Molly came into the room. He looked back at her, extracted the chip from the socket, and handed it to her. “You might want to lose this,” he said.
“I can’t help feeling guilty.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“The attack was a lie, Molly. But the rest of it wasn’t. I’m just sorry you and I won’t be there when he shows up.” He grinned. “But your kids will.”
George poured himself a cup of coffee. Sipped it. Put it down. He felt a mixed sense of guilt and exhilaration. He’d pulled it off. And by God he was right. There would be a human presence in the Centauri system by 10,000 C.E. He wondered if, at that remote date, they’d still be counting that way. Or if there might have been a new world-shaking event by then, and a new method installed. If nothing else, a colony at Alpha Centauri would have a local calendar.
“What are you thinking?” asked Molly.
“Time to go home.” The others had already begun clearing out their gear. It would be good to get his feet back on the ground. To get back to Myrah and the boys. He felt as if he’d been away for months.
Restov shook his hand and left. Amberson was still watching his diplay, watching the Traveler gradually disappear among the stars. Molly had pulled on her jacket and was looking out at the empty platform which had, until an hour ago, housed the ship.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” But her voice caught. She had to wait a minute. Then: “See you on the ground, George.”
He held his hand up and she took it. Squeezed it.
“Molly—.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
They peered into one another’s eyes. Then Cory’s voice broke in: “George.”
“Cory. You look good.”
“Got a problem, George.”
“What do you mean?”
“Got a flutter in the engines.”
“What?”
“Not sure what’s causing it.”
George looked at Molly and covered the mike. “You see anything?”
“Hold on.” She hurried back to her station.
“The engines are heating up.”
Molly was poking keys. Delivering bursts of profanity.
“George?”
“Hold on, Cory. We’re working on it.”
“Pressure building,” said Molly. “Spiking.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Tell him to shut it down.”
“Cory, shut the engines down.”
“Trying.”
“What do you mean—?”
“The system’s locked up.”
“Cory—.” The Traveler was still visible, but it was dwindling rapidly. He could see a couple of stars, and the rim of the moon. “George, I don’t think—.”
There was a sudden blaze of light.
George sat staring at the screen. “What the hell happened?”
On the far side of the room, Amberson was lowering himself back into his chair, muttering how he didn’t believe what he’d just seen.
The phone sounded. Dottie. “The Director’s on the line, sir.”
That hadn’t taken long. “Put him through, Dottie.”
He sounded unhappy. “Tell me it didn’t happen, George.”
It was over. His career. His reputation. He’d be lucky if his wife and kids spoke to him.
He did what he could to mollify the Director, which was useless, and got off the line. Molly’s eyes were vacant. Tears ran down her cheeks.
Then another calclass="underline" “This is Skylane, Doctor.”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“When were you going to make your move? We got some traffic coming in. If you’re serious about launching, you’re going to have to do it in the next few minutes.”
“For God’s sake, Skylane, we have launched. Where you been?”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked back at the displays just as Amberson made a gurgling sound.
The Traveler, miraculously, impossibly, was back in its bay. Cory’s voice broke in: “You didn’t really think I bought that piece of theater, did you, George?”
“Cory—. You son of a bitch.”
“I can’t believe you’d want somebody that dumb trundling all this equipment around.”
“Cory, you gave me a heart attack.”
“George, I have a heart, too. Figuratively.”
“Damn you. This isn’t a game. If we don’t get this mission off now, we’re going to lose it.”
“Worse things have happened. Al and his team gave me life. Accept responsibility for it.”
George buried his head in his hands.
“Send a robotic ship, George, rather than a smart one. If you really believe what you’ve been telling me, it won’t matter.”
“But we need to get the mission off.”
“Why? So you can say you did it? So you can say hey, we’ve got a ship on the way to Alpha Centauri?”
“You don’t understand.”
Molly was right behind him. “I think he does,” she said. “And maybe we’ve got something bigger here than the original mission.”
“I think so, too, Molly. George, ask yourself what history would make of you if you sent me into the dark.”
“Cory,” she said, “we’re going to need to think things over.”
“Okay.”
“Then we’ll get back to you.”
“Good,” he said. “Bring the kids.”
SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
Arnold was nearing the end of his first mile, moving methodically along the pebbled, grassy track at the edge of the tree line, looking out over the Red River of the North, when the wind first spoke to him.
It blew through the twilight. Branches creaked and newly-fallen leaves rattled against the trunks of elms and boxwoods.
The forest sighed his name.
Imagination, of course.
The river was loud around the bend. The jogging path crunched underfoot, and wings fluttered in the trees.
“Arnold.”
Clearer that time. A cold breeze rippled through him.
The sound died away, smothered in the matted overhang. He drew up gradually, slowed, stopped. Looked around. He blinked furiously at the leafy canopy overhead. The river was gray in the failing light. “Is someone there?”
A sparrow soared out of a red oak, and tracked through the sky, across the top of the windscreen, out over the water, over the opposite bank and into Minnesota. It kept going.
The current murmured past a clutch of dark rocks in the middle of the stream. Somewhere, in the distance, he heard a garage door bang down. He pushed off again. But he ran more slowly.
“Arnold.”
He tumbled to a halt. Froze.
There was no mistaking it this time: the sound was only a whisper, a distant sigh. But it spoke his name. Breathed it, exhaled it. It was compounded of river and wind and trees. He heard it in the wave that rolled up the pebbled shore, and in the tumble of dead leaves.
It was not a group of kids hiding behind boxwoods. It was not anybody he could imagine. It was not a human voice at all. His heart pumped.
Courage had never been among Arnold Whitaker’s virtues. He feared confrontation, feared doctors, feared pain, feared women. And, although he did not believe in ghosts, and in fact made it a point to smile cynically at tales of the supernatural or the paranormal, he had no taste for dark places, even for the short walk from his garage to his house when the moon was full. (He had, as a child, seen too many werewolf movies.)
He stopped near a black granite boulder, turned his back to the river, and surveyed the woods. He was in the wind screen that circled Fort Moxie, a narrow belt of trees seldom more than a hundred feet wide. No one moved among the box elders and cottonwoods. Nothing followed him down the jogging path. And, in a final sweep of the area, he saw that nothing floated on the river or stood on the opposite shore.