“Alive? That’s a crock of—”
“What if it’s not?” I interjected.
“Even if the ships were sentient and happen to take pity on us, what good would it do?” Ana-Zhi asked. “The passage is closed.”
“Not necessarily,” Chiraine said.
“Yes, necessarily,” Ana-Zhi said. “That’s how the Fountain works.”
“In my research for the Shima I found some data about a clandestine experiment that they had conducted in 2329.”
I wracked my brain for the details about that mission. I knew that Beck Salvage had been hired by the Ly’uth to go into the Fountain in 2329, and I seemed to remember that the Shima had also been granted access in ’29.
“Who did they hire to go in for them?” I asked.
“Allegro,” Chiraine said. “And they managed to smuggle in some kind of long-range scanner… ‘shear’-something—”
“A radiant shear transmitter?” I offered. It was a low-energy scanner that was used a lot in asteroid prospecting.
“That’s it!” Chiraine said. “Anyway, Allegro hid this scanner thing somewhere on Ordilon and pointed it the Fountain. Ten years later Allegro went back. This time for SPRD, but they did a side job for the Shima and collected the data pod from the scanner.”
“I’m sure the nitty-gritty of data collection is all very exciting to academics like you, princess, but some of us need to get some rest,” Ana-Zhi said.
“It should be interesting to all of us,” Chiraine said sharply. “Because when they analyzed the data, the Shima scientists were convinced that the Fountain doesn’t fully close. They believed that it could be opened from this side—at any time.”
Ana-Zhi shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. The Rhya have shared their data with our scientists. It’s been studied for decades. We know for a fact that the passage only opens every seven to ten years.”
“Yes, from our side,” Chiraine said emphatically. “But what if what the Shima learned was true?”
This was making my brain explode. In the back of my mind, I had resigned myself to being stuck here for as long as a decade. Could we actually have a chance of getting home now?
I turned to Chiraine and snapped, “Why didn’t you mention this earlier? Like when we were freaking out on Bandala?”
She gave it right back to me. “That’s exactly why I didn’t mention it earlier! Because you were freaking out, and I didn’t want to distract us with something that’s a massive long shot anyway. Is that okay with you?”
“Sorry.” I took a deep breath.
“We’re all frazzled,” Ana-Zhi said. “Let’s get some shut-eye and discuss this in the morning. I need some time to process.”
“Agreed,” Chiraine said.
We made our way back to the crew quarters in silence. Ana-Zhi stopped off to give Qualt some water and teinsticks.
Down in the narrow hallway that led to a half dozen small cabins, I briefly considered asking Chiraine if she wanted some overnight company, but her stern expression and curt ‘good night’ answered my question before I could ask it.
I awoke the next morning feeling tired and disoriented. It took me a minute to remember where I was—on a Mayir Crusader Party ship in the Hodierna galaxy. We had been here over a week.
Back on the other side of the Fountain, there would be a lot of chaos. None of the expeditionary teams had returned. The Rhya wardens had been attacked.
What would the Shima be doing right now? And Uncle Wallace? This gig was supposed to be Beck Salvage’s lifeline—the one thing that could prevent the company from collapsing.
The news would reach my friends, of course. And Lirala.
I felt a little pang of something when I thought of her. I wasn’t sure what it was. Concern? Fear? Longing? My relationship with my fiancée was very complicated.
Someone else also came into my mind when I thought of Lir: a girl I had only met once, spoken with twice (I think), but definitely shared a bed with.
Preity Kapoor. Pretty was how I thought of her, although I knew she hated that nickname. She was almost the complete opposite of Lirala and she shouldn’t mean anything to me, but she did.
Yeah, complicated.
I quickly dressed and looked around the crew quarters for Chiraine and Ana-Zhi, but apparently I was the only one who slept in this morning.
I found them both up on the bridge.
“Good news, junior,” Ana-Zhi said. “Well, good news and bad news, really.”
“Don’t call me that.” I wasn’t fully awake and was feeling a bit cranky.
She grinned at me. “Touchy. What should I call you?”
“How about ‘Captain’? Does that work?”
Chiraine stifled a giggle with her hand.
“Well, Captain, the gaggle of cognitive tracer AIs I ran overnight finally came up with something. It’s kind of what I thought: a bum triode in an isolator module is messing with the weave.”
“Good. Did you replace it?”
“Yes I did, but the replacement went bad too.”
That wasn’t good. “Well then, it’s not the triode, is it?” I said brusquely.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Chiraine said, half under her breath.
“Don’t bother me none,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Can we focus here, for a second?” I said. “Obviously, the problem is upstream.”
“Obviously,” Ana-Zhi said with a little smirk. “Fact of the matter is that there’s a little discharge retainer thingy connected to the module and that’s what got messed up when the cthulian decided to use our ship for juggling practice.”
I tried a more conciliatory tone. “I’m glad you are so on top of things, Ana-Zhi. So, did you replace that?”
“That’s the bad news part. Discharge retainers never fail. We don’t have any back-up stock on board.”
“Never fail?” Chiraine asked.
“Except now,” I said. “So can we fab one?”
“Sure we can, but, according to the KB, we need some mimonite.”
“Never heard of it.”
Chiraine perked up. “Is it also called a Cassandra Stone?”
“That sounds familiar.”
She jumped on a data pad. “I think it is…”
A few seconds later Chiraine jabbed the screen triumphantly. “Yes. Mimonite is also known as Cassandra Stone or Comet’s Tears. It’s a fairly common mineral—”
“Well, I haven’t heard of
