“When’s it due?”

“September.” She looked radiant.

“Congratulations.”

Amy squeezed her hand. “When it happens,” she said, “I’d like to be your pilot.” Hutch smiled.

“You know,” said MacAllister, “you sound as if you don’t really expect it to happen. The flight. The deep one.”

Hutch considered it. “Tor’s not like you, Mac. He’s not much of an adventurer.” That was her little joke, but she didn’t crack a smile. “He’s been off-world just enough to know he prefers life in Virginia.”

“You don’t think he’d go?”

“He might. To keep me happy. But he wouldn’t enjoy himself. And that would pretty much take the pleasure out of it.”

The coffee came. They had a good view of the moon through one of the ports. MacAllister marveled at the mountains and craters. They were spectacularly bleak.

VALENTINA WAS WAITING on the ship, seated in the cramped cockpit they call the bridge. She was busy talking to the AI, raised a hand to say hello, but never really broke off the conversation. She’d apparently already met Amy, who had spent the night on the station. MacAllister backed away, mildly irritated, and retreated to a larger room just off the bridge. This was, Amy explained, the common room. “It’s where everybody hangs out,” she said.

Moments later, Valentina joined them. Her eyes fastened on MacAllister, and she broke into a smile that was almost mischievous. “Sorry,” she said, “I was in the middle of something. Hutch, the monitors are loaded and ready to go.”

“Okay.” Hutch was visibly amused at the interplay between the pilot and her passenger. “I guess you’re all set then.”

She nodded. “How’ve you been, Mr. MacAllister?”

“Good,” he said. “Done any more shows?”

The smile widened. “No. I’m not much of a debater.”

“On the contrary, you can be quite argumentative. By the way, since we’re going to be in pretty close quarters for a while, you might want to call me Gregory. Or Mac.”

“I think I prefer Mac.” She offered her hand. “I’m Valya.”

He shook it and turned to Hutch. “Is the mission purely hit-or-miss? Are we really just going out there and hoping for the best?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “All you’re doing is planting monitors. Think of it as time off. Read, relax, and enjoy yourself.”

“Okay.”

“For what it’s worth, there’s been another sighting along Orion’s Blue Tour, at 61 Cygni. It’s your first stop, so who knows? You might get lucky and come home with the story of the century.”

“I’m sure.”

“Valya says,” said Amy, “that even if we see some moonriders, we might not be fast enough to catch them.”

MacAllister smiled at her enthusiasm. In fact, it hadn’t occurred to him he might become part of a pursuit. “I assume,” he said, “if we were to see something, we’d try to talk to them.”

“If you can,” said Hutch.

“Well, we’ll see what happens.”

Someone else was coming on board.

“It’s getting close to time,” said Valya.

Eric Samuels strolled through the airlock. “Hello, all,” he said, with that phony cheerfulness he always exuded in public. “Are we ready to go hunting for moonriders?”

It was going to be a long trip.

THE SALVATOR WASN’T exactly the Evening Star. It was cramped, uncomfortable, everything squeezed together. Its carrying capacity was a pilot and seven passengers. The walls were paneled, there was a carpet, and pseudoleather furniture. MacAllister chose a compartment toward the forward part of the vehicle. He’d read somewhere that the farther you were from the power plant, the safer you were. The compartment would be big enough provided he didn’t try to stand up. It contained a basin, but other facilities were located in twin washrooms. Only a contortionist, he saw, would be able to manage the toilet.

Samuels took a compartment in the middle of the ship, and Amy picked one at the rear. Their luggage arrived. They hauled everything inside and got settled.

Hutch got up to go. Good luck, everybody. Happy hunting. “We’ll try to bring something back,” Valya said.

“It would be nice,” said Hutch. “You guys have everything you need?”

MacAllister knew it would turn out he’d forgotten something. He always did. But he ran a quick mental check of the essentials. Unsure what the ship’s library would hold, he’d brought a generous supply of novels in his notebook. “I’m all set,” he said.

So were the others. “I’ve talked with Union Ops,” said Valya. “We’ve got launch in twenty.”

“Then I’m out of here, folks. See you when you get back.” Hutch shook their hands, embraced Amy, pressed her lips to MacAllister’s cheek, and strode out through the main hatch.

Valya closed it behind her. “We’ll be accelerating during the first thirty minutes or so,” she said, “which means we’ll all be locked down. You guys have anything you need to do, this would be a good time.”

ROBOT RUNS LOOSE; TERRORIZES TASMANIA

2 Dead, 7 Injured after Rampage

IS THERE AN UPPER LIMIT TO INTELLIGENCE?

