“Of course. I'm just thinking what we'd have to go through to manage this and where we'd be if it fell through. I mean, it's not exactly a routine rescue mission. If nothing happened, whoever ordered it would be laughed out of business.” He took a deep breath. “You can't even be sure there'd be anybody alive on the thing, can you?”
“There's no way-”
“That's what I thought. How many ships do you need?”
“Twenty.”
He shook his head. Cleared his throat.
Alex didn't have much patience left. “I don't think you understand, Kareem. The event was predicted. By Dr. Michaels here. Lives are at stake.”
“I understand perfectly, Alex. And I wouldn't want you to draw the wrong conclusion. We'd like very much to help. But you're asking me to send twenty patrol units out in-when was that again? — two weeks?”
“Ten days.”
“And where would they be going?”
“Taiulus Zeta.”
“Taiulus Zeta,” he said.
Shara showed him where it was.
“Hell, they'd need seven or eight days just to get there.”
“Five days and twenty-one hours.”
“How is it that a ship that got lost two thousand years ago still has power?”
“I know it's hard to believe.”
“Hard? Try impossible, people. Even if I wanted to go, I could never sell this to the director. Do you know what would happen to me if I took this in to him?”
“You'd have to explain it,” said Alex. “Look, Kareem, I know this is pretty wild stuff, but the science is valid.”
Kareem pressed his fingertips against his forehead. It's not easy to refuse a friend. “Alex, this would maybe be a little easier to sell, though I suspect not much, if you weren't involved in this black-box thing.”
“That's another issue.”
“I know. But it's the first connection they'll make.” He shook his head. “Let me ask a question: Is anyone in imminent danger here?”
“The people on the Airfares.”
“Who may not even exist. Is there a possibility of property loss?”
“It's not what we're talking about.”
“Of course it is. That's our mission, Alex. To protect and defend. We're effectively a rescue service. You get in trouble out there, we're the guys who ride in and bail you out. And we do that, by the way, within the confines of the Confederacy. Now, you need to be aware that we have limited resources. We have enormous coverage responsibilities and a minimum of equipment with which to operate. Right now, Villanueva is tying up a substantial number of our resources. So what happens if we send a large squadron out to chase this specter of yours, and somebody needs help somewhere else? Maybe people die because we don't have anybody available to go to the rescue?
“Look, I'd love to help. I really would. This is a fascinating story, and there might even be something to it. But we're just not in a position to take it on.”
For a long moment we all just sat there staring at one another. Then Alex got up. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks, anyhow.”
“I'm sorry, Alex. You might try Survey.”
Our reception at the Department of Planetary Survey and Astronomical Research wasn't much of an improvement. “I understand your concern,” we were told by an oversized woman who kept looking around the room as if she'd lost something, “but you have to understand that missing ships don't come within our purview. Unidentified vehicles that might have come from somewhere else- Now, that's something we'd be interested in. We'd certainly react to the possibility of uncovering an alien civilization, but that's not what you claim to have here.”
“Well,” said Alex, “it's possible. Maybe they are aliens. We're not really sure what it is.”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Benedict. But I think you've made yourself perfectly clear. I suspect, though, this is the sort of mission that StarCorps would love to sink their teeth into.”
Alex called Senator Delmar. She listened patiently, even sympathetically. She was out in the mountains somewhere, probably skiing. It was her favorite diversion. We could see a snowcapped peak through a window, and Delmar tended to gaze at it while Alex described what was needed.
When he'd finished, she hesitated, letting us see that she was giving intense consideration to something she didn't take at all seriously.
“Alex,” she said finally, “I'd like to help. But this, coming after the AI thing, just won't fly. I wouldn't be able to get anybody to support it.” She took a deep breath. “What kind of evidence do you have? Can you really back up any of this?”
We showed her the visuals. She looked shocked. “Send me a copy of the entire package. I'll show it to Larry.”
“Larry is-?”
“Larry Decker, the science advisor.”
We sent within the hour. Delmar got back to us later that afternoon. “They're telling me it's a long shot, Alex. We don't have the resources to chase it down. I'm sorry.”
“People are trapped out there, Senator-”
“The consensus is that the recordings are a misinterpretation of something else.”
“They think it's a hoax.”
“They didn't say that. But I can't find anyone who seriously believes that, even if you're right and they are ships lost in time, that anybody could be alive on them. What I'm hearing is that it's only an AI making the transmissions.” She read Alex's expression. “I'm sorry. Something like this, when StarCorps already has its hands full dealing with the Villanueva problem- Alex, it would be political suicide.”
We tried some of our other connections, but nobody knew us anymore. Like to help, they said. Unfortunately, ancient ships are a hard sell. Javis Bollinger, an assistant to Rimway's Secretary of the Environment, commented that, while he sympathized with what Alex was trying to do, his projects were “propelling us into the silly season.” First, black boxes. Now this. Anybody who wanted to be taken seriously, he said, wouldn't dare touch it. “Sorry, Alex. We owe you quite a lot. I know that, and the Secretary knows it. But this has disaster written all over it.”
Meantime, though the box controversy continued to rage, the crank messages had fallen off. Most of the attention now was being directed at organizations who were actually sponsoring the rescue missions. “I'm grateful for that,” Jacob told me. “Reading the mail we've been getting is depressing. I mean, I can understand some people might have a different perspective, but why do they persist in assuming that Alex is a maniac? Or a thief? At the very least, I'd think they would realize he has a filter and is not reading or listening to their tirades. That it gets left to somebody like me.”
“Human nature,” I said. “We seem to produce a lot of idiots. Maybe there's a nitwit hiding inside each of us.”
“I do not think you need to worry, Chase.”
“Thank you, Jacob.”
“And keep in mind my programing would not allow me to say that if I did not mean it.”
I wasn't sure, but I thought I caught a wink in there somewhere.
“We'll have to charter the ships,” said Alex.
“That'll be expensive. How many?”
“We'll be out there for at least four weeks. I think five is about as high as we can go.”
“All right.”
“What's wrong?”
“It's going to strain our resources. There's not much left after buying the lander.”
“I know. We're going to try to do this on credit.”
