Jon thought about it. He didn’t think anything was going to happen at six anyhow. “Let it go,” he said. “Can you set it up for tomorrow afternoon?”
The exhilaration that had come with the signal had drained off. He wasn’t sure why, but he just wanted the whole business to be over. Wanted to be sure everything was okay. To go out and bring in the lander.
He went back to his hotel room but was unable to sleep. At three thirty he called Union Ops. “The Preston’s ready to go,” they told him. “Whenever you are.”
At four, he went down to the Quarter Moon and had breakfast. Coffee, bacon, scrambled eggs, and home fries. He was getting ready to leave when Rudy came in. “Couldn’t sleep,” Rudy said.
“Me neither.”
Rudy settled for coffee. On the far side of the room, a Chinese group was celebrating something. There were speeches and periodic applause.
Rudy started talking about the future of the Foundation. How the Locarno Drive would change everything. Fire up everybody’s imagination. Jon said he hoped so. And eventually it was five thirty, and they finished up and went down to the operations center. The same watch officer was on duty. He looked up when they came in. “Nothing yet, Dr. Silvestri,” he said.
Of course not. It was still early.
Fifteen minutes later the chief of the watch showed up. He knew Rudy, told him he was glad to see him, and wished Jon good luck.
Jon was glad the place was empty this time. It had been horribly uncomfortable standing in front of all those people, waiting for a transmission that never came. Most embarrassing moment he could remember.
The clock ticked down to 5:58. Zero hour.
And crept past it.
To 5:59.
And five after six.
Rudy glanced at him. His mouth twisted. “It’s lost again.”
“No,” said Jon. “I think we’re getting good news.”
“How,” asked Rudy, “could this possibly be good?”
Jon considered the question. “Were you planning on going back down today?”
“Yes,” he said. “No point staying here.”
“Why don’t you hang on a bit?”
“Tell me why.”
“Change your reservation and stay for lunch,” he said. “On me.”
“What are you not telling me, Jon?”
“I think you’ll want to be here this afternoon.”
“Oh,” said Rudy. Jon could see his expression change. “It’s going to be late again?”
“I think so.”
Rudy brightened. “Oh.” The lander had made its transit to Pluto, or wherever, at 9:03 A.M. yesterday. Its transmission should have arrived at 3:17 P.M. But it had been almost eight hours late. “The vehicle went farther than we expected.”
“I think so.”
“A lot farther.” Jon sat quietly while Rudy looked around for a piece of paper, found a notepad, and started scribbling on it. “The signal came in at, what? Eleven o’clock?”
“11:07.”
“So it took a little more than fourteen hours to get here.”
“Either that, or the circuitry broke down.”
“Fourteen hours. My God. If that’s the case, this thing is about thirty times faster than the Hazeltine. Jon, that’s incredible.”
“We don’t know the details. It might simply have taken more time to make the jump. But if it did it in six seconds—”
THEY WERE IN the ops center when the transmission came in. Mac-Elroy lander reports arrival. It was 1:33. Time for transmission: fourteen hours and a minute.
Almost on the dime.
LIBRARY ENTRY
NEW STAR DRIVE SUCCESSFUL
…Took the vehicle almost 9 billion miles from Earth. Early reports indicate that the time needed to cross that distance was six seconds. A normal interstellar vessel, traveling the same distance, would have required two and a half minutes. Silvestri admitted to being surprised at the result, which far exceeded all expectations.
—Science Today, July 15
chapter 16
A SECOND TEST went off without a hitch, confirming Jon’s conclusions: The Locarno was far more effective than the original calculations had suggested. A Locarno-powered vessel could cross three hundred light-years in a single day. He was, to be conservative about it, happy. Ecstatic. Almost deranged.
He stood beside Rudy in the Foundation’s press area, while the director told a group of reporters how everything was now within reach. “The Dragon Cluster and the Omicron and the Yakamura Group.” The entire galaxy, filled with hundreds of millions of ancient class-G suns, eight, nine, ten billion years old. Who knew what lay waiting out there?
Speaking invitations came in from around the globe. Overnight Jon had become one of the most recognizable personalities on the planet. Wherever he went, people asked for autographs, took pictures, sighed in his presence. One young woman collapsed in front of him; another wanted him to autograph her breast. He was riding the top of the world.
Corporate entities called. Maracaibo offered its services and support, as did Orion and Thor Transport and Monogram and a dozen others. Their representatives showed up daily, tried to get through his AI. All were interested in helping, as they put it; all came armed with proposals for subsequent testing, licensing agreements, and “long-range mutual-benefit packages.” The latter phrasing was from Orion. The agents, who were sometimes executive officers, invariably produced offers that, by Jon’s standards, were generous. They wouldn’t be on the table forever, they cautioned, and several suggested, supposedly on a basis of I’m not supposed to tell you this, that people in their own development sections were working on technologies that, if successful, would render the Locarno obsolete. “Take it while you can get it, Jon.”
He filed the proposals, secured his patent, and informed everyone he’d get back to them shortly.
THEY SENT THE lander out a third time, forty-five billion miles, a thirty-second ride, into the Oort Cloud with a chimp on board. The chimp did fine. Henry took him on a cometary tour, took pictures, and returned him to the inner system, where the lander was retrieved by the Preston.
And finally it was time to make a run with somebody in the pilot’s seat. Hutch maybe. “You think she’d be willing to do it?” he asked Matt. “Does she keep her license current?”
“I have no idea,” said Matt. He was in a taxi.
“Okay. I’ll give her a call and find out. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“There’s another option.”
“What’s that, Matt?”
“I’m current.”
“Well, yes, I know that. But I thought you might be a little reluctant about deep-space flight. That’s not like bouncing around North Carolina. I mean, with real estate and all, it’s been a long time.”
Matt looked offended. “I’d be happy to do it. If you want to take your chances with a guy who specializes in professional buildings and three-story walk-ups.”
Dumb. “You know what I mean, Matt.” The taxi was passing through cloud banks.
“Sure.” He grinned, and they both laughed.
“Pay’s not much,” Jon added.
IT WAS, FOR Matt, a magnificent moment. A month or so later, on Tuesday, August 21, 2255, he and Jon, aboard the MacElroy High School lander, which was now world-famous, rode out toward Neptune. The passage took only a few seconds. There was no sign of the planet, which was elsewhere along its orbit. But Henry showed them a dim sun, little more than a bright star at that range, and assured them they’d arrived in the target area. They shook hands and came home. Once again, Rudy and the Preston picked them up.
That night they all celebrated in a small, out-of-the-way Georgetown restaurant.
Matt had made the biggest sale of his career a week earlier. It had transferred a large professional building from a collapsing corporation into the hands of a private buyer, and it brought more than six million dollars into the Stern & Hopkins coffers. In addition the buyer was in a position to refurbish the place and turn it into a decent property again. It was the sort of transaction that used to give him a sense of satisfaction, a feeling he’d done something other than turn a buck. But all he could do was laugh at himself. “I’m moving real estate,” he told Rudy. “But on weekends I help Jon Silvestri move the world.”