Not only were the number of the Travelers shrinking, but in each of the final panels, there were an increasing number of figures that were misshapen, even if just slightly. Perhaps just with a smaller or missing ‘eye’, or with no arm at all, or with legs missing—small differences that had been impossible to spot on unmagnified images, but there were more and more of these mutant Travelers among the population census figures. The angry sun was doing more than damaging the planet!
“They’re mutating from the radiation,” Lazz said numbly as he also spotted the changes. “Dying out.”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it.” I had suspected that radiation had been a problem, but this was worse than I had thought. “If this has been going on for a long time—we won’t know how long until we go through the first recording—and the whole time they have been trying to find other life forms—”
“—and now they’ve reached that goal, and we’ve been ‘witnesses’…” Lazz continued my thought but left the implication unvoiced.
“Exactly.” I saw he understood, and asked needlessly: “If you were very tired, dying, had no possible future really to expect, and had finally realized your one life’s ambition, what might you do?”
“What I tried, twice,” Lazz answered bitterly. “The first time with pills, except I took too many and threw them all up before they could work. And the second time with a gun, but I got caught before I could pull the trigger. And I didn’t even have a ‘life’s ambition’.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.” I felt like shit.
He squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry about it. Like I told you: I was a poor little rich boy who couldn’t handle reality too well at first. It took me a while to wise up, but I did. But what I want to know is how far this ‘witness’ thing is going to go?”
“Put the map back on, please,” I asked. As it re-appeared, I could see that we were on a direct course with the sun.
I saw Lazz’s lips move as he stared at the chart, and I could almost hear him whisper: “Liza”. Like Ellen worrying about my fears when she had been late, he was thinking of her instead of himself; knowing that all she could see was a rapidly accelerating ship heading right for the sun, and carrying her husband with it.
It made me think again of Ellen, and death, and coping. And I thought about the Travelers. If we were right and they were heading for some grand self-immolation to end their journey: how long had they been in search of their ‘witness’? And if we were right, it also meant that we were the first alien race they had encountered; or at least the first technically advanced one. There was the reason for that three part signal again, since the final component would only have been detectable to a space-faring race. They were tired and wanted to move on, but they wanted witnesses who would appreciate their journey and the scale of their existence.
The requirement for me to use their language and to ‘see’ in their way was obvious now. I shook my head as I thought about the way I had fought the temporary sacrifice I had been asked to make. For Lazz, it had not been a choice and he had survived and prospered. And I thought about poor Janice: a target for my attempt to deny what was happening, what I was going to face, and what I had lost.
Grow up and stop feeling sorry for yourself! I chided myself. It was time to accept that Ellen was dead. Soon I would have my eyes back and I would be able to on with a new, exciting life uncovering Traveler secrets, knowing that I had been part of one of the greatest moments in human history.
I looked up as my fingers typed automatically: “Thank you.” But even though there was no reply and I had a strange feeling we were alone, I wasn’t afraid. I believed their assurance that we would be “returned”.
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted. “The separation comes,” the chorus proclaimed. “Witness our existence to your world.”
Somehow I had expected excitement, fear, some kind of emotion, but that was stupid. The artificial voice of my computer had no programming for it and no knowledge of Traveler emotions, whatever ones they had.
“Now what?” I wondered, but I braced myself because I suspected what was coming. “Hold on Lazz.”
The map disappeared and found ourselves looking at the Traveler ship from a vantage point several kilometers behind it. Apparently a remote probe with a camera. The giant drive dish had been glowing in some peculiar way with energies displayed on the screen, but suddenly the dish flickered and gradually went dark as we found ourselves weightless.
“What the hell?” Lazz grabbed for the stool.
“Turnover,” I answered, sure I was right. “And if the separation is what I think, we’ll soon see it.”
“Right… Turnover!” Lazz caught on immediately. “Constant acceleration… hmm.” He let go and pulled up his Braille pad, fingering the keys rapidly as he gradually drifted up off the stool. “How long since we left Earth orbit?”
“Around thirty hours or so.”
“Bingo. Assuming we burn—or whatever this ship does—at the same rate on an outward vector to slow down, and continue to do a lateral burn since we also have orbital velocity to contend with…” His fingers kept flashing some more as his computer kept rattling off figures too rapidly for me to understand. “We should stop somewhere just inside Mercury’s orbit.”
“Stop, and then begin burning again to take us home,” I guessed.
“The separation…?” He didn’t finish, but I could see his guess paralleled mine.
On the screen the drive dish changed. A single, intense beam burst out from it, lasting nearly ten minutes.
“The signal goes home, to any who find what remains,” came a explanation after a while.
“Nice completion there,” Lazz said. “If any of their own people return there, they’ll know where to look. Or anyone else who comes calling.”
“If we’re still around,” I pointed out. “I’ll bet you this is a sub-light ship and that they’ve been travelling a long time.”
“Still kinda’ nice. They’ll know we were around, too.”
The screen swirled as the signal beam cut off, and I grabbed for Lazz we felt pushed to the side and new activity started on the screen.
“Here we go!” Lazz burst out.
“Yep. Look.” I pointed to the screen where we could see that the huge Traveler ship was slowly turning on its axis, propelled by reaction thrusters, until the dish was towards the sun. Then came the ‘separation’, I had expected, but had been afraid to count on.
Two of the pyramidal pods were separating from the central shaft as we watched, propelled by short bursts of thrusters. Gradually they swung around until their trunctuated tips faced each other. Then, with additional blasts of the thrusters, they moved towards each other until they joined at the tips to form a sort of a dumb-bell shaped whole that floated above the shaft with its single remaining pod underneath.
“This one!” We looked at each other, reaching the same conclusion at the same time.
I reached up a hand to pull Lazz down next to me. “Hold on. We’re next, I think.”
And we were. No sooner had the two separated pods joined up, than new and powerful bursts of energy extended back from the dish that now faced away from us. Gradually the ship slowed to leave the joined pods to continue their plunge towards the sun. We immediately felt a rapid return of gravity and I stared at Lazz as my hopeful guess was verified.
“This has been planned from the beginning,” I guessed. “All the Travelers went up into the other pods to leave us here.”
It was the only answer, and Lazz hissed with surprise as it dawned on him it meant. “They’re leaving us the ship! They’re leaving us the whole bloody ship! Computers, drive system, transmitter… everything!” His voice was hushed and reverent as he stared at me. “And it’s on auto-pilot—heading back to the station?”