Starbridge (3 page)

"I know what you mean," Mahree said eagerly. "I want to accomplish something special, too." Then her shoulders slumped. "But ... I don't know what that 'something' is."

Rob smiled wistfully, nodding. "I thought medicine would be my 'something special.' I thought that as a doctor I could really make a difference."

"But you did! During the epidemic, you and the others saved lots of lives."

"And lost nearly as many. Hundreds ...
thousands
of people died, and we were helpless to stop it." For a second the dark eyes in the unlined face were old, filled with pain. "I suppose I did make a difference, but ... every time I think about the people we saved, I remember all the ones we lost, so it doesn't feel right, if you can understand that." He sighed bitterly. "To me, it felt like failure." Rob shook his head, obviously frustrated. "I sound like some kind of glory hound, don't I? That's not the way I mean it."

Mahree cocked her head at him, forgetting her shyness as she considered his words. "I understand. Like me, you want a challenge. Something
big.
But at the same time you're afraid that even if it came along, you couldn't handle it."

His eyes met hers for a long moment, then he chuckled self-consciously.

"For two people who supposedly have most of our lives still in front of us, we're a gloomy pair, aren't we? And, as the person who supposedly keeps tabs on the mental health of everyone aboard, I'm hardly talking like a therapist. I'm supposed to make you feel better, not depress you."

"Then let's talk about something else," Mahree suggested. "Since
Desiree
is too small to need a full-time doctor or psychologist, you must have another shipboard job. What is it?"

"When Viorst goes into hibernation next week, I'll be in charge of the hydroponics," Rob replied. "Checking the greenhouse and the algae tanks to make sure the ship's oxygen supply stays constant."

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"Can I help?" Mahree asked. "I had a garden back on Jolie."

"Sure." He grinned at her and lowered his voice confidentially. "The moment I met Simon Viorst I could just picture his hydroponics stock. Strictly by-the-book. Regulation algae strains, and maybe some neosoy."

"Yuck."

"Exactly. So, before we left Jolie, I stocked up on some seeds. By the time Viorst wakes up, we'll have a variety that'll make his eyes pop. Flowers for the tables in the galley. Fresh vegetables."

Mahree smiled back at him. "Tomatoes? Zucchini?"

He chuckled. "Of coursei They're the easiest of all."

"And if we don't eat all the zucchini"--Mahree began to giggle--"we can always implant them with transmitters and use them for space buoys."

The doctor shook his head ruefully. "Isn't it amazing that no matter how few you plant, you end up with a surplus?" Sekhmet mewed, butting her head against Rob's arm as she rose. After stretching herself to a seemingly impossible length, the cat jumped down and began cautiously exploring the galley. Mahree looked back at her companion. "What part of Earth are you from?"

"OldNorthAm, the Midwest. A place called Terre Haute."

"High Earth," Mahree translated, surprised. "That's French."

"You speak French?"

"That was my mother's first language. A lot of Jolie's colonists came from France. But tell me about Earth. What is it really like?"

"Well, when I left three years ago, it was about the same as it's been for the last two hundred years. Crowded. Even the colonies on New Am, Jolie, and Novaya Rossiya haven't taken the overpopulation pressure off, because most people won't travel fifty klicks to work, let alone fifty parsecs to have a better life. You were lucky to grow up on a colony world."

"Are the cities everywhere?" Dismayed, Mahree thought of her long walks over Jolie's fields, of the hikes and camping trips she had taken in the mountains. How could she give that up for years?

"No, not in OldNorthAm. The government owned a lot of the land, and they hung onto it until the bitter end. So there are still big wildlife refuges and parks, and there are several huge

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areas belonging to the InterCouncil of Native American tribes. They call them living museums."

"Can anyone visit these places?"

"Well, they screen visitors pretty carefully, but I'm sure you could get in on a student pass. You enjoy hiking?"

"I love it."

"Sometime you'll have to catch the morning shuttle over and I'll take you out to the Blue Ridge Mountains, or the Rockies in Colorado. We'll take a picnic."

"That would be great! But I wouldn't want to ..." Mahree trailed off.

