Voyagers I (32 page)

“Ten minutes, forty-eight seconds, to be exact.”

Stoner’s gaze flashed to the alien resting on his bier. He’s spent thousands of years to get here and I have to leave in ten fucking minutes?

“No,” he protested. “We need more time. We can’t…”

“No more time,” Federenko said flatly. “Come back to Soyuz now. There is no other way.”

“Nikolai, I can’t! Not yet!”

“Now, Shtoner.”

He looked through the transparent hull of the sarcophagus, toward the distant stars. Then at the shrunken Earth, so far away, and finally at the stubby Soyuz.

“Nikolai, please…”

“We must go, Shtoner. Or die here.”

Stoner’s lips were dry and cracked. He felt the chill of death breathe on him, and he turned to stare once again at the alien. All the distance you’ve come, to offer us your body, your knowledge, everything that you are and you represent. So much to learn from you…

“Shtoner.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m not coming back with you, Nikolai.”

“Shtoner…”

“I’m going to stay here, with him. Maybe in another few million years some other civilization will find the two of us.”

And he turned off his suit radio.

Stoner felt strangely calm. All the big decisions were behind him now. There was no more need to struggle. No need to worry. All his life had pointed to this ending, he realized. He would finish life alone, untouched by anyone, away from them all, lost in the starry wilderness with his member of an alien race.

Another loner, he thought, gazing down at the alien’s strange, immobile face. Were you like that in life? Is that why you chose this way to spend eternity?

In New York the FCC monitor was screaming, “Get him off the air!” while the ABC News vice-president grabbed at his flailing arms to keep him away from the master control panel. In Moscow the Soviet censor, livid with anger and fear, slammed his heavy fist into the button that cut the Soyuz transmission off the worldwide broadcast. TV screens all around the globe still showed the picture of the alien spacecraft as seen by the Soyuz cameras, but suddenly there was no voice transmission coming from space.

Stoner had relaxed into an almost fetal-like curl, hanging weightlessly a foot or so above the floor of the chamber. Through the transparent walls of the ship he could see the distant crescent of Earth and the Soyuz, still parked about a hundred meters away. It seemed to be staring at him accusingly.

Stoner flicked on his suit radio.

“…you
must
return,” Federenko was saying, with frantic determination. “That is an order. Only seven minutes remain…”

“Nikolai, I’ve just realized something,” Stoner said. The cosmonaut fell silent. “This spacecraft—this tomb—must have been built to seek out G-type stars, I’ll bet. Our friend here came from a star that’s similar to the Sun.”

“No time for philosophy, Shtoner.”

“And once it reached a G-class star, it searched for planets with strong magnetic fields. That’s got to be right! That’s why it headed for Jupiter first: the strongest magnetosphere in the solar system. And then toward Earth, the strongest magnetic field among the inner planets.”

“Six minutes and thirty seconds,” Federenko growled.

“The strong magnetic fields are targets for two reasons,” Stoner went on, ignoring him. “First, the spacecraft taps electromagnetic energy to recharge its batteries…or whatever it uses for energy storage. But far more important, it’s likely that only planets with strong magnetospheres can support life. Life
needs
a strong magnetic field to act as an umbrella that shields the planet’s surface from cosmic radiations!”

“Shtoner, stop this foolishness. Come back.”

“Did you get all that, Nikolai? Was it sent to Earth? It’s important.”

“Yes, yes. Now come back.”

At CBS News, Cronkite was putting on a bravura performance, talking over the static image of the alien spacecraft, filling in with facts, conjectures, history, opinion, while his top aides phoned frantically to Washington to see if there was any way to pick up the live radio transmission from the Soyuz again.

In the White House, the President had rushed down to the communications room, where the radio transmission was coming in over the private link from Moscow. A wide-eyed aide told the President that Walter Cronkite was on the phone. The President took it immediately, and frowned with disappointment that it was actually only Cronkite’s producer screaming incoherently into the phone.

A few calming words and Cronkite himself came on. They chatted hurriedly and the President agreed to have his technicians relay the words being spoken in space to CBS. Cronkite hesitated a moment, then asked that the same favor be done for the other networks, as well. The President smiled and nodded.

“Barbara’s going to love you, Walter,” he said.

It sounded to the President as if Cronkite sputtered. “Thank you, Mr. President,” said that famous voice. “If you’ll excuse me now, sir, I should get back to the cameras.”

“Certainly, Walter,” said the President. “God bless you.”

Jo sat stunned at her computer console. All through the vast control center everything seemed to groan to a halt, as if each of the hundreds of men and women working there had simultaneously stopped breathing.

