“Me?”
“Sure. Why not?” She stirred her coffee, took a sip, rested her cheek on her fist. Her eyes locked on him. She was showing a little perspiration from their walk.
“What would I teach?”
“Astronomy.”
“I was a history major, Reyna.”
“They won’t care. Star pilot. You’ve been out there. They’d love you.”
The coffee was good. He had a Brazilian blend, sweetened with tapioca. “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine myself in a classroom.”
“I could ask around,” she said. “See what’s available.” She looked away, out the window at the river. “There’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve a friend who works in a law office in Wheaton. They’re looking to hire an analyst. Apparently, you don’t need a legal background. They’ll teach you everything you need. They just want somebody who’s reasonably smart.”
He couldn’t see himself working with contracts and entitlements. Of course, until these last few years, he couldn’t have imagined himself spending his days in an office of any kind. Maybe what he needed in his life was a good woman. Somebody who could make him feel as if he were moving forward. Going somewhere.
Maybe two good women.
“What are you smiling at?” she asked.
He’d just gotten in the door at home when Basil, his AI, informed him there was a news report of interest. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were out.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“François was in an accident. They’re sending out a rescue mission.”
“François St. John?” That seemed unlikely. François was a model of caution and good sense. “What are they saying? Is he okay?”
“Presumably. There are no reports of injuries. But apparently the ship is adrift.”
“What happened?”
“An omega. They got in its way.”
François was the guy who wouldn’t quit. When everything was shutting down, he’d found a way to stay with the interstellars. Most recently he’d been working for the Prometheus Foundation. Probably for expenses and lunch money. “We have details?”
“They’re running an interview with Dr. Golombeck now.”
“Put it on. Let’s see what happened.”
Golombeck’s image appeared. He was seated at a table, looking forlorn, saying something about a derelict ship. He was a thin, gray man. Gray mustache, gray clothes, gray skin. He didn’t look as if he had ever been out in the sun. He was, of course, the director of the Prometheus Foundation.
François and Matt had never really been friends. They’d not seen enough of each other for that. But they’d met periodically in the Academy ops center and at the outstations. They’d had a few drinks together on occasion, including that last memorable night at Union when the Academy announced it was closing down. There had been four or five of them present when the news came. Matt had returned less than an hour earlier from a flight to Serenity. François and one of the others had been scheduled for outbound missions, which had been delayed two or three days without explanation, and finally canceled. A couple of the others had been going through refresher training.
The talk, of course, had centered on the conviction that it wasn’t really happening. A shutdown had been rumored for years, but the common wisdom was that the threats were always designed to shake more funding out of Congress. There was some hope at the table that it was true this time, too.
But if not, what would they do?
They’d talked about getting piloting jobs with Kosmik and Orion and the other starflight corporations. But the field was drying up, and everybody knew it. One female pilot had talked about going home to Montana. “Maybe work on the ranch,” she’d said. After all this time, he could still remember the way she’d tilted her head, the way her blond hair was cut, the pain in her eyes. Couldn’t remember her name, but he remembered the pain.
Work on the ranch.
And François. He’d been solid, quiet, competent. The kind of guy you wanted playing the action hero. He was a born skeptic, thought nothing corrupted people quicker than giving them promotions. What was he going to do now? He’d shaken his head. Stay in the backcountry, he’d said. Ride the ships. Matt seemed to recall that he’d added he would never stoop to selling real estate for a living. But that was a false memory. Had to be.
“They were trying to salvage what they could out of the derelict,” Golombeck was saying.
The interviewer was Cathie Coleman, of The London Times. She sat across the table, nodding as he spoke. Her dark skin glistened in lights that did not exist in Matt’s living room. He described how the Langstons had boarded the derelict, had cut their way into it. How they had cut things a bit too close. How the derelict was by far the oldest ever discovered.
“And you say this object was a billion years old?”
“That’s what they’re telling us, Cathie.”
“Who was flying around out there a billion years ago?”
“That’s a question we might not be able to answer now.”
“Were they able to salvage anything?” she asked.
“A few relics, we know that, but we don’t know what specifically. Apparently almost everything was lost.”
Matt halted the interview. “How far away are they?” he asked the AI.
“Two hundred sixty-four light-years.”
Almost a month travel time. Well, they clearly had adequate life support, so there was really nothing to worry about. Other than losing a billion-year-old artifact. What would that have been worth?
“The rescue ship is leaving from here?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Dr. Golombeck.” Cathie took a deep breath. Big question coming. “Are you going to be able to salvage the Jenkins?”
“We don’t know the extent of the damage yet. They were hit by lightning. We’ll send a team of engineers out as soon as we can assess what’s needed. We’ll do everything we can to bring the Jenkins home.”
There’d been a time, during the peak of the interstellar period, when someone would have been close by, when help would have arrived within a few days, at most. That was only twenty years ago. Hard to believe. The era was already being described as the Golden Age.
In the morning, Golombeck was back. He’d been a bit optimistic, he admitted. The Foundation would have to write the Jenkins off. “Beyond repair,” he said.
The interviewer, Wilson deChancie of Chronicle News, nodded. “Professor,” he said, “there aren’t many people left doing serious exploration. And Prometheus is now down to one ship.”
“That’s correct, yes.”
“Will the Foundation survive?”
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll survive. There’s no question about that.”
“I’m sure our viewers will be happy to hear that.”
“Yes. We do not intend to give up and walk away from the table, Wilson. And by the way, I should mention we’ll be conducting a fund-raiser. That’ll be at the Benjamin Hotel, next Wednesday, at noon.”