Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [70]
During the balance of that first day, and for much of the time following, the pilot’s room was empty. The clock leaped forward over durations of several hours at a time. The calendar began to click off numbers. At precisely 8:00 A.M. daily, Kane entered, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or another of the crew, and studied the control panel. He talked to the AI, in effect asking it whether there were any anomalies, whether it foresaw any difficulties, whether there were anything it wished to call to his attention. The interactions acquired a ceremonial quality.
“It’s a precaution,” Solly said. “Required by the regs. They’ve built in a lot of redundancy, so it’s hard to imagine any sequence of events that could lead to trouble without alarms going off in plenty of time. Still, we all go through the same routine. Truth is, I think it’s intended to make the pilot feel as if he’s got something to do.”
Here for the first time Kim saw the living Yoshi Amara. She was vibrant and alive and full of enthusiasm for the mission, absolutely convinced that they would not come home without success. She was, Kim thought, a gorgeous young woman. Dark hair, dark eyes, offset by a gold chain and a gold bracelet.
“She must have had money,” said Solly.
Kile Tripley seemed to enjoy the pilot’s room. Other than the pilot, he spent more time there than anyone, often slumped back in the right-hand chair, his long legs crossed, usually reading, sometimes making notes. When Kane was present, or one of his colleagues, he tended to talk about what it would be like to round the curve of a new world, gliding into the night, and see patches of light across its continents. Kim understood that he’d made that run countless times, and that the night had always remained unbroken. As it had through the whole of human history.
“Can you imagine what it would mean,” Tripley said over and over, “if we can find them?” Not whether they’re there, but if we can find them.
Kim saw what Tripley apparently did not, that Kane did not believe there was anything to find; or if there was, that it was so thoroughly lost among the stars that there could be no realistic hope for success. We could continue crossing the terminators without result, his dark eyes implied, until we get tired of it and find a more useful outlet for the Foundation’s resources.
But he must have seen no point in actively discouraging his employer. Yes, he said, the Golden Pitcher’s rich with class Gs, yellow suns like Sol and Helios. Travel time among them would be relatively short. They could cover a lot of ground in a year.
We will cover a lot of ground, Tripley would say. And: “We’re going to do it this time, Markis. I know it.”
Kane inevitably responded with a nod and an abstract gaze, agreeing with Tripley but informing Kim that this was the conversation they always had. And nobody had ever found anything.
She was looking for an indication of tension between the two, but there was nothing to imply they did not get along, even though the personalities of the two men were vastly different: Kane was cool, deliberative, skeptical, methodical. Tripley was a believer, inclined to follow his emotions. But his instincts were good, and he was generally rational, other than his fixation on celestials. He had his own vision of the world and did not allow reality to intrude. Had he been devoted to religion, he would have been among those who argued that there was a God and a heaven, because otherwise what would be the point of life? Kim’s overall impression was that he was a man who had never quite grown up. But it was clear he was utterly devoid of malice. She discarded the possibility that he might have killed Yoshi. Or anyone.
She glanced at his record. He had completed twenty-nine missions in search of his grail, totaling almost twenty-five years off-world. That qualified him as a fanatic, an Ahab. No wonder Hunter’s motto was Persistence.
Later, to Emily, Kane delivered a more realistic assessment: “We’d need a hundred of these boats,” he said. “A thousand. Headed