Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [72]
Solly had fallen asleep. Kim was weary but she wanted to hang on until she found out what would happen. If indeed anything would happen. She’d begun to fast-forward through the conversations, planning to come back later and listen more closely. Sometimes Kane was alone in the pilot’s room, reading, writing in a notebook, occasionally doing sketches on a pad which he kept on a side table. She thought she detected an early version of the Autumn.
She was moving quickly through the record when she saw, for the first time, an empty pilot’s room. A klaxon was sounding and lights were blinking. She noted the time: 11:17 P.M., February 17, the fifth day of the mission.
The picture went to a split screen, adding a shadowy area that she recognized as the engine room.
She woke Solly.
“Problem with the jump engines, looks like,” he said.
“But they’re in flight, right? Coasting. The jump engines aren’t actually doing anything at this point, are they?”
“They’re still online,” Solly explained, “and any of a number of things can go wrong.” He brought up the data stream and examined it for a few minutes. “Auxiliary feed system,” he said. “It’s a redundant safety feature. Monitors the antimatter flow controls during the jump. If there’s a problem, it takes over.”
“You mean the engines would still work okay without the system in place?”
“Oh, sure. But you don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because antimatter is a cranky fuel. It has a tendency to blow out controls. If the secondary system isn’t there, and you get any kind of overload at all, you can kiss your baby blues goodbye.”
Solly switched back to the visual record in time to see Kane come down the stairs into the engine room. Emily, wrapped in a robe, was right behind him. He paused before a console, touched it, and the alarms died. “It’s okay,” he told her. “We’re not in danger.”
He sat down at a monitor and was paging through schematics when the others arrived. “It’s the auxiliary feed system,” he said. “We’re going to have to abort the mission.”
“Abort?” Emily looked stricken. “Is it really that serious? Can’t we fix it?”
Kim knew she would have asked whether they were in trouble.
“I can jury-rig it temporarily. But we don’t want to be running around the Golden Pitcher with a busted AFS.”
“Why not?” asked Tripley. “What exactly is the risk?”
“Hard to put a number on it. It’s a safety device that we won’t need unless we need it. If you follow me. But my opinion doesn’t matter. The regs require us to head back.”
“Who’d ever know?”
“I would. We die out here, it’d be my responsibility.” He took a deep breath. “It’s not the end of the world, Kile. There’ll be another day.”
“Yeah.” Tripley glared at the engine as if it had deliberately betrayed him. “Okay, what do we do now?”
“I need a few hours to work on it. Make some temporary repairs. We’ll get out of hyper and do the job. When I’m finished, we’ll jump back in and head for home.”
“They have to get out of hyperspace,” Solly explained, answering the question he saw in her face, “in case something goes wrong. It’s a precaution against getting stranded.”
“Bingo,” said Kim. “This is where the encounter happens.”
“Home?” Tripley said. “Why not St. Johns? Why go all the way back home?”
“It’s a major job. Not the kind of thing they do out there. They’d do what I’m about to, put together a patchwork solution. But to get recertified for flight, we need Sky Harbor.”
Emily gazed up at Tripley. “I’m sorry, Kile.” She made a sympathetic face.
“Okay,” he said. “Do it. Goddammit.”
Kane opened a channel to the AI. “Hunter, abort TDI. Take us out.”
“Wait a minute,” said Kim. “Are they near a star?”
“Don’t know,” said Solly. “Depends how you define near. If you mean inside a planetary system, I’d say it’s real unlikely.”
“Then this isn’t right. They have to go sight-seeing. They have to decide to come out near one of the seven stars.”
Solly shook his head. “It’s not going to happen.”
She watched Tripley leave the pilot’s room, watched Emily and Kane belt down. The AI counted