During the next few days Alyx came back, and they talked about it again, and Hutch didn’t say much but mostly just listened. Sometimes the conversation went in other directions. They talked about ambitions, men, clothes, what lay ahead. But inevitably they returned to the terrible moments on the ground.

Gradually, Hutch’s own tendency to relive the experience began to fade. And the emotions associated with it fused into a kind of numbness. Something she could package and put away in a locked room that she simply did not visit anymore.

Meantime, she and Alyx forged a strong bond of empathy with each other.

THEY WERE STILL a couple of days away from the class-G when Tor appeared on the bridge. He didn’t seem to have much to say, but simply asked how she was holding up.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You seemed down.”

“I thought everybody seemed a bit down.”

“Touché.” He sighed. “The flight hasn’t exactly been a barrel of laughs, has it?”

“Not exactly,” she said.

“I know this has been especially hard on you.”

She shrugged. “It’s been hard on us all.”

“If there’s anything I can do…”

She smiled her appreciation. “Thanks, Tor. I know.”

“Don’t hesitate to ask.”

“I won’t.”

“What do you think we’ll find up ahead?”

“Anybody’s guess,” she said. She had the sense of drifting down an endless track, littered with invisible satellites.

He gazed at her a long moment. “Hutch, I wish we’d had more time together. In the Arlington days.”

So did she. But that was a fresh realization, and she couldn’t entirely submerge a trace of resentment that he hadn’t tried a bit harder to hold on to her. “Me too,” she said in a neutral voice. “My schedule just never seemed to allow much time for socializing.”

“I know,” he said. “I understand.” He smiled, and she thought he was going to do it again, nod politely, excuse himself, leave the room, and not bring it up anymore. Or at least not for several more years, after which he’d show up again unexpectedly, implying that yes, he’d loved her all along, and he wished things had gone differently. Damn you, Tor.

“I just wanted you to know,” he was saying, “that I’ve always thought you were pretty special.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “Thanks. I think you’re pretty special, too.”

“Well.” He looked lost. “I should be going.” He kissed her chastely on the cheek. “If you ever need me, Hutch…” He paused in the doorway and looked at her for a long moment. Then he was gone.

Hutch opened a drawer in her console, fished out a pen, and flung it across the room.

THEY JUMPED BACK to sublight on schedule, at about 48 A.U.s from the central luminary, out where the signal would be passing through the system. Hutch deployed the dishes, and they began the now-familiar routine of searching for the incoming transmission.

George wished they had better communications technology, but seemed mollified when Hutch explained that he had gotten his money’s worth, that the Memphis systems were state-of-the-art, and that there were simply limits imposed by physics no matter how good the equipment was.

The males automatically tended to flirt with Alyx. By now, their affections for one another had deepened, had become something else. But Alyx never lost consciousness of what Hutch was feeling, and consequently tried to maintain an amiable distance.

“Do we know anything at all about this system?” she asked. “Have we even looked at it through a telescope?”

“Maybe through a telescope,” Hutch said. “But that doesn’t tell us much. There’s been no formal survey here.”

Her eyes grew luminous. “You know,” she said, “it’s kind of exciting to be first person into a solar system.”

“It is,” said Hutch. “This mission’s been a new experience for me, too.”

Bill broke in. “Message from the director.”

Hutch nodded, and Sylvia Virgil appeared on-screen. “Hutch,” she said, “I want to congratulate you on your accomplishments. You’ll understand I’m sorry about the losses. We all regret that there have been casualties. But I want to remind you that you are on a historic flight. Which means it is essential to document everything. Remember that the safety of the vessel and its passengers is our paramount concern. I know you’re getting far away from home. But this is a big prize we’re after. You’ll be interested in knowing that the network—that’s what they’re calling it in the media—is huge news back here. We’ll be sending out a few more ships to provide support. Keep us informed every step of the way, and we’ll try to have some of them rendezvous with you farther down the line.

“We’ve already dispatched the Henry Hunt and the Melinda Freestone to the supergiant, based on the possibility that BY68681551”—she read the catalog number of the star system they were in from notes—“is not the actual target. If it turns out that it is, let me know right away, and we’ll change their destination. Hutch, so you’re aware, everything we have in the Outpost area is being turned your way.”

She was worried about lawsuits.

“WE HAVE ACQUIRED the signal,” said Bill.

“Can you see the target?”

“Working on it.”

WITHIN HOURS, BILL found a planet in the path of the transmission. It was an ice world, maybe half again as big as Earth, the sun no more than a bright star in its black sky. Its atmosphere lay frozen on the bleak surface. Huge fractures, several of which would easily have swallowed the Swiss Alps, ran north and south. “Nothing ever lived there,” said Alyx, gazing at the images on the screens.

George was frowning. “It breaks the pattern.”

“What pattern?” asked Tor.

“Living worlds. Worlds with civilizations.”

“The neutron star doesn’t have a civilization,” said Nick.

Alyx, who was becoming an astronomy enthusiast, looked up from an image of a pair of colliding galaxies. “I wonder,” she said, “where the beginning of the chain is.”

Bill appeared on-screen. “I’ve located a stealth satellite. Looking for more.”

“Same type?”

“Keep in mind I can’t see it directly, Hutch. Only the spatial distortion. But nothing so far suggests anything different from the others.”

“Why?” asked George. “What can be here that could possibly interest anybody?” The frustration in his voice was evident. “Nick,” he demanded, “would you put an observation satellite here?”

Nick shrugged. “Not unless I wanted to watch the glaciers move.”

“That’s why they’re called aliens,” said Alyx. “They do stuff that nobody can understand.”

Bill used the sensors to look underground, but he detected no unusual geologic formations, no hint of any artificial structure, absolutely nothing of interest to the mission. There was no evidence that anything had ever happened on this world.

It had two moons, both frozen rocks, captured asteroids, neither more than a few kilometers in diameter. Both were misshapen. One moved in a retrograde orbit. Other than that, they, too, offered nothing of note.

“Maybe,” said George, “it’s just a relay station. Maybe we’re at the limit of the signal’s range from Paradise.”

“May I offer an observation?” asked the AI.

“Go ahead, Bill.”

“The power level in the transmission from Paradise suggests the signal could have gone well beyond this area. If I were to construct a relay station for this signal, it would not be here.”

“My head’s beginning to hurt,” said George. “Bill, do we have a second set of stealths?”

“I’ve been looking. We have no sunlight here to speak of, so they’re difficult to pick up. But I will continue to search.”

“How about if we pull out a short distance,” said Hutch, “and see whether we can hear an outgoing signal?”

WHILE THEY LOOKED, Bill announced that a second ship had arrived insystem.

“Our supplies,” said Nick.

It was the Wendy Jay.

Hutch instructed Bill to open a channel. “Captain Eichner is already on the circuit,” he said. “Shall I patch him through?”