“It was a big radio array. But it was pointed outward—away from the sun, into interstellar space. Now, you’ve got to ask yourself: What’s the point of that?”
Lamont jerked away at the sensation of a hand falling on his shoulder. It was small and weathered.
“You’re shaking,” Madison observed. “You should sit down.”
With a gentle nudge, she led him to a stool at the bar of her kitchenette. She crossed around to the other side and, bending down momentarily, produced a green-tinted bottle and a shot glass. She filled it and pushed it in front of Lamont with two fingers, waiting patiently until Lamont lifted it and tossed the drink down his throat.
“Thanks,” he croaked, his shoulders slumping.
Crouching again, Madison retrieved a second glass. She filled it, then refilled the one that still rested between Lamont’s ink-stained fingers. She drank hers effortlessly, her eyes never leaving Lamont’s face.
“You could be one of them,” Lamont said, meeting her gaze steadily.
His neighbor tightened her lips, forming fine wrinkles around them, lifting her palms in a helpless gesture. “A communist spy? I could be.”
Lamont downed the second shot and set the glass down, inhaling deeply. It no longer trembled in his fingers. “That’s very good,” He admitted. “You didn’t get it in District 7.”
Madison smiled slightly. “No, I bought it outside the spaceport in Medusa Dome. First thing after my cargo was converted to gold bars at the trade market. I was saving it for the flight home.”
“Sorry,” Lamont said self-consciously.
Madison waved her hand. “I can get more. Besides, that was months ago. I never expected to be renting an apartment here.”
“What was the cargo?” Lamont asked.
“Mostly helium,” Madison answered eagerly, her eyes lighting up at the familiar subject. “Pressure-cubed for transport. Enough to buy a farm when I get back to Earth. I hear people are doing that now…”
The blinds glowed a sullen red with the approach of artificial sunset in the daylights outside. Madison’s apartment had taken on a warm coziness, the small points of light scattered across the ceiling appearing to drift like fireflies in Lamont’s peripheral vision. Madison had long since come to occupy the second stool at the bar, and the bottle between them was half-empty, sharing space with two stainless steel mugs that had been filled with strong coffee to balance things out.
“It’s a strange thing,” Madison was saying, her speech affecting more of what Lamont now recognized as a Louisiana drawl than it had when they had first met. “Tracking the new fusion models zipping back and forth between Mars and Jupiter, Mars and the Belt. I saw a few of them make a round trip while I was still just moseyin’ along. I’ll tell you, though, those first radio transmissions might’ve just saved my life. I must have sounded like a lunatic.”
“It can’t be that unusual to meet a prospector out there,” Lamont suggested. He had kept her talking for hours, describing the minute details of a decade spent in the outer Solar System, which he carefully absorbed, weighed, compared.
Madison shook her head. “The Asteroid Belt is still crawling with ‘em, of course. I picked up some radio traffic from Saturn, and now they’ve practically got cities orbiting Jupiter. That’s new. But it’s still rare to venture out to the ice giants. The first half of our—of my—trip back was just about silent.” She looked haunted at the thought.
“So the whole time you spent in orbit around Neptune was just you and your partner? You never saw anyone else?”
“There was one encounter,” Madison admitted, quickly draining the cold dregs at the bottom of her coffee mug. “It was a weird one. After our departure, we happened to notice that a station of some kind was being constructed in orbit around Triton. There was a big supply ship for it in orbit; we could see the United Space markings on the side. But they never responded to our radio calls.”
“That is strange,” Lamont agreed thoughtfully.
“It gets stranger,” Madison teased, leaning toward him conspiratorially. “I took some photos of the station. It was a big radio array. But it was pointed outward—away from the sun, into interstellar space. Now, you’ve got to ask yourself: What’s the point of that?”
Next: A Search for Answers