The breeze sighed down from the hills, dry and warm. She could hear the faint, tinny noise of a radio somewhere off in the gathering darkness. With a startled shock of understanding, she realized that the voice on the radio was speaking English. An American broadcast, she said to herself. They’re letting an American broadcast through!
It was a news broadcast, of course. “Reaction” stories to the long day’s events, now that Stoner was permanently out of reach.
Jo listened, despite herself. The announcer was reading an item about a flying saucer organization in Missouri that indignantly maintained that the alien aboard the spacecraft was not of the same race as the aliens who had been sending UFOs to Earth.
“According to the Missouri saucer experts,” the announcer said archly, “we have found the wrong aliens.”
Instead of crying, Jo smiled. There are so many fools in the world, she thought. So many. She lifted her face to the heavens, to the stars that were starting to appear in the darkening sky.
“Thanks, Keith,” she whispered into the night. “They’ll have to send a team of astronauts to pick you up and bring you and your friend back to Earth. It’ll take a few years to put it all together, but when they go out after you, I’ll be with them.”
Then she turned and headed downstairs, dry-eyed, head high, determined to get to Houston as quickly as possible to begin her training.
About the Author
Ben Bova is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed science writer. He has writer more than sixty books, both fiction and non-fiction. A former editor of both Analog and Omni magazines, he is currently editing the Ben Bova Discovery Series for Tor Books. His most recent novel is Cyberbooks, also published by Tor. Mr. Bova lives in West Hartford, CT.