Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  Caddy could feel the hot tears pushing at the corners of her eyes, but she held them back. This was not the time to vent. She’d do that later, alone. When she could throw a pillow. Maybe even kick something. And nobody would see her. She’d worked too long and too hard for this. That things were being delayed at the final moment . . . bad luck. Dumb, stupid, bad luck.

  Her breathing slowed, and she momentarily closed her eyes. They were in the main school room, long after the final chime for that day’s concluding briefing had sounded. Everyone else was gone to get something to eat, and to talk excitedly about the big day tomorrow. It was just Caddy and the instructor.

  She gently rested a hand on the comet-catcher scale model at the room’s center—to steady herself.

  “Stupid Peter,” she finally said, breathing the words out with a long breath. “Always leaving a shadow for me to fall into. If he never vanishes, solo missions are still on the books, and I go out as soon as there’s a ship for me.”

  Chief folded his arms—the grip surface on his toes keeping him in place on the floor.

  “There was already talk about going to double and triple crews, long before Peter’s accident.”

  “They ruled it an accident?” Caddy said, laughing sarcastically.

  “No other way to classify it,” Chief said. “Ship returns on auto-pilot, nobody aboard. Did your brother go outside to fix something? Was he in the airlock when it accidentally got triggered? It was like he just . . . left. No indication whatsoever that there had been any problem. But also no record to tell us about the final days leading up to his ultimate vanishing. Your brother is a giant question mark in the minds of all of us dedicated to the comet-catching team. But don’t think his story alone caused us to change policy. We operated solo in the early days because we had so few pilots to work with, and the executive council wanted us to begin retrieving comets immediately. But as the number of qualified pilots began to grow, we knew it was simply common sense to jump to double crews. Your brother’s circumstance . . . merely solidified that decision. Since then, we’ve never lost a ship or a crew without knowing exactly how, and why.”

  Caddy chewed air for at least a minute. She wasn’t sure what else could be said. Obviously Chief was the final say on the matter, and she respected the man too much to begin calling him names, for simply having prudence.

  “Look,” he said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, “getting out there now won’t make it any different than if you wait for the next class to finish. I’ve seen the way you watch the stars, when class is taking a break. I can tell you’re searching out there. With your spirit.”

  “For him,” she said. “I don’t think I even want to bring him back, I just want to know what happened. What became of him, you know? Not having an answer . . . it’s like I can’t go out there—doing the job that he did—without trying to find the solution to the mystery. Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s something I have to let go of. But dammit, he’s my older brother, and he was the only family who came with me from Earth. I’ve been like an orphan since he went away. I just want something to close the hole. Does that make sense?”

  “It does,” Chief said. “And I’d be lying if I told you some of the other instructors didn’t want you off the project as a result. They think you’re going to do something stupid trying to discover what became of Peter.”

  “So why don’t you oppose me doing this job?” Caddy asked.

  Chief ran a tongue alongside one cheek, and his eyes lost focus for a moment.

  “Because it’s not my right to tell you that you can’t fulfill your destiny.”

  “My destiny?” Caddy said. That was a word she’d almost never heard anyone use before, outside of grand political platitudes from the executive council, regarding eventual human settlement on the surface of New Olympia.

  “Yes,” Chief said. “Each of us has one. And only we—ourselves—can ultimately figure out what that destiny might be. I tell you not to go out there . . . and it’s likely you find a way to go out there anyway, whether I like it or not. People are funny like that. You tell them no, they just redouble their efforts to go ahead and do something anyway. Maybe, as part of the comet-catcher program, at least you’re using your instincts for something practical. Besides, I think your brother would be proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” Caddy said, standing up a little straighter. “I’d want Peter to feel proud of me.”

  “Wherever he is,” Chief said, squeezing her shoulder, “I think he is that. Oh yes, I think that very much.”

  Postgraduation was like an exercise in slow-motion dentistry.

  To keep herself from going stir-crazy, Caddy used all the spare simulator time the schoolhouse could give her. In this regard she became a bit of a rump student: someone the new class veered around as they went through the motions.

  Everyone except Troy, that is.

  How or why he’d gotten into the program, Caddy couldn’t be sure. He’d never expressed the slightest interest in being on the comet-catcher missions. And if his grades actually supported his application—which they clearly had—it was surely by the smallest of margins. Troy had never actually tried for anything in his academic life, so far as she knew. He was one of those guys who seemed content to just sail through things, until he latched onto something that might be popular with the girls.

  Which comet-catching definitely wasn’t.

  “Seemed like the best job of any,” he said one afternoon, while they hung around the cafeteria, slurping on trays of stir-fry vat-grown beef, with veggies and noodles.

  “I know you,” she said, eyeing him across the table. “You’re a people person. You thrive on attention. Where we’re eventually going . . . you’re going to be stuck with nobody to talk to.”

  “There’ll be my partner,” he said. “I can talk to that guy.”

  “Assuming ‘that guy’ even feels like talking,” Caddy said. “Look, comet-catching is a lonely job. No joke. You haven’t been out there to see what it’s like.”

