I couldn’t help wondering why they would even have bothered. There was nothing on Mars. And the rest of the solar system had looked sterile. If they’d tried to go to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, at those velocities, it would have taken fifty thousand years.
What would have happened if they’d just given up? They’d come close. But they’d stayed with it. Manned flights had eventually headed out for Mars and then moved to Europa and beyond. They’d lost a few people along the way. But the vehicles had gotten better, and Maureen Caskill, in the twenty-fifth century, had figured out how to break the rules, to get past light speed. And after that, the stars had opened up.
“Makes you proud,” I said.
Alex didn’t ask for an explanation. “It’s why we need to hang on to our history. It tells us who we are.”
I sat there, munching my sandwich, thinking what Alan Shepard would have given to have known that one day I’d be visiting from another place so far away that no one in his time could have dreamed of going there. The restaurant wall carried photos of some of the early astronauts. Neil Armstrong, of course. And Viktor Patsayev. Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman. Gus Grissom. Gordon Cooper. John Glenn.
What would they have thought? Did they have any sense they were preparing the way for people who’d think of interstellars as yachts?
Science had been on the move in those years. It was the Golden Age, but they probably never realized it.
And maybe not so much simply because of the scientific advances, especially the breakthrough work in physics and medicine, the arrival of communications technology and advances in engineering, but because they had the people who knew how to make it pay off. They’d gotten past the nuclear threat, extended life spans, and generally made their world a better place. It hadn’t been perfect. Wars continued. They had problems taking care of their poor. They had lunatics who thought God wanted them to commit mass murder. But on the whole they did pretty well. And Alex and I were collecting the benefits.
“Chase, are you there?” He was looking at me, his brow creased. “You all right?”
“Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“They want to know if you’d like some dessert.”
Fifteen
The shuttle brought us down over the Atlantic. We dropped out of the clouds into driving rain and headed over open water toward the American coast. Alex was seated by the aisle, consulting his notebook. “We’re over the Jersey Islands now,” he said. “That big one there is Manchester Island. I think.” He peered out the window and checked his notebook again. “Yes. And just north of it is Plumsted. They’re popular vacation spots.” A cabin cruiser was moving west, leaving a wide wake. Nothing in that direction except ocean.
Ardmore was a spectacular city, blending Golden Age architecture with ultramodern spires and cones. Broad parks and walkways were visible as we came in off the sea and landed at the terminal, where Jay Carmody, an old friend of Alex’s, was waiting. He was a methodical guy with blond hair and golden eyes. Handsome by anybody’s standards, except that he could have used some animation. He said how good it was to see us again. “I’m not sure how much I can help, Alex,” he said. “But I’ll be happy to do whatever I can. I never actually met Garnett Baylee. I knew about him, of course. He was a big name here. I saw him a couple of times at conferences. But always from a distance. When did he die?”
“About eleven years ago.” He thought about it. “Maybe a bit more in terrestrial years.”
We were at the baggage section. I tried to pick up my luggage, but Jay wouldn’t hear of it. He got both of my bags and led the way toward the exit. Outside, we put everything down and waited while he went to get his car. Forty minutes later, we were pulling up under a full moon in front of a modest two-story cottage about a quarter mile from Sabat University, where Jay was a history professor. Lights went on, we climbed out, passed through a gate in a picket fence, and went up three steps onto an enclosed porch. The door opened, and a smiling middle-aged woman came out and waved. “It’s good to see you again, Alex,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
They embraced, and Jay introduced me to his wife Kali.
“I’ve looked into a lot of this stuff,” Jay said. “The Corbett you mentioned was one of the artifacts they moved off the Moon at the beginning of the Dark Age. They closed everything down and brought back what they could. That included the Apollo 11 lander. They put most of it, including the transmitters, in the Huntsville Space Museum. There was never a mention of the Apollo 11 after that. Nobody knows what happened to it.”
We were seated in their living room, surrounded by family pictures, Kali and Jay with their two kids, and with an older couple who were probably the parents of one or the other. Lots more of the kids. And a German shepherd. The shepherd’s name was Vinnie. He was on the floor beside Kali’s armchair.
Jay turned toward his wife. “Huntsville,” he said, “also had most of what had been in the Florida museum. Stuff from the very beginning.”
“That’s the one,” she said, “that was located near the launch facility, right?”
“Yes. At Cape Canaveral.” He looked my way. “It’s still a tourist attraction although you have to take a submarine to see it.” All of Florida save the northernmost hundred miles or so had gone into the sea during that period. “What we need, Alex,” he said, “is for somebody like you to come up with Cutler’s diary. You know who Cutler was?”
Alex did. “Abraham Cutler,” he said, “was the director at the Huntsville museum when the situation got critical.”
“That’s right. Mobs moved in, looted some of the stuff, and set some fires. That was enough for Cutler. Within the next few months, he moved as much out as he could. Sometimes under fire. There’s some evidence he might not have survived the experience, that he was killed by the thieves. We just don’t know.” Jay’s frustration was apparent. “You mentioned how valuable the Corbett is. I’d give two of them to get my hands on Cutler’s account of what happened. The standard story is that everything was taken to Centralia and put in a storehouse in Union City. That’s probably true, but what happened after that is a mystery.
“There’s a report that Cutler’s sister published his diary. But you know the situation. When the electronics went to hell, everything was lost. In some respects, we know more about the ancient Egyptians than we do about the United States of that era.”
Alex smiled sadly. The Egyptians had carved everything in stone. There had been a second United States, a few centuries later. Most of the major nations that had collapsed during the Dark Age came back. None of them still existed, of course. At least not in the same form. Somebody finally figured out that as long as there are independent nations, there will be friction, and all that’s necessary is one idiot in charge somewhere, and you get a war. Not good with the hyperweapons that kept getting more lethal. Which is why there’s a single government now, overseeing several hundred worlds and outposts.
“Cutler,” Jay said, “was effectively a minor figure. We don’t even have proof, at least none that I know of, that he was the one who actually cleared the museum. But however that may be, someone did.”