Trace the Stars

by Nancy Fulda

  He looked down at her white-knuckled hand.

  “Except I’ve not been having the same experience, Caddy. My sleep’s been fine. If there is something about this region of the cometary halo that is specifically affecting you, why isn’t it affecting me too?”

  “I don’t know,” Caddy said.

  “Well, whatever it is, do you I think we should abort and go home?”

  “So soon?” Caddy said. “We’re due for more snags! What will they say when we return early? God, Troy, they’ll take away my flight status! I’ll get thrown in the psych unit for sure!”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Troy said, holding up his hands to placate her. “It was just an idea. But what else can we do, Caddy? What if the dreams get more intense? What if you can’t rest? You’re no good to us if you can’t fly the ship. And the book says I can’t fly this mission solo. If you’re incapacitated to the point you can’t function—”

  “But I’m not incapacitated,” Caddy said. “I’m clear as a bell when I’m awake. Dammit, Troy, I just want you to know what’s going on, okay? I don’t want you to be in the dark—and I can’t keep this to myself forever. I had to tell somebody.”

  “Got it,” Troy said. “Thanks for trusting me. Okay, look. Let’s do this. Proceed with the mission. You start telling everything you know—everything you’ve told me—to a video log. We won’t send the log back home. We keep the recording with us. So, if something really weird happens, there is at least some kind of file they can look at . . . when they recover the ship.”

  Morbid thoughts, indeed. But Peter’s disappearance was utmost in their minds.

  “And hey,” Peter said, “if I start to notice anything funny with me? I’ll be the first to say so. I promise.”

  “Thanks,” Caddy said, and reached over the table to pull Troy into a hug. He returned the gesture for a surprisingly long time.

  The ghost came like a moth to a flame. It flitted about, just on the periphery of Caddy’s vision. Per usual, when she was piloting, she had all the lights dialed low, and a melodic piece of symphony orchestra music piping gently over the piloting globe’s speaker system. The coal sack effect was on brilliant display—a million tiny jewels scattered across an endless ocean of absolute black—but a particular light seemed to be dancing crazily just off to the side. Yet every time Caddy snapped her head to look, the flickering would vanish, only to reappear, moments later, on the other side of her peripheral vision.

  “Dammit,” Caddy said. “I hope to hell I’ve just dozed off. I can’t afford to begin seeing things while I’m damned awake!”

  She’d practically shouted the last words, and was shocked at herself for doing so.

  She was even more shocked by the words that came in reply.

  “But you are awake, sis.”

  Caddy froze. The voice was clear and strong, just as she’d remembered in the years since Peter’s final voyage.

  Suddenly, he was there. Smiling slightly. So close, she felt she could reach out and touch him. Unlike in her dreams, he was clearly inside the piloting globe this time. Caddy’s hand shook badly as she reached out for him—hoping to touch his full head of gently wavy brown hair.

  “You can’t touch me yet,” he said—forcing Caddy to snap her hand back.

  “Peter . . .” she breathed, feeling the tears flow hotly at the corners of her eyes.

  “It’s me, sis,” he said. “But not like you remember. If you touch me now . . . you’ll be transported to where I am. Before that happens, we have to talk.”

  “Peter, oh God, this can’t be real,” Caddy croaked, swiping at her face with the sleeve. Surely she’d dozed off at the controls, and the life monitor computer would pick up on the error at any moment, and begin to gently chime her back to wakefulness. But a quick glance at the life monitor told her that all was well. She was as alert as she should be. Nothing was amiss. Except . . . Peter was standing there in mid-air, having a conversation with his kid sister, like he’d just walked into her bedroom while she was doing homework.

  “Peter . . . what happened?” Caddy asked. “Everyone has been trying to figure out what went wrong with your flight.”

  “Nothing went wrong,” Peter said. “Everything went exactly the way it’s supposed to. Except, I found something out here. Something nobody could have expected.”

