Voyagers I (11 page)

A storm was coming.

Stoner had lived in New England long enough to know the warnings. The eleven o’clock news on television—two bland men so alike they might have been clones, in their gold blazers, teamed with a carefully coiffed Hispanic woman who traded inane small talk with them—had given a weather forecast of “clear and colder, with an overnight low around zero, winds from the west light and variable.”

But now, just past midnight, the wind was moaning and roaring outside the New Hampshire house. A look through the dining room windows showed clouds scudding across the face of the Moon. Trees were swaying and clacking their frozen branches together. The house began to creak like an old wooden ship laboring through heavy seas.

Cavendish, who now shared the house with Stoner, shivered as he stared out the window. “My god, to think that the Puritans faced this kind of weather. They must have been totally unprepared for it.”

Stoner laughed to himself. This is the winter that Big Mac was going to save us from. The winter we were going to spend in Puerto Rico.

As he sat at the dining room table, surrounded by Big Eye photographs of Jupiter and computer printouts, Stoner studied the Englishman. Cavendish was smoking a pipe. He wore a sweater beneath his tweed jacket. He turned back from the window and peered from beneath his bushy brows at the photos strewn across the table.

Tapping at the pinpoint of light at the center of one photo, he asked, “You’re really quite certain that this thing is from beyond the solar system?”

Stoner said, “Yes.”

“Mathematically certain?”

“Check the numbers yourself. It’s a tourist, a visitor, from outside this solar system.”

“H’mm.” Cavendish puffed a cloud of smoke ceilingward. “And the radio pulses have stopped.”

Nodding, “It’s been nearly a week now. Nothing.”

“Just abruptly…turned off, eh?”

“That’s what Jeff Thompson told me. And now the spacecraft is spiraling out from Jupiter, moving away from the planet.”

“Moving away? Really?”

“That’s what the numbers from the computer show. It’s taken a look at Jupiter, and now it’s going away. Maybe it’s heading back home.”

Cavendish said nothing for a few moments. The pipe smoke smelled pleasant to Stoner, comforting.

“Nothing close enough to us to be a reasonable home for the beast, is there?” the Englishman asked.

Stoner shrugged. “Alpha Centauri’s more than four light-years away, but there’s no evidence of planets there.”

“Quite. Nearest star with planets is Sixty-one Cygni, isn’t it?”

“Barnard’s Star,” Stoner corrected, “if you accept Van de Kamp’s work. Not quite six light-years out.”

“Really?” Cavendish puffed reflectively for a few moments, clouds of smoke rising slowly to the low, sagging ceiling of the dining room.

Stoner pulled his chair over to the computer terminal, perched on the far end of the dining room table. His fingers played over the keyboard briefly.

“Where’s the blasted thing heading?”

“That’s what we’d all like to know. The computer’s chewing on it now. Seems to be aiming out of the solar system entirely. If we extend its present velocity vector, it’ll climb way up above the ecliptic and head back out into deep space.”

“You think it’s going back home, do you?”

“Or off to another solar system.”

“But out of
our
solar system entirely,” Cavendish said.

“Right.”

“Without visiting us.”

Stoner looked up from the keyboard. “We’re not that important to it, I guess. It’s an alien craft. It entered our solar system, went to the biggest planet it could find, sniffed around, and now it’s leaving. Maybe it flew by Saturn before we discovered its presence, I don’t know. But whoever sent it probably came from a giant planet, like Jupiter or Saturn, I would guess. They probably can’t imagine life existing on a small, hot world like Earth.”

“Rather a blow to one’s ego, isn’t it?” Cavendish murmured.

“What hurts most is that it won’t come close enough for us to study in detail.”

“Yes. Pity.”

With a sigh that he hadn’t realized he had in him, Stoner nodded. “No more radio pulses, and our alien visitor is leaving us. Looks like we won’t need Kwajalein after all.”

“Puzzling.”

“Damned frustrating.”

Cavendish paced along the dining room table. “Do you always work this late?”

Leaning back in his chair, Stoner answered, “I was hoping the computer could give us an accurate projection of the alien’s track tonight, so we could get some kind of fix on where it’s heading. But there must be a glitch in the system somewhere. Nothing’s coming through.”