  “Oh, and you have?” Troy retorted, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “I’ve seen more of the job than you,” she responded. “Spent more time around the working pilots, too. We’re a quiet lot. We prefer the silence. When have you ever preferred silence to a noisy gaggle of hangers-on, Troy? People you can send into hysterics with your latest joke, or cutting up in front of the teacher? Well, we’re not in school anymore. This is serious.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, why are you throwing cold water on this with me, huh?” Troy said, sitting up straighter and putting his arms on either side of his tray—fists balled defiantly. “I’ve got just as much right to be here—to take my shot—as you do. The tests said I’m in, so I’m in. Every week I pass the exams and move on to the next phase, I move on to the next phase. Just like you did. And you’ve never been on a snag before. Not for real. You want to find out if you’ve got what it takes. And frankly . . . so do I.”

  “You don’t think I have what it takes??” Caddy shot, her cheeks turning red.

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, relaxing his hands. “Look, Caddy, since that day we talked in the observation module—when I brought you your scores—I’ve been thinking. You’re right. Bumming around the colony isn’t exactly how I want to spend the rest of my days. I am sure I could get engrossed in the mines, or running some automated milling operation, or even learning to become a medic, or, heck, a surgeon if I felt like it. I think I’m smart enough to do anything I feel like. My parents used to tell me that, back on Earth. ‘Young man, you’re smart enough to do anything you put your mind to.’ Well, this is what I’ve decided I want to put my mind to. At least for now. If I get bored and decide to change jobs, I am sure you will be the first to know.”

  They ate in silence for several moments. Caddy didn’t really have a good reply to any of that. It was largely the same speech to herself she’d been rehearsing in her own mind—in various forms—over the years. Just because Troy
had always seemed too unserious and freewheeling to ever make it on the oh-so-serious comet-catcher team . . . didn’t mean she was qualified to tell the man no. Any more than Chief Okatsu had felt qualified to tell Caddy no.

  “You ever miss them?” Caddy finally asked, changing the conversational direction.

  “My parents?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Sometimes. It’s like, I can never be sure when that feeling is going to hit. It gets me at the strangest moments. I mean, the adults here are all good people, and they did their best to finish the job our parents started . . . but I can never quite get over the fact that our parents aren’t just far away in space, they’re also far away in time, too. While we slept on the trip aboard Mainfront they lived out the rest of their lives on Earth. Or did they emigrate to one of the colonies in Earth’s solar system? Did they have any more kids? Do we have brothers and sisters who also had kids, and then their kids had kids, and somewhere back on Earth right now, people our age—the descendants of siblings we never met—are looking up into the sky, and wondering about us: the relatives they will never know, other than in name?”

  “I never thought about it that far,” Caddy admitted.

  “I did,” Troy said. “Especially after you and I talked, and I could tell how happy you were at the chance to become a Candidate in the comet-catcher business. I realized that if ever our relatives—far, far away, on dirty, crowded, dying Earth—are ever going to have a chance to meet our children, or our children’s children, we have to make sure that New Olympia works. That there is an actual, living world for the people of Earth to come to. A place for them to settle.”

  “Assuming we let them,” Caddy said, remembering what Chief Okatsu had once told her.

  “Yeah, well, right, assuming we can stop them if we want to,” Troy said, correcting her. “If a dozen sister ships to Mainfront showed up in orbit tomorrow, who do you think would cast the deciding votes? Which people on the present executive council would try to overrule the decision? Naw. Our best bet is to make sure New Olympia is a huge, wide-open, living planet. Forests. Seas. Life from pole to pole. Enough room for twenty billion human beings, if necessary. We give them enough room they can lose themselves in it, we won’t have any problems. In fact, it will be payback for the effort invested in launching Mainfront in the first place.”

  “You make it sound like we owe Earth a debt,” Caddy said.

  “I think maybe we do,” Troy said. And then he went back to eating.

  Surprise, surprise, Caddy thought. She’d never realized that happy-go-lucky Troy could think such thoughts.

  Then again, with both of them being quickly thrust into the adult world, switching gears into grown-up mode was something Caddy had been forced to grapple with, too. What would the future hold? Assuming she liked comet-catching, would she simply do that job . . . forever? The initial agreement—upon signing as a Candidate—was for ten years of service. But beyond that, what did she want to do? Where did she want to go? Troy had mentioned children. Caddy hadn’t even considered the possibility before now. But Troy was right. Unless disaster struck, some day, New Olympia would be a destination for fresh colonists leaving Earth. Caddy herself might be gone by then, but her legacy might live on. Assuming she found someone with the right components to be a husband.

  She eyed Troy over the food between them, and didn’t say another word.

  Deep space was like a literal coal sack. Other than the bright stars glowing perfectly across the sky, no other light source was discernible. Even New Olympia’s home star was just a bright, yellow-white bulb, almost small enough to disappear among the other stars.

  Thrusting out this far had taken months. Time during which Caddy and Troy traded off piloting the ship. They didn’t have a name for their craft. It seemed neither large enough, nor important enough, to give it a name, the way Mainfront had a name. They were merely a call-sign on the comet-catcher net. Assigned to rendezvous with a numbered objective which had been identified for them well in advance of their departure. It was their first designated capture. And they’d gambled to see who would be the one to make the attempt upon arrival—with Caddy coming out on top.

