“But I bet we’re working on it,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, we are, but we haven’t even figured out how to analyze it yet, let alone reproduce it.”
“And you say this is the only ship they lent us?”
Devon nodded. “I wish we had more. That way we could shadow all the different missions going on in space, save more lives.”
I remembered my five crewmates who had just died ugly deaths. “Yeah, too bad.” The disgust and anger was clear in my voice.
Then I remembered Tammie. She was going to think I was dead.
“Can I take Tammie with me to wherever I’m going next?”
Devon shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Only very specific people can know this exists. No families allowed. Besides, you need her to keep up your legacy of what you did.”
I nodded. Tammie had always been the perfect astronaut’s wife. She would make sure my memory stayed alive and that my death wouldn’t be in vain.
“Can I at least say goodbye?”
Devon looked like I had just trapped him bluffing in a poker game. I knew that look. There was something he didn’t want to tell me.
“There is a way, isn’t there?”
He nodded slowly. “We’ve worked out a way that you can say goodbye.”
Devon ’s hands flew through the air in front of him, seemingly touching and brushing different things that I couldn’t see.
Suddenly, outside the ship, the stars seemed to blur for a moment. Then at the next instant, we were in orbit around Earth. There had been no feeling at all of movement.
I had to be dead. What had just happened wasn’t possible. That was all there was to it. I had just traveled the same distance it had taken me two months before to travel, and all in a fraction of a second without feeling a thing. Dead people traveled like that, not live ones.
“We’re above the Phoenix area,” Devon said. “The Grays have this nifty device they showed us how to use that transports you to a place where you can hear and see and talk to people, but not actually be there. You’ll stay here on the ship the entire time.”
“Like a projected hologram?”
He nodded.
“And Tammie will be able to see me?”
“As a sort of ghostlike figure. If you tell her you’re dead and just came to say goodbye, she’ll believe you, especially when you vanish. But it’s going to scare the hell out of her.”
“I don’t think that learning that I’m dead is going to do her much good either,” I said. “I assume others have done this before?”
Devon nodded. “This isn’t easy on either you or her, but at least you have a chance to say goodbye, if that’s what you really want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be what I want? She’s the woman I love.”
From his large, thronelike chair in the middle of the massive space, Devon looked down at me with an expression I had seen many times before. He was worried.
“You’re not going to want to do this,” Devon said. “I think you should just let it go and we’ll beam into Area 51 and get you settled into your new life.”
“Why?”
“Just let her deal with her grief on her own, in her own way. It’s better that way. For both of you.”
I stood there, staring at my friend, thinking about what seeing me as a ghost would do to Tammie. Devon was right. It would scare her, and the news of my death was going to hurt her more than enough.
If I loved her, I didn’t need to hurt her any more.
But I did want to just see her one more time.
“I guess you’re right. Can the hologram he made so that she wouldn’t see me, or hear me? I’d still like to say goodbye in my own way.”
Now Devon looked really pained. “It can be, yes, but as your friend, I’m suggesting you not do that.”
“Why?”
Devon sighed. “Sometimes it’s better to just let memories alone, leave Tammie in your mind as you know her.”
“I’m still back in the Klondike, aren’t I? Having a horrid nightmare?”
“No,” Devon said. “You are very much alive, and we very much need your experienced help in our program. If the Klondike had come back on its own, we were going to try to recruit you into the program. We were lucky that circumstances at least saved you.”
“I don’t feel so lucky.”
“Let’s go to Area 51,” Devon said. “You have great memories of Tammie; just leave them that way and start the next part of your life.”
I laughed. “You know I’m not going to, unless you tell me what is so bad that I’m going to see when I visit her.”
Devon looked like the day he had swallowed his first oyster. I remembered laughing at him for an hour that night.
I wasn’t laughing now at all.
Devon sighed again, then said, “Maybe you should just go take a look. You won’t be seen or heard, and you won’t be able to touch anything. After that, we can talk more when we’re off this ship.”
It was as if the area around me on the ship suddenly changed into my home. Devon had put me in the living room, and everything was as tidy as Tammie always kept it. Outside the open window, the sun was just starting to paint the tops of the rock bluffs pink. We had a fantastically beautiful home. It was too bad I was going to miss retiring here.
I looked around. Actually, this wasn’t really my home. Granted, I had clothes here and all, but I had never really felt at home here. I had no sense of still being on the ship. This alien stuff was really amazing. Or my hallucination was very detailed and felt real.
“ Devon?”
“Right with you, buddy,” he said, his voice coming from my right and slightly above me. “Just let me know when you want to get out of there.”
“Only a moment.”
I headed for the bedroom where Tammie would be sleeping. I couldn’t really feel my feet touch the carpet, but the memory of walking without gravity boots made me think I was feeling it. Weird, really weird.
I tried to push open the half-closed door, but my hand went right through it, so I closed my eyes and just stepped forward and into the bedroom.
I was sure I was dead; now I was acting like a ghost. What more evidence did I need?
The pink morning light was gently filling the room through the closed blinds. Our big master bed filled the far wall under bookshelves loaded with Tammie’s favorite reading.
I moved about two steps toward the bed before I realized that Tammie wasn’t alone. A man, a young man, was curled up against her back, like he belonged there, like he had been there a very long time.
I had already been stunned over the last few hours with five of my shipmates dying, and then discovering that we really were friends with aliens and that I was going to live.
This sight just left me cold. I wanted to care, but for some reason, I just couldn’t.
I stared at my wife for a long minute, wondering why I didn’t care.
I should care. I should be angry.
But the image of my five friends’ deaths haunted me. Their deaths made me angry. Not this.
I couldn’t care because it really didn’t matter. My shipmates, my friends were dead. I was officially dead, but getting a second chance to move on to interesting challenges that I would love.
I couldn’t bring her anyway.
I stood and just stared at her. One thing was clear. She looked happy, contented in sleep.
I cared that she was happy. After being married to a man who had spent most of the last twenty years either in space or preparing for it, she deserved happiness in any way she could find it.
“How long have you known?” I asked my friend. I had a hunch that he was seeing what I was seeing with the fancy alien technology.
“A couple of years,” Devon said. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not a surprise,” I said. “As much as I was gone, how can I blame her?”
I moved over beside her, ignoring the guy behind her, and stared at her beautiful hair spread out over the pillow, at her cheek, at her slightly open mouth. I had been lucky to have the time I had with her, and all the support she had given me. I would miss that.