Steal Across the Sky

289 Pages·2009·1.2 MB·English

by  Nancy Kress

STEAL ACROSS THE SKY
Tor Books by Nancy Kress
_______________________

Beaker’s Dozen
Beggars and Choosers
Beggars Ride
Crossfire
Crucible
Maximum Light
Oaths and Miracles
Probability Moon
Probability Space
Probability Sun
Steal Across the Sky
Stinger
NANCY KRESS
____________________________

STEAL ACROSS
THE SKY

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK • NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,
and events portrayed in this novel are either products
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

STEAL ACROSS THE SKY

Copyright © 2009 by Nancy Kress
All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

®
Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kress, Nancy.
Steal across the sky / Nancy Kress.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1986-9
ISBN-10: 0-7653-1986-1
1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction. I.
Title.

PS3561.R46 S67 2009
813'.54—dc22
2008046432

First Edition: February 2009

Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Marty,
King’s pawn to King’s pawn 4 . . .
Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh;
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.
—SABINE BARING-GOULD

History . . . is indeed little more than
the register of the crimes, follies, and
misfortunes of mankind.
—EDWARD GIBBON

It ain’t necessarily so.
—IRA GERSHWIN
PART I
THE CRIME
1: LUCCA

“WELL,” CAM SAID, rising on her toes and leaning toward the bridge’s main
screen, “there they are.”
Lucca, despite the tightness in his throat, was startled into laughter. All the
hoping to be chosen for this insane mission, all the agonizing over the Atoners’
unknown selection criteria, all the complicated family reactions and media furor
and governmental observation, all the tension on the voyage out—and then Cam
greets the alien star system with the most mundane understatement possible. And
this was Cam, an American who thrived on flamboyance like vineyards on sun.
Although perhaps that was the point. Cam was making an uncharacteristic effort
to be careful.
Soledad scowled. Lucca understood: Soledad had to be viewing the Kular
System with mixed emotions. She was the alternate Witness, and neither Lucca
nor Cam had died on the trip to Kular. Neither had fallen ill, gone insane,
changed his or her mind. Cam and Lucca were going down to the twin planets
below, and Soledad was not. Nonetheless, Soledad was generous enough to
purge the scowl from her face and say, “I wish you both luck.” Lucca took her
hand and squeezed it.
He didn’t touch Cam.
On-screen, Kular A and Kular B sparkled with the magnificence of the remote.
The binary planet system rotated around a common center of gravity, 1.4 AU
from their G5 star. At some time in the unimaginable past they had formed from
the same dust cloud, and their composition and gravity were similar. That much
the Atoners had told their human surrogates.
Neither planet had any moons, although each would dominate the other’s sky.
On Kular A, the pole end of the one giant continent was obscured by a massive
dust storm, but the rest shone clear with blue seas and green flora. Clouds drifted
over the one inhabited continent on B. Or maybe it wasn’t the only inhabited
continent any longer. The Atoners had not, they said, visited Kular in five