The Sails of Tau Ceti (25 page)

To play her part in the drama, she would have to hurt people she cared for. She had already claimed the first of her victims. Garth had asked her to sign a limited marriage contract. She remembered the hurt look in his eyes when she had refused and the even greater hurt he had felt when she would not tell him why. Despite the ache she felt within, she had remained steadfast. How could she let him know that she could not be his wife because she was bound body and soul to a gaggle of alien monsters? What if he wanted children? What kind of woman would bring children into a world that had fewer than six years to live?”

Garth had been her first victim. He would not be the last. After she came out of cold sleep, she found a string of messages from Ben Tallen. He had been promoted again. He was now the principal aide to his old boss, former Underminister for Science Sadibayan, now humanity’s ambassador to the Phelan. He had spoken in glowing terms about resuming their relationship.

Funny, but she had trouble remembering what Ben looked like. Could cold sleep damage a person’s memories, or was it the time-heals-all-wounds principle at work? His letters had also spoken of a position waiting for her on the ambassador’s staff. Ben had gushed on about how good it would be to work together. She fretted over how she was going to break the news that she was joining the opposition.

How many others would she hurt before this was done? Hundreds? Thousands? In a sense, she would be hurting all the billions who lived throughout the Solar System. For the short time they had left to live, the name Victoria Bronson would be synonymous with that of Judas Escariot.

#

Even the longest journey must eventually end, Tory thought as she listened to the silent countdown in her brain. Their voyage had been the longest in human history, and was likely to remain so for quite some time. On the aft viewscreen, Earth had grown from a tiny spark amid infinite blackness to a great blue-white ball that overflowed the camera’s field of view. The only part of the home world still visible was the curving arc of the planet’s limb with its impossibly thin atmosphere line. The scene was softened by the iridescent fog that spewed from their exhaust and spread outward in a gently glowing cone of light.

Then, without fanfare, the countdown ended. The fires of matter/antimatter annihilation were extinguished. Thrust waned and Tory rebounded into the straps that lightly held her in place. Her body had not stopped oscillating when Garth ordered her to prepare for booster separation.

Tory issued the command sequence while Garth took the necessary precautions for separating
Austria
from its booster. This time there was no tedious effort to unplug the fiber optic assemblies from their interface boxes. Unlike at
Far Horizons
, their links with the booster were severed by a pyrotechnic charge. The giant power unit had dwindled in size until it was barely larger than the corvette. All the gleaming white fuel tanks but one had been jettisoned, and all but a few milligrams of antimatter consumed. They were home and would have no further need for the module.

Garth handled the separation with practiced deftness. At the sight of the truncated pyramid receding into the black, Tory felt a sudden flash of nostalgia. This would be the last time she laid eyes on the machine she had helped build. The used-up booster would be towed into solar orbit where it would be parked amid other space junk. When the neutron-induced radioactivity of its power section had cooled for a few decades, it would be broken up and its components reclaimed. Nothing in space was ever thrown away forever.

They watched the booster until it had dwindled to invisibility before Garth switched to forward view. There, slightly off center on the viewscreen, lay a rotating cylinder. It was not until one noticed the small ships hovering around one end that the scale of the thing became apparent.

Elysium Station was one of the oldest of humanity’s space habitats. It had been built as a proof-of-concept design for the first LaGrange colony. The station had seen its share of history. It had been the site where the treaty that ended the Martian rebellion had been signed, and the launching point for a dozen voyages of exploration to the outer planets. One of these had been the ill-fated Brandenburg-Cheng expedition to the moons of Saturn. The station was about to make history again. Today it was to be the greeting place for humanity’s first alien visitors.

