He was wearing a beret and smiling. Trying to cut through the general gloom, maybe. “We’ve got a hit,” he said.

George raised a fist. Alyx fell into Herman’s arms, and Hutch witnessed a major-league mood change. They shook hands and banged one another on the back. She got a hug from Tor. He winked at her afterward. “Thought I’d take advantage,” he said.

So they decided to stay because who knew where it might lead, and, anyway, they could only be second-best at Safe Harbor and did anyone know who captained the second mission to the Americas? (Hutch thought it was Columbus again, but she wasn’t sure enough to say anything.) She broke out the champagne, and they raised a glass to Bill, who smiled shyly, took off his beret, and said modestly that he was only doing his job.

THE SIGNAL SEEMED to be coming directly out of 1107.

“How much did we get?” asked Hutch.

“Only a couple of seconds. But I know where it is. We’ll be locking on to it again in less than an hour. Then we can follow it to the source. If you want.”

“What’s it look like?” asked George. “The transmission?”

“Can’t read it. But there is a pattern. Same as the original intercept.”

“Will you be able to translate it if we get a larger sample?”

“There’s no way to know. Maybe. You’re assuming it has a meaning.”

“How could it not?” asked Alyx.

“It could be a test message,” said Hutch. She sent a message to Preach, informing him what had happened. At about the same time another transmission came in from the Condor.

“Big news. We’ve picked up the 1107 signal. It’s aimed directly at Safe Harbor.”

He signed off, and Bill came back. “Captain, they transmitted a data package on the reception.”

“Yes?”

“Configuration doesn’t match. And the signal is stronger on its arrival at Point B than it should be.”

“There are other transmitters here,” said Hutch.

“I hardly see that it can be otherwise. The numbers suggest they are blending transmissions from three sources. Presumably all are in orbit around the neutron star.”

IT WAS A night for losing sleep. Bill rediscovered the signal and rotated the telescopes toward the source. “Nothing visible,” he said.

Hutch rotated the Memphis, and they moved closer to the dead star, homing on the transmission. Twenty minutes after they’d started, Preach was back. Looking shaken.

“We’re in orbit around Safe Harbor,” he said. “And I have bad news. It looks as if we couldn’t have picked a less appropriate name. The planet is hot. This is a dead world. Radiation levels are high. Lots of craters. Ruins everywhere. Looks as if they’ve had a nuclear war down there.” His image blinked off, to be replaced by a water-filled crater. Wreckage ringed the perimeter. The land was gray and black, sterile, rocky, blasted, broken only by occasional brown patches of what might be vegetable growth.

“It’s like this almost everywhere.” Images flashed by. Rubble, mountains of debris, great holes gouged in the earth. Dead cities. Here and there, buildings stood. Often only walls or foundations. An occasional house.

“We haven’t seen any indication of land animals other than a few long-necked creatures—look like giraffes—and birds. Lots of birds. But that’s it. We’ll keep looking, although no one here expects to find anything. It looks as if they did a pretty thorough job of it.

“Tom wants to send down a landing party, but we have no way to scrub the lander afterward so I’m not going to allow it. It’s causing a little friction. The mission director has insisted on firing off a request to the Academy, demanding they override me. They won’t, of course. If someone got killed, that would make the brass at home directly responsible.

“The moonbase looks dead, too. I guess it would have to be. At the moment we have no idea what they looked like.”

There were more pictures, and then the Preacher was back. “We were glad to hear of your success,” he said. “Whatever their transmitters are saying, though, it doesn’t look as if anybody’s listening anymore.”

They all sat quietly, stunned. Hutch felt the thrusters fire once, briefly, adjusting their alignment. Then she opened her channel to the Condor: “Preach, do you have any sense how long ago it happened?”

THE RESPONSE CAME in a bit more than an hour later.

“Not in the immediate past,” Preach said. “Some of the wreckage is overgrown, but it’s hard to tell without going down and taking samples. You ask me to guess, I’d say five, maybe six, hundred years. But it’s only a guess.

“There’s no indication that anybody survived. We’ve been looking for signs, but nothing’s moving down there, no boats, no vehicles, nothing.

“Did I mention there are roads? Highways, actually. They might have been paved at one time. There are four continents, and some of the roads cross coast to coast. Looks like an old-fashioned interstate system. And most of the harbors were improved. They’re complete with sunken ships.”

Images began to flash across the screen. The ships were eerily similar to the kinds of vessels that had roamed Earth’s seas until recently. Of course, she thought, that only makes sense. How many ways are there to build a ship?

And there, unmistakably, were the remains of an airport. The tower had been blown away, the runways were overgrown with shrubs, the hangars and terminals had collapsed. But it was impossible to miss. Off to one side they could even make out the wreckage of several aircraft. Propeller-driven.

“Here’s the moonbase,” said Preach. A half dozen dome-shaped structures stood on a plain. Near a depression that might once have been a riverbed. “We’ll be going down later today, to the moon, to take a look.” His expression changed. He glanced up, and Hutch knew his attention had been drawn by something on his overhead screen. He blinked off momentarily, then came back. “Wait one. We’ve got an artificial satellite.”

He left his seat again and disappeared. Someone, Herman, she thought, commented that they were getting more questions than answers.

Tom Isako, the mission director on the Condor, stepped into the picture. “We’re going to sign off for a few minutes,” he said. “George, it looks as if there are several satellites out there. They’re there, but we can’t see them. They are apparently invisible.”

George was standing with his jaw slack. It was too much for him. Alyx tapped his shoulder to remind him he should respond. “Okay,” he said. “Keep us informed.”

The screen broke away to the Condor’s logo.

Bill broke in: “Captain, that explains why we haven’t seen our target transmitter.”

“Lightbenders?” asked Nick. “But what would be the point? I mean, out here, who’s going to see them anyway? Why would anyone care?”

“HUTCH, I’VE LOCATED the transmitter.”

They were all in mission control. “Where?” she asked.

Bill put 1107 on-screen, drew an orbit, and marked the position. “It appears that Dr. Isako was correct.”

“Lightbender?”

“Yes. Or something similar. And it masks heat generation as well.”

“It’s still transmitting to the same target? To Point B?”

“That seems to be the case.”

There were more embraces and calls for more champagne. The sedate group that had quietly watched sims and played bridge during the first few weeks became almost rowdy. Hutch complied, wondering when she’d last seen people change moods so quickly. “To the Hockelmann Seven,” Nick said. And George drank “to our neighbors, and let’s hope we can find them.” Herman, especially charming because he meant it, suggested a toast “to our gorgeous captain.”

Hutch bowed appreciatively. Then she directed Bill to trace the orbit and the signal direction to Point B.