  “What?” Caddy asked, still desperately wanting to put her hands on her brother’s face—to experience the warmth and tangibleness of him.

  “I can’t explain all the technical details to you,” he said. “That would be too time-consuming, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Suffice to say that the portion of the star system you’re in now is like the platform for a subway train. Remember those from Earth? You’d go down from street level, and there would be a huge, long tube? It was empty most of the time. Except, every few minutes, a train would come through, stop, pick up people, drop others off, and move on down the track. Well, this part of space is the same thing. It’s a waiting area for a galactic train system that stops through every once in awhile, picks up passengers, drops other passengers off, and then goes on its way. Except, I don’t think the people who originally built the subway exist anymore. When the train came through last time—when I was out here—climbing aboard showed me nothing but an empty car. And though I’ve ridden the car through a thousand different star systems by now, I’ve never seen any sign of anyone who knows how the system was built.”

  “Aliens,” Caddy blurted, still wiping tears from her eyes.

  “Yes,” Peter said.

  “Then how come your whole ship didn’t get taken?” Caddy demanded. “Why did your ship come back untouched, without you in it, and all the logs and memory discs erased?”

  “It was a sudden thing, really,” Peter said, his face making an expression Caddy remembered, from when she was much younger, and her older brother was trying to explain complex things to her—things he wasn’t sure she could fully understand. She’d found the expression infuriating then, but it only made her heart break now. She wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him to her.

  “Try to tell me,” Caddy said. “I don’t care if you think it won’t make sense. Tell me everything that happened.”

  Peter rubbed a thumb along his jaw—he seemed to have not aged a day since he last left home.

  “I was comet-catching,” he said, “like you are now. And I started having vivid dreams. I didn’t understand them at first. But eventually I interpreted them as a kind of waking dream—the ones they say you can control, if you become aware of what they are. In the dreams I was able to take a kind of time and space warp far away from this system. Far away from any systems even remotely close to Earth. I could pick and choose which stars and planets I wanted to see. It was like playing tourist. I began to see other civilizations—built by amazing creatures of all manner and description. It was exciting. I almost began to think it was real. And then, one day, while I was in the pilot’s globe—like you are now—it became real. It was like the door to the subway car opened in my mind, and I stepped through it. Ever since then, I’ve been riding the system. You can’t believe the places I’ve been. The galaxy is alive with different people, many of them far older and wiser than humans are.”

  “How come Earth never knew about any of this,” Caddy asked. “Why doesn’t the . . . Subway? . . . Why won’t it run to Sol?”

  “I think the original builders never got around to building a stop there,” Peter confessed. “Back when they were creating the subway, humans didn’t exist yet. I don’t even think the dinosaurs existed. Earth hadn’t gotten interesting yet. That seems to be the key. The subway only stops at places that have something interesting going on—development, technology, signs of intelligent industry.”

  “If that’s true, what makes this system so special?” Caddy asked. “New Olympia is dead as a doornail.”

  “But it didn’t used to be,” Peter said. “Long, long ago, there was a civilization on
the surface. Advanced enough to build radio telescopes, and begin launching rockets into orbit. But the climate was changing too fast. They never had enough water to sustain the plants, to sustain the biosphere. A little bit like Mars, but a little bit like Venus too. Eventually they died out, before they could ever launch a ship deep enough into space to reach the subway. But the makers left the subway stop here anyway—just in case. Which is where I came in. I happened to be in the right time at the right place, and I climbed aboard when the chance presented itself. And I’m back now. The train is coming through again. I never thought it would be you out here, sis, but I’m glad that it is. I know how much you hated life back home. How much you dreaded being stuck on that asteroid with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Come with me, and I can show you all the places I’ve seen—the amazing life that waits for us in the galaxy.”

  Just then, Troy popped the hatch to the pilot’s globe. Both Peter and Caddy spun to face him as he floated in. His eyes were so wide, the whites were bright—even in the dim light. Peter seemed to shine of his own accord, like a lamp from nowhere were projected upon him at all times.

