“Like hell, Michael. We’re not a military organization. We don’t risk people’s lives. At least not deliberately.”

SHE WAS TEMPTED to catch a flight up to Union and follow the search from the operations center. It would look good when the inevitable investigation started to assess blame for the loss of the Heffernan. But there was really nothing she could add to the effort, so she resisted. The last thing Peter and his people needed was to have the boss looking over their shoulders.

Heavy clouds moved in from the west at midafternoon, and a violent lightning storm rolled across the capital. By five, the sky had cleared. Asquith called again, asking whether there was any news, whether there was anything more they could do. Some corporate ships were on the way. “It’ll take them a while to get there,” she said.

She sent out for pizza, called Tor to tell him she was going to stay at the office again, until she had word one way or the other. She talked to Maureen for a few minutes. “I miss you, Mommy,” her daughter said. “Where have you been?”

“I miss you, too, Sweetheart. Mommy’s had to work.”

“Why?”

As Maureen grew older, Hutch was feeling an increasing sense of unease over the amount of time she spent away from her daughter. The child was changing before her eyes, growing up, and the truth was that Hutch knew she would one day look back on these years and regret the lost time. That she’d wish she had done things differently.

Maybe it was time to step down. Let somebody else deal with Asquith and monetary shortfalls and outraged academics. Not for the first time, she asked herself what she really wanted out of her life.

EXPERTS AND CONSULTANTS were showing up across the media, unanimously predicting the Heffernan would not be found. Peter called to say that an independent commercial vessel, the Macarias, had arrived on the scene and joined the hunt. Hutch was second-guessing herself by then. Harry Everett had been right. She should have taken a stand when it first became evident that the fleet was deteriorating. There had been a string of incidents, and then the al-Jahani had driven the point home by blowing an engine during the Lookout rescue operation. The Academy’s stock had skyrocketed when its ships rescued the Goompahs, and a few weeks later took out the Earth-bound omega cloud. Riding a wave of Academy popularity, the administration had promised ten new ships, Flambeau models, top-of-the-line. But the economy had gone south and the president discovered that starflight was suddenly not a big item with the voters after all.

Hutch knew about the early days of spaceflight, when the Americans went to the moon and then took the better part of the next half century off. And the second burst, which had featured a few manned missions to Mars and points beyond. But there had seemed nothing particularly interesting in the solar system. At least not to politicians and ordinary voters. Who cared whether microbes might be found on the fourth planet or in Europa’s ocean? (As it happened, they weren’t.)

There was a good chance the cycle was about to repeat. Eventually, she knew, the human race would spread out around the Orion Arm. But it wasn’t going to happen quickly.

As for her, well, she imagined herself selling real estate or maybe running a physical fitness center somewhere. Hutch’s Gym.

She was wrapping up her work, getting ready to go home, when Peter called again. “We’ve got them.” He sounded as if the issue had never been in doubt. “They’re okay.”

“Thank God.” She uncharacteristically raised a jubilant fist over her head. “Who found them? Where were they?”

“Nobody. We got a radio signal from them. Here. At Union.”

“At Union? You’re telling me they never got out of the solar system?”

“That’s right.”

“How do you mean? What happened?”

“They’re well out past Sedna’s orbit.” The outermost known body in the sun’s family. “Seventy billion kilometers. Apparently, the drive never fully engaged. Or something.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible.”

“Well, there you are.”

“So, they bounced out and sent a radio signal.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

SHE CANCELED THE remaining corporate flights. Then she called Asquith at home.

“Well, I’m glad to hear they’re all safe,” he said without enthusiasm.

She’d expected him to be delighted. “So what’s wrong?”

“You say it was still in the solar system?”

“More or less. It was out near the orbit of Sedna.”

“Which is where?”

“About ten times as far as Pluto.”

“Incredible.” She wasn’t getting a picture, which meant he was sitting there in his pajamas. “So all along, we were looking in the wrong place.”

“That’s correct. Where they were, we’d never have found them. They radioed in.”

“It took two days for the radio transmission to get here?”

“Something like that.”

“You know, Hutch, from a public relations standpoint, this is almost as bad as losing the ship would have been.”

“What are we talking about, Michael? They’re alive. They all get to come home — ”

“But they were in the solar system. And we didn’t know it. Think how that makes us look.”