She looked up at Markov’s stricken face.

“He’s going to kill himself.”

“You must stop him,” Markov said. “You must!”

“How can I…?”

“No one else can,” Markov said, bending over her, gripping her shoulder, speaking urgently. “He loves you. You are his only link with life. Speak to him! Quickly!”

Numbly, Jo answered, “But this console isn’t wired for transmission…”

Markov turned to Zworkin, fidgeting nervously beside him. “Do something! Please! She must get through to him!”

Zworkin licked his lips and glanced uncertainly at the guards around them. “I’ll try…”

“You’re all going to have to work together from now on,” Stoner was saying. “All the nations of the world. It can never be the same for any of you. There are others out there, other races, other intelligences—and they’re just as curious and brave as we are.”

“Five minutes, Shtoner!”

“Five minutes, five hours…it doesn’t make any difference, Nikolai. It doesn’t.”

“Wait…communication from ground. On frequency two.”

“No,” said Stoner. “I don’t want to talk with them.”

“A personal message, from a woman. Miss Camerata. She sounds very upset, Shtoner.”

He debated within himself for half a moment, then pressed the button for frequency two.

“Keith! Can you hear me?” Her voice was shaking with anxiety.

“Yes, Jo, I hear you.”

Silence. Stoner realized it would take nearly twelve seconds for her answer to reach him. I’m already so far away that it’s impossible to hold a normal conversation with her.

“Please don’t do this! Don’t be a fool, Keith! Come back, please!”

“I can’t do that, Jo. Not now. If I stay here, I can send you more details about this ark, about our visitor. It’s a treasure house of knowledge. I can’t just leave it after a few lousy minutes and allow it to sail away from us forever.”

He stared hard at the distant blue-white crescent of Earth as his words sped to her and her answer came back.

“But you’ll kill yourself!”

“I’ll have more than an hour’s time before Federenko gets too far away to pick up my suit radio and relay it to you. I can describe everything in this chamber in detail.”

He waited, counting the seconds, preparing what he would say next.

“And then you’ll die!” Jo said. “You’ll die up there!”

“That’s not such a terrible thing. My life hasn’t meant very much to anyone.”

It was better this way. He had time to think, time to get ready for her voice, to freeze his emotions and guard against hers.

“Your life is important, you damned idiot! You can’t throw it away!”

“I’m content to die out here, Jo,” he said. “It’s not such a bad way to go.”

He noticed that frost was forming on the edges of his visor again, despite the suit heater’s highest setting. The cold was seeping into him; he could taste its metallic bitterness.

“No, Keith, no!” There were tears in her voice. “Come back! Come back to me! You have so much to live for…”

“No, I don’t, Jo. This is the climax of my life. This is what it’s all been leading up to. What would I do for an encore?”

“You can’t throw away your life like this! We have our whole lives ahead of us!”

“You have your life, Jo. You’re young, the whole world lies ahead of you.”

The time stretched, and then, “But you said that the world can never be the same now that we’ve contacted the alien.” Her voice was fever-pitched. “We’re not the same! I’m not and you’re not. It’s a new world, Keith. We need you here. I need you here, to be with me.”

“Three minutes, Shtoner.”

Before he could answer either one of them, a new voice spoke in his earphones:

“Switch to frequency three. Priority message from Kwajalein.”

Almost glad to get away from Jo’s voice, Stoner clicked on frequency three as if cutting an umbilical cord.

“Go ahead Kwaj,” he said flatly.

“Dr. Stoner!” The voice was breathless, familiar. “This is Dr. Reynaud, from Kwajalein.”

For a moment Stoner felt almost giddy. He wanted to laugh. Reynaud, our chubby monk. Is he going to try to save my soul?

“Listen to me, please!” Reynaud shouted in his earphones. “I’ve examined the plot the computer has made of the alien spacecraft’s course. It will not be irretrievably lost once you leave it. Do you understand me? It will not be irretrievably lost!”

“You mean we’ll be able to track it on radar?” Stoner asked. “What good is that?”

“That is very important! Vital!” Reynaud’s voice was shrill with excitement. “We can go out and reach it again. We can recapture it and bring it back into an orbit near the Earth!”

Stoner shook his head inside his helmet. “It would take years to build the hardware to retrieve this craft. We just barely got this far and it took six months of planning. And we screwed it up anyway.”

“But we have years!” Reynaud insisted. “The alien will slow down as it moves outward, away from the Sun. We have perhaps five years before it reaches the orbit of Pluto…”

“Five years,” Stoner echoed.

