Solly brought it up, found more moons, three this time, repeated the process, and smiled triumphantly. “I think we’re in business,” he said.

She was delighted. “Good. Let’s get ourselves into the same orbit. But I want to move a bit faster than the Hunter would have.”

“Why?”

“So that we’ll overtake anything that might be traveling at Hunter’s velocity.”

Solly frowned.

“Just do it, okay?” she said.

“Okay, Kim.”

“And let’s do as thorough a search as we can.”

“What exactly do you expect to find?”

“I expect nothing,” she said, feeling like Veronica King, who always said that. “But the possibilities are limitless.” The hope that she entertained, that she did not want to describe, was that the celestial was still here somewhere, a derelict. It was possible.

Solly passed instructions to the AI. “We’ll be going into orbit,” he told her, “later this evening. And we’ll need roughly twelve hours to do a complete search along the orbit.”

There was something in Solly’s voice. “Anything wrong?” she asked.

“I thought about this before we left but it didn’t really seem like something I wanted to bring up at the time.”

“Tell me, Solly.”

“We’re not armed,” he said. “Has it occurred to you that if this thing is here, it may not be friendly?”

“I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Why not?”

She looked out at the star-clouds. “Solly, even if they were an aggressive species, there wouldn’t be any point shooting at someone in a wasteland like this. What’s to gain?”

“Maybe they just don’t like strangers. Something happened to the Hunter”

“We have to assume they’re rational, Solly. Otherwise they couldn’t have gotten here in the first place.” She enjoyed being with him, alone in all this vast emptiness. It was different now that they could look out the windows and know that what they were seeing was really there. “They didn’t shoot at the Hunter. Or if they did, they’re not very dangerous because the Hunter got home safely.”

“It’s possible,” said Solly, “they’re at war against their own kind. Maybe Ben Tripley got the name right, calling it the Valiant. It could have been a warship.”

“Solly,” she said patiently, “they got home all right.”

“Did they? Who knows? Maybe they were taken. Maybe something else went back.” He made a scary face and hummed a few notes from the old horror series Midnight Express. She laughed. But a chill ran through her nevertheless.

Shortly after dinner they settled into Hunter’s orbit, which was roughly equatorial, varying only a few degrees above and below the line.

The rings dominated the sky, a vast shining arch beneath which the copper-gold clouds rolled on forever. Lightning bolts cruised through the depths and occasionally they saw the fiery streak of a meteor.

It seemed a place of infinite serenity and beauty. One might almost conclude it had been designed specifically to please the human eye and mind.

It was, she thought, a reason in itself to pursue starflight. Even if we were truly alone the mere existence of this kind of world and its magnificent star-clouds should be enough to summon the race from its ancestral home. There was something decadent in what was happening now, in the general retreat back to comfort and routine and familiar surroundings. In the lack of interest in all the things that had once been counted as noble and worth accomplishing.

We had begun to lead virtual lives.

No one had to work, so few did anything more than pursue quiet leisure. Kim had always thought herself ambitious. Yet during her entire life she had never felt an urge, even when the opportunity was there, to move beyond the home worlds. People complained about long weeks locked up in spartan accommodations, at getting ill during the jumps, at the expense of interstellar travel. And they settled for imaginary images, lovely little technological fireworks displays, created in the warm comfort of their living rooms. Throw a log on the fire and visit Betelgeuse.

She started to explain to Solly how she felt, looking at the star-cradles glowing in their windows, at the Horsehead, at the rings. The presence of another intelligence seemed not quite as important as it had a few hours before.

“Welcome to the club, Kim,” he said when she’d finished. “Those of us who make a living out here have known that for years. It really doesn’t matter all that much whether there are celestials in Orion. There’s just too much to see to complain about the details. And if it does turn out that we’re the only part of the universe able to see what’s around us, that’s okay.”

She’d always felt that Solly tended to neglect the more intellectual aspects of life. He didn’t read as much as he should, and he’d seemed to be too interested in the practical and the mundane, a man who seldom considered the philosophical issues. He’d surprised her several times on this trip, particularly with his remarks about the slow lightning. Ask Solly what the purpose of existence was, and he could be expected to reply that it’s a good lunch with good friends. Or a good woman.

She’d had a confused notion that life had something to do with expanding one’s intellectual horizons. And with achievement. Now she looked out the window and decided that whatever her purpose was, she’d fulfilled it when she arrived here.

And if she could choose a place to meet another intelligence, this would surely be it.

Below her, the upper atmosphere caught the light from the distant sun. It looked warm down there, and it was easy to imagine broad oceans and continents lying beneath those shimmering mists. In fact the temperature at the cloudtops was a terrestrial -17° C, the heat generated internally. Not all that bad if you could breathe hydrogen and methane.

Solly concentrated the scanners along the arc of the orbit, but he maintained a full search bubble out to more than six thousand kilometers. That took about 30 percent off the range and definition of the main search, but it was a price he was prepared to pay to avoid being surprised. Kim didn’t argue the point.

They were circling the planet every hour and twenty-two minutes. It had gotten late but no one showed any inclination to retire.

During the third orbit the alarm went off.

“Organic object ahead,” said the AI.

They went to the pilot’s room and Solly put the hit onscreen and went to full mag. They were on the dark side of the planet, in shadow, and consequently he could get nothing more than a marker. But the analysis had already begun.

Calcium.

“Object is rectangular, approximately two meters long, less than a meter wide.”

Carbon.

Range was twelve hundred kilometers.

Solly relaxed a bit. He laid in an intercept course. Kim felt the engines come on. The ship began to accelerate.

Potassium.

Below, the great arc of the rings was mostly in shadow, but a couple of moons gave them some light.

Hydrochloride.

Ahead, the sun was coming up. That wasn’t going to help visibility either.

“Won’t take long,” he said.

Kim felt a darkness gathering at the pit of her stomach.

They sat silently, sufficiently chilled that Solly raised the temperature on the flight deck.

Nine hundred kilometers and closing.

They flew into the sunrise.

Sodium.

The marker seemed to change its aspect, growing alternately brighter and dimmer. “It’s tumbling,” Solly said.

They raced toward the sun, passed under it, eventually got it behind them and were able to get a clear visual.

It was a body.

She was barely breathing now, gripping the arms of the chair, conscious of Solly watching her.

“You all right, Kim?”