George smiled. “She’s well, too. Crystal’s an athlete, pretty good for a twelve-year-old. Came in second at a school track and field meet. She got a blue ribbon.”
Rachel pointed at the Rocky Road. “Can we go inside the ship? Did you bring photos of the girls? I want to see them!”
As they walked to the ship, George wondered how he would tell his wife’s ghost that he had betrayed her.
Ed’s father, who had died of lung cancer five years ago, appeared next. Ed had seen photos of his dad’s last days, when he looked scrawny and wasted by disease inside an ill-fitting green hospital gown. But here on Odette, he looked healthy and fit, as he was in Ed’s childhood, and wore his favorite red plaid shirt and blue jeans.
Ed walked slowly, cautiously, to his dad. Ed felt his throat go dry with fear and surprise, but he managed to talk.
“Dad, how did you get here?” Ed asked.
“I dunno. Suddenly appeared here. Glad I’m alive again, though.”
“So you know—you know that you’re—dead?” Ed asked.
His dad threw a pebble. It soared silently through the beam of light from Ed’s flashlight and into the black depths of space.
Dad nodded. “Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t know how or why I’m here with you.”
The final ghost to appear to the rock blasters was Sally, Andrew’s sweetheart at the University of Oregon. She had died when terrorists bombed her train in their last year at university. Yet on Odette, Sally was alive and well, as young as she had been in her senior year, wearing the white, green, and yellow uniform of a University of Oregon cheerleader.
“Go, Ducks!” she yelled, referring to the University of Oregon’s football team. After dropping her pom-poms to the ground, she jumped into a pike, kicking her legs up parallel to the ground and bending at the waist to touch her toes. When she landed in front of Andrew, a small cloud of rock dust rose from her feet.
With a gasp, Andrew stumbled and fell backward onto the ground. Up and down his spine, he felt both the heat of shock and the cold of fear. As he looked up at Sally, he saw and heard her laugh.
“Klutzy, just like at the spring dance! You haven’t changed a bit!” she teased him. She bent and reached down to help him get up on his feet. He felt her solid hands grab his arm.
“Hey, Andy, let’s go into the ship,” she suggested. “You can take your space suit off in there. You’ll be more comfortable. Yeah.” She smiled. “Why don’t you take some clothes off?”
Back aboard the Rocky Road, Andrew took off his space suit and led Sally to the control room. Used to a mere three-man crew, Andrew suddenly felt crowded in the control room, with George and Rachel holding hands in one corner, Ed and his dad huddled over a monitor at another area, and now he and Sally walking into the room.
Andrew had never seen George’s green eyes so happy and bright as now, as Rachel ran her hands through his brown hair. Andrew also noticed that Ed’s blond hair was thinning in the same spot, at the back of his head, where his dad had gone bald.
He turned around and saw Sally put her pom-poms down beside a computer console. As she sat down in a chair and stretched, he noticed how lifelike these ghosts were. Unlike the transparent spirits of horror movies and stories, these looked opaque and felt solid.
He saw his reflection in a shiny metal control console. Gray hair, induced by time and hard living. He’d aged so much since Sally died. What a contrast with her ghost’s hair, still as blonde and shiny as it had been in college.
“How can you exist?” Andrew demanded. “Without air? Without food? Without, uh—”
“Without life?” said Sally. “Yes, I know I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t know how I got here. Buy why does it matter? We can just pick up where we left off.” She rose from the chair, put her arms around Andrew’s shoulders, pulled his lips toward hers, and kissed him. It was a deep, wet kiss, full of love and longing and hunger.
Andrew gripped her and returned the kiss. Her skin felt warm and soft and smelled of the lilac perfume she had worn on their last date, two weeks before she died.
On Space Station Reagan, Mission Control still could not see Sally, Rachel, or Ed’s dad through the Rocky Road’s cameras, nor could Mission Control hear the ghosts’ voices. After Mission Control and Andrew had argued for hours, Colonel Chang, the station’s commander was called in. Like his staff, the colonel could not see the ghosts either.
“All I see are you, Hodding, and Benton,” said Chang. “I can’t see anyone else.”
“How can you not see them? They’re right here beside us,” said Andrew. He turned to Sally. “Sally, say something to the colonel.”
“I can’t explain this, sir, but I am here,” said Sally.
Chang said nothing. Hadn’t he heard Sally? Andrew wondered.
Finally, Chang spoke. “Lundman, who were you talking to a minute ago?”
“Sally,” said Andrew. “Didn’t you hear her?”
“Hear who?” Chang asked. “I heard nobody.”
Over at another corner, Rachel sighed. “It’s so stuffy in here, George. Can I go back outside? I feel more comfortable on the asteroid surface.”
“Soon, Rachel, soon,” said George as he rubbed Rachel’s shoulder to soothe her.
On the monitor, Chang looked puzzled. “Hodding, what are you doing? Rubbing the air?”
“My wife,” George said. “Her shoulders are a bit sore.”
“Your wife? But Abby’s in New York,” Chang protested. “She called Mission Control last night.”
“Not Abby. Rachel,” explained George. “I was talking to Rachel.”
“Rachel?” Chang said. “No, that’s impossible.”
Ed’s dad waved dismissively at Chang’s image on the monitor. “He doesn’t believe we’re here,” he said. “He just wants you to blow up the asteroid.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. We won’t blow it up,” said Ed.
“Mr. Benton, did I hear you tell someone that you’re not going to blow up the asteroid?” Chang erupted.
Ed nodded. “You heard correctly,” he mumbled.
Andrew looked at Chang’s image on the monitor. “Colonel, I know how incredible this all seems to you. We’re very shocked and surprised, too. I think we shouldn’t destroy the asteroid until we’re had a chance to study it.”
Chang looked alarmed. “You must blow up that rock.”
“We can’t blow up this rock. It’s different.”
“What do you think you’ve found?” Chang protested. “A Siren Stone? You know they’re just a deep space myth.”
As mermaids had been to ancient mariners, Siren Stones were to modern spacers. They were a way to explain the space crews who turned crazy and disappeared without a trace. In the vast deepness of space, what lonely spacer could resist the beautiful spirits who haunted the Siren Stones? Andrew hadn’t taken the myth seriously—until now.
“Maybe there’s some truth behind the myth,” said Andrew. “That’s more reason to preserve the rock until we learn more about it.”
“What about the three hundred people on Space Station Reagan?” said Chang.
“We can still save them. Let’s not blow up the asteroid. Let’s move it instead,” Andrew suggested eagerly. “We’ll plant explosives on the rock’s surface—the blast will nudge Odette into a new orbit, one that won’t threaten Reagan or anything else.”
Chang shook his head. “Attempts to move asteroids into safe orbits have a lousy success rate. The procedure is too complicated. That’s why we blow up the damn things. I can’t take the risk. I won’t gamble with three hundred lives.”
“We can move the asteroid into a safe orbit,” Andrew insisted.