Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [90]
There was a sketch on the wall.
A ringed world.
She pulled the rest of the drapes down.
It was hard to make out in the uncertain light. But the planet was part of a mural embodying a woman. Another Emily. No question: her own image, brave and resigned, smiled out at her. She looked as she had on the Hunter, wearing the blue jacket open at the throat, her hair shoulder length, her eyes pensive. The ringed world was in her left hand.
And there was something in her right.
Kim went closer with the lamp, trying to make it out.
It looked like a turtle-shell.
She stared at it while the chill from the water crept into her bones. A flared teardrop on an elliptical platform.
The toy warship.
The turtle-shell vessel from Ben Tripley’s office.
It was the Valiant!
There was more: Although most of the sketch had faded during its long immersion, the background had been filled with star fields and—what? Roiling clouds? Impossible to be sure. But there, in one corner was the unmistakable image of NGC2024. The Horsehead Nebula.
Horsehead and ringed world and turtle-shell and Emily. All she could think of was Turtles all the way down.
The water seemed to have gotten colder and the suit’s automatic heating function wasn’t keeping up. She adjusted the control a couple of degrees, and then started taking pictures.
The most logical explanation was that the Valiant had been a real ship, and that Kane had once served on it. But it seemed unlikely that Ben Tripley would not be aware of that piece of information, would not in fact be conversant with every known make of starship. That was, after all, his business.
She moved in close and peered at the vessel.
No propulsion tubes. Just like the model.
What kind of ship didn’t have propulsion tubes?
She caught her breath: Was the bookshelf model a reproduction of a vessel from another civilization? A celestial? The Horsehead was in Orion, and would have been visible along the projected course of the Hunter. If there had in fact been contact, Kane and Kile Tripley might each have recorded it in his own way, one in a painting, the other by using a tech shop to build a reproduction. Her earlier guess that Ben Tripley’s model starship was a replica of a vessel from another place suddenly looked quite prescient.
Something caught her eye, a movement, a flicker, outside the range of her lamp. Over near the hole she’d cut in the door. A fish momentarily passing through the light?
She put the imager away, wondering if it would be worthwhile to arrange for a team to come in and recover the wall, to bring it out into the sun. The villa had been abandoned, so surely she could do that without legal consequences.
The thought drained away as she became aware that light was coming from the passageway. It was dim, barely perceptible, but it was there.
She shut off her lamp and backed into a corner. Marine life. It had to be: a luminous eel of some sort, probably. Nevertheless, she edged toward one of the windows. The frames were jammed with broken glass.
She did a final survey of the room, refusing to be rattled, and was rewarded with the sight of a mug all but buried in the silt. When she picked it up and wiped it off, she saw that it was emblazoned with the designator and seal of the 376. She added it to the Medal of Valor.
The illumination grew brighter. A soft green glow, like phosphorous.
She pushed off the wall and drifted easily across the room, getting an angle so she could look out into the passageway without getting too close.
A pair of eyes stared back. Great, green, unblinking eyes. They locked on her.
Intelligent.
Mad.
She could see no head, only the eyes, floating almost independent of one another just outside in the corridor. They were big. Enormous. Too large to belong to any creature that could have reasonably fit