She touched her forehead and felt sweat. Her throat was dry. “I can’t stay anymore,” she whispered to Susan. “I’m going back to see.” Dr. Shastri was looking at her with concern as she struggled to her feet.
“I’ll help you,” Susan said, taking her arm.
“We’re ready to try again!” a man’s voice announced over the speakers.
The screen in the pit lit up into a bright blue and began to flicker. Lissa saw the look of interest return to Susan’s face. “You stay,” Lissa said. “I’ll go myself.”
But then the room fell quiet as the screen showed a dozen multicolored lines, all dancing like strange snakes seeking to wrap themselves around each other.
Lissa almost turned away, but the sudden understanding of what she was seeing stopped her. She watched with wonder and curiosity as the lines danced; more lines appeared, superimposing themselves on the previous ones as if struggling to weave a fabric of some kind. These, she realized, were tachyon signals hurrying between galactic civilizations, exchanging the only thing in the universe worth trading—information, knowledge, unique viewpoints about the nature of life and the universe.
“Our Sun seems to be a tachyon crossroads,” the man’s voice announced, “a focus of some kind.”
“That’s very curious,” Lissa heard Dr. Shastri say.
The galaxy was alive with the gossip of civilizations, she realized. Conversations were going on at immense speed between vast centers of power and culture. And yet someone had bothered to send Earth a smoke signal!
How the radio buoy had arrived on the outskirts of the solar system, no one would probably ever know. Lissa felt a moment of awe and pity. Alek was not as important as this new development; it would change all human history forever.
But suddenly she knew that she would trade it all for a message telling her that he was safe. If he were found, she would never let him leave her again. She stumbled past Dr. Shastri and rushed out into the passageway.
Lissa felt torn as the cab whisked her back toward the search-and-rescue center. It would have been wonderful to have seen the great success of the tachyon receiver with Alek by her side. But somewhere he was fighting for his life, dying under a cold, starry sky; he might already be dead, his body rigid and unfeeling.
It can’t be
, she shouted within herself as the cab pulled over. She got out and rushed into the screen room. Only one person was on duty as she approached the rail and gazed again at the black moon. The technician below was watching a small screen, on which the drama of the tachyon reception was still unfolding.
Lissa sat down again by the railing and stared at the black moon. Alek had to he down there somewhere.
The drones had simply missed him. It was as simple as that.
She closed her eyes and felt the pressure of tears welling up inside her.
No, she told herself again,
he’s not dead
.
I won’t cry yet
. She adjusted her legs into a cross-legged position and settled down to wait, thinking that there was something cold-hearted about the way Dr. Shastri had tried to distract her. He was only thinking of the future, of course, of what would endure, balancing personal concerns against a greater good, and there would always be conflict and cruelty in that. Was it possible to love without worry and complications, to see other people without barriers, to feel their thoughts as clearly as one’s own, and not be hurt?
Her mind wandered back to the story of the weeders and nurturers that had emerged in her discussion with Dr. Shastri. Maybe other things were true, and fit the scanty facts just as well. Perhaps across billions of years, natural catastrophes destroyed intelligent life constantly. High civilizations might have lived and died on the same worlds several times. Add to this the possibility of self-destruction through nuclear war or ecological disaster, and it became clear that living technical civilizations might be very scarce. Maybe species with interstellar capability routinely searched out intelligent life and tried to prevent its destruction through subtle forms of contact—ways of shaping a culture without endangering its individual development, by getting it accustomed to the idea of cultures beyond its sunspace without direct confrontation, by giving warning but no advanced knowledge, by stimulating thought …
She worried again about the danger from the cometary halo. Even Earth’s Sunspace culture would not be able to deal with the rain of thousands of comets into the inner solar system. Many would miss the planets, but those that hit Earth, Mars, and Venus would inflict irreparable damage to the ecologies of those worlds, not to mention loss of life. Would the industrial capacity of Sunspace ever be equal to such a bombardment, even if warned a century in advance? The Sunspace habitats, being potentially mobile, would probably survive, but it would be a vastly diminished humanity that would gaze upon the ruins of the natural planets.
