“How is this getting us home?” Ryan growled.
“Will you just trust him, please?” Izzy said.
They emerged into a large room with what looked like a low reception desk and ample waiting area. Persisting led them out into another corridor. Down that one, and winding through a number of corridors after that, they saw or passed dozens of “real” Pelorians. Conn watched Izzy’s face, but the astronaut betrayed no displeasure with their form. Everyone on Earth had seen pictures of “real” Pelorians, but few had seen them live. The Pelorians often stopped or slowed and seemed to regard them with suspicion. For all they know we’re all avatars, right? she said to herself. Maybe we’re giving ourselves away somehow. Such as by walking too much like humans.
Conn could read the signs they passed—“SHOPS” with a triangle presumably pointing toward the shops, “HEALTH AND WELFARE,” and “B TRAIN” with a triangle. They had trains. It made sense, in a community of many hundreds of thousands, but it hadn’t occurred to her that they would have trains.
After a time they arrived at another waiting area, unmarked, as far as she could tell. This reception desk had somebody behind it. Persisting told them to wait, and went over to the desk. The aliens talked in low tones she couldn’t overhear, and then Persisting jogged back to join them.
“You’re all set,” he said. “Go through that door, through the portal, and you’ll be back on Earth.”
Conn's jaw dropped. “You have portals?”
“The technology is not proprietary to the Aphelials, Conn,” Persisting said. “As far as I know, there is only this one that leads to Earth. And almost nobody knows about this one.”
“So you don’t need line-of-sight?”
“You’ll see,” Persisting said. Ryan moved to the door and opened it. Something he saw behind it made him hesitate, but then he disappeared over the threshold.
“I guess we’d better go,” Conn said. She looked at Persisting and forced a smile. “Persisting, thank you so much—”
“You thanked me enough on the trip here,” Persisting said. “You all did. Now, go.”
She went last, turning to see her friend one last time. She closed the door behind her.
The group stood before the portal, waiting for her. “Why aren’t you going?” she asked.
Izzy answered. “This probably goes to China,” she said. The Pelorians’ closest Earthly ally, at least publicly. “What are we supposed to do when we get there?”
“I know a little Chinese,” Conn said. “I can get us to a fone, or something.”
“OK, then,” Izzy said, and she reared back and strode through the portal. She didn’t come out the other side. Ryan followed.
Conn hesitated, a little nervous. But Persisting wouldn’t send them through something dangerous, and wherever it led, her friends were already there, so:
She strode under the portal arch. She felt an electric impulse flit through her brain and everything went white for a moment, but other than that, she felt no evidence of having traveled a quarter million miles in one breath.
They were inside something that looked like a barn. They walked outside, onto a lawn. It had been mown recently. The day was clear, but muggy. Late in a California summer day, was how it felt. A huge house—mansion, more like—loomed before them. The other direction, an area demarcated by a wooden fence had horses in it. Conn felt like she weighed a ton. The others were struggling with the Earth-normal gravity, too.
“So,” she said. “Anyone know where we are?”
“I do,” Ryan said. Conn squinted at him. “We’re at Marcus’s house.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Deal
August 5 - 6, 2039
Conn didn’t know how they were supposed to explain how they got home. “The truth?” Izzy snarked, but she had a point. Persisting had been worried that if two worlds knew he was helping them, somebody would stop him, or arrest him, or kill him. That was over with. For their parts, they wouldn’t all be tainted by association with a Pelorian. Maybe Conn would be.
The president’s approval ratings were at an all-time low, and his “arm’s length” Pelorian policy was a major reason why. After the Sirius astronauts, he was under severe pressure to take the war back to the Pelorians, make it a shooting war again. Already one of the other parties’ frontrunner for the 2040 nomination was hammering him on the issue, and it was a likely preview of the election to come. If the President decided to run again, he would have to do something about the Pelorians: convince the country he was right, or start bombing them again.
