It seemed that way, because we were already at normal Earth gravity, which meant we were going to stop even sooner than expected, and then return the way we had come if it kept up.
My own mouth was dry as I realized what this would mean, and I stared at the rapidly separating shapes. Apparently the camera was keyed to the pods, because while the ship itself soon disappeared off-screen, the screen image kept pace with the pods.
“How long before they…?” I whispered. I couldn’t quite say it.
“About thirty-four hours,” Lazz answered after a moment, his eyes locked on the screen. “We’ll just have started back when they… hit the sun” He waved a hand uncertainly. “They’re all over there?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.” I reached down for my own keyboard.
“Has everyone left this part of the ship?” I typed.
“No,” a new voice answered after a moment, coming from the display screen. It was another stiff female voice this time. “There are two beings still onboard.”
“Who?” I asked just to make sure.
“The Witness.”
“You are a computer?” I added at Lazz’s prompting.
“Yes.”
Lazz gave a relieved sigh. “Well at least we’re not totally on or own. I’d hate to have to try to figure out how to fly this thing.”
I nodded. “That makes two of us.” But I wondered about something else and reached down again.
“Will you instruct us in how to access the information in your memory banks?”
“Yes. The Witness is now in command of this system.”
Lazz rubbed his hands together and chuckled. “Job security!” Then he hissed as his eyes focused on the screen. “Sorry.”
I got up, feeling strangely heavy after over thirty hours at reduced gravity. Looking towards the screen I asked: “Can I speak to you from anywhere on the ship?”
“Yes.”
I headed for the bathroom where we had hung our suits after flushing them out. “C’mon, Lazz. I’ve got to get away from that for a while.” I nodded to the screen where the featureless joined pods with the Travelers hung accusingly. I felt strangely guilty: as if we should have been able to help the Travelers somehow.
Lazz tore his eyes away from the screen. “Yeah, I’m with you. It keeps reminding me that we’re also still headed for the sun. What if they run out of gas, or whatever they use?”
After stocking our suits, we spent the next day exploring the Traveler ship with the guidance of the ever-present computer. We only returned to the viewing room to nap and eat, both activities done fitfully and with frequent glances at the growing sun on the screen. Neither one of us could bring ourselves to turn the screen off. We did direct the computer to display a split screen, showing the probe picture and the map diagram. The latter showed the joined pods drawing further and further ahead of the ship itself as we slowed.
But during the last hours we couldn’t leave the room, and we sat staring at the screen almost non-stop as the pyramid on the map slowed to a stop and then began an odd course outwards again.
I stared at the map, confused, but Lazz just slapped my arm.
“Relax, Kimosabe. We’re headed for where the Earth will be, not where it was, or is.” He sounded puzzled as he went on. “I do wonder why they went to all this trouble to slow us down, when a different trajectory could just have swung us around to hook up again, decelerating in another, more economical pattern. It would have been faster, too.”
“Yes,” I pointed out. “But we wouldn’t have been as empathetic as ‘witnesses’. They wanted us to really understand what they are doing and feeling.”
Lazz nodded after a moment. “That makes sense.” Then he let out a loud sigh, and with it went both of our unvoiced and lingering fears of the flaming sun and we turned our full attention to the Travelers.
Our eyes were fixed on the pods and the sun it was approaching, and I had no idea how much time had passed until static started breaking up the image. The pods were still fairly far from the roiling solar surface, but apparently the radiation was just getting too strong for the transmitter on the camera probe to overcome, because the right half of the screen went blank before restoring the solar system map that showed us on the way back out. And just touching the edge of the stylized sun was a small inverted pyramid.
“Do you think…?” Lazz asked softly, his voice broken.
“They’re gone. No one could survive that close to the sun.” I felt an overwhelming urge come over me and I cursed my eyes. Now I wanted to cry. But these eyes wouldn’t let me; they only released a pain that reached deep into my throat and gut.
“No,” Lazz corrected me quietly after a long silence. “They’re not gone. That’s our job.” He got up to stretch. “It’s funny that I didn’t think of it before, but I just remembered something from long ago reading. It made me realize why they only wanted you to witness this, as someone who had taken the first step to understanding them.”
“What’s that?”
“The ancient Japanese Samurai warriors had a ritual suicide custom very similar to this. A spectacular and brave death, sometimes witnessed by a close friend or retainer there for support. There is more to both, of course, but in either case, it is quite an honor.” He stared at the screen, his finger following a trace line that showed the course each part of the ship had taken, following the pods’ straight course into the stylized sun. His head bowed a moment in respect, and then he returned to sit beside me.
After a long pause, he asked: “Mitch, do me a favor? I don’t trust myself.”
“Sure. What?”
“I put an optical disk in your locker at work. Destroy it for me please?”
“The belch recording,” I realized. “You kept one!”
He nodded. “I didn’t lie when I said that I destroyed every computer file with it, but this is a straight digital audio recording: the original. But after what Liza’s been going through, I owe her freedom from that threat.”
“I promise.”
“Good.” He grabbed my arm. “And then we’ve got to get you a date!”
I only half-heard him as I saw the inverted pyramid disappear on the map. Closing my eyes, I thought about how the Travelers had faced their end—and how I had faced my own losses. The lesson was obvious, and I opened my eyes again to face Lazz.
“Yes, I think you’re right. This time, I think I’m ready.”