Study Suggests Few Meet Their Potential

Social Conditions Get in Way

Beliefs Block Mental Processes

Trick Is to Keep Open Mind, According to Experts

PATENT GRANTED TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

“Bob White” Gets Groundbreaking Authorization

MIT Project Develops New Sensing System

Next: Are AIs Sentient? James Watson Parker: “They Have No Souls”

LONGEVITY BREAKTHROUGH IMMINENT?

Today’s Infants May Get Indefinite Life Span

World Council Debates “Talis” Research “Where Will We Put Everybody?”

MIDDLE EAST TURMOIL UNLIKELY TO END SOON

DODGERS TRADE FOR BAXTER

HURRICANE SEASON WILL START

EARLIER THIS YEAR, LAST LONGER

Storm Intensity Likely to Continue to Grow

Atmosphere Seeding Helps, “But Probably Too Little Too Late”

STOCKS MOVE TO RECORD HIGHS

LITERACY RATE IN NAU CONTINUES TO DROP

AI Might Write New War and Peace, But Will Anybody Read It?

BEEMER CLAIMS HARM FROM RELIGIOUS TEACHING

Anti-Christ Loose in North Carolina?

Intelligence is like pornography. I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.

— Gregory MacAllister, “Keeper of the Keys”

One of the things MacAllister disliked about the Salvator was that, unless you were on the bridge, you had no windows. On the Evening Star, the walls of the dining area had been transparent, and even his compartment had provided a view of the stars. The Salvator was oppressive. The outside world was limited to what you could see on a set of display screens. It wasn’t at all the same thing.

Hutch had explained to him once that windows, viewports in the vernacular, needed special reinforcement because they didn’t withstand air pressure well, and it was simply safer not to have them, to use monitors instead. Nevertheless, he didn’t like it very much. He wondered what the Orion tour ships were like.

They were seated in the common room. The ship was still accelerating away from Earth, preparing to make its jump into the foggy morass they called hyperspace. Amy couldn’t take her eyes off the displays, and he could hear Valya on the bridge talking to the AI again. MacAllister was trying to manage a conversation with Eric. But the guy’s enthusiasm for the flight was almost beyond bearing. “Something I’ve wanted to do all my life, Mac,” he said. “I can hardly believe I’m here.” And: “Look at that moon. Isn’t that incredible?” And: “A lot of people don’t like to admit it, but in the end this is the way we’ll define ourselves. Make the stars our own, or sit home.” He’d attempted a piercing look, in case MacAllister missed the implied criticism. The guy was as subtle as an avalanche.

Amy Taylor was also awed by the experience. But she was fifteen, so it was tolerable. She’d opened a book, Norma Rollins’s The Nearby Stars, but she was too absorbed in the receding Earth-moon system to pay much attention to it. She told MacAllister she knew about his exploits on Deepsix and asked him to describe the experience. That was the way she’d put it. Exploits. In fact all he’d done was try to stay alive for a few days while Hutch figured out a way to save all their asses.

Amy seemed to have done surprisingly well for herself, considering she was growing up under the care of a full-time politician. The mother had run off years before with the senator’s campaign manager, abandoning both her husband and Amy. That must have been hard to take, and he wondered whether her desire to follow in Hutch’s footsteps didn’t really mask a desire to get away from her life at home.

Eventually the acceleration eased off, and Valya came back to join them. She inquired whether everybody was feeling all right, then told them they’d be jumping in about six hours.

“We’re headed where first?” asked MacAllister. “Something-or-other Cygnus?”

“61 Cygni,” she said. “It’s eleven light-years out. Takes about a day to get there.” She was wearing a white jumpsuit. Her red hair, cut shorter than it had been in Tampa, looked more military.

The furniture wasn’t especially comfortable. MacAllister grumbled at the prospect of having to deal with it for the next few weeks. “How long have you been doing this?” he asked Valya. “Piloting Academy ships?”

“Almost fifteen years,” she said.

“You don’t get bored?”

“Never.”

He recalled Hutch’s talking about how tiresome it could get, how pilots often made the same flights back and forth. How it could go on for months. Or the long flights. The mission to Lookout had taken the better part of a year one way. He tried to imagine being cooped up inside these bulkheads until next January.

Amy must have read his expression. “I wouldn’t want that either,” she said. “But you can get pretty cooped up groundside, too.” She’d come aboard prepared to talk like a pilot. Groundside. Bulkheads. I’m going aft for a minute when she was talking about the washroom. The kid was right at home. But talk was cheap. MacAllister was prepared to give her a couple days before the idealism came crashing down. “If my father had his way,” she continued, “I’d be stuck the rest of my life in courtrooms and offices.”