  “Can . . . can . . .” Caddy whispered to Troy.

  “Can I see him?” Troy said. “Yes. Sorry, Caddy, but I’ve been running a monitor on your piloting sessions ever since you told me about your dreams. I programmed the monitor to wake me up if ever it caught you talking to yourself. I never guessed you’d actually be talking to—”

  “A ghost?” Peter said, smiling.

  “If that’s what you are, then yes,” Troy said, clasping the handholds on the side of the pilot’s chair. He regarded Peter’s avatar warily.

  “Peter,” Caddy said, composing herself, “if this ‘subway’ is real, and you could get on, can you not also get off? Stay with us. Come back to the colony. Everyone will be amazed by what you’ve discovered! You have to tell them! You’ll be famous! They’ll broadcast the news to Earth!”

  Peter’s face darkened.

  “It’s not that simple,” Peter said.

  “Why not?” Caddy demanded. “Damn you, do you have any idea what you’ve done to those of us you left behind?”

  Suddenly Peter became aware of Caddy’s red, damp face—as if for the first time.

  “I’m sorry, sis. I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “No, of course you didn’t,” she said, sniffling. “But why did you have to vanish without a trace?”

  “There are certain side effects to how the subway works,” Peter said. “Our technology is too primitive. Our data storage is too vulnerable to the wave effect the subway leaves when it passes.

  “You couldn’t have written a stupid note on a stupid piece of paper?” Caddy practically shouted.

  “Who uses hardcopy anymore?” Peter said. “Look, I’m sorry, and I mean it. Sis . . . I’ve come back. Isn’t that all that matters now? You can come with me this time!”

  “What about Troy?” Caddy said.

  Peter considered the other young man in the globe.

  “He can come too, if he wants.”

  “And back home, nobody knows anything about what happened to any of us,” Troy said.

  “If it’s like last time? No, probably not,” Peter admitted.

  Caddy could see the sparkle in Troy’s eyes—he was considering it. Just as Caddy herself was considering it.

  “You said it’s not that simple, when I asked you why you can’t come back with us,” Caddy said. “Explain what that means. Why can’t you come back?”

  “It’s like . . . sis . . . I’ve seen too much. If you’d been some of the places I’ve been . . . the subway is an instant transport. It takes mere seconds to jump me tens of light-years in actual space. And each step of the way, I get to meet the other people who are waiting. They know about the subway. They even use it from time to time. They tell me about their worlds. I get to see images, listen to music, hear their speech—did you know there is a universal language that dates all the way back to the builders? The subway itself teaches you the language, if you’re patient enough to sit and learn.”

  “So how come we can’t see it?” Troy asked. “Why can we only see you?”

  “The subway functions apart from our ordinary concept of space-time,” Peter said. “I can use the subway controls to project myself into our space-time for a short while—just as long as the car is at the platform in this system. As soon as the train leaves again—as soon as the particular car I inhabit, goes away—the me that you see, will vanish. But if you take my hands—both of you—I can use the car to jump you to where I am now. You’ll leave the comet-catcher behind. No help for it. But once you’re here, seeing what I’ve been seeing, I think everything will make a lot more sense.”

  Caddy was breathing rapidly, her heart pounding. This was too much for her to accept at face value. Her brain demanded hard evidence, before she’d accept the hallucination that she—and now, Troy—had been thrust into. Still, it was also an answer to her most fervent wish: to be offered a free ticket out of the purgatory of her colonist existence. Away from New Olympia. Away from human beings altogether. Pure adventure. If Peter was right, the potential was practically limitless.

  Still, something nagged at her conscience.

  “People have been working too hard,” she said, her brown knit.

  “At what?” Peter asked.

  “New Olympia,” Caddy said. “The colony. Troy and me, we spent months and months in simulators and exercises, preparing to come out here and do a job.”

  “It’s a boring job,” Peter said. “I can tell you that better than anybody.”

