But he wasn’t really going anywhere. When his time came to retire, when he’d pulled the pin and gone back home, no one would ever remember him. Maybe they’d remember Dr. Science. But not Antonio Giannotti.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Hutch,” he said.

That brought a smile. “Thank you, Antonio. You’re a bit of a looker yourself.”

“That’s good of you to say, Priscilla. But I was never much able to turn heads.”

She studied him for a long moment. “You might have turned mine, Antonio.” She switched back to the AI. “Phyl?”

“Yes, Hutch?”

“Still no indication of activity?”

“Negative. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

The wall had become almost a blur. “How fast are we traveling?” he asked.

“Relative to the cloud, we’re moving at almost seventy-five thousand.” That was, of course, kilometers per hour.

“How long would it take us to look at the entire thing?”

“At this rate?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a long cloud.”

“Right. I know.”

She passed the question to Phyl. Phyl’s electronics picked up a notch, the equivalent of clearing her throat. “About 130 years.”

Antonio grinned.

“That would be just one side,” Phyl continued. “To do it properly, multiply the figure by four.”

The situation was not made easier by the fact that the cloud was simply too big for the sensors to penetrate adequately. “Somebody could be planting lemon trees in that thing,” Hutch said, “and we wouldn’t know it.” The displays showed murky and overcast. The ship’s navigation lights were smeared across the screens. “What do you want to do?” she asked him.

“How do you mean?”

“Did you want to go in and look around?”

“What would you do if I said yes?”

“Try me.”

“Ah, no. Thanks. Let it go. But I do have an idea.”

“What’s that, Antonio?”

“Let’s put all four of us in one ship, and use the AI to send the other one in for a test run. See what happens.”

“The transfer would not work,” said Phyl. “How would you get from one ship to the other without exposing yourselves to the radiation?”

“You don’t want to go,” Hutch told Phyl. The AI was right, of course. But the pilot couldn’t resist testing her sense of humor.

“No, ma’am, I do not. May I point out that if you send a ship in there, you may not recover it.” One of her avatars appeared, a young woman. She had Hutch’s dark hair and eyes, looked remarkably vulnerable, and was about eight months pregnant. “I don’t think it’s a chance worth taking,” she said. “But if you insist, I’ll do it, of course.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Antonio. “I’d feel the same way.”

EVENTUALLY, ANTONIO’S ATTENTION wandered from the cloud to the crowded sky. A couple of nearby yellow stars were almost touching. He tried to imagine Earth’s sun bumping its way through the chaos. Phyl reported a planet adrift. “Range is twelve million kilometers. I can’t be certain, but it doesn’t seem attached to anything. Just orbiting the core. Like everything else. It appears to have been a terrestrial world.”

“You wouldn’t expect it to be attached to anything out here,” said Antonio. “Maybe it’s what we’re looking for.”

“Phyl, any sign of life? Or activity of any kind?”

“Certainly not any kind of living thing we’d know about. There’s no electromagnetic cloud, either. Did you want to inspect it more closely?” A picture appeared on-screen. The world appeared to be nothing more than a battered rock.

“No,” said Hutch. “It’s not a very likely candidate.”

Something rattled the ship, a burst of wind and sand, and was gone. “Got in the way of a dust storm,” said Hutch. “Phyl, are we okay?”

“Yes.” The AI sounded doubtful. “It wasn’t enough to activate the particle beams. And, anyhow, the shielding covered us nicely.”

“Scopes and sensors okay?”

“Yes. I read no problems, maybe some minor scratches to the lens on number three. Although I have to say these are not ideal conditions for them.”

“Okay. Keep the forward and starboard scopes active, and the starboard sensor.” That was the one in the best position to work the cloud. “Seal everything else for now.”

“Complying.”

The pictures on the displays went down one by one until Antonio was looking either straight ahead or at the cloud.

AFTER AN HOUR or so, they jumped twelve million klicks. “All readings are still inside the parameters,” said Phyl.

Antonio had gotten hungry. He went back, made sandwiches for them, and carried everything onto the bridge. Hutch already had a cup of hot chocolate. After he got settled in his seat, she touched something, and his harness settled over his shoulders. Damned thing was annoying. “How long are we going to stay?” he asked. He expected her to make a crack about maybe only a couple of years. But she contented herself with a shrug and a smile.

“So when are we going to leave?” he said again.

She surprised him. “I don’t know.”

“We aren’t going to stay here the rest of the month, are we?” He was losing any serious hope that they’d find anything.

“No,” she said. “Let’s just give it a little more time, though. You don’t want to go back and face your colleagues and tell them we got nothing.”

“That’s a point.”

Phyl broke in: “Hutch, we’re getting some odd readings.”

“Specify, please.”

“Recurring patterns of nontypical electromagnetic radiation.” Details appeared on-screen, but they meant nothing to either of them. “There are also quantum fluctuations indicative of biological activity.”

“What?” said Hutch. “Biological? In there?”

“We need Rudy,” said Antonio.

“Explain, Phyl.”

“Data is insufficient to draw conclusions. I can say with certainty, however, that activity here is at a different level and more coherent than in the other clouds or at other sites in this cloud.”

“Coherent? By that you mean—?”

“Occurring within more distinct parameters. More repetitive. Less arbitrary. Fewer extremes.”

“You said ‘biological activity.’ Do you mean there’s something alive in there?”

“That is probable.”

“Okay.” She was jiggling the yoke. Pulling them away from the wall. “Let’s give it some breathing space.” She was apparently talking to herself as much as to Antonio.

It was all right with Antonio. Something alive in there? Maledire. If he could see the cloud at all, they were too close.

She turned the ship left, to port, and Antonio was pushed against the side of his seat. On the displays, the cloud wall moved up, angled overhead, and became a ceiling, an overhead. Then it dropped back to the side again.

He looked at her for a long moment.

“What?” she said.

“You’re showing off.”

“A little. Thought you’d enjoy the ride.”

She called Matt and passed the information along. “The cloud might have a tenant.”

ONCE THEY WERE well away from it—or at least what Hutch apparently considered well away—she did more gyrations with the ship, rotating it along its vertical axis until the main engines were pointed forward. Then she used them to begin braking. Antonio, now facing backward, was pushed gently into his seat.

She had also turned the ship 180 degrees around its lateral axis, thereby keeping the starboard scope pointed at the cloud. It would have been a good moment for the Dr. Science show: I’m now upside down, boys and girls, except you can’t tell a difference because there is no up or down away from a gravity well.

The cloud brightened and darkened in the swirling light from the pulsar.

“Something’s happening,” said Phyl. “Quantity and intensity of signals is picking up.”

The lightning was becoming more frequent. And more violent. “Maybe it’s waking up,” Antonio said.