Dykstra enjoyed his visits to Sammi's lab. The bulk of his own life had been spent in the areas of physics and high technology, and in those fields it was difficult to find anyone who could teach him something really new. More than once he'd attended seminars by bright, up-and-coming physicists where they'd been trying to describe their latest theoretical approach to some old problem, with all the confident self assurance of youth, only to find that the bright young person had merely rediscovered an idea that Dykstra had heard before, when some other bright young scientist had arrived at the same ideamaybe forty years before.
But outside his own fields he could routinely come into contact with other new stars with genuinely fresh ideas, or at least with ideas that were fresh to him.
Sammi was one of those stars working in the new world of genano engineering. Her name was not known outside her field, not yet anyway. But Dykstra was certain that she'd be heard from, that given time she would inevitably be recognized as one of the top practitioners in the field. He'd seen her type before.
No, not exactly her type, he corrected his thought as he entered the lab, cane gently tapping on the floor. There was something else about Sammi that made her special, something ineffable, but possibly sublime. He didn't know what it was though. Certainly, she had the same shininess of spirit that his dearest friend Jenny had also possessed, and with Sammi he felt that same kinship of similar souls. But there was more, too.
Perhaps much more.
The lab was the same as always, cluttered with high tech nano-manipulating equipment, and every device decorated with fingerprints and odd, sticky residues from spills of those sort of biogoops the biology types dealt with. Dykstra tried to make it down to the lab every few days, particularly since Sammi had a habit of burying herself there.
In the back alcove where Sammi kept her workstation, Dykstra noticed a flickering light coming out of the room's dimness. That would be her computer screen. He walked over and saw the recording of Sammi's experiment with the Phinon femur being played. The scientist herself he found with her face flat on the desk, sound asleep.
Her golden hair lay scattered over the desktop, entangled with a stylus, offering a nesting place to the mouse. Her lips were parted slightly, and even though she was sleeping, Dykstra could see the laugh lines that her smile had long ago engraved upon her face. But there were other lines, recent acquisitions, around her eyes. Lines born of stress and overwork. And grief.
He almost turned around to leave. She needed sleep more than she needed to make conversation with him. He lifted his cane, would walk without it out of the lab. In so doing he momentarily lost his balance, reached out a hand to the table to steady himself, and knocked over a small specimen rack.
"Huh? What?"
"Good morning, Sunshine. Although actually it's evening. Sorry I woke you," Dykstra said.
"Oh, man," Sammi said. "I can't believe I fell asleep. I have so much I need to do yet." She stretched, reaching high above her head and arching her back, which made obvious feminine features which even Dykstra was not too old to notice. "And with big brother watching, too." She gestured toward one of the ubiquitous security monitors. "I've got to get back to work."
"What's that you have playing on the screen?" Dykstra asked.
"That," she said, "is the video record of my latest, circa last week, remarkable success. I hope. Actually, I'm running into some problems I can't see my way around." She explained to him the details of the experiment with the femur, pointing out that she was pleased with the speed at which the bone had disintegrated. "But I can't seem to get the bugs to reproduce properly," she added.
"What characterizes the problem?" Dykstra asked.
"Where do I begin?" she said. "My original bugs were supposed to live in the Martian soil. I've gotten this particular strain of bacteria to live in Phinon tissue, so the viruses can use them to reproduce. Given time and a supply of live Phinons I could probably tailor a virus that will reproduce within Phinon cells, but why not just wish for the Moon?"
"I gather the problem isn't with the virus side of the symbiont?"
"Yes and no," Sammi replied. "I can get ideal reproduction rates of the viruses, but I can't get them to duplicate their tools properly. In a proper setup, the bacteria should live in the Phinon, and the viruses should reproduce in the bacteria, but not just themselvestheir tools also. But they won't. To do the femur experiment I supplied them with premanufactured nanotools. The results were gratifying. But they'll have to make their own when they're out there infecting aliens. And I can't see how to get them to do it right now."