The station had been added to and modified extensively over the years. Originally a solid cylinder, its latest incarnation had converted it to a hollow tube. A dozen circumferential decks surrounded an axis passage that was two hundred meters in diameter. Clusters of communications antennas sprouted from both ends of the station, while the interior was kept clear of clutter. It was in the long tunnel that the ships of deep space were moored during loading operations. Smaller vessels such as
Austria and
the hyperjets of Earth were winched inside hangar bays that dotted the inner cylinder walls. Larger ships were spun about their long axes until synchronized with the station, and then moored at the axis of rotation.

Garth kept the controls in manual as they made their approach. Every few minutes, he would fire attitude control jets to correct adverse drift. Slowly they glided toward the station’s open maw. Tory noted that there were stars in the bottom of the deep well toward which they were falling.

The light around the ship changed as they passed out of sunlight and into shadow. There were lights all around the cylinder’s interior. Some of them were large flood lamps focused on them to give the station controllers a clear view. A line of colored lasers on the opposite rim of the station kept them aligned with the station axis. In front and below, an open hatchway blazed forth with interior lights. There were other, smaller lighted squares around them. They could see several foreshortened figures craning their necks upward to catch a glimpse of Austria through these windows.

Garth pushed on his control one last time, to be answered by a burp of jets. A quick twist followed and
Austria
began to slowly rotate about its own axis. The stars at the bottom of the well began a stately dance around their prow, while the moving wall overhead began to slow. A minute later, it was the stars that rotated and the surrounding station that seemed rock steady. Tory felt a moment of discomfort as the fluid in her semicircular canals tried to come to terms with the new forces exerted upon them. Garth released his control stick and watched the alignment lasers for long seconds. Satisfied, he reported their arrival to the station controllers.

A second later, three lines snaked upward from around the station interior wall. They attached themselves to different points on
Austria
’s hull with a dull clang, and then grew taut as three computer-controlled winches took up the slack. After a few seconds, the ship began to drift out of position toward the open hatchway.

The light outside changed again as they entered the docking bay. The ship lurched a last time as the landing jacks touched deck. Two of the winch cables released and quickly disappeared upward through the open hatch, which then closed. There followed a silence of long seconds before a minor hurricane of wind sounds buffeted
Austria
as air was returned to the bay. In half a minute, the wind sounds died as well.

Garth let out a huge sigh, and then switched on the general intercom. “All hands! Secure the ship. We’re home!”

CHAPTER 19

Garth, Tory, Kit, and Eli gathered at the midships airlock. They were each in newly cleaned and pressed shipsuits. The small suiting chamber just inside the airlock was crowded. For, besides
Austria
’s human crew, Faslorn, Maratel, Neirton, and Raalwin were also there. The four Phelan had been revived three days earlier to give them time to recuperate from the effects of cold sleep. The eight of them crowded together as they waited for the embarkation bridge to be moved into place. The mixed scent of human and Phelan was strong in the enclosed space.

Garth had exercised the privilege of rank to be the first to disembark. Faslorn would be next, with Tory, Maratel, Kit, Neirton, Eli, and Raalwin following close behind. They would be welcomed by dignitaries, news people, and a large crowd of the merely curious. Despite the general anticipation with which everyone viewed the end of the journey, Tory was nervous at the prospect of so much attention. The Phelan, too, were exhibiting signs of stress.

“Ready?” Garth asked Faslorn after the loading bridge was secured.

“Very much so, Captain.”

Garth opened the airlock door and stepped out onto the spidery framework of the bridge. Tory watched as he disappeared through the opening in the station bulkhead. Faslorn followed somewhat more slowly using the Phelan knuckle walk. She noticed several people pointing from behind the thick glass window that overlooked the landing bay. She could almost hear their gasps of amazement as Faslorn came into sight.

Then it was Tory’s turn. She hesitated in the airlock chamber as she looked over the narrow footpath strung two meters above the landing bay deck. Local spin gravity was approximately half a standard gee. It would increase as they moved to the outer decks. As she stepped onto the bridge, she was paralyzed with a momentary spasm of fear. She drew a deep breath of frigid air, and then willed her legs to move. She moved as though in a trance across the slowly oscillating bridge. As she reached the station airlock, the crowd noise enveloped her. There was an excited buzzing and then a cheer as Faslorn raised his upper pair of arms to wave at the crowd.

