We looked back at the planet. To my eye it was maybe a little less visible, the lightning flashes less intense across the dusty clouds.
“Poor old Vandell,” said Jan. “Peaceful for all these years, then we come and ruin it. And we wanted to study a rogue planet, a place of absolute quiet. It’ll never be the way it was before we got here. Well, never mind, there should be others. When we get back we’ll tell people to be more careful.”
When we get back.
At those words, the world snapped into a different focus. For twelve hours I had been completely absorbed by the events of the moment. Earth, the Office of External Affairs, the Institute, they had not existed for me two minutes ago. Now they were present again, still far away — I looked out of the port, seeking the bright distant star of the Sun — but real.
“Are you all right, Jeanie?” asked Jan. She had observed my sudden change of expression.
“I’m not sure.”
It was time we told her everything. About Tallboy’s decision on the future of the Institute, about the cancellation of the Alpha Centauri expedition, the proposed decommissioning of the Hoatzin, and the way we had disobeyed official orders to follow them to Vandell. It all came rolling out like a long-stored fury.
“But you saved our lives,” protested Jan. “If you hadn’t taken the ship we’d be dead. Once they know that, they won’t care if you ignored some stupid regulation.”
McAndrew and I stared at her, then at each other. “Child, you’ve got a lot to learn about bureaucracy,” I said. “I know it all sounds ridiculous and trivial out here — damn it, it is ridiculous and trivial. But once we get back we’ll waste weeks of our time, defending what we did, documenting everything, and writing endless reports on it. The fact that you would have died won’t make one scrap of difference to Tallboy. He’ll follow the rule book.”
There was a moment of silence, while Mac and I pondered the prospect of a month of memoranda.
“What happened to the old Administrator?” asked Jan at last. “You know, the one you always talked about before. I thought he was your friend and understood what you were doing?”
“You mean Woolford? There was a change of Administration, and he went. The top brass change with the party, every seven years. Woolford left, and Tallboy replaced him.”
“Damn that man,” said McAndrew suddenly. “Everything ready for the Alpha Centauri expedition, heaps of supplies and equipment all in place; and that buffoon signs a piece of paper and kills it in two seconds.”
Ahead of us, I saw a faint blink against the starry background. It had to be Hoatzin’s pulsed beacon, sending a brief flash of light outward every two seconds. I made a first adjustment to our orbit to take us to rendezvous, and pointed out the distant ship to the others. Mac and Sven moved closer to the port, but Jan surprised me by remaining in her seat.
“Seven years?” she said to me thoughtfully. “The Administration will change again in seven years. Jeanie, what was the shipboard travel time you planned to Alpha Centauri?”
I frowned. “From Earth? One way, standing start to standing finish, would take Hoatzin about forty-four days.”
“So from here it would be even less.” She had a strange gleam in her eyes. “I noticed something before we set out. Vandell sits in Lupus, and that’s a neighboring constellation to Centaurus. I remember thinking to myself before we started, it’s an odd coincidence, but we’ll be heading in almost the same direction as Mac and Jeanie. So Alpha Centauri would take less time from here, right? Less than forty-four days.”
I nodded. “That’s just in shipboard time, of course. In Earth time we would have been away—” I stopped abruptly. I had finally reached the point where Jan had started her thinking.
“At least eight and a half years,” she said. “Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light-years from Earth, right? So by the time we get back home, we’ll find a new Administration and Tallboy will be gone.”
I stared at her thoughtfully. “Jan, do you know what you’re saying? We can’t do that. And as for that `we’ you were using, I hope you don’t think that Mac and I would let you and Sven take the risk of a trip like that. It’s out of the question.”
“Can’t we at least talk about it?” She smiled. “I’d like to hear what Mac and Sven have to say.”
I hesitated. “Oh, all right.” I said at last. “But not now. Let’s at least wait until we’re back on board Hoatzin. And don’t think I’ll let you twist those two around, the way you usually do.”
I frowned, she smiled.
And then I couldn’t help smiling back at her.
That’s the trouble with the younger generation. They don’t understand why a thing can’t be done, so they go ahead and do it.
We were going to have a mammoth argument about all this, I just knew it. One thing you have to teach the young is that it’s wrong to run away from problems.
Would I win the argument? I didn’t know. But it did occur to me that when the history of the first Alpha Centauri expedition was written, it might look quite different from what anyone had expected.
EIGHTH CHRONICLE: With McAndrew, Out of Focus
There are sights in the Universe that man — or woman — was not meant to see.
Let me name an outstanding example. McAndrew, dancing; Arthur Morton McAndrew, hopping about like a gangling, uncoordinated stork, arms flapping and balding head turned up to stare at the sky.
“The first since 1604!” he said. He did not, thank God, burst into song. “Not a one, since the invention of the telescope. Ah, look at it, Jeanie. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing a person ever saw?”
Not the most complimentary remark in the world, to a woman who has borne a child with a man and been his regular, if not exactly faithful, companion for twenty-odd years.
I looked up. It was close to nine in the evening, on the long June day that would end our holiday together. Early tomorrow McAndrew would leave Earth and return to the Institute; I would head for Equatorport, the first step in a trip a good deal farther out. I was scheduled to deliver submersibles for use on Europa. As part of the deal for making the run, I would be allowed to dive the Europan ice-covered abyssal ocean. I was excited by the prospect. The difference between deep space and deep ocean is large, and sky captains and dive captains respect and envy each other.
Overhead, the cause of McAndrew’s excitement flamed in the sky as a point of intolerable brilliance. The Sun and Venus had already set. Jupiter was in opposition and close to perihelion. The planet should have been a beacon on the eastern horizon, but today its light was overwhelmed by something else. What I was looking at was infinitely brighter than Jupiter or Venus could ever be. Instead of the steady gleam of a planet, the light above blazed like the star it was. But it dominated everything in the sky except for the Sun itself, visible even at noon, a light strong enough to throw clear shadows. For two days there had been no night in the northern hemisphere.
“A naked eye supernova!” McAndrew didn’t want or expect an answer to his earlier question. “And so close — only a hundred and three light-years. Why, if we used the balanced drive…”
His voice trailed away, but I’ve known the man for a long time. I suspected what he was thinking.
I said, “Be realistic, Mac. Even if you could fly out there in a reasonable subjective time, you’d be away at least a couple of hundred Earth years.”