  Troy seemed to take it in stride, much to Caddy’s surprise.

  “Less pressure on me,” he chided during one of their mid-shift swapouts—when she would go back to the living module and begin her twelve hours of down time, while he went into the pilot’s globe and spent twelve hours keeping the ship on course.

  Much could have been left to automatic control, naturally. But comet-catcher doctrine was to never leave the pilot’s globe empty for more than a few minutes at a stretch. And both Troy and Caddy adhered to doctrine in a by-the-book fashion.

  Food was plentiful. The only real concern was making sure the electrolyzer worked correctly once they sank their web into the target comet. That electrolyzer would ensure they had fuel, air, and water for the return trip. Or at least enough air, fuel, and water, to get the target comet headed on its way—at which point they would detach, receive new instructions for a new target comet in their relative vicinity, and the process would begin all over again.

  It was assumed they could divert dozens of comets before diving back into the inner system, for docking and refitting at home.

  Caddy felt herself marveling at the absolute, magnificent solitude she enjoyed during her stints in the piloting globe. With gentle music—the countless millions of recordings from Earth—playing into her ears, she could turn off all the lights and feel like she was practically one with the cosmos. A disembodied personage, floating free through the ether of time and space. She wondered if this was how the very first astronauts—riding alone, aloft, aboard their primitive rockets—had felt. She also wondered if this is how Peter had felt too. Before . . . before whatever took him away.

  Which was one thing Caddy had gradually become sure of: whatever had happened to Peter, it hadn’t been something premeditated or planned. He’d been enticed by something. Maybe the very nakedness of space itself. Caddy wondered whether on one of those long, lonesome stretches of time, Peter had simply decided to eliminate all barriers between himself and cosmos proper. Perhaps he’d felt so completely and absolutely in unison with the quiet blackness surrounding him, he’d stepped to the airlock and calmly let himself outside. To make the marriage—the man, and the void—complete.

  A morbid and yet also very eerily elegant thought. Or so Caddy admitted on one of her many shifts at the comet-catcher’s controls.

  When at last their target comet presented itself, it was as a massive, dark shadow that blotted out the stars. No beautiful coma this far from the sun. Probably the nucleus had not felt any warmth for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years, depending on its actual period.

  The capture proper was a thing of held-breath anxiety, yet it yielded no drama whatsoever. Caddy had practiced the maneuver how many times, back in the simulators? And this time there was no mischief-making instructor to throw her a technical curve ball right when she was making her final approach.

  The dreams began after the fifth capture.

  Not vividly, at first. But gradually growing in frequency and intensity, until—by the ninth capture—Caddy was positively agitated. The dreams were too real, and they were beginning to get to her emotionally. She couldn’t make them stop, and they seemed to be directly connected to the fact that they were progressing more deeply into the cometary halo than anyone else ever had in this region of space before.

  Nervously, she told Troy about the dreams. The book said every pilot was responsible for keeping her partner fully appraised of any irregularities or issues which might affect the mission. And if Caddy was slowly losing her mind, Troy deserved to know about it before it got too serious for either of them to handle.

  “This is where they think your brother vanished,” Troy said.

  Caddy raised both eyebrows. “How do you know that?” she asked, shocked. “Even I was never told
that.”

  “I sleuthed the coordinates out of your brother’s sealed case file, before we left.”

  “Let me guess: you’re in tight with a girl who—”

  “No, listen,” Troy said. “It’s not that. Chief Okatsu pulled me aside the day before we left dock. He asked me to keep an eye on you. I told him I would, but I also asked him if there was anything I should know—something nobody had officially been told. He let me look at the flight forensics for your brother’s ship. Where he was at the time of the expected disappearance, and about how deep into the cometary halo. We’re entering that general zone now. At least if all my relative calculations are correct. So tell me again, exactly, what happens in the dreams?”

  “It’s Peter,” Caddy said, closing her eyes and picturing her brother’s face. “He’s in his pilot’s suit. He’s trying to talk to me, but he’s not making any sound. It’s like I’m in the pilot’s globe, and he’s right outside the globe. Only the vacuum of space isn’t hurting him. I read his lips. I want to make out the words.”

  “Is he warning you?” Troy asked. “Is he trying to tell you not to do something?”

  “No,” Caddy said. “It’s like . . . it’s just the opposite. It’s like he’s found something, and he wants me to come see. And every time I unbuckle from the pilot’s chair and float to the exterior of the pilot’s globe, he vanishes. And then I wake up.”

  “And it’s like that every time?” Troy asked?

  “Yes,” Caddy said. “It’s been like that for at least the past few weeks. And the dreams get more vivid every night. I ignored them awhile back, just because I thought maybe I was simply beginning to feel the effects of us being gone from home for too long—they told us that extreme isolation would do strange things to our sleep cycle. But this isn’t just my mind playing games with me, Troy. I think this is something else entirely.”

  “Except . . .” Troy said, and didn’t finish his thought.

  “Except what?” Caddy said, grabbing his wrist with more force than she had any right to.