Seeker (47 page)

I put Windy in one of the compartments and closed the door.

Needless to say, Shara and Alex were relieved when I pulled alongside the
Spirit
and took them off.

We closed the outer airlock hatch and repressurized. They listened to my account of what had happened, and Alex became solicitous. Was I okay? You did the right thing. No choice.

We debated going back to the
Spirit
to recover Charlie’s body. But it entailed too much risk. We were getting deep into the dwarf’s gravity well. So we took a pass and lifted away, while the
Spirit
continued its long plunge toward the bright red clouds.

Alex got on the circuit with Brankov and guaranteed he’d find the flight worthwhile. He refused to divulge details, but Brankov had no trouble guessing we’d found Balfour.

We welded a patch over the section I’d burned out of the airlock, restoring it to working order.

“I think it’s time,” Alex said, “that we take a look at Balfour.”

The optical equipment on board the Lotus was minimal. The yacht had a single telescope, intended for navigation only, which meant no serious long-range capability and no fine-tuning. We couldn’t make out much planetary detail until we were virtually on top of the place. The atmosphere, a gauzy cloud-filled envelope, looked terrestrial enough. Gradually two island-continents and a vast globe-encircling ocean came into view. We could see a few storms. Polar ice caps appeared. And mountain chains and rivers.

“I guess they knew what they were doing,” said Alex.

Shara looked thoughtful. “I don’t see how it could have made any difference. They couldn’t have survived the transition phase. But it would have been a nice try.”

Alex asked again about ground conditions while the world was being hauled out of orbit.

“It’s unlikely any of the larger land animals could have survived,” Shara said. “After the initial shock, planetary rotation would have been disrupted while it went into tidal lock. That triggers everything. They’d have had turbulent oceans, supersonic hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, you name it.”

“And this would last—?”

“Forty years. Maybe fifty. Maybe longer. It’s not my specialty, but I’d guess it would continue well beyond any capability a colony would have for survival.”

“It looks placid now,” I said.

Blue water, clouds, river valleys. Even the jungles looked inviting. “It’s exactly the right distance from the dwarf,” said Shara.

“For reasonable ground temperatures?”

“Yes. On the facing side, of course. The back side of the world will be pretty cold.”

“Would the ocean freeze?”

“Don’t know.”

Clouds were, for the most part, white cumulus, but colored by the crimson glow of the pseudosun. The storms we’d seen through the scope drifted across the broad expanse of the ocean. Snow lay on some of the higher peaks. “You were right about the jungle,” said Alex. It appeared to be spread across both landmasses.

The
Lotus
burned an exorbitant amount of fuel. Alex had been anxious to get to Balfour, so we came in at a pretty good clip. “I’m going to use the planet to slow us down,” I said. “We’ll go around, about three-quarters of an orbit. A lot of it over the cold side. I’m sorry about that, but there’s not much I can do.”

“Okay,” said Alex. “What then?”

“We’ll come out with an angle that’ll allow us to go into orbit around the dwarf. When we’ve shed enough velocity we’ll come back here. Less stress on everybody and a lot easier on the fuel.”

Alex looked wistfully at the arc of the world. “Wish we had a lander,” he said.

“The
Gonzalez
will have one.”

Shara laughed. “I’m sure Emil will be happy to accompany you down.”

We were in orbit around the dwarf when the
Gonzalez
contacted us and announced it was in the neighborhood. “
What
is
that thing
?” asked Brankov, referring to the dwarf. “
Is that the surprise you promised us
?”

“Yes,” said Alex. “That’s it. Or part of it, anyhow.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“I’m not sure where you are just now, Emil. But can you see the blue planet in orbit around it?”

“Negative.”
His response took more than a minute. So the
Gonzalez
was still at a considerable distance. He was wearing a Beron jacket, one of those stiff models with pockets everywhere.
“Is there a blue planet here somewhere?”
I wasn’t sure whether he was asking us or his pilot.