Tory stepped over the inner airlock coaming and into the station proper. She found the compartment jammed with people, some literally hanging from the overhead. Many held small holocameras. The professional news media and private citizens seeking their own record of this historic event were mixed indiscriminately.

She moved to where Garth and Faslorn had stopped in front of a small clump of dignitaries. She recognized the familiar face of Ambassador Sadibayan. She scanned the crowd and spotted Ben Tallen at the rear. He was difficult to miss. His face was split into a wide grin and both arms were flailing over his head to draw her attention. She smiled at him, and then returned the wave self-consciously. She was acutely aware of that she was the focus of dozens of cameras.

The rest of
Austria
’s passengers and crew followed. Each time a Phelan entered the reception hall, a cheer went up from the crowd. For their part, the Phelan looked a little bewildered by the attention. Pandemonium continued for several minutes before Ambassador Sadibayan stepped onto the small dais that had been set up for the occasion.

Sadibayan gestured for silence several times before the crowd subsided. He smiled into the cameras focused on his broad brown features, then gestured for Faslorn to join him. There was a sudden hush as the Phelan climbed onto the small platform and Sadibayan began to speak.

“Faslorn, on behalf of myself, the first minister of the system council, and the people of the whole Solar System, let me welcome you to Earth. We have awaited your arrival these long months with growing anticipation. The first minister asked me to convey his good wishes and to tell you that he looks forward to working with you and your people. I am sure that together we can work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

The crowd erupted in cheers and whistles. When the commotion again died away, Faslorn took his place as the focus of a dozen directional sound pickups. “Ambassador Sadibayan, people of Earth and Mars, and of the great spaces between. I thank you for your welcoming words and the honor you show us here today. I would like to publicly commend those you sent so far to meet us. Captain Van Zandt and his crew were most diligent in representing all humanity among us. We learned much from them, and I dare say they learned a great deal from us. We have made a good beginning toward the goal of interspecies understanding and cooperation. Our task is now to build on that beginning. Our two races stand today on the threshold of a new era. Let us link arms and step together into the future!”

There were several more speeches, including one from Garth in which he told everyone how good it was to be home again. Tory found herself thrust before the microphones. She suffered a spasm of stage fright, but managed to get out a few words. Afterwards, she could remember nothing of what she said. Then they all posed for pictures before being led by security people to the lifts that would deliver them to the outer decks.

Once in the plush corridors of the Elysium Station Hotel, they were ushered to individual suites where they could rest before the evening’s festivities. They would stay a few days aboard the station while the doctors examined everyone. Though no one believed there was any danger, doctrine demanded a quarantine check.

Some twenty minutes after leaving the ship, Tory found herself alone. Her head was awhirl with the excitement of homecoming. Suddenly, her misgivings and weeks of worry seemed very distant indeed. She was among her own kind and determined to enjoy it while she could.

#

The suite had a carpet of bio-engineered grass. On Mars, such a display would have been considered ostentatious. Tory suspected that the same was true of Elysium Station. She felt deliciously decadent as she removed her shoes and ran her toes through the short green blades. Moving into the bedroom, she noticed that someone had delivered her kit bag. She busied herself unpacking. She was interrupted by the suite’s annunciator and hummed as she padded barefoot to the entrance.

The door retracted into its recess to reveal Ben Tallen in the corridor beyond. He carried a large bundle of flowers tucked into the crook of his arm and a broad smile on his face.

“Welcome home, darling,” he said as he stepped forward, enfolded her in his arms, and then stooped to kiss her. After a moment of surprise, she concentrated on cooperating. After long seconds, he released her. “I’ve been waiting three years to do that.”

“I’d say it was worth it,” she replied as she tried to catch her breath. “Please, come in.”