On the whole, she was quite good. She inevitably tended toward pomposity and usually said too much, but this time she hit the right tone, grabbed the credit for the Academy (which it clearly didn’t deserve), and expressed her hope that Mr. Hockelmann and his gallant team would get back safely.

THEY MADE A virtual record of the Retreat, and Hutch was able to re-create it on the Memphis so that it became possible to discard the e-suits and use the holotank to spend time there. Bill even reconstructed the place as it might have looked when it was new, and he shrank the dimensions so they could see it as its occupants must have seen it.

But it didn’t really matter. George and his people preferred the real thing, the pocket dome, the proximity to the graves, and the books. Always the books. Expectations for their contents, the wisdom of an advanced race, their history, their ethics, their conclusions about God and creation, ran so high that she thought they could not fail to disappoint when translation eventually came. It occurred to Hutch that it might be a blessing were the library and all its work to vanish. Go up maybe in a volcanic eruption. It would provide debate and romance for centuries, while scholars and poets speculated about what had been lost. Nick had commented once that people never look good at their funerals, not because they’re dead, but because there’s too much light on them. “We need some shadowing,” he said. “Some concealment.”

Virgil’s reply to George arrived during the early afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Hutch was on the ship when Bill asked whether she wanted to look at it before it was relayed down to the Retreat.

“Other people’s mail,” she said.

“You might want to look anyhow.”

“Let it go.”

Five minutes later George was on the circuit, outraged. “Did you see it?” he demanded.

“No. But I assume she denied the request.”

“Worse than that, Hutch.” He looked ready to commit murder. “She says she’s directed Mogambo to move the Retreat back to Virginia.”

“The furnishings?” she asked. “The books? What?”

“Everything. Lock, stock, and barrel. The woman’s lost her mind.”

Hutch could think of nothing to say. But she understood the rationale. Out here, a zillion light-years from Arlington, the site was inconvenient. Worse, if they left it where it was, they would need to find a way to keep poachers and vandals off the premises. Furthermore, at home, it would become a pretty decent tourist draw.

Now that she thought of it, she wondered whether the director wasn’t doing the right thing. Why not make it available to the public? The Academy drew 51 percent of its support from federal taxes. It struck her that the taxpayers had every right to see what their money was buying. But she could see that George was in no mood to discuss the matter.

“I won’t allow it.” They were empty words, and they both knew it. “Hutch.” He looked at her as if she could somehow intervene. Make Sylvia Virgil see reason. Beat off Mogambo. “It’s indecent.”

“Archeologists have always been grave robbers,” she said softly. “It’s what they do.” She almost said, what we do. Because she’d been involved, had helped make off with countless artifacts. But she was only an amateur grave robber.

She pictured the Retreat, with its unremarkable decks and its myopic windows looking out across the Potomac. With hordes of schoolkids tracking through it, and vendors outside hustling sandwiches and kites. And a souvenir shop. And visitors would say to one another, Built by real aliens. They’d enjoy their soft drinks and their popcorn, imagining they knew how it had really felt when George and his team landed.

George was right. And all those people making off with jars and knives and cups and medallions from Sumer and Egypt and Mexico, and later from Quraqua and Pinnacle and Beta Pac, had been right, too. She couldn’t bring herself to deny the work she’d assisted all these years. But still…

Without the needle peaks and the Twins and the big ring (they couldn’t take any of that back to Arlington) what would the Retreat be?

THEY WENT BACK to the Memphis for New Year’s Eve. They’d run out of constructive things to do on the ground. By then everyone wanted to get out of the pocket dome, or stop sleeping in the lander. So they came back up and had another party.

There’d been some reservation about the propriety of all these celebrations so soon after Kurt’s death. But Hutch assured them that Kurt would have preferred they go ahead and enjoy themselves, which was true. Moreover, it was a bonding process, a way to shut out the strangeness of their surroundings. So they raised the first glass to the lost captain, drank to their other lost comrades, and drowned themselves in each other’s company.

“This is the way archeology is supposed to be done,” Hutch told Nick, late in the evening. She was wearing a party hat and had probably drunk a bit too much by then. There were no rules about captains drinking, other than the general admonition that they be able to function in an emergency. Consequently, Hutch stayed within range of what some coffee and a couple of pills could do to bring her around. Bill helped her keep watch on her limitations, and was not above informing her publicly if he thought she was indulging beyond the limits.

At midnight, of course, everybody kisses everybody else. George had been a bit reluctant when Hutch offered herself to him, but he managed a smile and delivered a chaste peck just to one side of her lips. Poor George. He was the most driven man she’d ever known. Even there, in the midst of a success that would make him immortal, he couldn’t enjoy himself. When he started to pull away, Hutch tossed her own inhibitions to the wind, seized him, looked directly into his startled eyes, and delivered a long wet smooch after which she grinned happily at him. He tried to break free, but she hung on. “Happy New Year, George,” she said, while applause rose around her. It went a long way to breaking down the wall that had been rising between them.

And even Tor, who routinely kept his distance, approached her toward the end of the evening and took her aside. “Next year, Hutch,” he said, “however we do it, whatever it takes, I want to celebrate with you.”

Why not? “It’s a date,” she said.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR, Hutch.”

Bill startled her. Usually, when she was alone in her quarters and he wanted to speak with her, there was a preliminary cough or a telltale squeal from the screen. But this time the voice was right in the room with her, hello ma’am, how are you doing, no monkeying around.

“Happy New Year yourself, Bill.”

“Nice party.”

“Yes.” She had just finished toweling off after coming out of the shower and was pulling her shift over her head. “Is everything okay?”

“We have another anomaly. I think.”

That got her attention. “What?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay. What’s the anomaly?”

“The white spot.”

“The white spot?” She’d forgotten about it. The cyclonic storm on Cobalt?

“On Autumn. At the equator. I’ve been watching it for several days.”

“Why is it anomalous?”

“For one thing, it’s not in the atmosphere.”

“It isn’t? Where is it?”

“It’s in orbit.”

“I thought you said it was a snowstorm.”

“It is.”

“Can’t happen.”

“That would have been my view.”

She was tired. Ready to call the mission a success and go home. “What else?”

“Autumn is directly on the line of transmission.”

“The signal from Icepack?”

“That is correct.”

Hutch had been punching up her pillows. She abandoned them, turned, and waited for the wallscreen to light up. It did, and Bill looked out at her. He was wearing a black dressing gown with the ship’s insignia over the breast pocket. “Has the signal been tracking Autumn?”

“Yes.”