And brightened.

It wasn’t supposed to do that.

“—To do the thing systematically,” Solly concluded.

Behind the lamp, the wall and the control panel wrinkled. In the way of a strip of pavement on a hot day.

It was gone almost before the sensation had registered. “Solly,” she said, “are we having an imager problem?”

“No,” he said. “I saw it too.” The silence in the ship was overwhelming. She left the pilot’s room and was waiting by the air lock when it opened. Solly came out.

She put all the lights on in the entryway and looked into the air lock. Everything seemed normal.

“Ham,” she said. “Rerun the sequence from the helmet imager, beginning about four minutes ago. Put it on one of the entry windows.”

There were two large windows in the entryway. Both had carried images of the skies as they might have been seen from Greenway. Now one went dark and then lit up with Solly entering the air lock.

“Too recent,” she said. “Back it up another couple of minutes.”

“It was just a power dip,” said Solly.

“Maybe.”

She watched him moving rapidly backward, saw the saddle in reverse flight, watched it sail in toward him, saw him put it down on the hull. Use the bar.

Solly-in-the-window worked backward furiously on the saddle. The circular opening in the seat closed.

“Okay,” she said. “Stop, Ham. Run it forward.”

Solly laid his helmet down, peeled off the suit, and sat down to get out of the boots.

The sensor mount rippled again.

“Ham,” said Kim, “hold it.”

Solly’s brow creased. They ran it several times. Then she took him to the sequence in the air lock, and they watched the amber lamp fade and brighten and the control panel lose its definition. It seemed to fold slightly, and darken, as if something had passed in front of it, as if the space it occupied had changed in some indefinable way.

“Does that—” she stared at the image on the monitor, “—normally happen out here?”

“No.” He switched over to the forward hull imager, backed up the record, and they watched the entire scenario from another angle.

The sensor mount was in the foreground. Solly was behind it. And this time, it was Solly who rippled.

“I don’t understand that,” he said.

Kim’s heart had picked up a beat. “It scares me, Solly.”

When they peeled away her jumpsuit, they saw that something had cut Emily almost in half at the waist. The flesh was charred, the trunk partially severed, but there was no blood.

“They cleaned her up before putting her out the airlock,” said Solly, pulling a sheet over the mutilated body.

“What could have happened to her?” asked Kim.

“A laser, maybe.” Solly looked puzzled.

They returned the corpse to its container and Kim kept reminding herself that at least now she knew. But it wasn’t much consolation.

Analysis of the recordings provided no clue as to what, if anything, had happened on the hull or in the air lock. A trick of the light, perhaps. Or disturbances in the space-time continuum. After all, Solly had been outside the ship. Maybe there were side effects when you opened up air locks to hyperspace. Indeed, no other explanation offered itself. So they put it out of their minds, as best they could, and resumed their normal shipboard routine.

And as the days passed with no recurrence of the effect, they forgot about it altogether.

Meantime, the conversation centered on the kind of reception they’d receive when they got back to Greenway. Police or a parade? Kim was unwaveringly optimistic. You cannot prosecute the person who answers one of the great all-time scientific and philosophical questions. Solly, who’d been around longer, suggested that their accomplishment would only serve to anger Agostino even more. “We might look good to posterity,” he said, “but the locals may take a different view. Remember Columbus?”

“What about him?”

“Died in a Spanish prison.”

On the other hand, Kim thought Agostino could be relied on to milk the mission for all it was worth, to make it sound as if it had been an Institute initiative from the start. In that case, their careers would be safe as long as they cooperated.

Kim believed her interest in the sciences to be generally selfless, spurred primarily by a desire to push the frontiers of knowledge forward, to be part of the collective effort. She didn’t think she’d been in it for herself. But she resented the prospect that someone else might try to grab the credit after she’d gone through so much.

Five nights out of Alnitak, Kim, absorbed in these thoughts, was showering for dinner.

Because there were only two people on board, there was no pressing need to conserve the water supply. She had just rinsed her hair and was using a towel to dry her face before opening her eyes. But she sensed movement in the washroom.

“Solly?” she asked.

Once before he’d slipped in while she was in the shower, and had taken advantage of the opportunity, wrapping the curtain around her and fondling her through the translucent plastic.

But he did not answer and when she looked no one was there.

She dismissed the incident and the mild disappointment, dressed, and went down the hall for dinner, which included chicken, a fruit salad, and hot bread. They were talking about inconsequentials when Ham broke in: “Solly,” he said. “I am losing control over some of my functions. They are being rerouted elsewhere. To an alternate manager.”

“That can’t be,” said Solly. “Are you reporting a virus?”

“It is difficult to say precisely what the cause is, Solly.”

“Which systems are you losing?”

“I am having some difficulty with communications, diagnostics, life support. The deterioration is continuing as we speak.”

“Ham, what can we do to rectify the situation?”

“I do not know. You might wish to consider going to manual. If the process continues, I will shortly become unreliable.”

“Can we do that?” asked Kim. “Can we get home on manual?”

“Oh, sure,” said Solly. “It just means we’ll have to throw all the switches ourselves. And we might chip a little paint at the dock. Otherwise it’s no problem.” Nevertheless he looked worried.

They finished dinner, somewhat at less leisure than they’d begun, and went across to the pilot’s room. Kim took some of the hot bread with her.

Solly removed a wall panel marked AUTO OFF. “Ham,” he said, “I’ll check with you periodically. Try to locate the problem and eliminate it.”

“Yes, Solly. I am endeavoring to do that.”

His fingers touched a pumpkin-colored handle and moved it forward. A row of orange lamps came on. “The pilot finally gets to earn his pay,” he told Kim.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked.

“We relax.” He gestured toward the navigation console, which was built into a desk. “If you see any red lights and I’m not here, call me.”

“If something happened, wouldn’t the Klaxons sound?”

“Maybe. If we’ve got a virus in the system, everything becomes unreliable.” He must have seen the doubt in her face. “But don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. The ship is pretty much still automated. It’ll still produce hot water, prepare the food, recharge the power cells. The only difference now is that we’re going to have to punch some buttons to make things happen.” He paused, considering their situation. “If there’s a variance between actual conditions and prescribed conditions, the ship may not notice. Which means we might have to turn up the thermostat once in a while. Piece of cake, other than the inconvenience.”

Kim took a long time to ask the question that really bothered her. “Solly,” she said, “do you think it’s possible—?” She hesitated.

“—That—?”

“—The virus came from the device!”

“No,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly. “It’s a glitch in the programming, Kim.” He hesitated. “It happens.”