Armageddons
Page 31
I remembered how much I'd always wanted to go there, almost willing to abandon Lisa just so I could see diaphanous geysers against a deep blue world, out on the edge of the infinite.
Christie seemed somehow hollow, as if she were speaking from the depths of a dream. "They send us home to the Moon. Help us to survive with trade and . . . I . . ." She stopped.
What are you thinking about, Christie? That you might see the atmospheres of the gas giants after all? Is that it?
She said, "We could never mine tritium from the atmosphere of Jupiter, where it's free for the taking. Not in that radiation environment. Not anytime soon."
Tritium. Out of the depths of the past, I suddenly remember the Daedalus designs, so long forgotten.
She said, "Even out here at Saturn, there's a deep gravity well to contend with. And the collision danger from equatorial ringplane debris spiraling in. Neptune . . ."
Low-density gas giant with all the tritium we might want. And a big icemoon for the Titanians to . . .
A myriad of bright sparks suddenly emerged from the Earth, moving not toward another planet, but receding into the background sky, sky whose stars grew bright again, while the fleet of sparks grew smaller and smaller, until it merged with an unremarkable pattern of stars.
Christie muttered, "Something in Pavo, I think. I was never very good with the lesser constellations."
Delta Pavonis?
Is there a planet there? A planet just like the one we lost?
I said, "You think their technology's that good?"
She looked up at me, still nothing more than big eyes looking out through scratched, foggy plastic. "Maybe not. Not out here in the ice and cold. But put together with ours . . ."
Maybe so.
I said, "I guess the decision wasn't ours to make after all."
I awoke in the middle of the night, opening my eyes on darkness defiled by blue light from the instrument panels, perched on the edge of the bunk, curled inward, shadow of my head, shadow of tousled hair cast on the habitat wall. Christie was bunched into the space between my body and the wall, curled in on herself, the two of us damp and soft against one another, sharing some soft old blanket.
Somewhere outside, a new day is dawning.
Some time during that day we'll have to make our decision, get in the half-track, go on back to base and . . .
What will happen?
Oh, nonsense. The fantasy we've just been through was no better than one more iteration of White Man's Burden.
The decision's been made. Not by us.
All we have to do is carry out our part, speak our lines according to the script.
Lights. Camera. Action.
Fade to black.
If I held still, paid attention, I could feel Christie's back against my chest, moving slowly in and out as she breathed, pausing briefly before reversing direction. Asleep, I guess. I tried hard to remember what Lisa'd felt like sleeping against me.
Faded and gone, like just about everything else.
I listened for the soft sound of breath coming and going through what I imagined would be an open mouth, hollow breathing like the ghost of a snore, but the sounds of Titan coming through the habitat wall blotted it out. Sighing wind close by. A large wind farther away, moaning in the hills. Tidal creak of the deep crustal ice coming to us through the floor.
Christie seemed to sigh in her sleep, pressing back against me ever so slightly, like something from a dream.
I remembered the lights merging with the stars and found myself dreaming of a new world, of standing on a hillside under a crimson sunset, alien sun in the sky, sun with prominences and corona plain against the sky, something from a remembered astronomical illustration. Something from a children's book.
As in all children's books, there's a woman under my arm, standing close against me, standing close.
Below us, below the hillside, was a rim of dark forest, trees like feathery palms swaying in a tropical breeze, beyond it, a golden sea, stretching out flat to the end of the world.
Us?
Or just a dream?
Christie stirred suddenly, turned half toward me, nuzzling her head against my shoulder, and murmured, "Maybe things will . . . work out after all."
After all that.
It was a moment before I realized what she meant. Another moment before I felt the burden lift out of my heart, ghosts hurrying away to their graves, one more golden tomorrow awakening from a dream.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
FERMI AND FROST
A DESPERATE CALCULUS
EVOLUTION
A MESSAGE TO THE KING OF BROBDINGNAG
". . . THE WORLD, AS WE KNOW'T"
THE PEACEMAKER
THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION
A PAIL OF AIR
THE GREAT NEBRASKA SEA
INCONSTANT MOON
THE LAST SUNSET
DOWN IN THE DARK