Greg Bear - Beyond Heavens River

Out of the parsec abyss came little more than the twenty-one centimeter whisper of hydrogen, Gods favorite element. To the listeners, mechanical and human, it amounted to dead silence.

Alae Waunter entered the translucent blister of the Ear, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She put the equipment through several reference tests. Everything checked out. She frowned and replaced a short strand of reddish-brown hair.

A parsec away and over three years ago, the noise of an entire civilization had stopped. She tuned the Ear up and down the spectrum, passing the harsh whikker of the star, the cold murmurs of the outer gas giants in the solar system, the song of radiation trapped in ballooning magnetic fields. Then she focused, limiting her reception to the tiny point of the Perfidisian planet. There was nothing but cosmic background. They had been on station, listening through the Ear, for twenty-six years and nothing like this had ever happened before.

She flipped the switch which cut the Ear out of the circuits and altered reception to non-radiative communications. From the murmur of spaces below the Planck-Wheeler length came an even more profound silence.

Somehow, the Perfidisians had managed to blanket the most subtle signs of their presence. Or

She froze. If something drastic had happened, they could be out of a contract, out of the work they had pursued for more than a quarter of a century.

Oomalo Waunter walked into the Ear naked, drying himself with a towel after a swim in the seatanks. He was the same height as his wife, with thin brown hair and pale skin. Despite his constant exercising, his body was smooth and faintly chubby. Whats up? he asked.

Alae didnt answer. She took out special attachments and plugged them in one by one. The Ear expanded to thirty thousand times its usual size. The stations power sources whined faintly.

I dont hear anything, she said.

Let me give it a try. He repeated the tests she had made, then tried a few more. He checked the strain on their power sources and pulled the Ear in several thousand kilometers. Sounds like an empty hunk of rock, he said. For all the time they had been on line, the Perfidisian planetotherwise known only by a long serial numberhad presented an image of heavy overbuilding, industry, mining, a general air of frantic if mysterious busyness.

The Perfidisians were unpredictable, prone to erratic migrations which no one had yet made any sense out of. Though the distant world had been their base of operations for over five thousand years, it wasnt inconceivable that they could have packed up and stolen away, even in so short a time as a day. Very little was known about them; the Waunters had never found out anything significant, nor, so far as they knew, had any of the other listeners spaced at even greater distances.

Alae moistened her lips and looked through the Ears misty walls at the fog of stars. If theyre gone she began, her voice trembling.

Shh. No. Oomalo put his hand on her shoulder. For weeks at a time they didnt touch each other, or see each other. The station was huge and they had worked out a routine over the years, leaving each other alone much of the time. But they had not grown apart. Oomalo sensed her distress and it made his stomach twist. There may be more here, he continued. I mean, it may be an opportunity.

They had relayed all they had heard for twenty-six years, so that their employers could feel that the puzzle of the Perfidisians was being solved, no matter how slowly. They had never known precisely who their employers werethe contract had been confirmed only on their end, with assurance in the form of credits formally registered and accepted by proxy twice yearly on Myriadne, Tau Ceti II.

What kind of an opportunity? she asked.

Maybe theyve leftthats possible. But if so, were the first to know about it. There could be an entire planet down there, waiting for us, complete with artifacts.

Alae nodded. I see that. What if they havent left?

We take a risk.

Perfidisians had been known to go to great lengths to maintain their privacy. They were notorious for ruses, double blinds, and subtle violencethe kind of mishaps which couldnt be blamed on any particular party.

Alae didnt regret the decades spent on line. She felt no resentmentthere had been no hardships. The work, in fact, had been ideally suited for them, bringing the peace they had never had working on other jobs. Before they had bought into the stationan old, reconditioned Aighor starshipthey had spent the first five years of their marriage in miserable uncertainty, going after opportunities which had collapsed under them, twice declaring bankruptcy, with their equipment seizedAll because they had taken chances, faced risks, and not been very lucky or smart. On line, whatever weaknesses had brought them to ruin so often were not in evidence. They had done their work well.

But still, hidden away was a yearning she would never rid herself ofthoughts of all the things they could have done, could have been.

It would be days before the next line of listeners noticed the change.

Opportunity.

Alae slapped a test module on the panel and pushed her way past Oomalo, walking down the oval corridor to the ships old Aighor command center. Her footfalls were the only noise. She wanted to put her hands over her ears to hide from the silence. A quarter century of routine had made decisions agonizingly difficult. Oomalo followed. They sat in the twilight of the half-awake control consoles, smelling the dust and the cool electronic odors. Human-form chairs had been welded to the floor plates when the station had been re-outfitted, thirty years ago.

Most of the pathways and living quarters had been tailored for human occupation, but the command center was much as it had been for the past ten thousand years. The light on its consoles glowed with the same spectrum chosen by the last Aighors to crew the ship. Alien displays indicated that the dormant engines were still in working order.

They could be brought to life by touching three spots on a metal panel. The station could revert to a functioning starship in less than a minute. They could be in the Perfidisian system within a day. Within a day they could be dead, or they could count themselves among the wealthiest and most influential humans in the galaxy.

Alae glanced at her husband. None of our risks were like this, she said. Stakes were never so high.

He turned to the ancient position charts around the perimeter of the direct-view dome. Weve been here a long time, he said. Perhaps long enough. If you think its worth the risk.

Alae looked at the alien consoles with silver-flecked gray eyes, lips tight, one fist gripping and ungripping the fabric of her pants. Lets start before the others learn.

Oomalo leaned forward and pulled a plastic cloth away from the console. An amber metal plate with sixty symbols glinted in the red light of the slumbering monitors. He touched two of the symbols. The console brightened. A human computer had been interfaced with the old Aighor machine. Were going to enter the Perfidisian system, Oomalo told the computer. He consulted more up-to-date charts on his tapas, a small personal computer, then gave the tag-numbers and geodesics to follow. The computer translated. The old ship made hollow, resentful noises, but it complied. Their view of the stars in the direct-view dome was cut off.