“We can recapture the alien,” Reynaud repeated. “There’s no need for you to stay there.”

Federenko’s heavy voice interrupted. “Two minutes, Shtoner. I must start automatic sequencer now.”

“Yeah…”

“Bring back camera,” Federenko commanded. “Must return photographs to Earth. They are too valuable to throw away.”

“We can recapture the alien ship,” Reynaud said again.

Jo’s voice broke in on the same frequency. “Come back to me, Keith. Please come back.”

And Markov’s. “Keith, dear friend. Don’t be so stubborn. Dead heroes are of no value to anyone. From what Reynaud is saying, you can fly back to our visitor within a few years.”

Shuddering from the growing cold, Stoner realized he still held the stereo camera in his hands.

“The photographs, Shtoner. Now.”

He reached out and touched the spacecraft’s bulkhead, pushing himself toward the hatch. Where the hell is it? he asked himself. The entire hull was so transparent…

He felt it, a circular rim, open to space. Clipping the camera to his belt, he started to pull himself up and out of the alien ship.

Markov was still talking, “We can build new rockets and train new crews. And you will be the natural leader of such a program. You must come back and lead us. We all need you.”

“Please, Keith,” Jo’s voice pleaded.

He was halfway through the hatch when he looked back at the alien, resting silently for countless ages. And his mind filled with the bickering voices and flint-eyed faces of all the bureaucrats he had ever known. And McDermott. And Tuttle. He saw Dooley in his mind’s eyes, the agents and policemen and politicians who didn’t understand, who feared, who resisted, who would not accept reality even when it was thrust at them.

And he saw Cavendish, twisted and destroyed by them. And Schmidt, smashed into a pulp with his own hands.

“Shtoner, retrofire is in one minute. All is automatic. I cannot stay.”

“It’s all right, Nikolai,” he said quietly, sliding back inside the spacecraft’s transparent hull. His boots touched the springy floor at the alien’s feet.

“You get back to Earth, Nikolai. I’m staying here.”

“Keith!” Jo’s strangled scream.

“Don’t commit suicide,” Markov pleaded.

“It isn’t suicide,” Stoner said to them all. “You think I’m killing myself, but I’m not. I’m giving you an incentive, a double reason to come out as quickly as you can and recapture this treasure house. Because I’ll be here—frozen. Maybe I’ll be dead. But just maybe…maybe, I’ll be preserved, suspended, waiting to be brought back to life.”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s a vacuum in here. No air. Temperature’s pretty close to absolute zero. It’s preserved the alien for god knows how many millennia. It ought to preserve me for a couple of years.”

He took a breath, realized their reply couldn’t reach him for many seconds, and went on, “It’s cold enough to flash-freeze me once I turn my suit heater off. I’ll ride with the alien for a few years. If you really care about me you’ll come out and get me before the two of us leave the solar system altogether.”

“Keith, you can’t…” Jo’s voice broke into sobs.

“I won’t be dead,” he told her gently. “I’ll be waiting for you, frozen, suspended between life and death, waiting for you to reach me and bring me back to life. Like the tale of Sleeping Beauty, only with our roles reversed.”

Markov’s voice was filled with grief. “She can’t speak, Keith. She wants to, but she can’t.”

“Kirill…Jo, listen to me. Make them work together. Create a global space effort, make the politicians do what needs to be done. Get the whole human race involved in this. We have the chance to reach the stars, all of us, to come out of the cocoon that we’ve been living in. Make them understand, make them look to the stars.”

The delay seemed to get longer with each exchange.

“How can we?” Markov’s voice pleaded. “We’re only ordinary people. We need you, Keith. You must return to lead us!”

“No, Kirill,” he said firmly. “You’ll have to lead them. It’s all up to you now. You and Jo.”

He waited for a reply.

“Ten seconds to retrofire,” Federenko’s glum voice tolled. “I can’t do it,” Markov answered at last. “You must come back. You must!”

“Too late, Kirill. It’s in your hands now. You’ve got to change them—all of them. Change the world for me, Kirill.”

Federenko broke in, “Farewell, Shtoner. You are a very brave and very foolish man. Good luck.”

“So long, Nikolai. Stay in training.”

“Keith!” Markov’s voice begged.

Stoner turned off the radio and watched the Soyuz. Its retrorockets puffed soundlessly, a brief flare against the dark, and the craft slid away, silently speeding off, dwindling until it was lost against the stars.

He turned back to the alien, swallowed hard against the rawness in his throat. He tried to rub his aching eyes, but his hand bumped against the sealed visor of his helmet. Shrugging, he went back to describing everything he could see.