It was as if Reese knew what she was thinking. He smiled crookedly. “I told you… always have a backup.” He plugged the recorder into his laptop and hit the play button. The first voice she heard was Reese’s own.
“There are two voices on the tape you are going to hear, Mrs. Armacost. Your husband’s and that of Captain Streck.”
The sonic response lines of the noise on the tape showed on the laptop screen.
Spencer spoke first: “I’m going to rotate the main panel forty-eight degrees. You got me, Alex?”
Alex Streck’s voice replied. “That’s good to go, Spencer. I’ll need the 9c spanner as soon as… Spencer? You feel that?”
Reese pointed to his laptop screen. “Now, you see, this line here is your husband’s voice. This line here is Captain Streck’s,” he said professorially.
Spencer’s voice came next. It was high and panicky. She knew it was her husband, but she had never heard him like that before. “Alex? Jesus. Alex? What the—”
Reese pointed to the third line. “Two voices but there are three lines. There’s something else on this tape. Something we can’t hear. Something out of our range. But… I translated it. I had to hear it… This is what it sounds like.”
As she listened the squalor and disappointment that had become Sherman Reese’s life vanished. Instead, he was his old self, the precise, NASA-trained scientist.
Reese typed a code into the laptop, and from the speakers came that sound, the insect screaming, the horrible. shrieking. The terrible noise hit Jillian like a hot bullet.
Reese killed the sound and then turned back to face the camera. “Now, NASA said it was static. They said it was caused by the exploding satellite.” Jillian had reached her own conclusion. “It’s not static,” she whispered.
“NASA said it was a static buildup in their suits,” said Reese. “But it’s not static. I tracked it. It didn’t come from the satellite. It didn’t come from the suits. It didn’t come from the shuttle.” Reese’s cool seemed to ebb.
“It didn’t come from earth either,” he said nervously. “Two minutes. That’s all there is. That’s all it took. It’s a transmission, Mrs. Armacost. If you wanted to come here, to earth. I mean, from very far away… maybe you wouldn’t have to travel in a ship… maybe you could travel in a transmission. Travel at the speed of light. Like a thought. You wait for two humans to be up there…two of us in orbit, near a target. With something to aim at, like a satellite…”
Jillian was hanging on every word, staring hard at the screen. The story he was telling was so much worse than she ever imagined, she could hardly believe it.
“Two of us who are beyond suspicion,” Reese continued. “Heroes. All-Americans. You wait for a pair like them then erase them like a tape and record your own message.”
Jillian didn’t think she could hear any more. The truth was too awful to bear.
“Natalie Streck knew it,” said Reese. “And you know it, too, don’t you? He is not your husband anymore. He’s not. You know he’s not.” He looked square into the camera lens. “Don’t you?”
Reese seemed pleased that he had proven his case. He went back to his professorial mode. “That satellite they were supposed to be repairing—they weren’t repairing it, they were deploying it—you know what that was for? It was designed to listen for transmissions from deep space. It was supposed to look for anything, anything coming from there at all. It was just supposed to listen.” Reese laughed a little and shook his head ruefully.
“NASA thinks it failed. They think it didn’t work. We know it worked. Don’t we?”
Suddenly. Reese stopped talking. He appeared to listen to something beyond the view of the lens, then, without warning he jumped up, and ran from the frame. There was the sound of fumbling and static as the camera was shut down and the screen of Jillian’s television set went blank. She did not move, staring at the gray snow, even though the disturbing, hair-raising “show” appeared to have come to an end.
But it hadn’t ended. Abruptly the static cleared and Reese re-entered the frame. It looked as if some time had passed and Sherman looked a little worse for wear. He was holding a blueprint in his hand and he waved it at the camera.
“There’s no computer to run that plane,” Reese said. “It hasn’t been designed yet.” He unrolled the blueprint and held it close to the lens. “Once it’s designed it’s going to go right here, in the cockpit. Right here where the pilots should be.”
Jillian moved closer to the television screen squinting at the blueprint, trying to see the point that Reese indicated with a poorly manicured fingernail.
“It’s going to be a binary computer,” Reese said. “Binary. That’s twin, Mrs. Armacost. Twin. What do you think you have inside you? What do you think he put there?”
She couldn’t take any more. She turned off the VCR and leaned back on the sofa, her head reeling. She could see herself in the bathtub, Spencer kneeling next to her, washing her, attending to her. She heard Spencer’s voice. “What will they be? Pilots?”
Jillian lay on the couch, the television remote control in one hand and remembered well what she had said that night. “Pilots…just like their father.” She sat there still for a moment, the silence in the apartment was overwhelming. It made Spencer’ s voice sound that much louder.
“Jillian?”
She jumped and dropped the VCR remote as she turned to face her husband. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, doing her best to recover from her obvious surprise. “You’re home early.”
Spencer sat down next to her on the couch. Jillian watched anxiously as Spencer toyed absently with the VCR remote control. He tossed it lightly from hand to hand.
“I felt bad for you, getting into that fight with Nan.”
“How do you know about that?”
“She called.”
“And she didn’t tell you what it was about?”
Spencer shook his head. “She said, ‘None of your business, Spaceman.’ ”
“That’s right,” Jillian answered. “It was just sister stuff. She’ll get over it and so will I.”
Spencer ran his thumb up the remote, his finger playing on the play button.
“You haven’t heard from her?”
Jillian shook her head and watched his fingers play around the buttons.
“Well,” said Spencer, “I wouldn’t worry…I’m sure she’ll call soon enough.”
Jillian could not stand it any longer. She reached out and placed her hand on her husband’s. He stopped fiddling with the buttons. He touched her fingers.
“Jillian, you are trembling.”
“Am I?” Jillian said as lightly as she could. “I guess I’m just a little cold.”
Spencer put his arms around her as if to warm her. “I have something here to cheer you up.”
Spencer reached into his briefcase and pulled out a videocassette and waved it at her.
“Follow the Fleet,” he said. “Fred, Ginger, me, you. What do you say? How about it?”
Spencer went to the VCR and tried to load the tape. but he found the bay occupied. “You watching something?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.
He popped out the tape of Sherman Reese’s expose. “No label,” he said. There was the faintest sound of suspicion in his voice. “What is this thing?”
The lie came so easily, Jillian was astonished by herself. “It’s a pregnancy video,” she said. “Denise gave it to me. She thought it would make me feel better.”
Spencer loaded Follow the Fleet. The he joined her on the couch, taking her in his arms. “You worry too much, Jilly.” He hit the play button and they waited while the feeder tape spooled through the VCR.