Dykstra laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "What's getting in your way?" he asked.
"I don't know. Stress. Overwork. But mostly it's just that I don't have a live alien to work with. I keep guessing and counterguessing the parameters of the environment the genanites will have to thrive in, and then I rapidly get overwhelmed by the possibilities. The other biologists have their own problems to work on, and I'm still the only genano engineer here." She mock-collapsed back onto the desk. "What am I going to do, Chris?"
He looked at her, and deadpan, said, "I would recommend a party."
"What?"
"Sunshine, you've been hitting it way too hard. It's time you got a break from this. I'm having a small get-together in my suite tomorrow night. Lieutenant Nachtegall will be there, as will Drs. Vander Kam and Arie Hague"
Sammi shook her head, protesting. "I'm just too busy."
"You're spinning your wheels."
She'd been staring at the screen again, then she turned to him and there were tears in her eyes. "I'm . . . I'm not ready yet, Chris. I'm just not ready."
"I'm sorry, Sammi," Dykstra said. "But I really have to ask you to force yourself. I need you to come. We have some things to discuss. Some very important things. But I don't wish to discuss them now."
"So you need me?" She didn't really believe it.
"And I also wanted to say good-bye."
"You're leaving?!" Her eyes betrayed the look of a child about to be abandoned.
"For a while, Sammi. Only for a while. I'm going back to Earth. Probably for only several months, if all goes well. Rick and Arie will be going with me. The lieutenant will have to spend some time with us, too, but he'll be able to travel back and forth."
With exaggerated determination, she shut off the replay, turned off her workstation, and got out of her chair. With resignation she said, "I need to get some sleep. Who am I trying to kid, anyway? I'm not getting anything done here."
"A wise decision, Sunshine."
"When are you leaving for Earth?"
"The day after tomorrow. Early."
"I'll be at the party," she said.
Whenever Colonel Knoedler needed to think real hard, he found it necessary to put himself in the proper mood, and this was most easily accomplished by reading the right book. Since most of the things his position demanded he think about involved strategy and tactics, the two books he most often turned to were Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War, a classic from the middle of the last century, and Potapov's Kasparov vs. the Computers: The Complete Games.
At the moment he was seated in his favorite reading chair, a leather recliner, sturdy, functional, in a style that would never be flashy but would never go out of fashion either. There was Tchaikovsky in the air. The worn, red covers of the Kahn book were between his fingers, but his eyes were not focused on the pages. The book had already done its workthe colonel was thinking. Hard.
The Phinon attack in the Oort cloud had come over two years ago, but the OEV 1 had actually gone out to them. Now in only the last few months the Phinons had come closer to home and struck three times: Slingshot, Glacierville, and a few days ago, Deepguard.
Deepguard. That one was extra troubling. How had the Phinons even found that base? It was a passive viewing and listening post from which the entire Solar System could be spied upon, and not an easy thing to detect. He'd seen a photo of the girl they'd rescued from there. Nikki Le. Very pretty oriental lady. Knoedler had always liked oriental women. She was on her way to Luna right now.
Too bad he'd always had so little time for women.
His train of thought was in danger of derailing into images of himself, Nikki, and white picket fences when he wrenched it back to the situation at hand.
Dykstra had dropped his bombshell today to the Joint Staff. He'd told them he knew how to build a reactionless sublight drive that would work inside the Hague Limit, and that the Phinons had never invented it themselves.
Oh really now?
Knoedler put down the Kahn book and picked up the chess one.
The colonel's rooms at the High Command were efficiently furnished; several chairs, a couch, bookshelves, a table at which to eat or work, the usual computer workstation. But there were few pictures and no plants, and not even a single one of the numerous plaques and awards he'd received in his career adorned his walls. The only genuine decorations he had were his chess sets. Three out of his collection of more than a hundred were on display: one of gold and silver on a shelf; one of precious stones on a side table; one of pewter spaceship pieces on a gaming table, the only one that he'd actually play games with. Dykstra had had a collection of chess sets, until the Belt blew up his house.
