“Is Dad’s shuttle in yet?” Mom asked.
“It was just getting ready to leave Ashley’s Charm when I left the control center,” I told her. “Dad should be down in about ten minutes.” Penny was carrying a bag. Mom hadn’t bought anything. “What’d you get, Penny?”
She took it out of the bag. It was a toy—an action figure, of a slim, monstrous thing with arms and legs that bent the wrong way. She held it out to me.
“Why did you buy a toy Phinon?” I asked, taking it from her.
“I asked her that, too,” Mom said. “That toy costs three times as much out here as it does insystem.”
“I bought it for inspiration,” Penny said, taking it back and slipping it into her bag. “Either that, or as a reminder.”
“Reminder of what?” Mom asked.
Penny just smiled.
Mom and Penny went to meet Dad at the shuttle dock, and I went to clean up, promising to meet them at dinner in half an hour. I showered, looked in the mirror, then shaved off the beard I’d started to surprise Angela. That was for Mom. Even though she’d married a bearded man, maybe because she had, she liked me looking well-scrubbed and clean-shaven, and she wasn’t going to see me again for at least a couple of years.
On the way to dinner it began to sink in that this time it was my folks who were leaving me behind. I had only fled the nest for another branch on the same tree, but they were heading to an entirely different forest.
The family was already seated when I arrived, and just about to have their orders taken. I slid into the seat to Dad’s right. He finished talking to the waiter then said, “Hello, Joey. You were right about the piloting. That berth is kind of narrow. I’m glad I didn’t have to try to fly into it myself.”
Dad was buying. I ordered first and I went for the steak and lobster. We grow our own lobsters on Cameron so they don’t cost that much more than on Earth, but even if they did, Dad could afford it, and he had never been cheap.
In fact, Dad also ordered the steak and lobster, Mom got the chicken, and Penny ordered the vegetarian salad. “Is that all you’re having?” Dad asked.
“It looks like a pretty big salad,” she replied. Penny isn’t a vegetarian, but you can pick at a salad for a long time without actually eating much of it. She was nervous about the showdown with Dad, I was sure. Nervousness always killed her appetite. At exam time she used to live on water and air.
It was a fun meal during the main course. We recalled fond memories of trips we’d taken as a family. “Remember when we flew through the rings of Saturn?” “How about the hiking we did on Miranda?” “My favorite was the skiing trip to Titan.”
Dad talked about their coming trip to the stars. “First stop, Tau Ceti, and the sunny seas of Tropic,” he said. “If I like it there enough we may not even leave.”
“What? And not see what’s at the next star? Hah!” I said.
“You have your old man pegged,” Dad laughed. “The Universe is the limit. And after we finish with this Galaxy, there’s a bundle of others to see.” He raised his glass. “To the final frontier,” he toasted, and we all, even Penny, clinked glasses.
We were well into dessert and I was wondering if Penny would say anything at all when it finally happened. We were just making small talk and Dad said, “I hope you don’t miss the three of us too bad while we’re gone,” when Penny put down her spoon and said: “Dad, I can’t go.”
No preamble. No indication it was coming. No distant sound of thunder to warn of coming storms. Just a bolt from the blue.
“Dad, I can’t go.”
Dad’s last spoonful of ice cream didn’t make it to his mouth, just stopped halfway there and then returned to the plate. I don’t know what I expected him to say. I knew he wouldn’t just blow up. If it was anything like my breaking-away time, the blow-up wouldn’t happen until after the calm discussion had escalated into an argument and Dad realized he was losing.
But it was Mom who went first. “What’s the matter, honey? What’s wrong?”
“I just can’t go.”
“Don’t you think you could have brought this up a little sooner?” Dad finally asked.
“Daddy, I’m sorry. I really am. I should have said something before. I should have told you before we left. But… I just can’t go.”
“Well, why not?”
Penny was ready for that. “My work on Earth is at a critical point. And more than that, Dr. Towner is sitting on the biggest find of the last hundred years. I want… no, I need to be a part of this. It will make my career. It will make everyone’s career. It will rewrite our entire understanding of human history,” she said, and as her thoughts turned to her work, her confidence soared.
“Oh, really? Big as all that, huh?” Dad said, and I could hear the sarcasm coming. “So immensely huge that you waited until we were an hour away from going to the stars before bringing it up. Why was that, Penny?”
The confidence went away. She looked into her plate. Very softly: “Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of you.”
“Why?”
“Now, Father—” Mom started to interrupt.
“No, let her answer,” Dad said, cutting Mom off. “If Penny wants to stay behind and fend for herself, she’d damn well better start speaking for herself.
“Now, Penny, why are you afraid of me?”
I, of course, was lending my moral support by eating my dessert quietly.
“I said that wrong,” Penny continued. “I’m not afraid of you, Dad. I was afraid of disappointing you. I know you’ve… you and Mom, I mean… have always counted on me being the one that’s like both of you. You know, always looking over the next horizon. I knew the minute you brought up the star trip that you’d just assume I’d love to go as much as you and Mom. I knew all you were thinking about was whether or not you could convince Joey to go.”
“Good thing that’s all settled,” I interjected, not wanting it to come up again as an issue.
“No. I knew I’d ask Joey, maybe even try to pressure him a bit. But I never expected I’d succeed. I know my children better than that. At least I thought I did. You’re right—I assumed you wanted to go. You’ve always ‘wanted to go.’ So now I’m mystified—why don’t you want to go over this next horizon with your Mom and me?”
Right around then I noticed that the spoon I’d been lifting to my mouth kept coming up empty, so I set it down and started playing with my napkin instead.
“Because there’s another horizon I want to cross,” Penny answered.
“What? There’s some boy back on Earth? One of your archeology buddies?” I knew what “horizon” Dad was thinking about.
“No-oooo… time! The horizon of time, Daddy. Geez, boys are a plentiful commodity. I’m surprised you even said that!” Penny’s disgust was evident (though likely feigned).
“OK, great, fine. So it really is this big dig you’re on. You should have brought this up before. So just what is it that you’ve found that’s so important that it can’t wait a year for you to come back to it? If it’s so great, the dig will be going on for years.”
“But I want to be there for the announcement, Dad. I want my face next to Towner’s on the news.”
“But what is the find?” Dad persisted as I knew he would. “If I don’t know all the facts, then I can’t make a decision. You’re still a minor and we’re still your parents…” (That was Dad, including Mom as a rhetorical equal in his decision. But they’d been married for thirty years by then, so who was I to say anything?) “…so if you’re going to stay behind, I, we, have to have a good reason why.”