Voyagers IV - The Return Read online

  “That will be the reason we give to the public. The actual reason will be to discuss how to get rid of the nuclear weapons.”

  Overmire’s smile vanished. “We’ll discuss that in secret, I presume.”

  “Of course,” Angelique said. “And, as a gesture of good faith on our part, the New Morality will induce the United States’ government to dismantle several of its nuclear weapons. As a demonstration, out in the desert where they’ve been built and stored.”

  Overmire rubbed his chins. “And you think this will satisfy the star voyager. You think he’ll leave then?”

  “No, Your Eminence. I think there will be a terrible accident. A tragic accident.”

  The Archbishop’s narrow little eyes widened. “An explosion?”

  “A nuclear explosion. Not even Stoner could live through that.”

  “That’s . . . murder.”

  “An execution, Your Eminence. An execution of an enemy, a threat to the New Morality and all it stands for.”

  For several moments the Archbishop sat in his armchair in silence. At last he objected, “But how could you arrange it so that Stoner is killed and no one else? He’s no fool, you know.”

  Angelique bobbed her head in agreement. “There will have to be other casualties. We’ll keep them down to a minimum, but there will have to be others caught in the blast with him. Martyrs, even though they won’t know it beforehand.”

  The Archbishop folded his hands over his expansive belly. “I suppose you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, can you?” he murmured.

  “No, you can’t,” Angelique said, barely suppressing the elation that she felt inside her.

  The Archbishop held up his right hand. “Very well. I am very tired. It’s been a long evening.”

  Angelique dutifully sank to her knees and bowed her head. Archbishop Overmire put his hand on her head and murmured a blessing.

  She knew he was blessing not only her; he was blessing her plan also.

  CHAPTER 3

  Despite a lifetime spent in scientific research and administration, Bertram Feingold had never been in space. He had admired the stunningly beautiful images of stars and nebulae captured by space-born telescopes; he had thrilled at the discoveries of ancient villages on Mars; he had fought for better funding for the research stations orbiting the giant planet Jupiter and the hellhole of Venus. But he himself had never left Earth, not even for a stint aboard an orbiting space station, not even as a tourist exploring the wonders of Selene and the other settlements on the Moon.

  Of course, space tourism was practically dead these days. You needed all sorts of government approvals to fly as far as one of the orbital hotels, because the New Morality frowned on pleasure seekers who wanted to try sex in zero gravity. There were even more layers of red tape to cut through before you were allowed to go to the Moon. Too many “tourists” never returned to Earth. Too many asked for political or religious asylum once they got to Selene. And received it.

  Every year, it seemed to Feingold, it became more difficult even for scientists to gain permission to leave Earth temporarily to do research in space. The New Morality didn’t like having its comfortable twelfth-century view of the universe disturbed by new information, new knowledge, new facts. Feingold struggled hard to get those young, eager researchers to where their curiosity was pushing them. Sometimes he failed, but he counted his victories instead of his defeats.

  So it was with a great deal of personal satisfaction, and not a little trepidation, that Feingold embarked on his mission to asteroid 67-046 and his rendezvous with the alien artifact.

  His mission began with a liftoff aboard a cone-shaped Clippership, which carried him to a space station orbiting Earth. Feingold had studied all he could find about the physical effects of weightlessness that one encountered in orbit. It wasn’t actually zero gravity, he knew. The structure of the space vehicle and all the equipment in it exerted a minuscule gravitational force. The correct term was “microgravity,” but to normal human senses there was no discernable difference: zero g, weightlessness.

  Of course, he felt just the opposite as the Clippership lifted off. A force of three gravities squashed him down in his seat, made his arms feel like lead weights. The noise was muffled by the passenger cabin’s acoustic insulation, but still he could hear the roar of a thousand dragons bellowing from the Clippership’s rocket engines. The vibration was scary, too.

