Melinda and Kris ran into the room, frantic, eyes lined in red, but working together in quiet confidence. Melinda broke open the large orange case of a portable Automatic External Defibrillator and began to lay out the unit next to Nathan and Gordon, ripping off plastic wrapping and peeling the paper off a pair of sticky panel electrodes while the unit charged up. She pushed Nathan to one side and ripped open Gordon’s oxford shirt, exposing a smooth chest with unnaturally yellow and grayish skin. Melinda attached the electrodes as Nathan moved out of her way, still keeping his ear close to Gordon’s mouth.
The old man’s words were little more than breathy whispers. “Take up my sword … you must … take up my sword … save us … how’s it go … liberty … or death.”
With that, his pupils dilated and the last hint of rosy vitality faded from his skin. He seemed to deflate slightly and the AED, which had been giving Melinda verbal instructions unnoticed by Nathan, spoke out again in a calm, female contralto, “No cardiac rhythm detected. Unable to regulate rhythm. Perform CPR until rhythm re-established.”
Melinda and Kris cried openly. Nathan moved the secretary over and then settled his hands over a point an inch or so above the base of Gordon’s sternum. He locked his elbows and then pushed down and released, pushed down and released. He kept it up for a count of thirty and then sat back, looking to Melinda, who was still fiddling with the AED, trying to get it to magically bring their employer and friend back to life, instead of just repeating the same unhelpful statement over and over again.
“Melinda!” Nathan said sharply. “Breath for him. Two breaths.”
She nodded and wiped pendulous tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand. She tilted Gordon’s head back, lowered her lips to his, and breathed for him, twice. Nathan rose up to begin chest progressions again, and paid no attention to the tears that coursed down his own cheeks. He and Melinda alternated back and forth, listening to the AED repeat itself and watching Gordon’s unchanging body without hope.
Kristene looked from one to the other, shaking her head and moving gently in to relieve either Nathan or Melinda if their will began to flag. The three of them kept it up for ten minutes, silent for the most part, until the ambulance and EMT’s arrived, ready to do all that was possible to hold Gordon to the corporeal realm.
But Gordon Elliot Lee, who had cast such a large shadow for such a slight man over the course of his 68 years, had already left this world for the next, surpassing even the Promise in the scope of his final journey.
Hours later, Nathan re-entered the house and shut the door numbly behind him. He stood still and listened. No one was there. Melinda had gone home from the hospital with Kris in tow, both of them discussing funeral arrangements in somber, quiet tones. The paramedics, police, and a baker’s dozen of reporters were gone, their questions asked and answered with quiet respect and understanding, for the most part. The house staff, who always tried to be pretty much invisible, were indeed gone, the object of their labors no longer having the need for such care.
Nathan was alone.
He listened deeply, trying to block out the sound of his own breathing and the movement of his clothes. All was silent. There was nothing left. Gordon Lee could fill a room with his presence, and his spirit could keep it brimming with excitement even after he left, but none of that lingered now. Gordon was gone and not even a ghost remained to shepherd them through what lay ahead.
He shook his head, returned Gordon’s keys to his pockets and walked over to the immense terracotta warrior that dominated the foyer. Nathan looked up at it, bowed his head slightly in respect, and then proceeded on through the darkened, quiet interior of Gordon’s former home. He moved with a purpose, for he had one, but nostalgia and grief gave him a halting gait as he passed objects which had been merely part of the background, but now took on the significance of a thousand memories.
After the pain of losing his place in the Navy, this place had become his life and his home. It was not where he lived, but it was where his life had regained meaning. Gordon had given him something beyond any mere job or project. Gordon had given him purpose, had made Nathan matter again to the world, and made the world matter to Nathan. It was a debt he had not even realized he owed before, and now it was too late to ever repay it.
Nathan reached the home office, lit only by the frozen static on the desk screen. The stream was still logged in. He knew that the telemetry stream had already been viewed by almost everyone on the short list with access to the server, but he himself had not had a chance to review it yet. Nathan stepped carefully around the desk, self consciously avoiding the spot where Gordon had died, and sat down. He shook his head and scrolled the cursor around, clicking to begin the video log again.
The static cleared and a video divided into four images began. First was a visible spectrum, light-enhanced view out of the main camera. Next to it was the same scene, but in a false color, multi-spectrum view. Below the first images was the video from the sub-probes Promise had launched, switching from one unit to another every few seconds. The last image was a view of the Promise itself, taken from a spar extended from the main hull.
The probe looked to be in decent shape—discolored slightly, with multicolored burns and pockmarks around the shielded nosecone, but nothing appeared to be broken or missing. The other images showed nothing but stars and space. Then the main views rotated and the Deltans were revealed for the first time.
They filled the images. Either the probe was extremely close, the magnification was all the way up, or the approaching aliens were really, really big. Nathan’s jaw fell slack and he forgot to breathe for a moment. The “ship” was unlike anything he had expected. And it was not really a ship at all.
The most immediate feature was the Deltan drive. It was not a photonic drive or rocket as they had surmised, though it might ultimately produce a similar effect. This was, for all intents and purposes, a sun.
It appeared as if someone had lassoed a star and forced it to radiate in only a single direction. Blue white light blasted forth from one pole of a distended ball of plasma. The tortured sphere of the drive had its own roiling purple white and golden red radiance, but it was far outshone by the thrust of the drive. Where the “star” was constrained, brilliant ropes of silvery light bound it, forcing it out of its natural form and putting it to work for the ornate bodies orbiting it.
Surrounding the drive, but unconnected to it by any visible means, were four shapes. The configuration of those shapes had perplexed Gordon for years. He had never figured out what significance they had, but it all seemed obvious to Nathan upon seeing it now. The bodies orbiting the Deltan drive were positioned directly upon the classic Lagrange points—three of the shapes in an equilateral triangle around the drive, with the fourth shape stuck in the middle of one of the sides.
For any two bodies in a gravitationally bound system, where one body is much more massive than another, there were points of gravitational minima and maxima, where another body so placed would be in equilibrium with the first two bodies and the whole system could exist in stable harmony. These were known as the Lagrange points, designated L1 through L5, and these were the points that the four constructs surrounding the drive were configured around.
The drive obviously filled the role of the central, massive body. The other body of the “two body problem” was the smallest of the constructs. Illuminated by a brilliant violet-red glow from the equator of the drive, this vessel was the most starship-like of the four. It appeared as a dully metallic, plated ovoid, with various projections and hatches of unknown purpose adorning its hull. The vessel had none of the comforting normalities of a human construct—no recognizable docking points, solar panels, thrusters, or view ports. Nathan could hardly even tell the front from the back. The overlapping rings of plates which formed the hull gave it a vaguely arthropod-like appearance, but Nathan was probably more closely related to a lobster than these things were. Below this vessel, all of the silver-white bands of energy around the drive sphere came together, though for what purpose, Nathan was not ready to guess.