"Impose?" he guessed. "I remember vividly what it's like to be a stranger on a new world. Your father and mother made me feel as though I were a part of the family. It would be a pleasure to begin returning the favor. And I'd really enjoy hiking again."

She smiled. "Too bad we can't put on spacesuits and hike around the outside of the ship. We'll be closed in for--"

"Attention,"
interrupted the ship's intercom. "First Mate Joan Atwood report to the communications station immediately."

"Communications?" Rob frowned. "We're in metaspace, aren't we? Too far from Jolie to be receiving any messages?"

"I know." Mahree jumped up excitedly. "That was Uncle Raoul. He sounded funny. Something strange must be going on . . . maybe we've crossed the path of another freighter."

Rob shook his head. "The odds against that are--"

"Come on!" She headed for the door, waving impatiently for Rob to follow her.

Fortunately, the galley was located forward of the work areas and crew quarters, because even as Mahree bolted toward the bridge, she heard the excited babble of the other crew members behind her. She and Rob were at the forefront of a living wave as it spilled through the entrance into the control cabin.

All of the watch crew plus the Captain and the Chief Engineer stood clustered around the communications console located on the left side of the bridge. A quick glance at the viewscreens showed Mahree normal stars, instead of the flickering, elongated violet trails indicating passage through metaspace.
That's strange, we're not due for a change of course,
she thought, remembering that she had asked her aunt about it that morning over breakfast.
Is something wrong?

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But the navigation console and pilot's control bank looked normal--no telltales flashed red.

"What's going on?" she whispered, tugging on the nearest man's sleeve. He was dark-skinned and wore a baggy ship's jumpsuit with the green shoulder patch of maintenance engineering. His ID strip identified him as Azam Quitubi.

"Don't know," he said, in strongly accented Standard English. "I was giving a report to the Captain when the emergency- frequency signal went off. Jerry checked and said that it was a radio source, but that it didn't sound like an E-beacon to him. He was pretty excited."

"Excited?
Jerry?"

Azam shrugged. Mahree craned her neck, trying to see the communications board.
What's going on?

Travel between Earth and its three colony worlds was still minimal; five or six freighters and one or two passenger ships each year. Even though ships could move at faster-than-light speeds, using the Stellar Velocity Drive, no method of making FTL transmissions had yet been discovered, so
Desiree
and vessels like her transported messages and mail, in addition to freight and passengers.

Even though the chances of another ship happening by in time to assist in an emergency were practically zero, all vessels were equipped with emergency beacons, and, by law, all ships kept their E-frequency channels open at all times.

By now the entire nonhibernating crew had jammed into the back of the little cabin. Mahree couldn't hear over the babble, and she could barely breathe, sandwiched as she was between tal er people. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck. The ship's ventilation blowers were doing their best, but they weren't designed for such a concentrated crowd.

"Let me
through,
dammit!" Mahree heard her Aunt Joan bellow. "Raoul, I'm back here!"

"All
right!"
the Captain's voice roared suddenly. "I want all crew except myself, the Chief Engineer, the First Mate, and the Communications Chief to clear out! I'll let you know what's going on as soon as we know!"

Muttering reluctantly, the crowd shuffled backward, into the corridor. Joan Atwood finally emerged, a tall, raw-boned woman with pale, patrician features and a permanent frown line etched between her brows. Joan was an excellent pilot, hardworking

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and unimaginative by nature, and coldly intolerant of stupidity or incompetence. She was stronger than most men, and had once fractured the skull of a crewman who had attempted to smuggle drugs aboard
Disiree.

Mahree was a little afraid of her aunt.

As the crowd shuffled slowly out, Mahree stayed at the rear of the group. She paused within the entrance to glance back.

Joan Atwood was just seating herself at the communications console, beside Jerry Greendeer. The Communications Chief was a member of the OldNorthAm Winnebago tribe, and his features showed his ancestry clearly.

Like most crew members when on duty, he wore a ship's-issue, blue-gray coverall with
Desiree's
logo and his name above the breast pocket, but Greendeer had ripped the sleeves out and left the front fastening half-unsealed. Fetish necklaces of abalone shell swung against his broad chest, and turquoise studs winked from his earlobes between the lank strands of his shoulder-length black hair.

