Rudy’s eyes closed and a pained smile appeared. “Lord,” he said, “would that it were true.”
“Maybe it is.”
“I doubt it. So what’s he want with us?”
“It looks as if he’s going to ask for a ship. To run some tests.” She recounted their conversation.
When she’d finished, he sat staring at the wall. At last his eyes came back to her. “What do you think? Does he know what he’s talking about?”
“I have no idea, Rudy.”
“The Locarno. Think what a break that would be.” His eyes brightened. “If he does want a test vehicle, we’d have to use the Preston.” With the loss of the Jenkins, it was all they had left. He scratched a spot over his right eyebrow. “Did he seem to think he could really make it work?”
“He says probably.” Two hotel bots came in and began collecting leftover food. The Ranger who’d been standing at the doorway, waiting to talk with Rudy, wandered off.
“Well,” he said, “let’s find out.”
SCIENCE HAS ENDED, SAYS JULIANO
“Issues That Remain Are Not Open to Scientific Inquiry”
Connected Story—see editoriaclass="underline"
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING AND NOT NOTHING?
WORLD COUNCIL WILL CLOSE SERENITY
Last Interstellar Base Outlives Usefulness
Will Shut Down at End of Year
BRING EVERYTHING HOME, SAYS MARGULIES
“Deep Space Never Made a Dollar”
SPACE FLIGHT AMBITIONS A DELUSION?
“Time to Grow Up,” Says President
“Coming Home Marks Beginning of Maturity”
MAMMOTHS DOING WELL IN INDIA, AMERICA
WHALE BEACHINGS A MYSTERY
Scientists Test the Water
COMET OLDER THAN SOLAR SYSTEM
9 Billion Years and Counting
PHYSICISTS, THEOLOGIANS DISCUSS END OF DAYS
Fourteenth Annual Vatican Symposium
Lights Out in a Few Trillion Years
Does Anybody Care?
SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCE IMMORTAL CHIMP
Will Not Age, Researchers Say
Treatment to Be Available for Humans by End of Decade
But Where Will We Put Everybody?
SOUTH AMERICAN REFORESTATION PROGRAM NEARS COMPLETION
COLLAPSE OF ICE SHEETS MAY BE IMMINENT
Race Is Close Between Stabilization Effort and Ongoing Melting
PUERTO RICAN AMAZON PARROT SPECIES FOUND
Believed Extinct in 21st Century
Bird Alive and Well in Lesser Antilles
THIS YEAR’S HURRICANE SEASON EXPECTED TO FOLLOW TREND
Number, Intensity of Storms Should Decrease
Chief Forecaster Hopeful Worst Is Over
SCAM ARTISTS CLAIM TECHNOLOGY TO HARNESS VOLCANIC POWER
Investors Bilked
Police: “They Got Away Clean”
Tidal Wave Technology Next?
Victims Mostly Elderly
STUDIES SUGGEST MARRIAGE, BUT NO CHILDREN, KEY TO LONGEVITY
BLACK HOLES MAY DISSIPATE MORE QUICKLY THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
ARK ON ARARAT MAY NOT BE NOAH’S
Replica Probably Built in Ancient Times
Intended to Commemorate Biblical Event?
ARE LITTLE PEOPLE SMARTER?
Studies Suggest Correlation Between IQ and Size
Smaller May Be Better
Chapter 4
Matt wasn’t entirely sure why he’d wanted to speak with Priscilla Hutchins. He didn’t really know her. He’d just been starting his career when she’d left the Academy. Maybe it was no more than the craving to say hello, I used to pilot superluminals, too. I understand what you’re talking about.
“There’s almost always someone, after one of these events,” she had told her audience, “who asks how I got my start. ‘I have a nephew who talks about piloting starships,’ he’ll say, in a tone that suggests the kid has other problems as well. ‘Never been much into travel out there myself. The Earth’s big enough for me.’ And you know, I feel sorry for him. The train’s long since left the station, and he’s still standing on the platform.
“I honestly can’t imagine what my life would have been without the opportunity to sit on the bridge of a superluminal, to cruise past Vega IV. To see Saturn’s rings from the surface of Iapetus. To stand on the beach at Morikai, on a warm summer afternoon, with the wind blowing behind me and a silver sun high overhead and to know that I’m the only living thing on that entire world.
“And I know what you’re thinking. This is a woman who’s spent a lot of time alone. In strange places. You have to expect she’d be a bit deranged on the subject.” That drew laughter from the audience. “But let’s talk about why the interstellar effort matters.
“Once you’ve been out there, and seen what it’s like, how many worlds there are, how gorgeous some of these places are, how majestic, you can never settle for staying in Virginia.” She talked about good times on the flight lines, described what we’d been learning about our environment and about ourselves, and even brought in Destiny and DNA. “If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.
“To close everything down now, to say we’ve had enough, let’s just park on the front porch, which is what we’re doing, is a betrayal of everything that matters.” She’d looked out over her audience. “What would we think of a child who had no curiosity? Who was given a sealed box and showed no interest in its contents? In the end, we have to decide who we are.”
When she’d finished, somebody asked whether she thought it was true that the human race, to ensure its long-term survival, needed to get off-world. Establish colonies. Immunize itself against catastrophe.
“That’s probably so,” she’d replied. “It makes sense. But that’s not the real reason to go. If we stay here, where it’s warm and comfortable, we’ll die a kind of spiritual death. And I guess maybe it wouldn’t matter because we’d probably not be worth saving.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d have said to her had he gotten the chance. Maybe just that he thought she was right, and that he wished her well. But a guy in a light blue suit had cornered her in the lobby. He’d waited a few minutes while they talked, begun to feel either impatient or conspicuous, and finally decided to hell with it.
They were having a reception in the green room, but he decided he’d invested enough time, took a last look at Hutchins, who seemed to be trying to break off the conversation, and wondered briefly whether he shouldn’t help out. She’d probably welcome being rescued. In the end, though, he simply left.
It was an afternoon filled with paperwork, clearing up the administrative details on the sale of a town house on Massachusetts Avenue, going over a right-of-way agreement, making sure the licenses were in order. When he’d finished, he needed to make some adjustments to the inventory. Then talk with the company lawyer, who was looking into a property dispute, one of those domestic things where one party wanted to divest the property and the other was trying to hang on to it.