Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [153]
She watched the lights of his flyer disappear below the trees. “Kim, do you know for sure of anyone it has attacked?”
“No. But—”
“There you are then. We’re going to make history tonight, you and I. Are you with me?”
“Sheyel—”
“Do you know what I have on board?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do. You think I have a replica of the celestial.”
“No. You have the ship itself.”
“Oh.” She heard the respect in his voice. “Well done, Kimberly. Well done indeed. How long have you known?”
She was tempted to lie, to tell him she’d realized, as he undoubtedly had, from the moment she found out there were identical ships on the mural and in Tripley’s office. “I’ve known for a while,” she said. “You didn’t tell me the whole truth, did you?”
“You mean about my conversation with Yoshi? Yes, that’s so. I did hedge a bit. She told me they’d brought back a ship. But she wouldn’t answer any questions. Told me I’d have all the details soon enough.”
“What did you think? That they’d hidden it in the outer system somewhere?”
“To be honest, Kim, I didn’t know what to think. I suspected maybe they’d brought back something completely different from what we’d expect. And I wasn’t sure they hadn’t hidden it in the lake. It’s why I came here so often.” She heard his engine shut off and his door open. “Now, I have to get set up. Come join me if you want.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this, Sheyel.” She ordered her flyer to lift off, to find the other vehicle and land beside it. It left the ground and followed the shoreline east.
Sheyel’s aircraft was down on Cabry’s Beach, where she and Solly had landed. “Careful,” Kim pointlessly cautioned her own vehicle. There wasn’t much room left. And then to Sheyel: “We don’t know what this thing might be able to do if it gets access to the microship.”
“It won’t go anywhere with this.” He was out of the flyer, dragging a packing case down from the cargo compartment.
“Why not?” Her aircraft settled into weeds and high grass, and she popped open the door and jumped out.
“Because I’ve scanned it. It has an antimatter power source. But there’s no fuel. No antimatter.”
“Oh.”
“So now we know what blew the face off Mount Hope, right?”
“I guess we do.”
He pulled a collapsible table from the flyer, locked its legs in place, and set it on the sand at the water’s edge. He pushed on it to make sure it was stable.
Now he opened the case, moved the packing out of the way, and lifted out the Valiant. He gazed at it with affection and reverence, and put it on the tabletop.
Kim could have seized it by force. She could have thrown it into the back of her own aircraft and gotten out of there with it. But something stopped her, an inability to defy her old teacher, a need to see what might happen, perhaps simply a reluctance to make the decision.
Whatever the reason, she chose not to act.
He brought out a battery-powered lamp, set it on the table beside the spacecraft, and snapped it on. The Valiant sparkled. Kim walked toward it, trying to grasp what she knew to be true: that it was a vessel built by celestials. That it had traveled among the stars. That it had housed an entity like the one that had stalked the corridors of the Hammersmith.
Sheyel watched her carefully. For the first time she read distrust in his eyes. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You said you’ve scanned it. What’s inside?”
“Other than the dimensions, and the propulsion system, or lack thereof, it could almost be one of ours. Control room, individual quarters, pilot’s room of some sort. No chairs. Nothing to sit on.”
“What about the propulsion system?”
“I can’t find one. But that just means we need some experts to look at it.”
Kim thought about Kane’s offer to assist. “It must have been in trouble when the Hunter found them.”
“Why do you—?” Something out on the lake caught his eye. She followed his gaze and saw a reflection. Possibly distant lightning. She looked off toward Mount Hope and saw flashes around its