Chapter Two
Moira Sims was all any man could ask for in a woman. Long of limb and svelte of form, she was beautiful enough that men sometimes walked into walls as she passed. Her dress of black gossamer set off her pale skin while emphasizing her full figure. Her jewelry was understated and expensive, her coiffure perfect, and her voice that low, throaty purr much prized in holo actresses. She was poised, a witty conversationalist, and had a sparkling sense of humor. Yet, Mark Rykand was becoming bored with her.
“Let’s go back to your place, Markie. I am tired of this party.”
Mark glanced toward his companion who was sprawled beside him in the lounger on which he was perched. She had slipped a finger under his cumber bun and was kneading the little roll of fat that he worked so hard to keep under control. He tried not to frown despite the fact that she had interrupted Gunter Perlman, his fellow solar racing enthusiast, and the skipper of the yacht on which Mark occasionally crewed.
He made a conscious effort to swallow his irritation as he turned to her. “In a while, Moira. Gunter and I need to settle this bet before we leave.”
“But solar racing is such a bore!”
“Then why not go get yourself another drink? We’ll be through in a bit.”
“Oh, pooh!” He was conscious of her warm body as she slid off the lounger and stood up. Gunter watched as she straightened the dress hiked up by the maneuver. Her answering smile showed that she was aware of the attention. For some reason, that irritated Mark even further. The two of them watched her sway her way past the string combo toward the bar.
“Why do you do that, man?” Gunter asked.
“Do what?”
“Why do you treat her like furniture? She loves you.”
“Moira loves my money.”
“Even if true, that’s no excuse. If you are not careful, she is going to leave you the way Carol did.”
Mark’s answering shrug felt callous, even to him. “There are a lot more fish in the sea.”
“At the rate you are going, you just might do a full-scale ecological count on this particular ocean.”
Irritated with the way the conversation was going, Mark asked, “Look, have we got a bet or not?”
Gunter smiled. “You still think Price is going to beat Hoffman in the cis-lunar, do you?”
“Why not? His yacht just had a sail replacement and the word is that he has lightened his life support system by twenty percent.”
“Doesn’t matter. When Niels Falon quit him, he lost all hope of winning the trophy this year.”
“I think Price’s advantage in equipment will overcome any experience loss from Falon’s departure. In fact, I’ll put a thousand on it just to make it interesting.”
“Even bet? No distance handicap?”
“None.”
“Then you have got yourself a wager, Rich Boy. I just hope you aren’t too drunk to remember this tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll show you who’s drunk,” Mark hissed as he stood. Suddenly, the room began to revolve slowly. He reached out to steady himself on Perlman’s shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. I think I’ll find Moira and call it a night.”
“Don’t forget that I am having a practice session aboard Gossamer Gnat in a couple of weeks. I would love to have you crew for me if you have the time.”
“Sure, sounds like fun,” Mark said. “Nothing I like better than smelling myself after being cooped up in a vacuum suit for a solid week. Call me in a couple of days and we’ll arrange it.”
* * *
The lights of the Phoenix-Tucson metroplex were a brilliant carpet of diamonds strewn across the dark desert floor as Mark Rykand’s air car wended its way west. In the intermediate distance were the ribbon-like communities that lined the banks of the Colorado River, while on the horizon; the sky glow of San Angeles was just becoming visible. Within the sky car, the only illumination came from the blue glow of the instruments.
Mark scanned the horizon, searching for other aerial traffic while Moira snuggled close, her left arm draped around his neck and her head resting on his chest as she emitted soft, snoring sounds. There was a reason for his vigilance.
Three years earlier, Mark’s parents had been traveling this same flyway when a drunken pilot had chosen Blythe for his next drink. It had been a busy Friday night and traffic control had refused changes in flight plans all evening. Rather than take the chance that his maneuver would be disapproved; the drunken flyer had illegally switched to manual and started a long sweeping turn to the right. Part way through the turn, his car had encountered that of Mark’s parents.
The drunk had paid for his mistake immediately. His car’s right side impellers had been smashed, robbing him of half his lift. The resulting asymmetry had turned his car over and sent it diving into the ground some twenty kilometers east of the river. Mark’s parents had been marginally luckier. With most of his active flight controls smashed, Hugh Rykand had fought his car into a semblance of stability and headed for the ground. He’d let down to land on a stretch of Old Interstate 10 only to discover a small hillock, invisible in the dark, loom in the beams of his landing lights at the last second.