  And then it abruptly stopped. His arms floated off the seat rests. If he hadn’t been buckled into the chair he would have floated free. It wasn’t so bad. Feingold actually felt almost exhilarated. Until he turned his head to look at the passenger beside him. Then everything swayed and Feingold’s stomach went hollow, as if he were falling from a great height.

  He gulped down bile and gritted his teeth. Just relax, he told himself, trying to remember the instruction files he’d read. It’s not like seasickness. It’s just the fluids in your body rearranging themselves because they’re no longer being pulled down by gravity. Methodically, he inventoried his symptoms, comparing them with what he’d read: stuffy head, empty gut, balance system in the ears saying you’re falling, but your eyes tell you you’re safely strapped into this nice, padded chair.

  By the time the Clippership connected to the space station’s air lock, Feingold felt that he could deal with zero g. Then he realized that they weren’t in weightlessness anymore. The space station rotated to produce a feeling of nearly normal Earth gravity; the ship now shared that rotation and the feeling of weight it produced.

  Feingold grinned as he unstrapped and stood up. I’m a space veteran, he told himself.

  He didn’t see much of the space station. A pair of uniformed attendants met him at the air lock and escorted him to the fusion torch ship that would take him to the Asteroid Belt. He didn’t see the exterior of the fusion vessel at all. Its interior seemed larger than the Clippership, but he was the vessel’s only passenger.

  The attendants left him in a spacious compartment that looked to Feingold like some sort of lounge. The floor was carpeted, he saw. Comfortable upholstered chairs were scattered here and there and one wall (“bulkhead,” he remembered, was the correct term) had a bar built into it.

  The attendants from the space station left him there with a smiling, “Have a pleasant trip.”

  For several empty moments Feingold just stood there, surrounded by the luxury, uncertain of what he was supposed to do. Then a young woman in a sleek dolphin gray uniform stepped into the lounge and gave him a dazzling smile.

  “Welcome aboard the Darling Clementine, Dr. Feingold,” she said cheerily. “You must be a Very Important Person to have the ship all to yourself.” She pronounced the capitals distinctly.

  Feingold couldn’t help staring at her.

  “My name’s Filomena Neuberg and I’ll be your hostess for this flight.”

  “Filomena Neuberg?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Dutch father, Portuguese mother. The guys in the crew call me Lobster Neuberg, but you can call me Filly.”

  She had an outstanding figure, Feingold realized. Some filly, he thought.

  “Shall I show you to your stateroom?” asked Filomena Neuberg.

  He had to swallow twice before he could reply, “Please do.”

  Darling Clementine rode its fusion torch engine at close to one g all the way out to the Belt, accelerating halfway and then reversing thrust to decelerate. Feingold had his run of the ship. He met and dined with the crew: pilot, navigator, engineer, and flight attendant Filly. The navigator was another woman, almost as young as Filly, but quiet, stolid, the kind of social introvert that gave technical people the reputation of being nerds. The pilot and engineer were cheerful enough, bright, and intelligent. They took turns showing Feingold every aspect of the ship.

  “We have to angle quite a bit out of the ecliptic,” the flight engineer told Feingold as they neared the end of their five-day flight. “The ’roid we’re going to has a high inclination.”r />
  Feingold knew that Martin Humphries had ordered the asteroid moved to its peculiar orbit to discourage visitors.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” the engineer went on, “what’s so important about this chunk of rock? Why’s HSS got a ship stationed by it all the time?”

  Feingold studied the young man’s face closely. He had seen that expression in classrooms many times. The kid knew the answer to his question; he just wanted the professor to acknowledge that he had the right information.

  Feingold decided to be enigmatic. “I think you know the answer to your question as well as I do.”

  The engineer’s eyes brightened. “So it’s true? There’s an alien artifact inside the rock?”

  With a sly smile, Feingold replied, “That’s what people say.”

  The engineer broke into a laugh. “You’re supposed to keep it secret, huh?”

  Feingold gave him a shrug.

  “Well, maybe I’ll ask Filly to spend our last night with you and worm the information out of you.”

  Feingold felt his cheeks redden as he thought, I wish!