“That’s because something went wrong with the drive.”

“You and I understand that. But we have the whole world watching, every news organization on the planet following this thing, and it turns out nobody was ever in danger.”

“Michael, nothing like this has ever happened before. What we understood about Hazeltine space was that you could only travel through it at a fixed rate. It was always the same. You were in there one day, and you covered a little over ten light-years. You were there one second, and you did a billion klicks. That was it. No more, no less.”

“We were wrong.”

“The physicists were wrong. Hazeltine was wrong.”

“Unfortunately, we’re the ones in the crosshairs. The only thing the public knows, and Hiram Taylor and his crowd, is that the thing was in our backyard, and we had no idea. We look dumb. What about the other ships you were sending out?”

“I’ve canceled them.”

“Next time, I hope you’ll show a little more patience.” He shook his head, a great man rising above ordinary mortals once again.

If we conclude that the drive to explore the stars is not fueled by a desire to communicate with otherworldly beings, as has always been supposed, what then does it represent? I think an argument can be made that it is the same characteristic that brought us out of Africa, that sent men in wooden boats around the globe, that gave us the arts and ultimately the sciences: an insatiable need to know, to understand, to penetrate the dark places of our environment and throw light on them. It does not matter that there may be no one out there waiting for us, or that, if there is, they may turn out to be mundane. What does matter is that there are vast emptinesses, places we have not been, worlds we have not seen. If they are sterile, or if they have shining cities afloat on their seas, it is of no consequence. What does matter is that we will have been there, mapped the place, and moved on. And that so long as there is ground on which we have not walked, we will be unable to sit quietly in our living rooms.

— A. J. Klein, The Cosmic Dance, 2216

When things go wrong, the standard management strategy is to decide who takes the blame. This should be an underling, as far down the chain as possible, but preferably with some visibility so people know management means business.

— Gregory MacAllister, interview with The Washington Post

It should have been a night for celebrating. Hutch got a voice message from Abdul, thanking her for organizing the rescue. She really hadn’t done much other than sit and watch, but it was one of the perks of the job that she got credit when good things happened. At least, inside the organization. Still, she was dismayed by the level of sarcasm aimed at the Academy. “Right here in the solar system the whole time,” said the Black Cat’s Rose Beetem. A headline in The Baltimore Sun read: UNDER THEIR NOSES. One late-night comic observed that he now understood why we couldn’t find intelligent life elsewhere: “We can’t find it at home.” A guest analyst on Worldwide endorsed the notion of a congressional investigation; another said it was time to shut the Academy down: “Costs too much. And what do we have to show for more than forty years of massive expenditures? Where’s the payoff?”

She slept fitfully through the night, and woke shortly after dawn to Franz Liszt. One of the Hungarian Rhapsodies.

THE MORNING WAS warm and damp. Heating up already. Flocks of geese filled the sky, headed north. She called Mission Ops and Union Control and left messages of appreciation for all who had participated in the search. She relayed similar messages to the three ships that had conducted the hunt and to the two that had launched from Union only to be called back.

She also sent a reply to Abdul and his passengers: “Good to have you back. Next round is on us.”

When she got to the office, she took time to express her appreciation to the people who’d secured corporate help. They were glad it had ended the way it had, and they told her anytime. But she detected a sense of distance in their voices. As if she worked for a minor-league outfit.

Later, Asquith sent for her. “There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

The visitor rose as she went in. He was middle-aged, well dressed, handsome in a sedentary sort of way. His hair was just beginning to gray. His eyes were blue, set close together. He had a long, narrow nose, and an expression that projected a general camaraderie. We’re all in it together. The commissioner, seated with his back to the door, was commenting that “we need to find a way to shut down the irresponsible criticism.” He might have been talking about Mac, but at the moment the entire planet was firing salvos at them. He looked toward her and pretended to be surprised to see her. “Priscilla,” he said. “Didn’t hear you come in. This is Charles Dryden.”

Dryden almost looked impressed. “Priscilla Hutchins? I’m delighted to meet you. Please call me Charlie. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Charlie works over at Orion Tours,” Asquith said, signaling her to take a seat. “Something odd has been happening. Something we wanted your opinion about.”

She looked from one to the other. “And that would be?”

A bot brought coffee. “You probably know,” Dryden said, “we’re in the process of building a hotel.”