emanating from the speakers. “Do you actually think you can make this work?” he asked.
“I think, with your assistance, Charlie, we will do pretty well.”
“I hope so. If the mission were to go wrong, it might be a long time before anybody else tries to help.”
“I'm aware of that,” he said.
“Okay,” said Alex. “Dr. Drummond, are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course, Alex. We've already decided about this. We're going to make the effort. If Charlie wants to help, we'd be grateful. But with or without him, we'll be going.”
Alex raised his voice slightly: “Charlie? Do you want to try this?”
“Yes. I am inclined to trust Dr. Drummond.”
“Okay,” Alex said finally. “When do you plan to leave, Doctor?”
“We'll pick Charlie up in three days. In the morning. And, by the way-”
“Yes?”
“My friends call me 'Doc.'“
The night before Charlie left, we threw a party for him.
TWENTY-NINE
We are better than our culture. Load us down with prejudice, equip us with indifference, and we will nevertheless, at the critical moment, cast the nonsense aside and find our true selves.
“Same routine,” Alex said. “We'll send Belle out to the launch point and give it two weeks. If she doesn't see anything, we move on.”
“Okay.” I sat down at my desk, ready to call Belle.
“One more thing before we get started. I've been trying to get through to Shara. She's in conference, and I want to run this black-hole thing by her first before we take it any further. Make sure it makes sense. That we didn't overlook something.”
“All right, Alex. Just let me know.”
He was going out the door when Jacob broke in: “Call coming in now, Alex.”
Shara loves a good party. But when she's talking physics, she keeps her emotions locked down. So I was entranced watching her eyes widen as Alex explained what he'd been doing. “I've sent you everything I have,” Alex said. “The Sanusar events consistently occur along the black-hole tracks. Not all of them, but that's probably because we don't have enough information on the black holes.”
He put it on a display.
Shara stared at it. “That's incredible, Alex.” She touched the screen in front of her, her fingers spread out, as if it were a sacred object. “You have, what, eleven sightings, and seven of them are located along the tracks. No way that can be a coincidence.” She broke into a huge smile. “If this is correct, you could win the Walton Award.”
Alex tried to look modest. “When,” I asked, “was the last time an antique dealer won the top science prize?”
“Well, I'll tell you: Carolyn Walton would have been proud of you. And you'll get my vote.” She couldn't get her eyes off the display. “I still can't believe this, Alex.”
“Why?”
“The basic time-space fabric is supposed to be immutable. You can bend it, but you can't permanently damage it. You can't warp it. I don't know how to phrase it, but it's not supposed to be capable of behaving this way.”
“Well, maybe that's a position that's going to have to be reconsidered.”
“That may be.” Her eyes closed momentarily, then opened even wider. “The Capella/' she said.
“Yes.”
“The dates match. Rimway was near the track when they launched.” The look she gave Alex made it pretty clear she'd have been delighted to drag him into a bed at that moment. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Where'd it come from?”
“Winter's notebooks.”
“Well,” she said, “I'm impressed. And by the way, I've got another piece of evidence that supports your idea that these Sanusar objects are ancient vehicles.”
“What's that, Shara?”
“I've been doing some research. Some of the early drive units did fade in and out. Same way they've been reporting from the sightings.”
Alex nodded. “It looks as if, once Robin confirmed that the ships were actually ancient, he tried to duplicate the process. So he took the junk yachts out, put them in the middle of the track, and directed the AI to make a jump. I think one of them, maybe the third attempt, didn't emerge where it was supposed to. If it happened that way, he would have known he was right.”
“The next step,” she said, “would have been to try to get control of the process. Send it out somewhere and try to find it afterward. But how would you do that?”
Shara looked at me. “I'd want,” I said, “to have the AI call Skydeck when it surfaced again. That means you have to arrange for a short jump, if you have any control at all. But if it uses the hyperlink to call in, then it's no problem.”
“I wonder,” she said, “if the jumps are consistent? Same duration? And same distance covered each time?”
“They are consistent,” said Alex.
Shara looked surprised again. “How do you know?”
“Robin showed up twice in advance of sightings. He knew when and where. That sounds like consistency to me.”
“Excellent,” she said. “So what's the next step?”
“We're going after the Firebird.”
“Again?”
“Yes. We should do better this time. We know the launch point now. All we have to do is follow the track.”
THIRTY
If you would give your life, give it in a good cause. Man the guns while your comrades get clear of the valley. Spare no effort to save a child swept out by the tide. Regardless of risk, be there when needed. It is the definition of a hero.
We launched Belle. The same day, Doc Drummond, Charlie, and the doctor's team slipped quietly away from Rimway, while Alex, hoping to talk about the lost ships, accepted an invitation to appear on The Mia Komico Show. But he inadvertently caused a problem. Mia, of course, was unfailingly polite, an attractive young dark-haired dark- eyed woman who loved to catch her guests contradicting earlier statements, which she seemed always to be ready to show her audience.
The setting for the show moved from week to week. On this occasion, she and Alex were seated on benches