The Phinons had him in one hell of a chess match right now. The raids happening on the trans-Hague Limit assets were little pawn thrusts. The ships congregating out in deep space, leaving hyperspace but not reenteringthat had to be where the real strategy was shaping up.
And Dykstra's going the Phinons one better? Was the old genius really that good, or were the Phinons employing a gambit?
It had taken Dykstra only two months to go from thinking FTL travel was impossible to duplicating the Phinon drive. Less than two months after that he'd come up with tremendous improvements.
Had the Phinons maybe wanted it to be this easy?
Although he'd cracked open the chess book, Knoedler had yet to read a line from it. The Tchaikovsky had ceased playing.
What kind of a chess game is this? They can see my pieces, but theirs are invisible. They can see my possible moves, but theirs I can't consider until after they've made them.
Colonel Knoedler was a marvelous chess player. Against weaker opponents, he'd readily exchange pieces, simplifying things until he could put together an elegant checkmate. The few times he played someone of equal caliber, or more likely, had gotten careless and fallen into a perilous situation, he'd play for complications, trusting that his wit and skill would ultimately carry him through if he just had time enough to pick away at his competition.
In this situation, I most definitely need to play for complications.
Dykstra had already argued to the staff that once the first FTL ship was ready, they should take it deep into the Oort cloud and gather information on the aliens. But would any information gathered be more valuable to the Patrol than the knowledge that humanity had developed its own FTL capability would be to the Phinons? And God forbid that Dykstra was right, and the Phinons did not know how to build sublight drives that worked within Hague Limits, and they captured our first ship and reverse engineered their way to that technology.
There would be another meeting with the staff tomorrow. Knoedler knew he would argue vociferously to keep the new ship close to home.
But something else was nagging him about that new drive Dykstra had invented. It could become a major piece in an earlier puzzle the colonel had been working on. But, oh, "our new buddies," the Belt, won't like this at all. Although the BDF and the System Patrol had agreed to a cease-fire while the Phinon problem was assessed, the Patrol had not revealed the existence of any of the new technology they'd already developed.
Knoedler put down the chess book finally and went to his bookshelf. He took an old Bible out and returned to his chair. He opened it to I Kings, then flipped pages backwards all the way into II Samuel before he found what he was looking for.
And then, several times, he read the story of David and Goliath.
Mare Tranquilitatis, the Sea of Tranquility, was perhaps the most appropriate place in the Solar System to put a cemetery. Here lay thousands upon thousands of men and women who'd died in space in the service of the System Patrol. Black crosses, stars of David, symbols from other faiths, and plain rectangular markers for those who'd had no religious convictions, spread out in perfect alignment all the way to the horizon no matter which way one looked from the landing field in the center of the cemetery. Among those buried here were genuine heroes of the 21st century, men and women whose names were household words, but their markers were no different from those of the lowly belowdecks cannon fodder that had met their ends in their bunks.
Which was why Sammi would have needed a map to find again the spot where Steve's marker was placed. There wasn't any body buried there in his case, of coursethere hadn't been one to return to her.
She'd thought about what Dykstra had said to her the day before, and knew he was rightshe was working much too hard, and she hadn't allowed herself a genuine catharsis since that night he'd shown up at her apartment to tell her what had really happened to Steve. So she'd taken this morning off to visit the cemetery, her only time back since she'd watched his marker being emplaced.
She was riding in a little open scooter that the cemetery provided for visitors to use among the markers. The repulsors on the scooters only allowed them to rise ten centimeters off the surface, and there was absolutely no way one could get them to kick up dust short of killing the power and letting them crash. Sammi was mildly surprised at how comfortable the scooters were even for a person in a spacesuit. And the scooter knew how to find section GL-8088.