Moira stirred. “What’s the matter? You are shivering.”
“Sorry. The liquor must be giving me the twitches.”
“Oh, poor Markie! Your heart is beating a kilometer a minute,” she said as she burrowed her head into his chest. “Is there anything Moira can do for her Markie?”
“No,” he said more sharply than he intended. “Go back to sleep.”
He had been a student at the time, studying to be a computer specialist, with a minor in astronomy. Life had been good. As the son of rich parents, he had lacked for neither money nor clothes and had more than his share of female companions.
“Are you Mark James Rykand?” the taller of the two police officers that called at his apartment door had asked.
“What have I done, officer?”
“Nothing that we know of, Mr. Rykand. We are here about your parents. There’s been an accident.”
The knife that had entered his heart had been ice cold. “How badly are they hurt?”
“I am sorry, but they’re dead.”
The news had not really sunk in until Mark had gone to identify the bodies. He had managed to identify his father’s battered corpse without breaking down, but when he saw his mother lying naked on the cold slab with no obvious injuries; it had been too much. The feeling of being alone had been overwhelming. Despite his many friends, he’d felt that only one person could remove the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was his sister, Jani, and unfortunately, she was exploring some nameless star system out in the deep black.
Over the next several weeks, he had wondered how he would break the news to her when her ship finally returned. Like a trip to the dentist, the anticipation of the event had proven worse than its reality. In fact, he had not had to tell Jani at all. The Stellar Survey took care of that as soon as her ship materialized somewhere beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Jani had nearly three weeks to compose herself before her return to Earth, and then she barely stayed a week. She had visited Mark just long enough to have a good, long cry with him and to sign over her power-of-attorney, giving him carte blanche to manage their mutual inheritance. After that, he had accompanied her to the spaceport, kissed her good-bye, and watched her disappear back into the endless vacuum overhead. Her whirlwind visit had done nothing to alleviate the gnawing feeling of loneliness.
Three years later, the feeling was still with him. Mark often awoke to find himself wrapped in perspiration-soaked bed sheets, shivering, fists clenched around an invisible control column as he struggled to gain just the few meters of altitude that would have saved his parents. In the aftermath of such episodes, Mark often wished that he had followed his sister’s example. Better a life among friends in the midst of vast emptiness than a life alone among Earth’s teeming billions.
* * *
Moira was the first to notice the blinking notice on the screen in the den. They had been home ten minutes and were preparing for bed.
“You have a max priority message, Mark,” she said as she entered the bedroom, head cocked as she removed one of her earrings.
“From whom?” he asked with a start.
“Doesn’t say.”
He muttered under his breath as he padded in bare feet to the den. Sure enough, the diagonal red stripe designed to draw instant attention was blinking on the screen. He cleared it and called up the message. The face was that of no one he had ever met.
“Mr. Rykand, this is Hans Cristobal, duty officer at Stellar Survey Headquarters,” the recording said. “Please give me a call when you return. It’s important.”
The sober expression and matter-of-fact delivery were enough to shock Mark sober. A call from the survey duty officer could have only one meaning. All that was left was to find out just how bad the news was. Mark punched out the numbers at the bottom of the screen with shaky fingers and waited an eternity until he was looking at the same face as had been in the recording.
“Yes, may I help you?…Ah, Mr. Rykand. Good of you to call back.”
“What’s happened to my sister?” he asked without preamble.
The officer blinked, not knowing how to react to the direct question. The hesitation told Mark all he needed to know. He had seen that look before, on the face of the police officer that had delivered the news about his parents.
Finally, after a lag that was nearly four times that required to get a message halfway around the world, the officer said, “I am sorry, Mr. Rykand. It is my sad duty to inform you that your sister was killed in an accident three weeks ago.”
“How did it happen?”
“We have few operational details at this time. Perhaps we will know more when Magellan docks. All I can tell you now is that we have received official confirmation of her death.”
It was the recurring nightmare about his parents all over again. Mark felt the cold hand grip his heart again, just as it had three years earlier. If anything, it was worse this time. He barely heard his own voice as he asked, “When will you be shipping the body home?”
