Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [43]
Kim paged through as casually as she was able, commenting innocuously on grades of lubrication and periods between engine inspections, trying the whole time to sound as if she were only interested in generalities.
She took it back to the beginning. The Hunter went into service Midwinter 3, 544. “It takes a lot of work to keep one of these things operating,” she said innocently.
Isaacs agreed. She scrolled forward, locating and then familiarizing herself with the system which revealed the type of maintenance or repair and the signature of the technician. She noted the extensive maintenance performed toward the end of 572, prior to departure for St. Johns. Weeks later, a final inspection was completed at that distant outpost before the Hunter left for the Golden Pitcher.
On March 30 it was back at Sky Harbor, and another general inspection was done. She ran quickly through the items, and found that an air-lock door had been replaced in the port cargo hold, and the jump engines had required repairs. She wondered what the problem had been with the door, but the record didn’t say. As to the engines, she wasn’t skilled enough to understand the significance of the damages. She saw only that numbered parts were installed and the engine pronounced okay.
The name of the technician was Gaerhard. She couldn’t make out the first name. But it shouldn’t matter.
She passed on through a few more pages, thanked Jacob, and left.
7
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Intimations of Immortality, 1807 C.E.
The following evening, Kim caught a shuttle to the Star Queen Hotel. The onetime liner was brilliantly illuminated, and pictures from groundside showed that, at least for this one night, there was a new star in the heavens.
No two interstellar liners look completely alike. Even those sharing the same basic design are painted and outfitted so there can be no question of their uniqueness. Some have a kind of rococo appearance, like a vast manor house brought in from the last century; others resemble malls, complete with walkways and parks; and still others have the brisk efficiency of a modern hotel complex. Starships, of course, have few limitations with regard to design, the prime specification being simply that they not disintegrate during acceleration or course change.
The Star Queen looked like a small city on a dish. The approach tube was designed to provide maximum view. Kim had seen virtuals of the Queen, but the real thing, up close, took her breath away.
The new owners had worked hard to create the impression of a living vessel that might leave at any time for Sinus or Sol. An enormous digital banner amidships displayed her name in proud black letters.
There were about a dozen people in the shuttle. Most, she judged, were upper-level employees of various Sky Harbor corporations, coming over for the party. One of the men tried to engage her in conversation, but she squirmed and looked uncomfortable and he got the message. She was not necessarily averse to adventures on the road, but at the moment she was too deeply caught up in her own thoughts to spoil the occasion fencing with a prowling male.
There was music at the dock, and automated porters, and hotel representatives anxious to assist. A news team stood off to one side interviewing someone Kim couldn’t see.
She’d been on the Queen once before, when she was fresh out of college, as an Institute intern. She wandered now among its display rooms to refresh her memories of that earlier trip. Here was a memorial to Max Esterly, portraying him poised in thought over a computer console, presumably designing the engines which had made the Queen class of liners possible. And there was the presidential suite in which Jennifer Granville had drawn up the Articles.