There was almost no one out there this morning. Sammi had seen only two caretakers at the landing field and the man who'd given her the scooter. As she rode along, she'd seen only one other scooter along the way she had come, and another some ways ahead of her, so far away she could barely see the person standing next to the marker that the scooter had stopped beside.
I don't know why I came out here, Sammi suddenly thought. What do I think I'm going to find, anyway? Emotional release? I've done all my crying. Renewed conviction that working for the Patrol is the right thing to do? That would be nice. She looked over the acres and acres of markers. But I won't find that here, either.
Her scooter was getting closer and closer to the one she'd seen up ahead, and then she realized that it was grounded at Steve's marker. At first she thought maybe one of Steve's suicide orbiteer buddies had stopped to visit, but she didn't recognize the insignia on the suit.
The scooter stopped and she got off. The man noticed her, smiled at her through his faceplate, and she returned the smile.
"That smile," he said. "You're Sunshine. Steve's wife, I mean. My God, he wasn't lying about how you got that nickname."
"Yes. I'm Samantha MacTavish. I didn't get your name."
"Forgive me. I'm sorry. Been out in space too long," the man said. He was a mature-looking black man she could see from his face, but his posture revealed a man of strength and vigor. "My name is Roger Tykes. People call me `Pops.' Steve called me `Pops.' "
"I could have guessed," Sammi said. "He told me about you in his letters. He was in awe of you."
"Shucks," Pops said. "I've never done anything to match what your husband did. Hell, I'd be dead now if it wasn't for him. I figured I'd better pay my respects while I'm on Luna. I don't usually come to the inner system. Don't know when or if I'll be back."
Something doesn't seem right about Pops, Sammi thought. He was talking too much, which wasn't what she'd expected from Steve's description of the strong, taciturn, father figure that Pops had been to the men under his command. She looked at him more closely, and through the faceplate saw the streaks of tears on his cheeks that the proud commander had been unable to wipe away.
And Pops knew his secret was out. "All right, dammit. I admit itI was crying. Practically like a baby before you got here. I owed him that. There aren't that many people I've met who deserve to have tears shed over them when they're gone, but, by God, he was one of them! Those alien bastards . . . those alien bastards . . ." Then he turned away from her and shut off his mike for a few moments.
Sammi stood there silently, taking in the cross marker, the harsh shadow it cast upon the surface, and the figure of the old soldier standing straight and silent nearby, paying his respects not just to a man, but to a kind of man.
And for the first time in months, she felt her emptiness filling up with something warm. She didn't want to analyze itshe just wanted to feel it.
Finally Pops turned again to face her. "I've got to be going, ma'am. I'm very pleased to have met you." There was iron in his voice now.
"Me, too," Sammi said.
Bob met her at the door and led her in. The gravity in the room was set at half standard, just the way Dykstra liked it.
They were all there as promised. Over by the autochef, helping with the drinks, stood Dykstra and Rick Vander Kam. By himself, but savoring a hot chocolate flavored with just a splash of scotch, sat Hague. And by her left arm, close, but not too close, hovered the lieutenant.
He wasn't going to get anywhere with her, not tonight, probably not ever. She was sure of that. She did sneak a side glance at him, noting once again that he was gorgeous, with a solid body displaying the classic V from waist to shoulders, and his close-cropped curly gold hair. But the part of her heart that could love was still solidly surrounded with an ache that wouldn't go away, no matter how hard she worked, no matter how hard she tried to get on with her life.
She remembered the first time she'd come to Dykstra's apartment. Then, she'd been awed in the presence of the Genius of the Age, but only at first. His cool demeanor and friendly manner had set her at ease, and apart from his legend, he was, at core, a lovable old man.
She snapped back into the present when Dykstra came over.
"Sammi, I'm glad you came. Now our circle is complete," he said.
"But soon to be broken. Why didn't you tell me until yesterday that you're all going off and leaving me behind?" she asked.