Lissa stared at the big screen as she thought. The black moon’s northern hemisphere filled the whole frame. A light flickered in the northeast quadrant. She blinked and saw it wink on and off.
“Did you see that?” she shouted to the technician below.
He didn’t answer. She saw that he was hunched over his panel, listening intently.
“Did you see!” Lissa repeated.
He raised his hand for her to be quiet. “I’m picking up old-style code! Deciphering now!”
Lissa waited. The message appeared on the screen, superimposed across the black moon:
TAKING OFF NOW. SHIP BADLY DAMAGED. IF YOU SEE TAKEOFF, PICK ME UP IN HIGH ORBIT. CAN’T BE SURE THIS MESSAGE WILL GET THROUGH.
A lonely flash appeared on the black hemisphere, and stayed lit. The shuttle was rising on its nuclear engines, burning bright in the screen’s infrared sensors. Drones fed in views from different angles.
Lissa tensed, watching the screen, unable to believe what she was seeing. Alek was alive and on his way back.
After a few minutes, the brightness blossomed and disappeared.
“The shuttle’s exploded!” the technician shouted as the drones converged on the craft’s last position. Telescopic scanners pulled in toward the point high over the black moon where the explosion had registered, but there was nothing to be seen.
Lissa grasped the rail supports with both hands and pulled herself to her feet.
No, no, no,
she repeated, realizing that Alek had worked all this time to repair the downed shuttle, and had used his takeoff burn to signal his position, hoping to be picked up before the shuttle failed. His radio had been damaged, so he had rigged an old-style radio transmitter, good enough to send dots and dashes.
Now he was gone for sure, blown to pieces when the shuttle’s damaged engine had overheated.
Drone eyes searched the volume of space, pulling in closer and closer. Suddenly she saw a spacesuited figure tumbling against the stars.
“Alek,” she whispered in shock, realizing that he was probably dead. It might not even be Alek, but his copilot. She waited, hoping to glimpse another figure in the void, but there was no one else.
“Shuttle launched,” she heard the technician say in the pit. “Pickup in less than an hour at charted position. Recalling all drones.”
The waiting was endless. One by one the large screen lost its inputs from the drones, until finally only the picture of the spacesuited figure remained, tumbling high above the black moon.
“Have you tried getting the pilot on the suit’s radio?” Lissa called down to the technician.
“Of course. No answer.”
She looked around the gallery. The empty chairs seemed to be waiting with her. She felt lonely and cold. The man below seemed to be doing a routine job. More important things were happening in the tachyon project control room.The expedition to the borderlands of Sunspace would be a success, leading to consequences vastly more significant than the lives of two shuttle pilots. It wasn’t fair; it was only the way things had happened. If it had been another shuttle, another pilot, then she would have been in the other gallery, listening to the stars speak. There was no way, she realized, that the excitement around her would drive out her feelings for Alek. She would have to accept that fact and cope as best she could.
The tumbling figure disappeared for a moment, then reappeared.
“They’re very close now,” the technician said. “The rescue craft has the pilot on its scope.”
Lissa watched the turning figure, trying to catch some sign of life in the bulky limbs, but there was nothing except the slow turning of head over heels.
“Be alive!” she whispered through clenched teeth, surprised by her own vehemence. She felt her face relax, certain that the suited figure, whoever it was, could not be alive.
“They’re coming close now,” the technician said excitedly, surprising her with the concern in his voice.
Suited figures appeared at the edge of the screen, maneuvered toward the tumbling figure, and stopped it by grabbing its shoulders. Then they fired their jet packs and drifted off the screen, on their way back to the ship with the rescued pilot.
“Who is it?” Lissa demanded, her voice echoing in the large chamber.
The technician raised his hand impatiently. “They’ll know in a few minutes.”
Time slowed. Her stomach collapsed into a rock. Soon her heart would stop.
“They’re in the airlock. It’s cycling.”
Lissa gulped air.
“They’re inside.”