The duty officer hesitated. When he resumed, his words gave no comfort. “I am afraid there is no body. We will, of course, arrange a memorial service for Miss Rykand at the time and place of your choosing. There is also the matter of her standard insurance policy. I believe you are the beneficiary.”
“Damn it, I’m not interested in her insurance. I want to know what happened!”
“As I said, sir, I don’t have that information at this time. Perhaps in a few weeks—”
The screen rattled on his desk as he slammed his fist onto the cutoff plate. He sat trembling before the darkened screen for nearly a minute before Moira came in to see what the noise had been.
“What’s the matter?” she hissed upon seeing his expression.
“Jani is dead.”
“Oh, no, Mark! It can’t be true.”
“It is. That call was from survey headquarters. Sorry to inform you, Mr. Rykand. No, we do not know anything else, Mr. Rykand. Sorry, but the body will not be returned, Mr. Rykand—”
Mark’s voice evaporated as his body was wracked with sobs. A moment later, he found himself cradled in Moira’s arms. She stroked his hair and cooed to him softly. It did not help. The old foreboding was back. He could not shake the feeling that this time his loneliness was permanent.
* * *
Mark Rykand watched the endless procession of vineyards sweep past as the bullet car soared between successive electromagnetic accelerator rings in its usual gravity defying flight. This part of northern Switzerland was especially beautiful with its green hills and whitewashed houses slipping past at an easy 200 kph. Normally he would have been enchanted by the view. Not today. This morning he felt drained—emotionally, physically, mentally, morally. The human body has only a finite capacity for strong emotion and he had used up his full quota in the previous twenty-four hours. The only trace left was a pale anger, a mere shadow of the rage that had threatened to consume him during the dark hours before sunrise.
The bullet car topped a rise to reveal the blue expanse of Lake Constance in the shallow valley below. White sails were silhouetted against the dark blue of the lake. The view was a brief one. Soon the car dipped behind a low hill as it followed its line of pylons and accelerator rings. The lake flashed into view one last time. On the far shore, the glass-and-steel pyramid shape that was the headquarters of the Stellar Survey seemed as large as the distant Alps. The building fluoresced gold as early morning sunlight reflected off the eastern flank of the pyramid. A moment later, the lake, its boats, and the pyramid on the far shore were gone as the car hurtled into the black maw of the tunnel that would take it across to the far shore.
Mark’s anger had been unfocussed at first. He had raged at an uncaring universe that had robbed him of his entire family in the short span of three years. Yet, shaking one’s fist at the stars is not very satisfying. Society taught that when a person dies, someone is to blame. The culprit might be a criminal, the drunken flyer of an aircar, or even the victim himself (if he dies of a heart attack after a life of dissolution).
Until he knew the details of Jani’s death, it would be impossible to assess blame. The more he thought about the duty officer’s refusal to tell him how his sister had died, the angrier he became. How dare they keep such vital information from her only relative?
After a long night spent in mental turmoil, Mark decided to do something. It was easy to ignore a face on the screen, considerably less so when that face is close enough to feel hot breath issuing from an angry mouth. The sun had not risen over the Sierras when he had booked passage on the first suborbital flight to Europe. Even then, nature conspired against him. The eight-hour time difference meant that the first direct flight did not leave until early evening. He had spent the day in anxious anticipation and useless recrimination before boarding a suborbital hyperjet for Zurich.
In less than a minute, the car was out of the tunnel and in sunshine again, climbing the low hills that surrounded the ancient fortress at Meersburg. The bullet car pivoted about its long axis, compensating for the sideways surge of a long sweeping curve to the right. The accelerator ring pylons ran parallel to the shoreline, directly for the gleaming pyramid that towered above the trees. A minute later, the car decelerated swiftly as it entered the pyramid and slid to a halt in the subsurface transport station. Most of the passengers climbed to their feet and waited patiently for the automatic doors to open. When it came Mark’s turn, he moved like a man in a trance.
“Mr. Rykand?” a young woman asked as he exited the car.
“Yes?”
“My name is Amalthea Palan. I am special assistant to the director here. We received your message that you were coming late last night. Director Bartok apologizes for not meeting you personally, but he had an appointment in Toronto today. He asked that I convey his sympathy for your loss. Your sister was a valued member of our family and will be sorely missed.”
“Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I won’t be quiet either. I came here to find out how my sister died. I think you owe me that.”
“I understand your concern, Mr. Rykand. Why don’t we go up to my office and discuss it? I’ll be happy to share everything we know, little as it is.”
They rode an escalator up to the main level of the building. The public foyer of Survey Headquarters was one of the eight architectural wonders of the world. It was the largest enclosed space on the planet, exceeding even the ancient Vehicle Assembly Building at the Cape Canaveral Museum. Finished in polished marble, the great expanse reminded Mark of a mausoleum—a thought that he ruthlessly put down as soon as it occurred to him. Around the perimeter were views of worlds the survey had discovered. It being early on Monday morning, the usual small groups of school children were absent and the anti-echo field had yet to be turned on. Mark listened as his and Amalthea Palan’s footsteps echoed back from far overhead.
They took another escalator to a mezzanine level and then an express lift to the 27th level. The director’s assistant ushered him into a plush office with a sloping window that looked out over the lake.
“Refreshments, Mr. Rykand? Coffee, tea, perhaps something stronger?” she asked as she motioned him to a leather settee and then sat opposite him.
“No thank you.”
Amalthea gazed at her visitor.
She saw a well-muscled young man of slightly more than average height with a shock of sandy hair and piercing blue eyes. He would almost be handsome except for the dark bags under each eye and the turned down corners of his mouth. In addition, it looked as though he had not depilated today. “I hope you don’t think me too forward, Mr. Rykand, “but you look as though you haven’t slept in a long time.”
“Could you sleep if it had been your sister?”
“No, I suppose not. If you like, I will have our staff doctor prescribe something when we are through here. We can even provide you with quarters in this building. We keep them for visiting VIPs.”
“Please, I just want to know what happened to my sister.”
She paused, seemed to come to a decision, and then said, “Very well. Are you aware of your sister’s job out in the deep black?”
“She was a scout pilot.”
“Quite correct. As I understand it, the system Magellan was exploring this trip is quite dirty compared to most. It had a lot of meteorites and space dust in it. The astrophysicists tell us that this is normal for a new system. Personally, I majored in economics, so I do not really understand these technical things. Do you?”
Mark nodded. One of the courses he had taken in pursuit of his minor had gone extensively into the evolution of star systems.
“Anyway, your sister’s scout craft was transporting several of the ship’s planetologists to a moon when it ran into a piece of orbital debris. The ship was vaporized instantly. That is why we can’t return Miss Rykand’s body to you.”
“There were others killed?”
“A total of eight, according to the report by Magellan’s captain. I am afraid that is all we know about the incident until the ship docks and sends down its full logs.”
“Perhaps I can talk with the captain to get more information,” Mark said.
Amalthea Palan sighed and cocked her head in an odd gesture. “I am afraid that is impossible. The ship is still out beyond the orbit of Mars and two-way communications are not yet practical. Speed-of-light delay, you know.”
“When will it arrive?”
“Within a week.”
“Perhaps I can visit the captain then, both to hear what happened to Jani and to pick up her personal effects.”
“We’ll deliver her effects to you. You certainly won’t have to go to the expense of going all the way to orbit to retrieve them.”
“I am rich. I don’t mind the expense.”
“I understand your pain, but there is really nothing constructive you can do in orbit. Captain Landon will not be able to meet with you, anyway. First, there is the mandatory quarantine period and he will be very busy preparing the ship to go out again. I will tell you what. We will forward a copy of the captain’s log entry as soon as we receive it. Will that be acceptable?”
Mark gazed at the pretty blonde opposite him. Her expression reminded him of the professional lamentation of a mortician. Perhaps it was his lack of sleep or the fact that his senses had been stretched taut. Something about her manner told him that she was not telling him the truth, at least not the whole truth. He frowned, and then nodded. “I suppose it will have to do.”
They talked for another ten minutes, after which Mark found himself deftly herded back to the transport station. He climbed into a bullet car headed south and watched Amalthea Palan as she stood on the platform until his car had left the building.
Mark mulled over his next move. If the survey thought that he would go back to California and give up, they were in for a surprise. Someone was to blame for his sister’s death and he was not going to rest until he found out whom that someone was!