Nobody liked the Pelorians, and a majority of Americans these days actively hated them, thanks to the destruction of the Sirius spacecraft and crew. And the public would remember that Conn had been jailed early in the war for associating with Pelorians. She had been a celebrity newly back from the Aphelial system, and the public loved her for going to Mars, but life saved by a Pelorian? Again? Thinking about it gave her a headache.
The real issue was the existence of a portal on Earth. One linked to the Pelorians on the moon. Having it might literally be considered treason. Izzy still favored telling the world and telling the truth. Ryan and Conn said they were uncomfortable with that. They wanted to talk to Marcus Stoll first, and he wasn’t home. Nor answering his fone. “He would if he could,” Ryan said. “A call from my account?” He didn’t leave voice mails. It didn’t seem like the kind of news you left in a voice mail.
Izzy called her family. Conn called her father, then Yongpo. Her father seemed irritated, as was his way. Yongpo almost went through the roof.
Conn didn’t think Daniels had any close family, and wouldn’t know how to contact them if he did. She felt guilty at the relief she felt.
Ryan called Marcus again, but nothing. They decided to get some sleep.
# # #
Conn got a couple of hours. Her sleep cycle wouldn’t get used to Earth again for some time, but more immediately, she felt like she was trying to sleep under a hundred-pound weight, not used to the greater gravity of the Earth. She couldn’t get comfortable.
When she got up and wandered around, she discovered Ryan was also awake. He was in what looked like a family room. The house had many rooms—they each had their own bedrooms—and she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had multiple family rooms. She’d grown up in a dinky apartment on Division Street in Wicker Park, a north side neighborhood of Chicago. The “family room” was space for a love seat and a chair and a TV, and its main function was to separate the front door from the galley kitchen. She was no expert on family rooms.
“Still nothing,” Ryan said. “Maybe he lost his fone.”
“Does it go straight to voicemail?”
Ryan held up the fone. “The subscriber you are calling is not available. After the tone . . .”
“Are there signs he’s been around lately?” she said.
“His bed wasn’t made. He has someone that comes in on Mondays and Fridays to clean.”
“Well, there you go,” Conn said.
Ryan shrugged. “Unless she just knows something we don’t and that’s why she hasn’t come.”
She saw the logic in that and sat down on a couch across from Ryan, who was in an expansive easy chair, the kind it looked like nobody ever sat in because they’d get lost.
“Something to drink?” Ryan offered.
“Uh-uh. I’m fine.”
They sat.
“Your father will be awfully proud of you,” she eventually said.
“I medicate for anxiety,” Ryan said. Conn nodded. “The medicine I took with me wasn’t my usual. The usual makes me sleepy, and I couldn’t have that in space.”
She waited for him to go on. Then she said, “Lucky you. You have a sleeping pill for tonight.”
“I will when I get some,” Ryan grumbled. She nodded. She was almost out of medicine herself. “I was a bastard the whole way out to Mars. I realize that. And that day, the day we landed? I double dosed. I didn’t think it would do
anything but make me even less anxious, and I was very, very anxious about landing on Mars.”
“But it made you angry.”
“It made me angry and paranoid. I lost control. And it cost me the history books. Not that I’m worried about that.”
“You shouldn’t be,” she said. “You were still the first man on Mars.”
“I only bring it up because I treated you very poorly that day—the whole way to Mars, really—and I never apologized, or told you why.”
“I accept your apology, but I’d like to say for the record that it wasn’t necessary.”
“It was,” Ryan said. “It was unprofessional. But more—but more than that. I—you were the last person I wanted to be angry with.”
She studied his face.
He continued, “I would give anything to not have acted that way in front of you.”
She smiled and looked down. “Thank you, but honestly, don’t worry about it.”
That made Ryan smile. They sat in silence for long minutes, before Conn excused herself to go get a glass of water and to try to fall back asleep.
Marcus Stoll came home at about eleven in the morning. He’d flown in from SFO, they later learned.
