Simone turned her back on the Sun. Far beyond the planets of the solar system and the Jupiter Belt lay the Oort Cloud, extending a third of the way to the nearest star. Would that be far enough? Or would another millennium see humans at work there also?
No matter. Beyond the Oort Cloud shone the endless, quiet stars. Go far enough, with time enough, and safety was guaranteed.
She stopped stargazing and headed toward the nearest tunnel. Twenty minutes more, and the Diabelli drives, feeble but steady, would fire. Helene would begin to spiral slowly outward, away from Sol. Before that happened, Simone must be safe in the deep tunnels, along with the only others of her kind.
She took a last look around her and started down. Were they still human? She did not know. Certainly, she was not one of those humans, for whom a century was an unimaginably long time—long enough for memories to fade, for interest in an investigation to dissipate, for sometime reality to become the discredited stuff of legends. Every human now alive would be dust. But two hundred years was nothing for beings who aspired to outlive the Sun itself.
Simone reached the white membrane barrier and passed on through. The solar system would wait. When it was ready for them, and only then, the Ganymede Club would return.
THE END
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The Ganymede Club Page 32
