“It’s a pity someone didn’t record where he’d put the artifacts.”
“If somebody had, Chase, I doubt we’d have anything to look for now.”
“What did Marjorie think? She give any credence to his having stashed everything somewhere?”
“She’s like us. She wants to believe it.”
Next day, a second transmission came in from Khaled. “I got your message, but giving up is a losing proposition. I’ll let you know what my schedule looks like as soon as it takes shape. You can tell me you don’t have time if you want. Or even that you don’t want me to come. I’ll understand. And I’ll abide by your wishes. But I’m just not going to walk away from you unless you push a little bit. I hope you don’t mind my taking this into my own hands. I’m looking forward to spending some time with you again, Chase. If you’re willing. Incidentally, I’ll only be in the area for a week. But don’t worry. You won’t have to entertain me or anything like that. I have sightseeing plans, so I won’t be getting in your way. See you soon. I hope.”
“Jacob,” I said, “message going back.”
“Very good.” I detected a note of approval. But coming up with the right response wasn’t easy. And after a couple of minutes Jacob asked if I’d changed my mind.
“No,” I said. “I was just thinking. But okay, let’s go.”
“When you’re ready.”
“‘Khaled, I’ll confess I’d enjoy seeing you again. But I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Not right now. Eventually, we’ll probably get back to Earth. I’ll let you know if it’s going to happen.’ Make sure it goes priority, Jacob, okay?”
Shara called in the middle of the night. “They found them.” She paused, and I held my breath. “They’re saying they’ve been dead for thirty years.”
“What?”
“Thirty years, Chase. Probably died of starvation.”
“You were right.”
“Yeah. I guess. Time was moving differently for them than it was for us. But not the way we’d expected. They think that they survived for about four years, until they ran out of food.”
Thirty-two
There is no emotion so painful as a happy memory.
By midafternoon, the media had the story. The victims, the networks were reporting, had died when their food supply ran out. Shock was deep and widespread. Nothing like this, everyone was saying, had ever been reported before.
The HV ran on and on. Physicists tried to explain how something like that was possible while political commentators predicted that there would be no further talk about manipulating star drives. Walter Brim, a guest on Straight Talk, asked the viewers to imagine how terrible it would be if something like that happened on the Capella.
I got through the afternoon as best I could, needed some medication to get to sleep that night. Alex called in the morning to make sure I was okay, and suggested we meet at the Hillside.
When I arrived, he was already there, seated at a corner table. He raised a hand and smiled. “You still okay?”
“I’ll live.”
“Apparently, Nick arranged things to conserve power. That’s why so much was shut down. But I guess they couldn’t do anything about the food supply. Believe it or not, they had enough food on board to get them through it if they could have prevented it from spoiling.”
“I guess,” I said. “I’m not sure though I would have wanted to live inside that thing for four years.”
We ordered whatever off the menu. I don’t recall what it was, just that I drank a lot of coffee. And we were back to talking about living for the day because you never know about tomorrow. Nick and JoAnn had seemed so alive when they were on the Grainger bridge.
The Hillside was crowded. “Never noticed before,” I said, “but having almost a full house lends a sense of security to the place.”
He reached across the table and pressed my wrist. “The world has changed, love.” He was about to continue when his link sounded. He activated it, listened, and nodded. “Good, John, let me know when, okay?” And then: “Yes. She’s with me now.”
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“There’s going to be a memorial for JoAnn and Nick at the headquarters building. Middle of the week. They’ll tell us when they lock in the night.”
That evening, President Davis spoke. He stood behind a lectern, the blue and white colors of the Confederacy draped across the wall behind him. “Friends and citizens,” he said, “you already know of the losses we incurred during an effort to find a better way to manage the rescue of those trapped on the Capella. JoAnn Suttner and Nicholas Kraus, members of the Sanusar Recovery Force working under the auspices of the Department of Transportation, lost their lives in the attempt. I am sorry to report also that, as a result of the experiment, we know now that the technique under development cannot be relied on. We will not risk the lives of the people on the Capella. Therefore, we will be falling back on the lifeboats that we have been preparing for the last few months.
“It is a method we would have preferred not to use because it is more time-consuming than we wish. But it is our safest way to proceed. Consequently, we now face the reality that we cannot take everyone off prior to experiencing another jump. In fact, we will be able to provide an immediate escape for only about two hundred of those on board.
“Having said that, I want to remind everyone that our first consideration remains the safe return of our friends and family members, not on rushing to get them off quickly. Our primary concern is their safety. I regret this reality. But we are confronted with a force of nature. We have no reasonable choice except to wait. It is a price we must be willing to pay to bring this unhappy state of affairs to a successful conclusion.”
Three nights later, we went downtown to the Riverside Hotel for the memorial service, which had been originally scheduled for the Department of Transportation Building. But the planners had been surprised by the public response to the event. “I don’t think we realized,” Senator Caipha Delmar told us, “that people would turn out the way they have.” Obviously, the sacrifice JoAnn and Nick made had an impact.
Several thousand persons jammed into the hotel. About half got into the Starlight Room, where the ceremony was to be held. The rest filled the lobby, the restaurant, the bar, and a second showroom where the event was put on-screen. John came out onto a raised platform precisely on time, thanked the audience for their support, and introduced himself as Nick’s brother and as the director of the operation that had taken the two lives. “At first,” he said, “I’d planned to describe this simply as an effort gone wrong. But it served to show us that the potential downside of trying to stop the process is too high, and in that sense, because of JoAnn and Nick, twenty-six hundred people will not be put at risk. I’m proud to be Nick’s brother and to have been JoAnn’s colleague.”
That drew somber applause. “Whatever it takes,” he continued, “we will not waste the sacrifice these two heroes have made. We will get those people off the Capella. The lifeboats are ready to go. We’ll take advantage of its return to get the lifeboats to it, to get them on board, and when it comes back in five years we’ll get the passengers and crew off, all of them, and we’ll throw the biggest party Rimway has ever seen.”