“In orbit around the dwarf,” said Alex. “A living world.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. That’s interesting. What’s it have to do with us?”

“It used to be in the Tinicum system.”

Brankov grinned. It was a big, what-time-does-the-celebration-start expression.

A few hours later we slipped into an equatorial orbit around Balfour. We were over the dark side during those early minutes, and could see nothing below, except land and water.

We watched the sun rise, and crossed the terminator into the daylight. It was our first leisurely look at the world. Alex was glued to the viewport, and Shara was watching the monitor. They both reacted at the same time, Alex pumping a fist while Shara told me in an excited voice to look.

I saw an inland area on one of the island continents. Other than that—?

Shara tried to enhance. Alex waved me closer to the viewport. Get a better angle, look, down there.

The jungle seemed to have been cleared away and there was a cluster of straight lines. Near a large lake.

“A city?” I said.

“And there,” said Alex. More lines, farther north. Embracing a river.

I’m not sure what I saw in his eyes at that moment. Usually, when we find a new site, he assumes his modest genius appearance. Sometimes, if it’s been a long hunt, he doesn’t bother, and there’s simply a sense of triumph. But I don’t know what it was that time. Delight. Sadness. Wistfulness. Exhilaration. All wrapped together.

“More,” Shara said. Along the southern coastline, but still in the terminator. We counted five clusters.

“Nothing on the other big island,” said Alex.

“That’s because it’s in direct sunlight,” said Shara. “It’s too warm. Everything we’ve seen is in the twilight zone. That’s where the weather would be most comfortable.”

We passed over and lost them. The
Lotus
didn’t have a telescope that could look down to the rear. Alex confronted Shara with a huge smile. “So much for the tidal waves and tornadoes,” he said.

She was frowning. “Shouldn’t have been possible.”

“Sure it was. They rode it out in orbit. In the
Bremerhaven
. They stayed there until things calmed down.”

“For
forty
years?” Shara and I both blurted it out. Nobody was buying that story.

“Yes. That’s why they needed the greenhouses. Look, they needed to get the
Seeker
under way as quickly as possible, so it could get to Earth and, they hoped, trigger a rescue effort. They expected there’d be some survivors on Margolia. But they probably didn’t trust the
Seeker
. It was their best shot, but they weren’t sure. They knew Balfour would eventually become livable and that conditions on Margolia would be extreme. So, before cannibalizing the
Bremerhaven
, they used it to bring some people here.
Then
they stripped it and sent the
Seeker
on its way.

“The Balfour group stayed on board. In orbit. Forty, fifty years. Whatever it took. When conditions settled down on the ground, they were able to go down and establish themselves.”

“That’s why there was no lander,” I said.

“Right. It’s below us, somewhere.”

“How many you figure there were?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Not many, I’d think. As few as they could get away with. Only a few hundred, probably. Maybe not that many. The fewer they had, the better their chances. What’s the minimum number you’d have to have to allow safe reproduction?”

Nobody knew.

Shara stared at the blue world. “Pity,” she said.

“Why? What do you mean?” I asked.

“The cavalry’s a little late.”

Suddenly there was ocean before us again. Behind us, the dwarf-sun sank toward the rim of the planet. The sea was blue and polished and quiet. We rushed toward the darkness.

“That one area,” said Shara, “is probably the only piece of real estate on the planet that has comfortable temperatures. I’ll tell you what I think—”

We never found out because she broke off and
squealed
and pointed at the screen.

Something in the ocean.

“Can you enhance it?” she asked. “It looks—”

Like a
ship
.

It wasn’t much more than a wake. The object leaving it was too small to make out.

“Might be a large fish,” said Alex. I tried to get a better picture but it went fuzzy. “Damn this thing,” he said.

Confirmation came from the
Gonzalez
, which was, as it approached, able to use its telescopes. I’ll never forget Brankov’s first words: “
My God, Alex, they’re
alive
down there
.”

Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island in infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.
— John Stuart Mill,
Three Essays on Religion,
1874 C.E.

Who would have thought?

The
Gonzalez
’s sensors and telescopes keyed on the planetary surface, and they picked up images that were relayed to the
Lotus
. Cities. Bridges and highways. Harbors and parks. Something that looked like a train arced across a canyon. And I thought I caught a glimpse of an aircraft.

Brankov called again: “
There’s an electronic cloud. They’re talking to each other
!” We heard cheering in the background.

I don’t know how to describe the exhilaration of those moments. It almost wiped out my discomfort over the events of the preceding hours. It was a good time. I took a moment to congratulate Alex, to kiss him, and hang on to him in the way sometimes we try to hang on to a special moment, hoping it will never end.

A tidal wave of news broke over us. The
Gonzalez
picked up video signals, music, voices. I tried to get some of it directly using the yacht’s equipment. The sky was filled with traffic.

Alex was ecstatic. Shara pronounced herself dumbfounded. “They’ve been isolated out here more than half of recorded history,” she said. “These people could not have survived.” She literally
glowed
.

A few hours later, the
Gonzalez
came alongside, and we crossed over to handshakes and claps on the back. Have a drink. How’d you guys ever figure this out? They’ve got satellites! Look at this over here: A ball game. With three teams on the field. How long did you say they’ve been out here?

They were throwing the incoming images across banks of monitors and relaying some of it back to Survey.

Alex looked happier than I’d ever seen him. He accepted congratulations from everybody. Shara and I got smooched by every guy on the ship. They weren’t fooling anybody. But what the hell, how often did something like that happen?

Shara’s eyes were bright with emotion. When things calmed down a bit she came over. “You did good, Chase,” she said.

“It was Alex,” I told her. “I’d have let it go a long time ago.”

“Yeah. But I think you deserve a large piece of the credit.” She grinned. “My buddy.”

Those first minutes were filled with images: a tower that had to be part of a radio transmission network, a beach loaded with people, a park with fountains and broad lawns and children. “I guess the lesson,” one of the researchers said, “is that we’re tough little monkeys. We don’t go down easily.”

Brankov stood erect and beaming like a conquering hero. “Biggest discovery in human history,” he said. They raised their cups to Alex, the Margolians, Shara, and finally to me. As I write these words, I’ve a picture of that glorious moment on the wall at my right hand.

We found additional cities. They were all located along the terminator, where weather would be most accommodating. Some had tall needle towers like the City on the Crag, some had vast parks, a couple seemed simply to have spread out haphazardly. One resembled a vast wheel. In each of these places, the inhabitants had beaten back the jungle, literally walled it off.

We saw more aircraft.

And listened to radio broadcasts. “Can’t understand any of it,” said a frustrated Brankov. “I wonder if they know we’re here.”

The AI was assigned to acquire a translation capability.

Brankov had undergone a transformation. The formality and reserve were gone. He stood revealed as a collection of enthusiasms. Loved his work. Loved being out in the field. Loved being on hand when things were happening. Loved his lunch. I’m not sure I ever knew anyone maintain so high a level of exhilaration through so prolonged a period. That first night he tried to talk Shara into his bed. She ducked, and he tried his luck with me. “It would be a way to celebrate,” he told me. “A way to make the event unforgettable.” As if it weren’t already. While he waited for a response, he added, “This seems like a moment when anything is possible.”

All in all, it was a magnificent time.

A debate started over whether it would be prudent to pay our groundside cousins a visit. “They’re an
alien
culture,” one of Brankov’s specialists argued. “Doesn’t matter that they’re human. We should let them be, to develop as they wish. They should be let alone.”

I wasn’t really invited to comment, but I did anyhow. I pointed out that I didn’t know anything about impeding development, but going down to say hello to people who’d have no clue who we were or what we wanted, could be dangerous. “We might get a missile up our rear end,” I said. “They’ve been alone a long time. Strangers dropping out of the sky might make them nervous.”