The Great Escape Chapter 12, Part 6 of 10

The Great Escape
Chapter 12, Part 6 of 10

"It won't help," Mariotta said, looping back to the main subject, "but now Ezra's been gone a year, I can exercise my power of attorney over his estate and look at his communications."

"I can do that anyway, Mum. Ezra sent me his password so I could use it in an emergency. I can access his messages and bank accounts whenever I want."

"Well, let's do that. He won't mind. Will you tell me what you find?"

"I can do it now if you want."

She had the passwords safely stored, and in two minutes, Ezra's mailbox was open on her screen. There were only a handful of messages.

"Shall I send them to you, Mum?"

"What are they?"

"Log entries. Mostly technical data from his ship."

"Then just read anything interesting to me."

Danielle read his inbox backward from the most recent messages.

"Ezra must have set his ship to transmit his logs and messages back home after each hyperspace jump, though we will get a message only when he's near a comms beacon, which is rare on his route and non-existent as far out as he went. The last log entry is from after his third hyperspace jump when he was about eight hundred light-years from Earth."

Danielle analyzed the read-outs from the onboard instruments.

"Everything seems all right. The starboard rocket thruster has been running hot, and the oxygen recycler is working harder than normal."

"Are they problems?"

"No. The thrusters are only for maneuvering in space, and the low oxygen levels could be caused by anything. Ezra might be cooking with an open flame or increasing his exercises. At those levels, it's nothing to worry about."

"All right, what else?"

"The next entry is a bank statement: a notification that the deposit he left with the Capella Port Authority has been refunded. It was returned to him on the day he left."

"The next entry before that is a message from someone called Yumi Takahashi. It was also on the day he left Capella."

"I don't know any of his friends called Yumi. Do you know him?"

"No, and she's a woman. It's a private message, but innocent enough."

Danielle was coy on her brother's behalf. She didn't mention that Ezra and Yumi seemed to have a romantic attachment: He spent his last night on Capella with her. Yumi also signed off her message with 'love' and left a home contact address.

"All right, nothing to learn there," Mariotta judged. "What's next?"

"Just records of Ezra's transactions on Capella. He put one hundred Galactic pounds on a credit stick. That's all there is. There are more ship logs and diagnostics for the month he spent space-testing the ship and, before that, correspondence on Earth."

"So all we know is that Ezra left Capella safely and was still all right nearly a week later."

"I'm afraid so, Mum. It isn't enjoyable but also sort of a relief. He may have reached Samothea safely. I once set one of my classes the task of plotting the trajectory of a trip to Samothea to prove it could be done safely, and it looks like it can."

"Well, I'm not going to worry about him, Darling. He's been on more dangerous missions and always turned up again."

Agreeing that her mother was probably right, Danielle confessed she was tired now. Promising to call her parents later that day, she finally went to bed, yawning.

The following day, as soon as she woke, she sent a message to the Celetaris Institute of Science, accepting the job offer and the offer to arrange travel and accommodation for her arrival in September. She also sent her company a month's notice of her resignation.

Then Danielle looked for the mailbox addresses of her two-star pupils from the previous year's advanced astrophysics course. She knew Rosa Silverstein and Li Qu Yuan were working on their master's degrees, but she hadn't seen them all year.

Rosa's mail address was in Danielle's contacts list. As soon as she opened the contact, she remembered why. It immediately linked to the work she'd done ten or so months ago on Rosa's clever but ultimately unsuccessful method of sending a traveler to Samothea in one hyperspace jump.

She was absorbed in that problem for fifteen minutes until Roger came into the living room, showered and refreshed.

"Morning, fiancé. I love you. You were amazing last night. How are you feeling?"

"Wonderfully well, future husband. I love you, too. You were pretty good yourself. Mum congratulates us."

"Thanks. I should call my folks today. What's the time?"

"Eight-thirty."

"What're you doing?"

She was sitting at the coffee table with a computer tablet beside her. Rosa's data cube was on a reading pad on the table, and above it hovered a holographic projection filled with equations in black writing with notes and comments in red and blue.

"I encountered an old problem while looking for an address - which you've just reminded me about. I should call her."

"Whom?"

"Rosa, an old pupil. I want to invite her to do her PhD at Celetaris with me. ... Computer, call
Rosa Silverstein."

The Computer began to make the connection.

"Isn't it a bit rude calling her this early?"

"Eight-thirty is too early?"

"It's a Sunday, Darling, and she's a student. Mid-day would be too early."

It was too late. The Computer completed the connection, and a bedraggled-looking Rosa, in her pajamas and with bird' s-nest hair, appeared, gazing sleepily out of the screen.

"Hello, who's this?"

"Hello, Rosa, it's Danielle Goldrick."

"Doctor Goldrick? Is it an emergency?"

"No, just a beautiful spring morning."

"Huh?"