Conn was still in bed. She’d finally slept. She heard Stoll’s noisy arrival, and thought to go get Ryan—but she wasn’t sure what room Ryan was in. She waited. After a short time she heard Marcus cry, “Oh my God! Ryan! What in the world?” It was probably safe to go downstairs.
“Conn!” He crossed the room—another family room—to give her a big bear hug. “You got my son home alive!”
“Other way around,” she said, but Stoll was welcoming Izzy, who trailed her.
“So why wasn’t he answering his fone?” Conn asked Ryan. Ryan said he hadn’t asked yet, while his father furrowed his brow at them. He finally understood and explained that he had changed numbers. The press had got hold of the old one and it was almost unusable whenever the astronauts were in the news.
“How did you get home?”
“Your portal,” Conn said.
He looked confused again. Izzy chimed in: “We got a ride home from a Pelorian. He took us to the moon, and to their portal.”
Stoll paled. “I can certainly explain, to you, but I’d prefer not to explain to the rest of the world,” Stoll said. “I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“Ya think?” Izzy said.
“That’s fine,” Conn decided. “I’m glad we waited. Izzy, call Dyna-Tech. Just tell them we got a ride home from a Pelorian.”
“Who dropped us off here in Orange County?” Izzy offered. “Wouldn’t he drop us off somewhere he couldn’t be seen?”
“People don’t know what the Pelorians can do,” Conn said. “No one will be surprised they can fly into southern California and out again without being seen.”
“But that ‘fact’ might cause a panic,” Izzy said.
“You landed in Chino Hills,” Stoll said.
“That’s an hour’s drive from here,” Ryan said.
“Is that the best idea we have?” Izzy asked.
“Why didn’t we call anybody?”
“Fones all dead.”
“Why didn’t we stop somewhere and ask to use a fone? Why didn’t we flag down a cop?”
Conn was looking down and tapping her foot. When she realized it, she reddened.
“We got dropped off here,” Ryan said. “That’s how it’s got to be.”
“Fine. Then that’s what it’ll be. But people are going to be more afraid of Pelorians than ever.” Izzy went into another room to make the call.
# # #
Dyna-Tech was sending a helicopter to pick them up and take them to John Wayne Airport, where a chartered jet would bring them to San Jose; from there to Sunnyvale, and the company headquarters. Conn and Ryan were invited. Skylar Reece knew attention would be split if the media had two separate missions to cover, but that Izzy would never leave the spotlight if everyone was together. At least, that’s how Conn would have thought if she were Skylar Reece.
“We don’t have much time,” Conn said, “and I’ve got a lot of questions. Ryan told me you wanted to open up trade with the Sidereals, and to make that happen you both learned Basalese. Now you have a portal that goes to the moon. So I’m guessing a Pelorian avatar is really behind all this. I can’t think of another way you would have even known the Sidereals were there on Mars.”
Stoll looked at her. “You haven’t asked a question.”
“Do I have that right?” she said sweetly.
“The Pelorians aren’t behind this, Conn. I brought them in. Their technology. What they’ve shown us isn’t one-one hundredth of what they have.”
Izzy groaned. “You’re about to tell us something so illegal it’s not even funny,” she said.
“There is a war on,” Conn said. “How were you supposed to use their tech without anyone knowing where you got it?”
“Incremental steps. Reverse engineer, figure out how to get from point A to point B, have a breakthrough once a year for five years. Anyway, we aren’t going to be at war with the Pelorians forever.”
“So you have them build you a portal and then . . . what?” Izzy said. “What do you have that they want?”
“Perchlorates,” Conn said.
Stoll pointed at her. “Perchlorates only occur naturally in quantity in a few spots on Earth, none of them convenient. Mars is lousy with them.”
“What do the Pelorians need combustion rocket fuel for?” Izzy wanted to know.
“It can be used as a fuel, probably with a lot of applications we’re not aware of. But it’s also a rich source of oxygen. And it happens to be necessary in trace amounts in soil for plants to thrive”
“Earth plants.”
