automatically when the ship dimmed down for nighttime running. There was nothing that could have fooled her into thinking she’d seen a pair of eyes.
The most frightening aspect was the thing’s resemblance to the earlier apparition. She wondered if it had somehow contrived to follow her out here.
She’d brushed aside the experience in the Severin Valley, locked it in a remote corner of her mind, and convinced herself it had been a trick of the light, or a product of an over-supply of oxygen.
Now she was confronted by it again. And for the first time in her adult life, she questioned her worldview, her assumption that the universe was rational. That it was governed by self-consistent laws. That there was no place for the supernatural.
“You all right, Kim?” He was standing over her, pulling on his clothes, obviously worried.
“I’m fine,” she said.
There was another, more likely, possibility.
She sat down at the console and replayed the visuals from Solly’s helmet imager, stopping the display when the ripples appeared, on the hull and in the air lock.
The thing she’d seen was connected with the saddle. The object had not been a bomb; it had been a transport.
If that were so, she wondered whether she and Solly could even talk to each other without being overheard. Had the celestials mastered enough of the language to eavesdrop?
She told Solly what she thought.
“Okay,” Solly said. “We’ll proceed on the assumption we’ve got an intruder. That would explain what’s happening to Ham as well.”
“There is this,” she told him. “At least it won’t try to murder us in our sleep.”
“I don’t want to be downbeat on this, but why not?”
“Because it wants to follow us home.”
“Kim, I hate to point this out.” He lowered his voice. “The course is already set. If it were to get us out of the way, all it would have to do is sit tight and ride old Ham into port.”
They were sitting on the bed, staring out into the corridor, which now seemed like strange territory, a passageway from another world. “No,” she said. “It probably doesn’t know what leg of the trip we’re on. It’ll want us functioning until we get home. Until it can be sure.”
“I hope.”
21
For Courage in Extremity
—INSCRIPTION ON THE CONCILIAR MEDAL OF VALOR
In the morning, they searched the vessel again, all three floors, the engine room, the lander, and every other space they could think of. Solly removed the various access panels and peered back among the cables and circuits. They found nothing. “It’s hard to believe there’s anything on board that shouldn’t be here,” he said.
Reluctantly, she said what they both must have been thinking: “Maybe we shouldn’t go home.”
They were sitting in the wingback chairs in the briefing room. It was late afternoon; both were exhausted from the long hunt and its accompanying frustrations. “Kim,” said Solly, “we can interrupt the flight anytime and call for help. But then what do we do? If it could get aboard without our seeing it, it’ll do the same to any rescue ship.” He rubbed his eyes. “We’ve done everything we can to ensure there’s no intruder. So either we go home, or we sit out here somewhere until the food runs out.”
During the search, Kim had sensed that he was becoming skeptical of her story.