“Perhaps the machine’s gone to sleep?” Cavendish said it with a vague smile.

“It never sleeps.”

“Neither do you, apparently.”

“You’re up kind of late yourself, Professor.”

Cavendish’s smile crumpled. “Yes, quite. You see, sleep is something of a bad show with me. I dream, you know.”

Stoner turned in the heavy dining room chair to follow the old man’s pacing.

But Cavendish changed the subject. “So the thing is actually heading out of the solar system.” He pointed at the silent computer with the stem of his pipe.

“Looks that way.”

“Good. Get rid of it. Godawful nuisance. Something more for the East and West to fight over. Be a blessing if the damned thing would just go away.”

Stoner felt surprised. “But we’ll never find out where it’s from, who sent it, what it’s all about.”

Cavendish shrugged his frail shoulders. “We already know the important part of it, don’t we? We are not alone. It really doesn’t matter who made it or where it’s from or even why it was sent here. The important fact is that we know now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there are other intelligences out there, among the stars. We are not alone in the universe.”

“
We
know it,” Stoner grumbled, “but the rest of the world doesn’t.”

“Oh, everyone will, in time. Don’t be so impatient. The whole world will find out soon enough.”

“Not if Tuttle and Big Mac have their way.”

“They won’t,” Cavendish assured him. “Not for long, at any rate. The news will be out sooner or later.”

Stoner sat back and waited for the old man to say more. But Cavendish merely walked to the window and stood staring out at the tempestuous night, puffing clouds of aromatic blue smoke from his pipe. The wind shrieked out there, and from high above came the trembling whine of a distant jetliner.

With a glance at the strangely quiet computer terminal, Stoner got up and headed for the telephone, in the living room.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he told Cavendish. “I’m going to call the computer center and find out what the hell’s going on with this machine.”

“Good,” said Cavendish. “In the meanwhile, I think I’ll pour myself a brandy. Good night for it.”

“Fine. Make one for me, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly,” Cavendish said.

Jo sat in the little secretary’s chair at the main input console of the computer. The glareless fluorescent light panels up in the ceiling gave the huge room a sense of timelessness. There were no windows, no way to tell if it was day or night.

Like a Las Vegas gambling casino, Jo told herself. They want your whole attention devoted to the machines, not to any distractions like sunshine or rain.

The clock on the far wall showed it was well past twelve. Jo knew it was midnight, but a nagging part of her mind warned her that she just might have it all wrong, and it could just as easily be bright noon outside the solid walls of the computer complex.

“Hey, I’m going out for coffee.”

Startled, she looked up to see the other graduate student who was working the graveyard shift this week.

“You want any?” He grinned down at her. Pleasant face, young, unlined. He was trying to grow a beard but only a few wisps of blondish hair marred his jawline.

“No, thanks. I brought a lunch.” She glanced at the big shoulder bag resting on the floor near her chair.

“Okay. I’ll be back in ten—fifteen minutes. Don’t open the door for anybody; I’ve got my key.” He dangled the key from its ring. “Too many freaks out there this time of night to take any chances.”

“I’ll be all right,” Jo said.

“Okay.”

He pranced off, whistling off-key to himself.

Once he closed the heavy steel door behind him, Jo rose to her feet, stretched her cramped legs and arms and started some deep knee bends. The only sounds in the room were the sixty-cycle hum of the lights, the deeper rumble of the computer’s main core and her own rhythmic breathing.

The computer was working on something, a problem that was soaking up a large part of its capacity. It had been humming and blinking to itself without a single line of printout ever since Jo had shown up for her shift, nearly an hour ago.

Maybe it’s working on a problem for Keith, she thought as she bent down to sit on her heels. The corners of her lips tugged down. More than two weeks now and he hasn’t called, hasn’t even sent a message through Dr. Thompson or any of the other people who go up to the house.

He just doesn’t care, Jo realized. He doesn’t give a damn about me. I was just a convenient lay for him.

The phone rang.

Grunting, she got to her feet and went over to the handset built into the console, next to one of its keyboards.

“Computer center,” she said into the phone.

