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ERIC NYLUND
35
"Scan it again," the Master Chief told Cortana.
"Already completed," her disembodied voice replied. "There's
nothing out there. I told you: just dust and echoes."
The Master Chief's hand curled into a fist, and for a moment he
felt the urge to slam it into something. He relaxed, surprised at his
frayed temper. He'd been exhausted in the past—and without a
doubt the fight on Halo had been the most harrowing of his
career—but he'd never been prone to such outbursts.
The struggle against the Flood must have gotten to him, more
than he'd realized.
With effort he banished the Flood from his mind. Either
there'd be time to deal with it later. . . or there wouldn't. Worrying
about it now served no useful purpose.
"Scan the field again," he repeated.
Cortana's tiny holographic figure appeared on the projection
pad mounted between the pilot's and system-ops seats. She
crossed her arms over her chest, visibly irritated with the Master
Chief's request.
"If you don't find something out there we can use," he told
her, "we're dead. This ship has no Slipspace drive, and no cryo.
There's no way to get back and report. Power, fuel, air, food,
water—we only have enough for a few hours.
"So," he concluded as patiently as he could manage. "Scan.
Again."
Cortana sighed explosively, and her hologram dissolved. The
scanner panel activated, however, and mathematical symbols
crowded the screen.
A moment later the scanner panel dimmed and Cortana said,
"There's still nothing, Chief. All I'm picking up is a strong echo
from the moon ... but there are no transponder signals, and no
distress calls."
"You're not doing an active scan?"
Her tiny hologram appeared again, and this time static flashed
across her figure. "There are trillions of objects out there. If you
want I can start to scan and identify each individual piece. If we
sit here and do nothing else, that would take eighteen days."
"What if someone's out there but they turned off their trans-
ponder? What if they don't want to be found?"