Echo (36 page)

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Authors: Jack McDevitt

Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Adventure, #Fiction

BOOK: Echo
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“Okay.”
“If it comes after us, we take it down. No hesitation. And no second thoughts later.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Gabe, where’s our cub?”
“It’s in Chase’s seat. It seems to have calmed down a bit.”
“Okay. Good. If it starts to get upset again, play the MacIntyre Symphony. Loud. Okay? Crank up the volume as much as you have to. I don’t want Mom to hear her cub.”
He switched on the bracelet link.
“Ready?”
“Go.”
He turned up the volume on my bracelet, and the pup’s cries, yowls and sniffles and shrieks, filled the building.
The creature turned.
It hesitated. Looked up toward the empty viewport, bared a long set of fangs, and howled.
Then it came running in our direction.
Alex and I didn’t need any prompting. We ran for the mound of snow and ducked behind it as the mother roared in through the hole. Alex increased the volume in the other link, the one planted in back, and shut off mine. I’m not sure what Mom was doing because both of us were hiding behind the snow. But I could hear the cub’s cries and yelps coming from that back passageway. The creature stomped around a bit, apparently confused. Then it let out a roar and charged to the rear. I stuck my head up just in time to see it vanish through the door. We scrambled for the exit.
 
The outer hatch was, of course, still closed. Alex leaped onto the ladder and pushed the panel that should have opened the airlock, but nothing happened.
No time to monkey around. I tossed him my cutter. He switched it on and started to burn his way in.
“Hurry, Alex,”
said Gabe.
I wanted to scream at him to shut up for a couple of minutes. Stop distracting everybody. But I said nothing.
Then he was back:
“Mom found the link.”
“Okay.”
“And shut it off.”
Probably tromped on it.
 
We were still cutting our way into the lock when the creature came out of the polygon. She saw us and snarled and bared enormous teeth and went into a kind of loping gallop.
The whole wide world knew we were not going to get the hatch open in time.
“Chase
.
”
Alex glanced over his shoulder as I aimed the scrambler.
“Don’t shoot. Get on the ladder.”
He grabbed one of the rungs himself.
I climbed on beside him.
“Gabe,”
he said.
“Lift off.”
Nothing happened.
“Gabe, take us up.”
Still no response.
“Belle,”
I jumped in. “Take us up. Quick.”
“Working on it, Chase. It’s a little more complicated from here.”
“There’s a time factor,” I said.
The ground fell away, and I saw saliva flying from Mom’s lips as she made a desperate grab for us. But we were out of reach. All she could do was stand down there and throw branches and rocks at the trees.
It was hard to imagine our little panda growing up to look like that.
 
“Not too high,”
said Alex. He was trying not to look down as the forest dropped below us.
I picked out a hilltop and told Belle to make for it. “Take it slowly. No sudden stops or turns.”
“Have no fear, Chase.”
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t dangling on a frozen rung over the treetops.
The hill was far enough to be safe but close enough that the mother could reach it in a few minutes. We descended into the forest again. We broke off more branches, and we both came away with scrapes and cuts. But we were down.
We finished putting the hole through the outer hatch, got into the airlock, and pushed the pad to open the inner door. The pup was dazed, but okay. It didn’t especially want to cooperate, but it didn’t like us very much. So when we got inside, it took its first opportunity to get out.
The outer hatch was going to remain useless for the rest of the voyage. That wasn’t especially good, but it was a minor inconvenience compared to what might have happened.
We were getting ready to lift off when Belle mentioned that Mom had arrived. She and her pup were standing at the edge of the forest, watching us. I couldn’t resist waving.
THIRTY
Home. It is the place where once we lived and laughed, where we grew up with the assumption that all would be well, where we met our first love, where life stretched endlessly ahead. This is the place that now becomes a desert of the heart.
—Kory Tyler,
Musings
, 1412
 
 
 
 
 
Gabe would be out of action until we got home. The pup had also broken some lamps, cracked a couple of gauges, dislodged a seat, and disconnected a circuit. He was lucky he hadn’t been electrocuted. Outside, his mother had taken out two sets of sensors. We’d cut a hole in the outer hatch, thereby depriving the airlock of its utility. We had replacements aboard the
Belle-Marie
for everything except Gabe and the hatch, so there was nothing we couldn’t live with.
Alex, pretending to be tough-minded now that the crisis was over, commented that he hoped we’d remember to close the outer hatch next time, and if anything like that happened again, we’d juice the animal. We were in the air again, circling the polygon at about three hundred meters, while Alex studied the building, and I set about patching things as best I could before we lifted into orbit. “I wonder who they were?” I said.
He produced a bottle of wine, cracked it open, and filled two glasses. He handed me one and raised his. “To the little green men.”
“Who weren’t there.” I touched his glass with mine and drained it. I felt as if I needed it. Endless forest spread out on all sides. “You think this was the source of the tablet?”
“I don’t know. It might have been part of a marker down there.”
“Isn’t it worth the effort to look?”
“If there was a reasonable chance of success. And if we actually had the tablet. As the situation stands, I don’t think we’re going to find the answers we want on the ground. But whatever happened, I think we know now why Tuttle didn’t get excited.”
“I guess.”
 
