“I know it.”
Startled, he looked up and saw Jo leaning against the doorjamb.
His grin turned to embarrassment. “Uh…I’ve taken to talking to coconuts. Sign of nervousness, I guess.”
“You don’t look nervous to me,” Jo said, stepping into the office. She was wearing her usual cutoffs and half-unbuttoned blouse. Her skin was a deep olive brown. A quizzical smile touched the corners of her mouth.
“Iron self-control,” Stoner muttered.
“Are you all packed?” she asked.
“Just about. What about you? You’re not going aboard the plane in those clothes, are you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I just thought I’d take one final stroll along the beach before dinner. Plenty of time to change and catch the plane.”
He nodded. “Well, I’m sure not going to miss the food here.”
She reached out for his arm. “Come on, take a walk with me. Let’s say good-by to the island together.”
They walked barefoot, arm in arm, along the wavelapped beach, toes digging into the warm sand, long shadows thrown ahead of them in the red glow of the dying day.
Out beyond the lagoon and the tiny fringe of islands rimming it, the sun was sinking into the ocean, turning the whole world the color of molten gold. Birds crossed the cloud-streaked sky, calling, calling.
“Our last sunset on Kwajalein,” Jo said, clasping Stoner’s arm in both of hers.
“We never got much of a chance to enjoy this beauty, did we?” he asked.
“There’s a lot we’ve never had a chance to do,” she replied. “A lot of living.”
“I know.”
“When this is over, Keith, when our lives settle down into something more ordinary…”
“Will they?”
“They’ve got to,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know. The alien changes everything so much…who can tell what’s going to happen?”
She turned and put her arms around him and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “Keith, please don’t go through with it. I’m scared of this rocket mission.”
He breathed in the scent of her hair. “Scared? You? I thought you wanted to be an astronaut.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid if I was going,” she said. “But I’m scared to death for you.”
He laughed, but she could feel his body tense. “Reynaud thinks the Russians are out to kill me.”
“You see?” Jo pulled away slightly and looked into his eyes. “I’m not the only one.”
“I’ve talked to Kirill about it. It’s nonsense.”
“Did he say it was?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of? Did he laugh it off or take it seriously?”
Stoner waggled a hand. “Kind of in between.”
“Keith, you are in danger from them. I can feel it.”
“I’m going to be a guest of the Russian Government. We all will be. They wouldn’t dare do anything.”
“You’re being stubborn,” she said. “And stupid.”
“Kirill’s going to look out for me.”
She raised her hands to the heavens. “Some bodyguard. He can’t even paddle a canoe!”
Stoner laughed.
“Don’t do it, Keith. Please. Let the Russians send their own cosmonauts to rendezvous with the alien. Stay on the ground with the rest of us.”
“No,” he said.
“Keith, I’m scared for you! I’m frightened!”
“I know you are,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m a heartless sonofabitch, okay? But this is more important to me than anything else. It’s my life. Can you understand that? More important to me than my kids, than you, than anything or anyone else. I’ve got to do it. I need to do it. I’d walk through fire to get to it.”
Jo said nothing. Her chin fell. She stared down at the sand at their feet.
“Am I wrong to feel this way? Am I some kind of monster?”
“Yes,” she answered softly. “You know you’re putting yourself in danger. But you turn your back on every human emotion, every human need. The only thing you want is to go out there and make this flight, even though you know they’re going to kill you over it.”
“What can I say?” he wondered. “So I’m a monster, after all.”
“Not a monster, Keith,” she replied. “A machine. An automated, self-programmed machine. I saw the way you battered Schmidt. He was an animal, but you were a machine. An inhuman, tireless, unemotional machine. Nothing can stand in your way. You drive over every obstacle, anything that gets in your way. Mac, Schmidt, the whole goddamned Navy…even your own children. None of us can hold you back.”
“That’s what you think of me?” Stoner’s voice was a strangled whisper. His insides felt cold and empty.
“That’s what you are, Keith,” Jo said, struggling to keep her own voice calm, untrembling.
For a long moment he said nothing. Then, “Okay. We’d better get back. I still have some packing to do.”
“Right. Me too.”
They walked in cold silence and Stoner left her at the entrance to the hotel. Jo watched him stride away, stiff with pride or anger or pain, and she realized that he did have emotions and vulnerabilities.
But he doesn’t care about me, she also realized. There’s no way that I can make him care about me.
Then she hurried inside, ran upstairs to her room and shut the door tightly behind her.
Chapter 38
There can be little reasonable doubt that, ultimately, we will come into contact with races more intelligent than our own. That contact may be one-way, through the discovery of ruins or artifacts; it may be two-way, over radio or laser circuits; it may even be face to face. But it will occur, and it may be the most devastating event in the history of mankind. The rash assertion that “God created man in His own image” is ticking like a time bomb at the foundations of many faiths…
The Ilyushin jet transport was noisy and uncomfortable despite the fact that only two dozen passengers rode in its cavernous cabin.
Stoner sat up front, staring out a window at the endless expanse of steppe: nothing but grass, as far as the eye could see. Not a tree, not a town, not even a village. This must be what the American plains looked like before the farmers covered it with corn and wheat, he thought.
The plane rode smoothly enough at this high altitude. If only the seats weren’t so crammed together, Stoner compained silently. The only rough part of the flight had been when they’d crossed the Roof of the World, passing close enough to Everest to see its lofty snow-plumed peak, then across craggy Tibet and the wild Altai Mountains. Stoner imagined that far off in the distance he could see Afghanistan, where the hill tribesmen still fought for the independence, as they had fought against the armies of Alexander the Great.
Across the cramped aisle from Stoner, Professor Zworkin snored fitfully. The others were scattered around the long cabin. Jo had taken a seat in the rear, he knew.
His stomach rumbled. Food service aboard the flight was nonexistent. They had been fed once when the jet had landed at Vladivostok, and then once again, many hours later, at the refueling stop near Tashkent. Neither time had any of the passengers been allowed to step off the plane.
They had crossed the wild hill country where Kazakh horsemen still dressed in furs and conical felt hats and rode stubby ponies after their herds of sheep and goats. Now the grassland, the eternal steppe, with the city of Baikanur coming up and beyond it, the rocket-launching base of Tyuratam.