Bonnie nodded at him. She had begged the authorities for more time to stay on the satellite, to help with the work Lou and the others were doing. The General Chairman himself signed the papers that let her stay indefinitely. But if Lou had really looked closely at her, he would have seen that she never smiled anymore, even though she tried to.
It took six months before they were certain. Six months of hectic work, calculations, conferences that lasted all hours, arguments, cajolings. Six months in which Lou saw Bonnie maybe twice or three times a week, sometimes not that often. And always he talked of the work, the plans, the hopes. And she said nothing.
Then, abruptly, Lou was telling Kaufman, “There’s no doubt about it. We can turn this jail into a starship. We can freeze most of the people. We can reach the stars. Now we have to get the government to give us the equipment we need.”
Kaufman said reluctantly, “I’ll ask for a conference with the proper authorities.”
Shaking his head, Lou countered, “The General Chairman once told me that if we needed anything, we could ask him. I’m going to call him. Directly.”
It was one of those moments when time seems to have snapped, and you’re back in a spot where you had been months or years ago. Exactly the same place.
Lou stood in the General Chairman’s office again, Bonnie and Kori beside him, as the elevator doors sighed shut. The room was unchanged. The Chairman called to them from his desk. The past six months aboard the satellite suddenly seemed like a remote and unpleasant dream. Did I actually live aboard that plastic prison? In that artificial little world? After a drive from the rocket field, through the green farmlands and bone-white villages, through the scented winds and steady call of the surf, through the noisy, crowded, living city—the satellite seemed totally unreal.
The Chairman listened patiently to their story, nodding and rocking in his big leather chair, steepling his fingers from time to time, even smiling once or twice. Then Lou finished talking.
For a long moment, the Chairman said nothing. Finally, “Your ingenuity amazes me, in a way. And yet, somehow, I am not truly surprised that you have come up with an amazing idea.” He looked at the three of them, his dark eyes clear despite his many other signs of age.
“I will not presume to comment on why you want to leave our world entirely,” the Chairman said. “I suppose that even death among the stars is preferable to you than a long life of exile.” He laughed, softly, to himself. “I never expected to be faced with such a decision. I never expected man’s first attempt to reach the stars would be made under conditions such as we find ourselves in.”
“Then you’ll allow us to go?” Lou asked eagerly. “You’ll help us, you’ll give us the engines and …”
The Chairman silenced him with a spindly upraised finger. “You say that there are many among you who are opposed to this idea… many who do not wish to fly toward the stars.”
“Yes,” Lou admitted. “Our work to date has simply shown that it’s physically possible for us to make the journey. Dr. Kaufman and many of the others—especially the older people—don’t want any part of it.”
The chairman sighed. “You realize, of course, that it all comes down to a question of money. Everything does, it seems. Sooner or later.”
“Money?”
Nodding, the Chairman explained, “It will take billions to outfit your satellite for a journey to the stars—”
“We’ve figured that out,” Lou said. “It’s expensive, but still cheaper than keeping us in orbit indefinitely. This way, you pay one big bill and we’re gone. If you keep us, you’ll have to feed us, doctor us, everything—”
“I feel like Pharaoh arguing against Moses,” the Chairman complained. “I would be perfectly willing to spend what must be spent and help you on your way, if that is what you wish. But—what of those who don’t wish it? I cannot keep some of you in orbit and still spend the money necessary to send the rest of you out to the stars. It must be one or the other. It cannot be both.”
“Then we’ll have to vote on it,” Lou said.
“Yes,” said the Chairman. “I suppose you will.”
So they left the Chairman’s office, went back down the whispering elevator and into the car that took them back through the semitropical seaside farms of Sicily, toward the rocket field. But now the grass and sunshine and cottages were cruelties, sadistic reminders that the satellite, was real and permanent and they were only visitors in this beautiful world; their prison awaited them.
They rode in the back of the open turbocar in silence, eyes wide and all senses alert to drink in every sight and sound and fragrance that had been commonplace all their lives but now were small miracles that they could never expect to experience again.
A second car followed a discreet distance behind them, and somewhere overhead a helicopter droned lazily. They were prisoners, no doubt of it.
As they got close enough to the rocket field to see the stubby shuttles standing in a row, Bonnie turned to Lou.
“You shouldn’t have brought me with you today, Lou. You shouldn’t have.”
Surprised, “What? Why not?”
“Because I’m not as strong as you are,” she said, shouting over the wind and turbine whine. “I… Lou, I can’t leave all this, not permanently. It’s bad enough in the satellite, when you can see the Earth outside the viewports. But to leave forever… to go out into that blackness… Lou, I can’t do it. If they vote for going to the stars, I’ll come back to Earth.”
“But I thought…”
Even Kori, sitting on the other side of Bonnie, looked shocked.
“I’m sorry, Lou… I can’t help it. I checked this morning. The government will still let me return, if I want to. I can’t leave Earth forever, Lou. I just can’t!”
“But… I love you, Bonnie. I can’t leave without you.”
She put her head down and cried.
22
Lou sat tensely in front of the Tri-V cameras. Next to him sat Dr. Kaufman, in an identical sling chair that creaked under his weight.
They were in the special compartment that had been turned into a Tri-V studio. Everyone in the satellite was watching them as they explained their positions on Lou’s starship proposal.
As Dr. Kaufman spoke in his vigorous, emphatic manner, driving points home with the accusatory thrusts of a stubby forefinger, Lou’s mind was far away.
He kept seeing Bonnie’s stricken face when she admitted that she would never go with him to the stars. Kept seeing the green countryside, the lemon orchards and vineyards, the safe blue sky and friendly sea that he would never visit again.
“I can’t leave Earth forever, Lou. I just can’t!”
Can I? he wondered. Can any of us? Turn our backs on the whole world, on a billion years of evolution? Is that what I want them to do? Is it what I want to do?
Dr. Kaufman was saying, “It is desperately important that we all realize exactly what is involved here. No one has ever built a manned starship. No one has even attempted to. You all know that we get supplies from Earth, every week. Even though we have closed-cycle air and water systems, we still need replenishments of air and water at least once a month.
“As long as we remain in orbit around the Earth we can get those supplies and replenishments whenever we need them. But if we leave Earth, if we try this foolhardy scheme for going to the stars, we must have air and water and food systems that are absolutely foolproof. Now, I realize that manned missions to Jupiter and Saturn have used closed-cycle systems, and they’ve worked quite well for periods of up to six years.