“I think they’re really after the oxygen,” Stoll said. “They’re eight hundred thousand organisms. There’s not that much water on the moon. It’s a humanitarian endeavor, if that would make you all feel better.”
“I still say we tell the truth,” Izzy said. “One of us is bound to slip up. Probably me.”
“It’s important,” Ryan said. The women looked at him. “It’s really important. If anyone finds out about this, Marcus is going to jail.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Companionship
August - October, 2039
Yongpo had started his own aerospace company. He thought Conn wasn’t coming home. “I still had most of the Dyna-Tech money,” he told her. “You do too, right?”
“Um . . .” She had some, but much of it had gone to Mars.
Yongpo shook his head. “No matter. I don’t want your money. I started the company, but I want you. To be my CEO.”
Conn was flattered and excited, but she was the only employee on the payroll, which made her salary feel a bit like charity.
The company was called Interstellar Aerospace, but Yongpo said that if people started calling it Conn Air, that would be fine with him. He wanted her to be the face of the company.
“I’m a Pelorian stooge,” Conn said. “Didn’t you hear?”
“The world loves you, Conn,” Yongpo said. “I wish you would realize that.”
Daniels’ funeral was right there in northern California, which he had called home as much as he had anywhere. It was a media circus, which contributed to Conn’s grim mood during what should have been a celebration of an accomplished life.
The event safely over, Conn’s thoughts were free to return to Daniels in a way that felt more private. She had been on the moon with him, twice, and then on Mars. They’d dated for a while. She’d found out he had tried to kill her. It was natural that she should have mixed feelings about the man. No matter what he was or what he had done, he was a part of her life, which had another hole in it now.
Usually, thinking about Daniels made her think about Grant. She wasn't angry with Grant anymore. She realized that anger had been masking the pain of losing him. It was easier to be mad than to grieve. Time had helped, and she now knew th
at she’d lost someone who had meant more than she'd realized at the time. Losing Peo had been devastating, but she’d just returned from the moon, and first contact with an alien race, and everyone had wanted her time and attention. She’d been forced to hide her emotions. So she dealt with losing Grant the same way.
If she had loved him, and it sure felt like she did while rescuing him from Tethys, what did that teach her about love? To pick somebody who didn’t have such a dangerous job? Don’t knock yourself out, it will all mean nothing in the end?
Tell the people you love how you feel?
Grant would be a part of her for the rest of her life. But he wasn’t a vital organ, any more than Peo was. He had colored her life, not drawn it. That she did herself. Both Grant and Peo would have wanted her to keep going—learning. Growing. Softening, when she needed to.
She called her sister Cora. Cora sounded surprised to hear from her. They talked for half an hour, and then Conn told Cora she loved her.
# # #
In September, Ryan got a job with Dyna-Tech. Down the road from Conn in Sunnyvale, to start, though he hoped to move to Houston before long and train as one of the company’s bench astronauts. They were always sending somebody to work at Gasoline Alley. They hadn’t spoken except briefly a few times since they’d made the rounds together on the world’s most interminable media tour.
Would Yongpo’s company have a place for someone like Ryan? Astronaut candidates didn’t normally ask you to look at their experience instead of their schooling and training, but Ryan had shown the Right Stuff in the run-up to Mars, at least. She didn’t know about a job, but if he needed a reference, it was enough to merit him a good one.
Conn really wanted Izzy De Maria involved in Conn Air. She talked to Izzy, who was in Houston, regularly. They always found something to talk about. Conn had had a hard time getting close to other women after Peo’s death. It felt good to have a real friend again. Among the things they’d talked about was Izzy becoming involved in Conn Air, and Izzy was noncommittal. She liked Dyna-Tech, she’d sure earned a lot of clout there, and she was reluctant to move from Houston. But she loved and was supportive of the idea of Conn running an aerospace company. Conn felt like if they could get off the ground, Izzy would be amenable to a change.
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