"I'll still be around," Bob said. "Some of the time, anyway."
It wasn't much as parties go. There was an exchange of small talk, and Rick gave her a hug she didn't expect, but also didn't really mind. Even Hague joined in, though with all his usual surplus of "Oh, yeses." After ten minutes of this Dykstra had them all take a seat, and he started to tell them what this "party" was really all about.
He sat before them in his comfy chair. He held his walking stick in his right hand, almost like a scepter. But no, kingly images didn't fit Dykstra, Sammi thought. It was more like she and the others were sitting on one end of a log, and Dykstra was playing Socrates on the other.
"I'm going to tell you what the future holds," he said. "Or what it can hold. All of you are necessary to make it happen.
"Tomorrow, Dr. Hague, Dr. Vander Kam, and I are going to Earth, there to work at the Capitol Products spaceship yards. When we are finished there, we will have produced humanity's first faster-than-light spacecraft. But here's the thingour first try is going to be superior to anything the Phinons have."
"That's news to me," Rick said. "What makes you think so?"
"Two engines, yes, two, so much better, so much," Hague piped up. "Reactionless sublight effects, too. Oh yes, oh yes."
Rick just smiled. "You guys have been holding out on me."
"I only figured it out a short time ago," Dykstra said. "And I wanted to bounce the ideas off Dr. Hague, have him do his magic at calculations on the equations. What we figured out is that using two of the FTL engines, properly tuned to each other, allows a doubling in the efficiency of making the transition to hyperspace. Why this should be the case is obvious when you understand the physics. Why the Phinons never seem to have figured it out is a mystery."
Sammi asked: "Does that mean our ship will be able to travel twice as fast as theirs do?"
"No. Hyperspace doesn't work that way. It means that it will only take us half as much energy to get into hyperspace. Two engines, or more properly, two drive elements, means half the energy consumption. And before you ask, no, it is not the case that three would be even better."
"No, no. Two is best, is just right. It has to be two, yes, it has to be two, oh yes. But, oh, the reactionless effect. Oh, yes!" Hague put in.
"That's the kicker," Dykstra continued. "If you use these two elements in normal spaceinside or outside the Hague Limit, it doesn't matterjust the right way, you can get a direct conversion of mass into kinetic energy, and you get to choose your velocity vector. It's uncanny. But I haven't seen any evidence in the Phinon engine that they know anything about this effect."
At the mention of the Phinon engine, Hague gave a visible shudder. The savant was a whiz with human technology, had stored in his brain the entire contents of scores of parts and equipment catalogs, could repair and improve almost anything ever invented. As long as it was human. His revulsion for all things Phinon, the sense of innate wrongness about them, drove him into a frenzy whenever he was forced to be near any of the alien artifacts. But Dykstra had recast the alien technology in human terms, and with that Hague was perfectly content.
"So let me describe what's going to happen, maybe as soon as three months from now," Dykstra continued. "Our modified streakbomber is going to depart from Earth without even the hint of an exhaust jet, and speed on its way to the Capitol Products base outside the Hague Limit. From there, the ship and her crew will become the first from this race to vault into hyperspace. What happens after that is up to us, and by us I mean just we few in this room, and one other whom I won't name yet."
"You're making this mysterious, Chris," Bob said. "Just what is it you have in mind? What's supposed to happen is that once our ship gets outside the Hague Limit, it's to undergo a series of tests, and they'll probably take months. You don't like that, do you?"
"Not one bit," Dykstra confirmed. "By the time our ship first jumps into hyperspace, the last thing we'll need will be more tests on the craft. What we will need is information on the Phinons.
"And maybe a specimen or two. Preferably living, right Sammi?"
"So now I find out why I'm here," she said. "You want to go capture some aliens, and you don't think the Patrol is going to go about it fast enough, do you?"
"You told me earlier that you really need a living specimen to confirm the value of your work. Does it bother you that I also came to that conclusion some time ago?"