  CHAPTER 4

  By the time the fusion ship established its parking orbit around asteroid 67-046, Feingold had the beginnings of a trim little moustache sprouting on his upper lip. He had worn a moustache ages ago, when he’d been a snotty young undergrad student, but once he started his work as a researcher he quickly learned that the Powers That Be much preferred up-and-coming scientists to be clean-shaven. Feingold felt that his moustache was a small price to pay for advancement up the ladder of success.

  Now, a career and a lifetime later, he spent the five days of the trip to the asteroid regrowing his old moustache. It came in gray, of course, but none of the crew twitted him about it and Filly even seemed to like it. As he inspected himself in the metal mirror above the sink in his stateroom’s lavatory he thought, I can always shave it off on the trip back home.

  Feingold thought he’d have to wear a space suit to go down to the asteroid’s surface, but he found that the Humphries Space Systems team that was stationed in orbit around 67-046 had built an airtight dome on the surface of the little asteroid. Not so little, Feingold thought as he rode an HSS shuttlecraft to the dark, pitted, rough-surfaced rock. Ten kilometers wide sounds piffling, compared to the size of a planet or moon, but as the austere little shuttlecraft came down for its landing the rock grew bigger and bigger until it filled Feingold’s vision entirely.

  He saw boulders and swaths of what must be dust and, finally, the glassteel bubble that had been erected over the entrance to the tunnel that led to the artifact’s chamber, deep inside the rocky asteroid.

  Once the craft had set down on its springy, spidery legs a segmented access tube inched across the few meters of bare rock from the transparent dome and connected itself to the shuttlecraft’s air lock. Within minutes, Feingold was able to walk in his shirtsleeves to the dome, although the almost nonexistent gravity of the asteroid caused him to bounce and stumble when he took his first steps. He had to steady himself by reaching out to the sides of the tube as he walked.

  Inside the dome, he was greeted by a stubble-jawed, weary-eyed technician in rumpled coveralls bearing the HSS logo, who opened the metal hatch that led into the tunnel.

  “Just follow the tunnel,” he said, in a raw, scratchy voice. It sounded to Feingold as if the man hadn’t spoken aloud in quite a while. He wondered how long he’d been stationed on the rock.

  “Are you all alone here?” Feingold asked.

  The tech shook his head. “Naw. There’s three of us. We rotate shifts, two days down here, then four days up in the ship.”

  “You mean, even when there’s no visitors somebody’s stationed down here?”

  The tech nodded bleakly. “Orders from Mr. Humphries his own self.”

  “How long are you stationed out here?”

  “Three months at a time.”

  “Just the three of you?”

  The man nodded unhappily. “It don’t pay to get on Mr. Humphries’ shit list.”

  Feingold wanted to say something more, but he found that he didn’t know what it should be. The technician gestured to the open hatch.

  “The chamber has an automatic gate. It’s closed now, but by the time you get down there it oughtta be just about ready to open. Stays open for an hour, at least.”

  “An hour?”

  “More or less. The gate operates on its own schedule, almost at random, but not quite.”

  “I understand,” Feingold said. He saw clearly that the technician wasn’t going down the tunnel with him. Squaring his bony shoulders and straightening his back as much as he could, he stepped through the hatch and started down the tunnel.

  It was warm inside, and the gravity felt almost Earth normal. The tunnel was narrow, and in places so low that Feingold ducked his head as he walked along its downward slope. Must be an old lava tube, he said to himself. But then the ceiling got higher and smoother; the walls and floor were smoothed, too.

  The tunnel made a sharp turn to the right, and Feingold found himself in front of an utterly blank metal door that completely blocked the tunnel.

  Before he could think of anything to do or say, the metal slid silently upward and disappeared into the ceiling. Looking down, Feingold could see a thin groove where it had fitted into the stone floor.

