Seeker by Jack McDevitt Page A

gotten his doctorate in astrophysics at Yulee. He declined going into academia and opted instead for a field career with Survey. A fair number of postdocs take that route. It means they’re less interested in making a reputation for themselves, or in doing serious work in their fields, than they are in simply getting up close to stars and visiting worlds that nobody has ever seen before. You don’t usually think of scientific types as being romantics, but these guys seem to qualify. I spent two years piloting Survey ships, and I met a few of them. They are unbridled enthusiasts. Normally a mission is assigned a section of maybe eight to ten stars. You go into each system, do a profile of the central sun, get more information about it than anybody’s ever going to care to read, then run a survey of the planets if there are any. And you look especially close at worlds in the biozone.
    I looked at Adam’s graduation picture from Turnbull. He was twenty-two, good-looking, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a confident smile. This was a kid who might or might not have been bright, but he himself had no doubt he was going to be top of the class.
    I dug out whatever else I could. Adam Wescott doing grunt work at Carmel Central Processing Lab. Wescott entering the
Lumley
, the first time he’d gone on board an interstellar. I found him as a thirteen-year-old accepting an award as an Explorer, smiling as if recognizing it would be only one of many. He looked good in the uniform, everything tucked neatly in place, beaming while an adult, also in uniform, handed him his plaque. He turned and I got a look at the audience, composed of about fifteen other boys, all brushed and sharp in their uniforms, and maybe three times as many adults. The proud parents of the little group of Explorers at, according to the banner strung across one wall, the Overlook Philosophical Society, which apparently sponsored the corps.
    I even got to hear him speak. “
Thank you, Harv
,” he said, and immediately corrected himself: “
Mr. Striker
.” Smile for the audience. We all know he’s really good old Harv. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and made a face at it. “
The corps wants me to say thanks to all the parents, and to Mr. Striker, and the Society
,” he said. “
We’re grateful for your help. Without you, we wouldn’t be here
.”
    The kid was on his way.
    And there was a middle-aged Adam as an observer at the table of Jay Bitterman when Bitterman received the Carfax Prize. And Adam again during a birthday celebration for a politician with whom he’d developed a passing relationship.
    And Adam’s wedding. He’d shown good taste and married his pilot, Margaret Kolonik. Margaret looked gorgeous the way brides inevitably do because they are happy and emotional and celebrating a premier moment. In fact, though, she’d have looked good in an engine room. She had the same highlighted black hair I’d seen in her daughter, framing perfect features and a smile that lit up the room.
    The routine at Survey is to interchange pilots and researchers after each mission. The average mission now lasts about eight or nine months, and I doubt things were much different forty years ago. It was done because the missions usually carried only the pilot and one or two researchers. People locked away like that for extended periods of time tend to get on each other’s nerves.
    But the background information indicated the happy couple had been together ten consecutive flights. On the last two, their baby daughter Delia had been along. I assumed there was no problem arranging that if you wanted to do it.
    I sat in my office and watched Margaret Kolonik stride purposefully up the aisle to take charge of her guy. No wilting flower, this one. The data prompt informed me that her father was dead, and she was given away by an uncle, an overweight man who kept looking around as if he wanted to escape. Not somebody she’d have been very close