They hovered. There was no sound. The wind pushed once at the stationary aircraft and then relented. Dave pointed, and Baedecker slid his window back and leaned out for a better view.
A hundred feet below them, the only structure on a hill high above the wind-tossed Columbia, the stone circle of Stonehenge sat milk-white and shadow-bound in the light of the full moon.
'Okay,' said Dave, 'I could use some help here, amigo.'
Dust billowed up as they descended through thirty feet. The landing light extended and flashed on, illuminating the interior of a swirling cloud. Baedecker caught a glimpse of a graveled parking lot set on an uneven patch of hilltop below, and then dust surrounded them again and pebbles beat like hailstones on the belly of their craft.
'Talk to me,' Dave said calmly.
'Twenty-five feet and drifting forward,' said Baedecker. 'Fifteen feet. Looks all right. Ten feet. Wait, back up ten, there's a boulder there. Right. Okay. Down. Five feet. You're okay. Two feet. Okay. Ten inches. Contact.' The Huey rocked slightly and settled firmly on its skids. Dust surrounded them and then dissipated in the strong breeze. Dave shut down the ship, the red cockpit glow disappeared, and Baedecker realized that they were in gravity's realm once again. He took off his helmet, undid his straps, and opened the door. Baedecker stepped off the skid and walked around the front of the helicopter to where Dave stood, his dark hair damp with sweat, his eyes alive. The wind was stronger now, ruffling Baedecker's thin hair and cooling him quickly. Together he and Dave walked to the circle of stones.
'Who built this?' Baedecker asked after several minutes of silence. The full moon hung just above the tallest arch. Shadows fell across the large stone lying in the center of the circle. This was Stonehenge as it must have looked shortly after the druids finished their labors, before time and tourists took their toll on the pillars and stones.
'A guy named Sam Hill,' said Dave. 'He was a road builder. Came out here early in the century to found a town and vineyards. A sort of Utopian colony. He had a theory that this section of the Columbia Gorge was perfect for wine grapes — rain from the west, sunlight from the east slopes. Perfect harmony.'
'Was he right?'
'Nope. Missed it by about twenty miles,' said Dave. 'The town's lying in ruins over the hill there. Sam's buried down there.' He pointed to a narrow trail leading down a steep section of hillside.
'Why Stonehenge?' asked Baedecker.
Dave shrugged. 'We all want to leave monuments. Sam borrowed his. He was in England during World War I when the experts thought that Stonehenge had been a sacrificial altar. Sam made this into a sort of antiwar memorial.' Baedecker went closer and could see names set into the stones. What first had appeared to be rock was actually cement.
They walked to the south of the circle and looked out over the river. The lights of a town and bridge glowed several miles to the west. The wind gusted strongly, bending brittle spears of grass on the hillside, carrying the cold scent of autumn with it.
'The Oregon Trail ends a few miles down there,' said Dave, pointing toward the lights. A little later he said, 'Did you ever wonder why they would come so far, pass up two thousand miles of perfectly good land, just to follow a dream?'
'No,' said Baedecker. 'I don't think I have.'
'I do,' said Dave. 'I've wondered that since I was a kid. Christ, Richard, I drive across this country and can't imagine crossing it on foot or in those pis-sant wagons, at an ox's pace. The more I see of it, the more I realize that any man who wants to be president of the United States is committing the ultimate hubris. Wait here a minute, I'll be right back.' Dave walked back through the circle of stones, and Baedecker stood at the edge of the cliff, letting the breeze cool him, listening to the sounds of some night bird far below. When Dave returned, he was carrying a Frisbee that glowed slightly from its own fluorescence.
'Jesus,' said Baedecker, 'that's not the Frisbee, is it?'
'Sure enough,' said Dave. During their last EVA, while performing for the TV camera on the rover, Dave had produced a Frisbee from his contingency collection bag, and he and Baedecker had tossed it back and forth, laughing at its tumbling in a vacuum and its odd trajectory in one-sixth g. Great fun at the time. When they came home four days later, they returned to the Great Frisbee Controversy. NASA was upset because Dave had used the term Frisbee — a brand name — thus providing priceless advertising to a company not affiliated with NASA. Media newscasters and commentators generally approved of the frivolity, one calling it 'a rare human touch in an otherwise heartless undertaking,' but questioned the need for a manned lunar exploration program and pointed to the Soviet robot probes as a cheaper and more sensible approach. A Connecticut senator had discussed 'the six-billion-dollar Frisbee tournament,' and black leaders were incensed, calling the event both callous and insensitive to the needs of millions. 'Two white college boys playing games in space at the taxpayers' expense,' said one black leader on the Today show, 'while black babies die of rat bites in the ghettos.' Capcom had radioed up some of this during their daily news update at the end of their sleep period four hours before reentry. Then the communicator asked if any of them had any opinion on the whole affair or any suggestions for mollifying the agency's critics.
'This channel secure?' Dave had asked. Houston assured him that it was.
'Well, fuck ‘em all,' Dave had said laconically, thus going down — at least for the astronaut corps — into the program record books for the first live-mike use of that particular pilot's term. It had also almost certainly cost Dave a future ride in the Skylab program. Nonetheless, he had waited five more years for a flight, watching Skylab end and the single, obsolete gesture of Apollo-Soyuz go by before finally resigning.
Now Dave tossed the Frisbee to Baedecker. The phosphorescent plastic glowed green-white in the bright moonlight. Baedecker backed up ten steps and snapped it back.
'Works better in air,' said Dave.
They threw the glowing disk back and forth silently for several minutes. Baedecker felt a tide of affection tug at him.
'Do you know what I think?' Dave said after a while. 'What do you think?'
'I think old Sam and all those others had the right idea. You pass all those other places by and keep on going because the place you're headed is perfect.' He caught the Frisbee and held it two-handed. 'But what they didn't understand is that you make it that way just by dreaming about it.' Dave walked to the edge of the cliff and briefly held the Frisbee toward the stars, an offering. 'Everything ends,' he said and pulled back, pivoted, and threw the disk hard out over the drop-off. Baedecker stepped up next to him and the two watched as the Frisbee soared an impossible distance, banked gracefully in the moonlight, and silently fell into the darkness above the river.