"Rosa, I'm sorry to wake you up, but I have a proposition for you. Are you free today?"

"Free? I suppose so."

"Oh, good. It's important. Can we meet up? Would you like to come over here?"

"All right. o, I've got a session with my study partner."

"Bring her along."

"It's a him."

"All right, bring him along. See you at ten?"

"I suppose so.  f it's important, can we make it eleven?"

"Of course. Meanwhile, do you know Li's mail address?"

"Li? o."

"He's still at Trinity, isn't he?"

"No, I think he's in Hong Kong."

"All right. Don't worry. See you later."

Danielle got up to look for Li Qu Yuan's data cube, but it wasn't with the other cubes. he double-checked the places where she kept university materials and then stood, puzzled.

Roger reappeared, dressed and ready for breakfast.

"Can you help me find a missing data cube from one of my students?" she asked him.

"Of course. Here, have you looked?"

"The drawer, a file, and this wallet are where I put all the data cubes."

"Hmm. id you use a bag to carry things to and from the college?"

"A small briefcase. It's not in there."

"What if you were going somewhere after the class? Could you take a bigger bag?"

"You're right. e should look in all my bags."

Danielle had a cupboard full of bags of different sizes, shapes, and colors. Roger, being a man, had no idea why a woman needed more than one bag. He understood that different bags go with various outfits, which raised the question of why a woman required so many outfits.

They found Li's data cube in a brown leather hold-all at the bottom of the cupboard, with a year's worth of fashion accessories piled randomly on top, used only once or twice.

Danielle put the data cube on the reader. t produced a holographic list. The top item was Li's version of the last task she set for the class, with a note apologizing for leaving it incomplete.

She'd forgotten the details of his project, but she remembered that having sex in the broom cupboard distracted her. After that, she forgot to check Li's work. He did so now, projecting a holographic image next to Rosa's.

"Well, that's interesting," she said to herself. Rosa's and Li's methods are the inverse of each other. Ut Rosa's works, more or less, and Li's are way off. Why is that?"

"It's a rhetorical question, I presume?" Roger asked.

"Hmm, what?"

"I can't tell you why Rosa's method works and Li's doesn't, but my academic training says you should run them side-by-side to see where they begin to diverge."

She stared at him for a second and then smiled.

"Darling, what are we doing today?"

"Nothing until later," he said. We're going to dinner. I've booked a restaurant."

"Oh, good. hat time?"

"Seven-thirty."

"All right, so I'm not spoiling any plans if I look into this?"

"Well, my original plan was to stay in bed all day and have sex, but that's off the menu anyway, so, no, you're not spoiling any plans."

"Good. Also, Rosa's coming over at eleven. He's bringing someone."

"Very well. By the way, phone your father," he reminded her.

"Oh yes, I was forgetting. Thanks."

A long video call followed. Although her father congratulated them both in ten minutes, Mariotta was present and had lots to say about the music, the catering, and the dress.

Eventually, Danielle mollified her mother and could sit down and discuss why Rosa's virtual traveler reached Samothea, but Li's didn't. He prepped the Computer and opened the holographic models again.

"We've missed breakfast, Darling," Roger said. Do you want anything?"

"Uh, uh," she replied, which he took to mean "No" because she said nothing more but stared at her holo screen, her head already in hyperspace, puzzling over the problem.

She rolled up her sleeves, tied her hair out of the way, and traced the virtual spaceships as they made their hyperspace jump from Capella Spaceport to Samothea. Rosa's program had a margin of error of half a light-year, while Li's had a fifteen-light-year error.

"Odd," she said.

Roger was on the couch with a tablet, writing the outline of his amended proposal to send with his acceptance letter to the video company. e took his glasses off to admire his beautiful fiancé. He had a high forehead, was currently knitted with a frown, big, wide-set, deep-blue eyes, a wide mouth with light-pink lips, and a small but determined chin. Er, crown of wavy platinum-blond hair shone in the morning light.

He saw her frown suddenly lift and her face light up.

"Aha!" she said. It's not the different programs; it's the data!"

She ran them on the same star-projector program and got similar results: both missed their destination by plus or minus fifteen light-years.

"I've found it, Roger. His anomaly is near Samothea. Look!"

She projected the stars near Samothea onto the holo-screen, toggling between Rosa's and my data sets.

"There's a star missing," he observed helpfully.

"The missing star is in Rosa's old data set, which I used to create the class question.

And this," she toggled the image and pointed to the stars around Samothea with the conspicuous gap, "is Li's recent data set. o wonder his spaceship never made it."

Then she remembered. A sunny smile vanished from her face.

"Damn!" she exclaimed. Damn, damn, damn!"

Her body got cold, and her heart sank into her feet.

"Ezra," she whispered.

"What about him?"

"That's where Ezra jumped, straight into that anomaly. Od, what a disaster!"

"Do you know what happened?"

To be continued