In the pause Lorimer tries to grasp the staggering figures. From eight billion to two million… Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, America itself-wiped out. There weren't any more babies. World sterility, from what? The Black Death, the famines of Asia those had been decimations. This is magnitudes worse. No, it is all the same: beyond comprehension. An empty world, littered with junk.
"Sunbird?" says Margo. "Da, I should have thought you'd want to know about space. Well, we have only the four real spaceships and one building. You know the two here. Then there's Indira and Pech, they're on the Mars run now. Maybe the Mars dome was since your day. You had the satellite stations though, didn't you? And the old Luna dome, of course-I remember now, it was during the epidemic. They tried to set up colonies to, ah, breed children, but the epidemic got there too. They struggled terribly hard. We owe a lot to you really, you men I mean. The history has it all, how you worked out a minimal viable program and trained everybody and saved it from the crazies. It was a glorious achievement. Oh, the marker here has one of your names on it. Lorimer. We love to keep it all going and growing, we all love traveling. Man is a rover, that's one of our mottoes."
"Are you hearing, what I'm hearing?" Bud asks, blinking comically.
Dave is still staring at the speaker. "Not one word about their government," he says slowly. "Not a word about economic conditions. We're talking to a bunch of monkeys."
"Should I ask them?"
"Wait a minute… Roger, ask the name of their chief of state and the head of the space program. And -no, that's all."
"President?" Margo echoes Bud's query. "You mean like queens and kings? Wait, here's Myda. She's been talking about you with Earth."
The older woman they hear occasionally says, "Sunbird? Da, we realize you had a very complex activity, your governments. With so few people we don't have that type of formal structure at all. People from the different activities meet periodically and our communications are good, everyone is kept informed. The people in each activity are in charge of doing it while they're there. We rotate, you see. Mostly in five-year hitches; for example, Margo here was on the zeppelins and I've been on several factories and farms and of course the, well, the education, we all do that. I believe that's one big difference from you. And of course we all work. And things are basically far more stable now, I gather. We change slowly. Does that answer you? Of course you can always ask Registry, they keep track of us all. But we can't, ah, take you to our leader, if that's what you mean." She laughs, a genuine, jolly sound. "That's one of our old- jokes. I must say," she goes on seriously, "it's been a joy to us that we can understand you so well. We make a big effort not to let the language drift, it would be tragic to lose touch with the past."
Dave takes the mike. "Thank you, Luna. You've given us something to think about. Sunbird out."
"How much of that is for real, Doc?" Bud rubs his curly head. "They're giving us one of your science fiction stories."
"The real story will come later," says Dave. "Our job is to get there."
"That's a point that doesn't look too good."
By the end of the session it looks worse. No Venus trajectory is any good. Lorimer reruns all the computations; same result.
"There doesn't seem to be any solution to this one, Dave," he says at last. "The parameters are just too tough. I think we've had it."
Dave massages his knuckles thoughtfully. Then he nods. "Roger. We'll fire the optimum sequence on the Earth heading."
"Tell them to wave if they see us go by," says Bud.
They are silent, contemplating the prospect of a slow death in space eighteen months hence. Lorimer wonders if he can raise the other question, the bad one. He is pretty sure what Dave will say. What will he himself decide, what will he have the guts to do?.
"Hello, Sunbird?" the voice of Gloria breaks n. "Listen, we've been figuring. We think if you use all your fuel you could come back in close enough to our orbit so we could swing out and pick you up. You'd be using solar gravity that way. We have plenty of maneuver but much less acceleration than you do. You have suits and some kind of propellants, don't you? I mean, you could fly across a few kays?"
The three men look at each other; Lorimer guesses, he had not been the only one to speculate on that. -;
"That's a good thought, Gloria," Dave' says. "Let's hear what Luna says."
"Why?" asks Judy. "It's our business, we wouldn't endanger the ship. We'd only miss another look at Venus, who cares. We have plenty of water and food and if the air gets a little smelly we can stand it."
"Hey, the chicks are all right," Bud says. They wait.
The voice of Luna comes on. "We've been looking at that too, Judy. We're not sure you understand the risk. Ah, Sunbird, excuse me. Judy, if you manage to pick them up you'll have to spend nearly a year in the ship with these three male persons from a very different culture. Myda says you should remember-;' history and it's a risk no matter what Connie says.
Sunbird, I hate to be so rude. Over."
Bud is grinning broadly, they all.are. "Cave men," he chuckles. "All the chicks land preggers."
"Margo, they're human beings," the Judy voice protests. "This isn't just Connie, we're all agreed. Andy and Lady Blue say it would be very interesting. If it works, that is. We can't let them go without trying."
"We feel that way too, of course," Luna replies. "But there's another problem. They could be carrying diseases. Sunbird, I know you've been isolated for fourteen months, but Murti says people in your day were immune to organisms that aren't around now Maybe some of ours could harm you; too. You could all get mortally sick and lose the ship."
"We thought of that, Margo," Judy says impatiently. "Look, if you have contact with them at all somebody has to test, true? So we're ideal. By the time we get home you'll know. And how could we all get sick so fast we couldn't put Gloria in a stable orbit where you could get her later on?"
They wait. "Hey, what about that epidemic?" Bud pats his hair elaborately. "I don't know if I want a career in gay fib."
"You rather stay out here?" Dave asks.
"Crazies," says a different voice from Luna. "Sunbird, I'm Murti, the health person here. I think what we have to fear most is the meningitis-influenza complex, they mutate so readily. Does your Doctor Lorimer have any suggestions?"
"Roger, I'll put him on," says Dave. "But as to your first point, madam, I want to inform you that at time of takeoff the incidence of rape in the United States space cadre was zero point zero. I guarantee the conduct of my crew provided you can control yours. Here is Doctor Lorimer."
But Lorimer cannot of course tell them anything useful. They discuss the men's polio shots, which luckily have used killed virus, and various childhood diseases which still seem to be around. He does not mention their epidemic.
"Luna, we're going to try it," Judy declares. "We couldn't live with ourselves. Now let's get the course figured before they get any farther away."
From there on there is no rest on Sunbird while they set up and refigure and rerun the computations for the envelope of possible intersection trajectories. The Gloria's drive, they learn, is indeed low-thrust, although capable of sustained operation. Sunbird will have to get most of the way to the rendezvous on her own if they can cancel their outward velocity.