The Sails of Tau Ceti Read Online Free PDF

at his comely assistant. “They’ve got the proxies of every one of our sponsors on Earth. Even if we wanted to stop them, we couldn’t. How long before we can launch?”
    She activated her implant and quickly reviewed the project’s status. A moment later, she answered, “A month, Dard. We will need to accelerate the certification process. That should not be a problem now that the mission has been shortened. There’s a big difference between a voyage lasting a few years and one lasting half a century.”
    “What about fuel loading?”
    “We’ll need to get priority at the Phobos refinery.”
    “I will take care of it, Miss Bronson,” Jorge Contreras, the Mars government representative, said from across the table. He scrawled a note on his electronic notepad.
    Pierce nodded. “Then we launch one month from today. Let us talk about what Starhopper is going to do when it gets there. Boris, you have had the most time to think about it. What say we begin with you?”

CHAPTER 3
    Victoria Bronson sat at the bar and nursed a double scotch, her second. Ben Stalling regarded her with curious eyes.
    “What’s the matter with you?” she asked petulantly after intercepting his third sidelong glance in as many minutes.
    He sipped from his beer before answering. “Of all people, I would expect you to be the most ecstatic about this discovery.”
    “I am … sort of.”
    “Then why the long face?”
    “It’s hard to explain.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “I’ve spent the three years of my life working on that damned probe.”
    “So?”
    “So, we built it to go to the stars, not to take pictures of a bit of space flotsam.”
    “It’s damned important flotsam.”
    “Why? Just spotting it tells us that we are not alone in the universe. What else can we learn from it?”
    “We’ll learn how aliens build light sails, for one thing. If an anthropologist can reconstruct the whole history of a prehistoric people from a few pottery shards, just think what they will be able to do with a light sail to study. You people are going to make it happen! There is not a ship in the system with one-tenth of Starhopper ’s speed. Without it, we’d have to watch in frustration as the sail zipped right past us.”
    “Then what you are saying, my ex-love, is that I made the right decision when I went for that interview?”
    She had meant the comment as a jibe. To her surprise, the expected witty rejoinder did not materialize. Both of them sat without speaking for a long time.
    For her part, Tory tried to analyze why she had reacted the way she had. Ben was right. Normally she would have been ecstatic at the prospect of examining an alien artifact. Her negative reaction had possibly been an unconscious response to the unfairness of it all.
    What a cruel joke for God to play on those poor unknowns who had died with their exploding sun. They must have known that another intelligent race inhabited Sol, a mere 12 light years off. Yet, with both species on the verge of a technology that would have made contact a certainty, Tau Ceti had exploded, snuffing out billions of intelligent minds in a single instant. What if it had been the sun that had gone nova rather than Tau Ceti? Would some alien be sitting in a bar on his distant world at this very moment, contemplating the lost bipeds of Sol III?
    What were the chances of two races at nearly equal technology levels springing up so close together, and at the same moment in history? For a long moment, Tory toyed with the idea of overriding her implant’s safety interlocks and posing the question to the Olympus city computer. She resisted the urge. Compared with operating an implant, driving a groundcar under the influence of alcohol was an exercise in caution.
    “There you are!”
    Tory and Ben Stalling both turned around at the shouted accusation. Dardan Pierce was striding purposefully in their direction. If anything, his look was even stranger than the one he had worn in his office