“This is Dr. Stoner,” Keith’s voice replied. He sounded slightly annoyed. “Who am I speaking to?”

“Keith…” She tried to mask the sudden breathlessness of her voice, tried to tell herself it was from the exertion of the exercises.

“Jo? Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re working at the computer center now?”

She nodded, then realized how foolish it was. “Yes. That’s what they’ve got me doing now. I’m on the swing shift this week.”

“How are you?”

“I’m…” she hesitated, put her thoughts in order. “I’m all right, Keith. And you?”

“About the same.” His voice became guarded, too. “Not much we can say over the phone, is there?”

“No. I suppose the security regulations…”

“Yeah, I know.”

Suddenly there was nothing she could say.

After a moment’s silence, he asked, “How’s Big Mac treating you?”

A flash of electricity went through her. Does he know? she wondered.

“I heard from Jeff Thompson that he’s written a letter to NASA for you.”

She could feel the cold anger in his words. Just as coldly, she replied, “That’s right, Keith. He has.”

“Good for you,” he said acidly. “You’re a girl who knows what she wants. I hope you get it.”

You ignorant fool! she wanted to scream. You think I’m doing this for myself?

But she answered aloud, “I’m all right, Keith.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

“Why did you call?” she asked woodenly.

She heard him pull in a deep breath before he replied, “I punched in a trajectory problem a couple of hours ago and my terminal’s been dead silent ever since. What’s going on down there? The problem shouldn’t take that long for the computer to work out.”

“The machine’s been running ever since I came on shift,” she said. “Some of those special trajectory problems of yours have built-in subroutines that take a lot of time.”

“Well, check it out for me, will you?”

“Certainly,” she said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

She waited for him to answer, to say something to her, anything. Even anger would mean that he cared.

Instead, he merely mouthed, “Thanks.”

He doesn’t care, she realized. He never cared. Not for an instant. He’s more worried about his goddamned computer program than about me.

“You’re quite welcome,” Jo said.

And hung up.

Stoner heard her voice, icy, as remote as the farthest star: “You’re quite welcome.”

The phone clicked dead.

The little bitch, he thought to himself. She’ll fuck anybody who can help her get what she wants. Well, I hope she’s enjoying herself with Big Mac.

He slammed the phone down, feeling the fury seething inside him, knowing that he was raging not at Jo, not even at McDermott, but at himself.

You’re quite a man, Stoner, he told himself. You sit here and let them hold you prisoner and tell yourself that your work is more important than personal ties and what you really want to do is kick the fucking door down and go out and grab her and carry her off to your cave.

“Just listen to that wind!”

Stoner jerked away from the phone to see Cavendish standing in the living room doorway, a brandy snifter in each hand.

With a deep, shuddering breath, he brought his raging emotions under control, forced his pounding heart to slow down, smothered the fury he felt burning inside him under a blanket of cold numbness.

“Are you all right?” Cavendish asked, crossing the big room toward him.

Stoner nodded, not trusting himself yet to speak. He accepted the snifter from Cavendish’s outstretched hand.

The old man lifted his glass and smiled wanly. “Cheers,” he offered.

“Cheers,” Stoner said. He sipped at the cognac. It slid down his throat like liquid fire.

Cavendish pulled the rocker up by the crackling fire and sat down with a weary sigh. “Quite a night out there,” he said. “Quite a night. You can hear the wind howling in the chimney.”

Going over to the easy chair that faced the old man, Stoner asked, “Why can’t you sleep?”

“H’mm? What?”

“You said you don’t sleep well.” It was a safe subject. Stoner could feel the anger damping down inside him, fading away to the hidden corner where it could remain without anyone knowing it was there.

“Bad dreams,” Cavendish answered, staring into the bright flames. “I was a prisoner of the Imperial Japanese Army for four years—just about the length of time it takes a photon to travel from Alpha Centauri to Earth.”

“Must have been rough,” Stoner said.

“Oh, that was only the beginning.” A heavy gust of wind rattled branches against the roof and Cavendish glanced up, his eyes haunted. “The Japanese moved us to Manchuria, you see, just in time to allow the Russians to capture us when they finally stepped into the Pacific war.”