Still hesitating in the doorway, Mahree bit her lip, torn between obeying her uncle's orders and her overwhelming curiosity. Then she turned back into the control cabin. Since
she
wasn't crew, she decided not to move until specifically told to do so. Luckily, her uncle had already turned back toward the communications board and didn't notice her.

"What's going on, Raoul?" Joan demanded.

"Something activated the E-frequency," her husband told her. "Jerry's not sure what. First time I ever heard the thing go off--gave me a hell of a start."

"Do you scan any ships in the area?"

"It wasn't an E-beacon," Jerry told her, his eyes bright with excitement. "An SOS is impossible to mistake. This was just a wave on the same frequency."

"How long did we receive this . . . whatever it was?" Joan asked, raking an impatient hand through her cropped auburn curls.

"For about ninety seconds," Jerry told her, "but it was pretty weak. Then it began breaking up. Interstellar scintillation, maybe. Or our receiver isn't big enough. Or whatever was making those waves stopped making them."

"Well, which do you think it was?" Raoul demanded.

"No way to tell."

"Let's see it," Joan said. "And turn on the audio."

Jerry's short, squarish fingers skipped capably over the controls, and the central holo-tank display filled with a rainbow

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profusion of colored peaks and valleys, even as hissing, chattering bursts of static-ridden sound erupted from the audio speakers. "See it there?" he pointed. "The pale orange-colored wavelength."

"And what about how it sounds?" Raoul demanded.

"It's so faint, it's hard to make out."

Raoul gestured at the board. "Isn't there any way to eliminate all this other stuff and boost the signal so we can hear it better?"

"Yeah, I can fiddle with it, and probably do a little better. It's still going to be weak. Maybe if I can pick it up again, get a stronger reception, I can isolate it better ... but to do that we'll have to stay sublight and search this area."

Mahree turned at a light touch on her arm to find Rob Gable standing beside her, Sekhmet draped over his shoulder. "You're not supposed to be here,"

she whispered, putting a finger to her lips.

He grinned recklessly at her. "Neither are you," he returned, his mouth only inches from her ear. "What have we picked up?"

"Electromagnetic radiation," Mahree told him, still in an undertone. "Long waves. Radio."

"Radio?"
He looked startled. "You mean from
Earth!
But we're too far--"

Mahree was already shaking her head. "Shhhhh!" she reminded him. "No, it doesn't have to be from Earth. All kinds of things produce radio waves . . .

anytime electrons move, you get them. Quasars, pulsars, Seyfert galaxies . . . even ordinary stars produce some, though they're not strong sources."

He gave her a look of surprised respect. "I took a semester of astronomy at U-prep, and I can't remember a damned thing about any of it."

"I just had it last year, two terms' worth," she explained, flushing with pleasure.

"So why did the E-beacon go off?" he asked.

"We picked up a wave that was on the same frequency," Mahree replied, then she waved him to silence in order to hear what her uncle was saying.

"You're telling me it definitely wasn't an E-beacon, Jerry." Raoul Lamont's voice was slow, heavy. "Then what was it?"

"Don't know, boss." Jerry had regained his usual equanimity. "I'd like to listen to it all by itself, and I'd also like to run

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both the visual and the audio through the computer for analysis-- have it tell me whether those waves were totally random, or whether they contain any repetition of patterns or sounds."

"What would that indicate?" Raoul asked.

"Maybe something other than a natural radio source."

Mahree's eyes widened. Rob jabbed her with his elbow. "Does what he just said imply what I think it implies?"

"Shhhhh!"

Raoul Lamont stared at his Communications Chief for nearly a minute in silence. "Jerry . . . we're still more than two hundred light-years from Earth.

What are the chances we could be picking up old radio waves that originated there? Television, for example?"

"Slim. The frequencies don't fit. And that sure didn't sound like any human language or code I ever heard. I'll have the computer search its auxiliary files to make sure." Greendeer's broad, OldNorthAm Native features were still impassive, but his voice betrayed an undercurrent of excitement.