Her pulse raced as time stopped.
“They’ve got the helmet off.”
Sweat ran into her eyes.
“He’s alive,” the technician said softly.
“Who?” Lissa screamed from the gallery. “For God’s sake, tell me!”
“Just a moment,” the technician replied, holding up his hand again.
“Well?” she demanded after a moment, waiting.
“He’s not hurt at all,” the technician said, his voice breaking.
“Who is he!”
The man turned his chair around and looked up at her. She saw a middle-aged face with sunken eyes and a day’s growth of beard. She had never seen him before.
“It’s Calder,” he said grimly, brushing back his disheveled black hair with his hand.
Lissa let out a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” the technician said. “I thought you knew Pandasala Gbeho. She was one of our best pilots.” His tone was sad, and Lissa realized that he had expected her to know that it was Alek as soon as the rescued pilot had been identified as a male. “Pan was my best friend,” he added softly, then turned away and began to shut down the center. Lissa stared at his back for a moment, not knowing what she could say to him to express her sympathy for his loss. Finally, she retreated and went out into the passageway.
She caught a glimpse of Alek as they brought him off the rescue shuttle. He was on a stretcher and she almost cried out at his paleness. But the medics weren’t taking any chances. They put him in the hospital and ran all kinds of tests. He was allowed visitors two days later.
Lissa showed up early. Dr. Shastri was just coming out. He smiled as Lissa went in.
She tried to look cheerful. Alek looked a bit surprised as she came up to the bed and caressed his face with her open hand.
“Missed me a little?” he said, smiling.
She swallowed hard and nodded. He pulled her to him and kissed her for a long time. “Never thought I’d get to do that again,” he whispered, holding her tenderly.
She stood up after a moment and sat down in the chair by the bed. “Alek, what happened?”
He shrugged. “Big piece of something went right through the ship. Pan was killed right away. It just took her head right off.”
Lissa’s stomach lurched.
“Do you want to hear this?”
She nodded. “Yes, I want to know how it was for you.”
“Well, after screaming a lot I managed to land. The debris strike happened during our landing approach to the base, but we drifted quite a ways off. Radio was out and every system was failing as I came down. The ship hit roughly. Pressure was down in the cabin and I had only my suit to rely on, but I set about trying to fix what I could. Mostly, it was the controls that were gone, so I knew if I could rig them back I might be able to take off again.” He smiled. “That took longer and was much harder than I thought. It took a lot of crawling around in the ship’s innards to find the connections. Those crawl spaces were not made for space suits.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Of course I was.” He closed his eyes, and Lissa saw sweat on his forehead. “I’ll be fine in a moment. Anyway, I got the crude version of the radio working, but I couldn’t be sure anyone would receive what I sent, since I couldn’t receive. I sent messages a few times, then took off, but the controls were completely unreliable. All the safeties were gone. I couldn’t be sure if the ship’s engines would hold up, since I had no way to know where the safety was on the throttle. The automatic programs had safeties, but they weren’t there to tell me if the engines were overheating. I got up into orbit, hoping they’d picked up my ascent burn on the infrared scanners, and went out the airlock about three minutes before she blew.”
Lissa caught her breath repeatedly as she listened to Alek’s story, realizing just how close it had been, and how resourcefully he had performed in a harrowing situation.
“I’ve told this a few times already,” he said, “once for a recording. It was strange, drifting out there with the black moon nearby, and its big planet beyond, and the stars in all directions. I was all the humanity there was, all that was left, it seemed. The Sun was a far star, not very special at all.” He touched her hand. “I thought of you before I blacked out.”
“I’m sorry, Alek,” she said. “I’m sorry I snubbed you when you joined the project. I’d like us to start again, if you want to. Maybe we can do better this time.”
He smiled. “I knew that if only I could get back you’d know how you felt about me. So maybe it was worth it.”
He was silent for a moment, and she knew that he was thinking of Pandasala.
“So,” he said finally, “I hear you’ve had a bit of excitement here also. Dr. Shastri told me about it.”