“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know.” The creature’s eyes stared at her out of the navigation screen. “Talk about eternity in hell.”

“Well, look. It’s not up to us anyhow.”

She nodded. “Right. And the omegas will keep coming. For a long time. We’ve seen the kind of damage they do.”

“You’ve been talking to it. Tell it to stop.”

“I plan to try.”

“Good.”

ANTONIO’S NOTES

This entire exercise has had an air of unreality about it from the beginning.

What no one has said, but what I am sure they’ve all been thinking is: Why does it not disentangle itself from the cloud and show us what it truly is? Is it so terrifying? Surely it would not seem so to itself. It may be that it is wholly dependent on the cloud, perhaps for sustenance. And then there is the possibility that, despite Jon’s theorizing, it is the cloud.

When I mentioned it to Hutch, she told me that she doesn’t believe any living creature could be that large.

—Thursday, March 13

chapter 37

HUTCH SAT ON the bridge, wearily trying to figure out how to expand the vocabulary. How do you say omega cloud with blinking lights? How to establish a unit of time? How to ask what kind of creature it is?

“If it’s not native to this area,” asked Antonio, “how did it get around?”

“There’s only one way I can think of,” said Jon. “It absorbs dust or gas and expels it.”

“A jet.”

“Has to be.”

The eyes remained open. Stayed focused on them. “It never sleeps,” said Matt.

“Looks like.”

Antonio got up. “Well, am I correct in assuming we won’t be leaving in the next few minutes?”

“I think that’s a safe guess.”

“Okay. In that case I’m going to head back for a while. I’m wiped out.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t mind?”

“No,” said Hutch. “I’m fine. You go ahead.”

He nodded. “Call me if you need me.”

She turned back to the screen image. The eyes. You and me, Frank. She blinked the lights. Frank blinked back.

How long have you been here? My God, a million years in a place like this. Has anybody else been by to say hello?

Maybe a billion years. Are you immortal? I suspect you could teach those idiots at Makai something about survival.

She thought back across her life. It seemed a long time ago, eons, since as a kid barely out of flight school, she’d taken Richard Wald to Quraqua. Since she’d stood outside that spooky city that no one had ever lived in on Quraqua’s airless moon. It had been constructed by an unknown benefactor, thought to be the Monument-Makers. But who really knew? It was supposed to draw the lightning of an approaching omega away from the cities of that unhappy world. It hadn’t worked.

Frank, if that was you sending the clouds, you’ve been stuck out here a long time. How could a sentient being stay sane?

The eyes looked back at her.

Matt said something about why were they waiting around? Nothing more to be done here. Why not start back tonight?

“Let me talk to it a bit more, Matt. Be patient. This is the reason we came.”

The expression in the eyes never changed.

What are you thinking?

She blinked the lights again.

It blinked back.

PHYL’S VOICE RETRIEVED her from a dream. “…Ship out there…” She recalled something about a woodland, a sliver of moon, and lights in the trees. But it faded quickly, an impression only, less than a memory. “…Edge of the cloud.”

There was nothing new on-screen. “Say again, Phyl.”

“There’s a ship—” She stopped. “Matt wants to talk to you. They’ve probably seen it, too.”

“You mean a ship other than the McAdams?”

“Yes, Hutch.”

“On-screen, please.” It was box-shaped. Covered with shielding. Like the Preston. “Can you give me a better mag?”

“You have maximum.”

Its navigation lights were on. “It looks like us.”

Phyllis put Matt through. “Hutch, you see it?”

“I see it. Phyl, where is it?”

“Forward. Directly along the face of the wall. About four thousand klicks.”

“It’s almost in the cloud,” said Matt.

It could have been the Preston, even to the extent that the armor appeared to be a series of plates tacked on. “Open a channel,” she said.

“You have it.”

Hutch hesitated. An alien ship? That meant another language problem. At least. “Hello,” she said. “This is the Phyllis Preston. Please respond.”

She waited. And heard a single word: “Hello.”

She stared at the image. “Phyl—?”

“No mistake, Hutch. They’re speaking English.”

“Help us. Please.”

“That can’t be,” said Matt. “Not out here.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, either.” She played it back.

Hello.

Help us. Please.

Male voice. Perfect accent. A native speaker. “Sounds like you,” she said. She stared up at the image, at the boxy ship that shouldn’t be there. “Who are you?”

“Help us—”

“Identify yourself, please.”

Matt broke in: “Who the hell are you?”

“I’ve got it, Matt,” she told him on a private channel. Then she switched back: “Please tell us who you are. What is your situation?”

She listened to the carrier wave. After about a minute, it was gone.

“They’re adrift,” said Phyl.

Hutch called Antonio and asked him to come forward. He appeared moments later, in a robe, looking simultaneously startled and bleary. “Yes?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

She explained while he gaped at the display. “I want to take a look,” she said. “But I don’t know what we’ll be getting into.”

“And you don’t have any idea who that is?”

“No.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

She informed Matt. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll meet you there.”

“No. Stay where you are.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Stay put until we find out what this is about. And let me talk to Jon for a minute, please?”

“Sure. hang on. He’s in back.”

Moments later, Jon got on the circuit. “That’s really strange,” he said.

“Did anybody else have access to the Locarno?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of.”

“Anybody work with you on it? Maybe before you came to us?”

“I had some help, yes. But nobody who could have gone on and finished the project on his own.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“All right. That leaves us with the technicians who installed it.”

“They wouldn’t be able to figure out the settings. Anyway, you’re forgetting how big everything is out here, Hutch. Even if somebody else had the drive, if they had twenty ships, the chance of any two of them running into each other in this area is just about nil.”

“Then how do you explain it? The guy speaks English.”

“I can’t explain it. But if you want my advice—”

“Yes?”

“Leave it and let’s go home.”

She would have liked to assure the creature she’d be back, but she could think of no quick way to do it.

When they pulled away, minutes later, the eyes were still trained on her.

THE SHIP LAY just outside the wall, its navigation lamps still on. It had remained silent after the original transmission.

It looked like a vehicle humans might have put together. Yet, as they approached, they saw that the hull, armored as it was, possessed a suppleness that placed it ahead of any designs currently in use. It had to be one of ours, had to be. But it was different in a way she couldn’t quite pin down.