  “But Peter,” Caddy said, “sometimes the things which are most worth doing are boring. Troy and I talked about this, and I’ve decided that he’s right. Earth is depending on us to make New Olympia into a planet worth settling some day. Those old aliens—the ones who lost this world in the first place—they never had the technology to save themselves. But we do, and though it might take a long time, somebody’s got to try.”

  “There are plenty of people to run the comet-catchers,” Peter said, dismissing her words with the wave of his hand. “What I’m offering you is the voyage of eternity.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Caddy said, considering her thoughts as she formed them into words. “And maybe, some day, when I’m old, and I’ve given my life to making New Olympia a better place than how I first found it, I will want to retire—come out here, climb aboard your train, and take a trip. But now? Now . . . I’m dug in, big brother. Going through Candidate school? Our first snags? Sending those comets back to the inner system? I feel like the things I am doing finally count for something. I’ve never felt that before. And I don’t feel like I’m done yet.”

  “I don’t think I am either,” Troy said, nodding his head along with Caddy’s words. “You know, you’ve become a legend, Peter. And I’m sure after we get back and tell everybody about this, you’ll become an even bigger legend still. Assuming anyone believes us. I am assuming when you . . . warp out of here, that our computers are going to get wiped?”

  “Probably, yes,” Peter said, nodding.

  “No worries,” Caddy said. “We have protected backups for all the programs to continue the mission. But what about our minds?”

  “The subway won’t do anything to those,” Peter said. “I can assure you.”

  “Well, then,” Caddy said, suddenly feeling warmth building in the center of her chest, “I respectfully decline your offer, big brother. Not easily, mind you. I am sure there will be many nights when I will regret not taking you up on this . . . thing you’ve embarked upon. But there’s comets that need catching, and Troy and me, we’re comet-catchers. New Olympia needs the air and the water. It won’t be fit for man or beast next year, nor in ten years, nor maybe even in a hundred years. But if you’re right—and this subway comes through again—I think there will plenty of time for me to make my mark in this little corner of the galaxy. Before running off to see all the rest.�
�

  Peter was actually smiling at this point. “I always thought your heart was in the right place, sis.”

  “And I never stopped loving you, big brother,” Caddy said.

  Peter turned his attention to Troy.

  “You,” Peter said sternly, aiming a finger at Troy’s nose.

  “Yessir?” Troy said reflexively.

  “You be good to her,” he said. “And be a good dad to my nieces and nephews, understand?”

  “But I—” Troy began to sputter.

  “Understand?” Peter said again, his finger waving sternly.

  “Got it,” Troy said, and swallowed thickly. “I promise.”

  “Right,” Peter said. Then he turned his attention back to Caddy.

  “I have to go now,” he said, his tone turning soft. “The window for me to be here is almost shut. If I had more time, we could talk more. I mean it when I say you can’t believe the places I’ve been.”

  “I’ll get my chance!” Caddy said, tears forming anew. “But first, there’s work to be done. Just make sure the damned subway never misses this stop, okay? I have a feeling whole boatloads of people will be coming out here eventually, to take you up on your offer. You’ll become known as the ghost conductor of the interstellar express!”

  Peter laughed, and ran a finger along his jaw.

  “I like the sound of that.”

  And instantly, he popped out of existence. No sound. He just . . . wasn’t there anymore.

  For many minutes, Caddy and Troy simply stared in silence. Nothing was said. The soft orchestra music continued to play. The sparkling vastness of the coal sack night was everywhere at once. Magnificent, chilling, and larger than any single human mind could grasp.

  “Do you think anyone will buy it?” Troy said. “When we tell them?”

  “Does it matter?” Caddy responded. “Just us telling the story is going to get explorers scrambling out here to check it out. At first they’ll say we’re nuts—and maybe they will be right. But if what just happened, happened, sooner or later somebody other than us is going to be around when Peter’s train pulls through, and that’s when it’s gonna get real interesting.”