Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [3]
How on earth would she know? “I have no idea, Canon,” she said.
“But you’re deeply involved in the Beacon Project. And your sister devoted her life to the same goal.”
“Maybe it’s in the wiring.” Emily, her clone actually, had vanished when Kim was seven. She paused momentarily and tried to deliver a thoughtful response, something about the human need to communicate and to explore. “I suspect,” she said, “if there’s really nothing out there, if the universe is really empty, or at least this part of it is, then maybe a lot of us would feel there’s no point to the trip.” There was more to it than that, she knew. Some primal urge not to be alone. But when she tried to put it into words she floundered around, gave up, and glanced at the clock.
One minute to midnight, New Year’s Eve, in the two hundred eleventh year of the Republic and the six hundredth year since Marquand’s landing. One minute to detonation.
“How are we doing on time?” asked one of the journalists. “Are they on schedule?”
“Yes,” Kim said. “As of ten A.M. this morning.” The hypercomm signal from the Trent required fourteen hours and some odd minutes to travel the 580 light-years from the scene of detonation. “I think we’re safe to assume that the nova is imminent.”
She activated an overhead screen, which picked up an image of the target star. Alpha Maxim was a bright AO-class. Hydrogen lines prominent. Surface temperature 11,000°C. Luminosity sixty times that of Helios. Five planets. All barren. Like every other known world, save the few that had been terraformed.
It would be the first of six novas. All would occur within a volume of space which measured approximately five hundred cubic light-years. And they would be triggered at sixty-day intervals. It would be a demonstration that could not help but draw the attention of anyone who might be watching. The ultimate message to the stars: We are here.
But she believed, as almost everyone else did, that the great silence would continue to roll back.
We live along the shores of night,
At the edge of the eternal sea.
The effort was called the Beacon Project. Its sponsor was Kim’s employer, the Seabright Institute. But even there, among those who had pushed the project, who had worked for years to bring it to fruition, there was a deep, pervading pessimism. Maybe it resulted from the knowledge that they’d all be dead before any possible answer could come back. Or maybe, as she wholeheartedly believed, it grew from a sense that this was a final gesture, more farewell than serious attempt at communication.
Emily, who had given her life to the great quest, would have been ashamed of her. It just demonstrated, Kim thought, how little the DNA really counted.
The Trent lay at a distance of five AUs from its target. The ship was an ancient cargo vessel refitted specifically for Beacon. Immediately after detonation, its crew and technicians would transfer to another vessel, which would transit into hyperspace, out of harm’s way. The Trent would be left to probe and measure the nova until the blast silenced it.
Kim threw a switch, and a computer-generated image of the LK6, a modified antique transport, formed in the center of the room. The LK6 was loaded with antimatter, contained within a magnetic bubble. It was traveling in hyperspace and, within a few seconds, would emerge in the solar core. If all went well, the resulting explosion would destabilize the star and, according to theory, ignite the first artificial nova.
A clock in the lower right-hand corner indicated the time of the image, and a counter ticked off the last seconds, simultaneously the last of the century and the last before the LK6 entry.
Kim watched the numbers go to zeroes. The year rolled over to 600 and 580 light-years away the missile inserted itself and its payload into the heart of the star.
Outside, the Institute