Infinity Beach (2000) aka Slow Lightning by Jack McDevitt

Author:Jack McDevitt [McDevitt, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf
ISBN: 0061020052
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2001-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

18

We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.

—CHANG WON TO, Mind and Creation, 404

Never go to bed angry.

They slept together that night as they had every night since Raven. But the lovemaking was perfunctory, reserved, cautious. One might almost say politic.

“Are you okay?” she asked, when they’d finished and lay quietly, aware that the tension had not eased.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Solly, I don’t want you angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.”

And so it went. The odd thing was she’d never seen him this way before. She’d known him to sulk, to take offense, and even on occasion to turn cold. But there was something deeper here, a degree of resentment that both surprised and hurt her.

It might have been that he also regretted the lost years, and that he was holding her responsible. Being bottled up in the ship didn’t help. Everything was too closed in. There was too much solitude.

In the morning things were better. He apologized and agreed that of course they should wait, should not rush into commitments that maybe neither of them was ready to keep.

During the days that followed they supplemented their impassioned evenings by creating love by proxy, staging romances in which their alternate selves indulged in exotic exploits. But only with each other. No outsider was permitted to join the party.

The climax of the first phase of the flight came during the late afternoon of March 7, the thirty-ninth day. The Hammersmith’s automatic systems warned them that transition into realspace was imminent. They’d been waiting in mission control, drinking coffee, full of anticipation for the hunt.

“Five minutes,” said the AI.

Kim brought the harness down over her shoulders.

“Zero hour,” said Solly. “Good luck.”

The ship was always alive with the sound of power, of ongoing maintenance, of life support, of the engines even when they were in an inactive mode, which was most of the time. Kim had quickly become inured to it and heard it only when she deliberately listened for it, or when the tone changed. Now, as they approached their destination twenty-seven light-years off Alnitak, the jump engines began to build and power flowed through the walls.

Kim’s eyes drifted shut. She imagined herself going home with the evidence, showing Agostino proof that an encounter had taken place, calling press conferences, accepting the congratulations of the world. A thousand years from now people would still speak in hushed tones of the flight of the Hammersmith.

The real challenge, she suspected, would be to create a second meeting.

It all seemed very promising, and she was luxuriating in the glory to come when the jump engines took hold and they crossed back out into realspace.

“Okay,” said Solly. “That’s it. We’ve arrived.” He brought the forward view up on the overhead screen. It was filled with stars.

“Time to get to work,” she said, so anxious she could scarcely contain herself.

He reached over and clasped her hand. “We should have thirty hours or so before the signal will be arriving here.

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