28

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” It was Yoshi’s voice. But only Kane was visible, relaxed in his chair. He was looking off to his right, gazing out beyond the view of the imager. Kim, recalling the design of the Hunter, knew he was looking through large double windows. The overhead screen depicted the Alnitak region, the vast roiling clouds, the dark mass of the Horsehead, the brilliant nebulosity NGC2024, the giant star itself, and the sweeping rings of the Jovian world.

“We thought you’d not want to miss it.” Emily this time. “There’s nothing quite like it anywhere we’ve been.”

She came into the picture now and sat down in the left-hand chair. “I think,” she said, “we should have dinner tonight out on one of the terraces.”

“Precisely what we had in mind.” That was Tripley. Kim judged from the body language of Emily and Kane that their colleagues were not physically present in the pilot’s room. “In fact, we’ve made it a tradition to do that whenever we’ve been out here.”

Something on the control board caught Kane’s eye. He made adjustments, looked at his screens, and frowned. “Well, that’s interesting.”

“What is it, Markis?” asked Tripley’s voice.

“I don’t know. We’re getting a return—”

“What kind of return?”

“Metal. Moving almost perpendicular to the plane of the system.”

Emily leaned forward to get a better look at the screen. “Is that significant? I wouldn’t think a chunk of iron’s that much out of the ordinary.”

“This one appears to have some definition.” After a pause: “But don’t get excited. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Nevertheless, Emily’s face took on an aura of hope.

“Markis.” Tripley again.

“It’s on your monitor now, Kile. We’re still too far away to make anything of it.”

“You think it might be an artificial object?”

“I think it’s a chunk of iron.” He pressed a key on the control panel. “So everybody knows,” he said, “the Foundation requires us in any unusual circumstance to record everything that happens throughout the ship until we resolve the situation. Save for private quarters, of course. We will go to full recording mode in one minute. So get your clothes on back there, kiddies.”

“Can we get a picture of the thing?” asked Yoshi.

“It’s still too far away.”

“How far is that?”

“Seven hundred thousand kay. It’s in orbit, about to drift behind the planet. We’ll lose it in a few minutes.”

“Not altogether, I hope,” said Emily.

“No chance,” said Kane. They watched it drop down the sky, disappearing finally behind the rim of the big planet.

“Kile, I assume we want to take a closer look?”

Tripley laughed. “Sure. Why not, as long as we’re here?”

“How long before we see it again?” asked Yoshi.

“Don’t know. We didn’t get enough to plot an orbit.”

“Just stay with it,” said Tripley.

“All right.” Kane gave directions to the AI. “If we’re going to pursue we should get rolling. Everybody belt down.” Hunter rotated, realigned itself, and the mains fired.

They’d been running for almost three quarters of an hour when the object reappeared. Kane tried unsuccessfully to acquire an image. “It’s still too far,” he said.

“Markis.” It was the AI. “The object is in a long irregular orbit. It’ll decay quickly. Within about six weeks, in fact.”

“When will we catch up with it?” asked Tripley.

Kane put the question to the AI.

“Late tomorrow morning,” came the answer.

Two lamps burned dimly in the pilot’s room.

Rings and moons dominated the windows. At 2:17 A.M., the AI woke Kane. “We have definition, Markis.”

The object was smooth, not the rugged piece of rock and iron one would have expected. It was shaped somewhat like a turtle-shell.

Kane studied it for almost ten minutes, enhanced it, tapped his fingers on the console, nodded to himself. Eventually he opened the intercom. “Friends,” he said quietly, “we have an anomaly.”

They padded one by one into the pilot’s room, in bare feet, all wearing robes. All cautiously excited. Emily looked at the overhead, the others turned to the windows, into which Kane had placed the image. “It’s an enhancement,” he explained. “But I think this is close to what’s really out there.”

They stared quietly. Yoshi stood near Tripley and they seemed to draw together. Emily’s face shone.

“It’s not very big,” Kane said.

“How big is that?”

“A little more than a half meter long, maybe two-thirds as wide.”

Kim could almost feel the room deflate.

“It looks like a toy,” said Yoshi. “Something somebody just tossed overboard.”

It was tumbling, turning slowly end over end.

Tripley stood near a desk lamp. He turned it off so they could see better. “Just for argument’s sake,” he said, “is there any possibility of a local lifeform?”

Emily shook her head. “Alnitak puts out too much UV.”

“But we don’t really know that it couldn’t happen,” Tripley said.

“Almost any thing’s possible,” said Emily. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

Antennas and sensor pods were becoming visible. Kane tapped the window. “It has a Klayson ring.”

It might have taken a minute for the implication to set in. A Klayson ring indicated jump capability.

“Aside from the size,” said Emily, “anybody ever seen this kind of design before?”

Kane shook his head. “I’ve run a search. It doesn’t match up with anything.”

“It’s a probe,” said Emily. “Probably left by the survey unit when it was here.”

“Can’t be,” said Kane.

“Why not?”

“The Klayson ring.”

“Some probes have Klayson rings,” insisted Emily.

“Not this size. It’s too small. We wouldn’t know how to pack a jump system into a package like this. Unless there’s been a major advance in the last few months.”

“Are you suggesting,” said Yoshi, “it’s a celestial artifact?” She barely breathed the conclusion.

Kane got up, went over to the window, and studied the object. “I don’t want to get everybody excited, but I don’t think we, or anybody we know, left this here.”

They looked at one another. Tentative smiles appeared. Emily pressed her hand to her lips. Tripley glanced around the room as if he feared someone would have a more straightforward explanation. Yoshi stood unmoving in front of the windows, beside Kane.

“Don’t be discouraged by its size,” said Kane. “It might still be possible to talk to it. There might be an AI of one sort or another on board.”

“Let me ask a question,” said Tripley. “Does intelligent life have to be big?”

Emily nodded. “Theoretically, yes. Got to have big brains.”

“Theoretically. But is that really true?”