We ran into turbulent weather during the ascent. “I can understand why nobody ever put a colony here,” I said.
“You talking about the ape, Chase?”
“No. Big predators are unavoidable, I guess. But this place has no moon. The climate would be unpredictable. Unstable.”
“I guess so. I was thinking that it’s too close to the sun. We were almost at the pole, and it was cold, but not frigid. Imagine what it must be like near the equator.”
We broke out of the clouds but were still being tossed around by heavy wind gusts. “Alex, I’ve a question for you.”
“Okay.”
“When people ask whether you believe there’s anyone else in the Milky Way, other than us and the Mutes, you always say you don’t know. That there are probably a few others. That, since there are at least two in the Orion Arm, there should be others
somewhere
, but that they will be extremely rare. But you usually go on to admit that maybe you’re wrong, and the place, except for us and the Mutes,
is
empty. When you say that, people always get annoyed.”
“I know.”
“Why do you think that is?”
Alex smiled. “Why do they want so desperately to find somebody else?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, as the politicians say when they don’t know how to respond, that’s an interesting question. I mean, we’d be a lot safer if we were alone.”
“Do you have a theory?”
“How do
you
feel about it?”
“I’m not sure. Given my preferences, I don’t think I’d want to live in a galaxy where we were the only ones.”
“Why?”
“I don’t
know
why. I just think I’d rather take my chances that somebody else might be unfriendly rather than he not be there at all.”
“Yeah.” Alex fished another link out of his seat pouch and inserted it into his neck chain. Then he dropped the chain into a pocket. “We seem to be social critters, Chase. I don’t think we like being alone, either as individuals or as a species.”
I put the glass down and went back to calibrating the relays that the cub had scrambled. “I guess,” I said.
“You have another idea?”
“The universe is too big.”
“How do you mean?”
“We seem to have a spiritual dimension. And don’t ask me what that means because I’m not sure. Maybe a need to believe in a higher power, that the universe is made for us in some indefinable way. But to have a universe like this, so big that light from some places won’t reach us in the lifetime of the species—Well, that just makes it seem as if we’re of no consequence. We’re just an accident. A by-product. Maybe even a waste product.”
Alex asked whether I wanted more wine. I’d already violated my code, which required abstinence during operations, but it had been a tough landing. In several ways. Still, enough was enough. So I passed.
“I’ve never thought of you as being religious, Chase.”
“I’m not, really. I don’t think about it much. Except sometimes out here. But I suspect that’s what’s behind the desire to find others. Maybe we’re really looking for God. For somebody who knows we’re here. Does that make any kind of sense?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. It’s a bit metaphysical for me.”
“I just don’t know. But I do know that, whatever the reason, the thought of a universe with just us and the Mutes is depressing.”
 
“Alex,”
said Belle,
“I can confirm the existence of another world in the biozone.”
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Range from the sun is two hundred five million klicks. It appears to be slightly larger than Echo II. I haven’t been able to get a good look at it, but there’s no question it’s there, and there’s a high probability it’s a terrestrial.”
“Are we picking up any electronic signals?”
“Negative, Alex. It’s silent.”
“Damn.” His head dropped back, and he glared at the overhead. “We’re just not going to get a break, are we?”
 
Echo III was on the far side of the sun. To save fuel, we took our time getting over there. Meanwhile, I worked on the lander. I replaced the damaged parts but couldn’t lock the chair down properly. If we used the vehicle again, Alex would have to sit in back. And there was nothing I could do about the outer hatch. So getting in and out would be a battle. But we’d manage.
It was indeed terrestrial, and it had a big moon, broad green continents, and sparkling blue oceans. A second living world. It was unusual to find two of them in a single system.
We were coming in on the daylight side. The polar regions were snow-bound. Mountain chains cut across the face of the world. There were inland seas. An enormous canyon, almost continentwide, cut through one landmass. High in the northern latitudes, a volcano was erupting. “Anything in orbit?” asked Alex.
“I do not see anything.”
Belle was putting everything on the displays. We were watching them, watching forests and plains slide past. And suddenly Alex stiffened. “Look,” he said.
A city!
I wasn’t positive until we kicked the magnification up a couple of notches. But there it was, towers and rectangles glittering in broad sunlight along one of the shores. Piers stretching out into the ocean. Streets crisscrossing each other.
Yes!
It might not be aliens, but we had
something
. “Not supposed to be anybody out here,” I said.
We might or might not have found an alien civilization, but we had at the very least located one that had gotten lost to history. I was about to congratulate him, but he didn’t look receptive. “Why isn’t there any electronic activity?” he asked.
“Maybe they have a more advanced technology.”
“Okay. Why is nothing moving down there?”
I looked again. At the streets. At a broad walkway that bordered the ocean for the entire length of the city.
At the beach itself.
There was nothing. The waves swept in on an empty shore. Nothing moved anywhere. I saw a couple of animals in one of the streets. Other than that—
“It’s empty,” said Alex.
We were coming in off the ocean, passing over the city. It was implacably still. A bridge lay just ahead, crossing what appeared to be marsh-land. It was narrow, rickety, supported by timbers. One end had collapsed and been partially washed away.

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