  He stepped across the groove and found himself in a round chamber. Its walls were smoothed but blank. It felt warm inside and smelled faintly of—lilacs? Can’t be, Feingold told himself. But that’s what the delicate odor reminded him of. Haven’t smelled lilacs since I was in college in California, he said to himself, marveling at the barely detectable scent. He turned in a complete circle. Nothing. Just a bare-walled circular chamber. Like a womb made out of rock, he thought. Warm. And smelling of lilacs.

  There’s nothing here, he realized. But there’s got to be something. Something’s making that smell; there’s no lilacs growing within five hundred million kilometers of here.

  Then he noticed a tiny glow, like a firefly hovering before his face. But the glow was steady, unflickering, holding its place before his eyes.

  It grew brighter. And brighter. Like a tiny star it blazed. Feingold’s eyes began to burn. He cupped his hands atop them to cut the glare. Yet the light grew still brighter, dazzling, more and more intense. Feingold wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t. Wanted to squeeze his eyes shut against the overpowering brilliance, but he couldn’t.

  For now he saw shapes in the radiance, shifting amorphous shapes at first, but they began to take form, to make sense. Feingold saw flaming stars and whirling galaxies, whole worlds coalescing out of clouds of gas and dust, massive stars blasting themselves into wild bubbling, seething balls of ionized gases in titanic supernova explosions. It was like being weightless again. He was hurtling through the universe, hurtling backward through time, back to the beginning and beyond, back to the birth of the universe.

  And it all made sense! He understood how it all began and how it came to be what it was now and where the entire swirling, beautiful, awe-inspiring universe was heading. He understood it all! He laughed aloud as he peered deeper and deeper, down into the atoms, into the quarks, into the fundamental forces of energy that made the stars and planets and life itself.

  Feingold’s legs sagged beneath him and he slumped to the rock floor of the chamber, still laughing like a man drunk on the nectar of the gods. The chamber floor felt warm and somehow softly yielding. Feingold curled up and fell asleep, his face still wreathed in a smile of utter peace and happiness.

  CHAPTER 5

  Stoner pushed his chair back from the restaurant table and announced to Tavalera and Holly, “I’ve got to leave you.”

  Before either of them could say anything, Stoner explained, “I have another appointment, out in the Asteroid Belt.”

  Tavalera gave him a skeptical look. “You mean you can’t be two places at the same time?”

  With a wintry smile, Stoner r
eplied, “Only when I absolutely have to.”

  And with that, he got up from the restaurant table and walked away, disappearing into the night.

  Hardly speaking to one another, Tavalera and Holly finished their dinner, then strolled unhappily to the band shell, where couples were dancing to the languid beat of the latest Latino rhythms. They danced, holding each other close, feeling each other’s body warmth. But Tavalera knew he was separated from Holly almost as completely as if he were already back on Earth.

  “You could come back with me,” he suggested as they walked back through the evening shadows to her quarters.

  Holly shook her head. “I’m still chief administrator here, remember? I’ve got responsibilities.”

  After a few silent steps along the bricked path, Tavalera muttered, “Me, too.”

  “Raoul, you don’t owe them anything!” Holly insisted. “They’ve treated you like crap! Why the hell do you want to go back to them?”

  He shrugged. “I know you’re right, Holly. But . . .”

  “But you’ve still got to go.”

  Nodding, “I’ve got to. I can’t explain why, but I’ve got to do it.”

  Strangely, she smiled up at him. “I know you do. And I know why. And I love you for it, dammit.”

  That caught him completely by surprise. “You do?”

  “Yes. I’m as big an idiot as you are, I guess.”

  “I love you, Holly. I really do.”

  “I know.”

  Abruptly he was in Stoner’s starship again, or at least the manifestation that Stoner showed him, in orbit around Earth, incredibly blue and flecked with dazzling white clouds.

  “I’m glad you decided to return,” Stoner said. Yet his expression was far from joyous. He looked concerned, apprehensive.

  Tavalera found himself standing in the beeping, blinking bridge of the ship, fully dressed, freshly scrubbed, even shaved.

  “How do you do things like this?” he asked wonderingly. Before Stoner could reply, he added, “I know. It’s a gift from the stars.”