2084 The End of Days (34 page)

Jorge smiled weakly and lapsed into unconsciousness. Jack stood for a moment with a great lump in his throat. A great wave of fear and anxiety swept over him. He turned and floated slowly over to Xi Xhu who was furiously beckoning Jack to get a move on.

“C’mon, Jack, let’s go. We can’t waste any more time.”

“Poor guy over there – he ain’t got long to go, Xi.”

“Yeah, the doc told me. You going to leave him here on the Ell-Eye-Eye?”

Jack stood silent for a moment, head slightly bowed in thought.

“Jack?”

“Ah’m not goin’ with you Xi. Ah’m takin’ Jorge back –“

“Back? Back where, Jack? There is no back!”

“Back to Earth, Xi, that’s where. Ah’ve just realised that Jorge an’ me, we want the same thing in a way. He wants to go back to Havana an’ ah want to go back to ma boys an’ – an’ ma Peggy Sue.”

“Jack, you’re talking crazy talk. There is no Earth. You don’t even have enough oxygen or fuel to get you there and back safely to Mars.”

“Ah know that Xi. But me an’ poor Jorge over there – we are just gonna point ourselves at that gas cloud back there an’ we’ll just take what we find. That’s the way it’s gotta be, Xi.”

“But – Jack -?”

“Time for you to get your butt off ma ship, ole buddy. You’ve got the future of mankind to think of. You need to get your passengers back to Mars or you’ve wasted your time comin’ out to save them. So go on – get the hell outta here!”

The two old friends just stared into each other’s moistening eyes and then they hugged each other tightly for the last time. Jack unzipped his breast pocket and took something out. Jack handed Xi Xhu the Medal of Honor which had been awarded to Commander Bethan Jones saying that he had promised her father it would make it to Mars. Xi Xhu Pan took the medal and then he passed on through the air lock, which Jack engaged in the locked position. A moment later he felt his Oh LII rock slightly as the little space tender pushed gently away towards the Oh Two for the last time. He walked back over to Jorge on the hospital bed. Poor Jorge was dead. Jack wept silently over the young dead Cuban. He wept for the eight billion humans wiped out in an instant by what in cosmic terms was an insignificant mass of rock and ice - Schenkler HMM2. He pulled himself together and went back into the cockpit and strapped himself into his pilot’s seat. He squinted a look out of the porthole. Jack watched the Oh Two slowly boost up its fusion drive and begin to pull away rapidly from his own battered ship. He could tell from his long experience as an astronaut the point at which Xi Xhu had deemed to be safely away from the Oh LII. Jack could see the fusion drive power up to the maximum. The Oh Two zoomed away from him towards Mars at a speed in excess of around twelve thousand miles per hour. He saluted and wished them bon voyage. Jack stared at the glow of the engines for quite some time
until the Oh Two disappeared into the black void of space.

Epilogue

J
ack had lost track of time, although he was aware that a few days had certainly passed by. After the Oh Two had disappeared out of sight he had managed to use the retro rockets and turn the Oh LII on a bearing for what was once his beloved Planet Earth. There was just about enough rocket fuel left in the tanks to boost up to a fraction under four thousand miles per hour. He burned the remaining rocket fuel within a few hours and for days the ship had just been freefalling through space on a trajectory towards the Earth gas cloud, but Jack was more hopeful than expectant that the ship would remain on the correct course. Anyway, he thought, he would not be around to see it. The oxygen indicator was now sitting virtually on the empty mark and he knew that it would not be long before he and Jorge would be making the same final journey. His breathing was getting shallower and he was gulping hard to find good breathable air. His thoughts were becoming wilder and more frantic as he was being slowly starved of the life giving oxygen.

“Well, Mother Earth, ah wonder what you look like now? Just a swirling mass of gas an’ molten debris. Yeah, but to Jorge an’ me you’re still home.”

Jack was never actually going to see the gas cloud. There were no telescopes or satellites left to transmit any images from the destroyed E2MSN within what had been the blast zone perimeter. However, he began to imagine wild shapes in his mind as if he was looking through a set of psychologist’s Rorshach inkblot test cards. His imaginings kept drawing him back to an old familiar shape and which he kept trying to shake out of his befuddled brain. Try as he might the shape became more and more vivid and fixed until he felt that he had become reconciled to this shape. In his mind’s eye he was certain that this was
indeed
the shape of the gas cloud.

“Mighta known, Earth, that you would be the man with the gun.”

All of a sudden Jack felt a calmness within himself. He no longer feared the old vision from his childhood. In fact, he embraced it almost joyfully. Jack laughed a little too high-pitched, a little bit too crazily. He knew it was not long now. He could see Milner and Jack Junior running towards him through his lush ripening wheat field back on the Crossan ranch in Lexington, Virginia. The boys were waving and laughing and beckoning for Jack to join them. Peggy Sue was running towards him too. She was young again, like when they first met, so beautiful and so full of love for him. Peggy Sue was calling to Jack and he strained hard to hear her last lovely words. He stretched out his arms to embrace the one true love of his life. Peggy Sue called out.

“We’ll meet again in the sweet bye and bye!”

The Oh LII glided silently towards the newly formed gas cloud within the inner solar system and beyond the cloud shone the beautiful bright shining Sun.