"No. It makes sense. But I wonder why the Patrol hasn't made it a priority. I mean, given that we're going to have a ship actually capable of going after the Phinons any time we want to, I'd have thought capturing specimensor hostages, whateverwould be an obvious thing to do."
Dykstra sighed. "It is, but there are other considerations. Since Major Moore was sent back to Earth, I've essentially become the head of the alien technology and studies group. But I don't carry any exceptional clout in the rooms where strategy is discussed. And there are essentially two competing views about how to deal with the Phinon threat.
"My view is that, though we know very little about the aliens themselvestheir motives, their plans, this ongoing question of their `souls'we do know enough about their technology to conclude that they are only a short distance ahead of us in some technical fields, and probably behind us in others. For instance, we've yet to find any evidence that they have nanotechnology or genano capabilities. If it is the case that they are as I've painted them, then our strategy is straightforward. We fight them ship-to-ship, bomb their bases, find out where they are and go after them, and design nasty weapons like Sammi's rust bugs."
"I thought that pretty much was the only view," Bob said. "What else are people thinking of doingcease-fire talks?"
The group laughed, except for Hague, who had wandered back to the autochef and was getting himself another drink. Dykstra said, "The Patrol doesn't have any diplomats, so that suggestion hasn't come up. But have you heard of a Colonel Knoedler, Bob?"
"Colonel Tommy? Sure. He pulled himself up through the ranks from enlisted man. They hold him out as a model for new recruits during boot camp. What's his view?"
Sammi watched the old genius as he stood up and began pacing before he answered. She got the impression that he found the opposing view not just wrong, but personally troubling as well. Nevertheless, he resumed the discussion.
"I don't want to unfairly characterize Knoedler's position," he began. "I've met the man. He does seem to merit the honor he's paid among the recruits. But his ideas are not particularly flattering to me, and the influence he wields in the strategy group is leading to delays and what I think is a foolish level of pseudo-caution that I feel could be dangerous to, well, humanity."
"As bad as that?" Rick asked, rhetorically.
"In a nutshell, the colonel thinks that we're the victims of an ingenious ruse on the part of the Phinons. He feels that this alien technology we acquired from their ship and their implements, and our subsequent mastery, has all come too easily. He thinks the Phinons wanted us to develop our own FTL technology, to the point where we become overly dependent upon it, and then perhaps they'll trot out some sort of super weapon that will, to use his words, `take us out in one blow.' "
"Oh, right!" Bob hooted in derision. "Like you'd give aircraft technology to savages just so you could shoot them down later with surface-to-air missiles. If you have that kind of technology and they don't, then why bother?"
Dykstra smiled, obviously gratified by Bob's outburst. But he said, "It's not quite as simple as that. It is possible to conjure up a scenario that would work for them. Suppose they have a weapon that, say, causes spacecraft in hyperspace to disintegrate. And suppose the technology of that weapon is not readily derived from the FTL technology. We could then assemble an armada of FTL spacecraft and send it on its way, only to have the Phinons destroy it easily. Not only would we lose the fleet, but all of that time and effort and money that went into creating it."
"Do you think that's likely, Chris?" Samantha asked.
"No. For one thing, I wouldn't trust us not to figure out the secret of the other weapon and develop a counter. And there are other considerations . . ." he said, but he trailed off, and seemed to be thinking about something.
"I have a dispute with the idea that we acquired the technology too easily," Rick piped up. "He's selling you short, Chris. I was working on the Phinon stuff before we called you in. We were hopelessly befuddled. I know we wouldn't have figured out the mass conversion trick. And as for the theory of FTL travel . . . Well, I've read your reports, and I don't think I'll ever understand them. I know you taught Arie how to do the math, but I don't think he really understands the physical principles involved. And besides you two I doubt if there's anyone else in the whole Solar System who could begin to understand hyperphysics."
"Thank you, Rick," Dykstra said.
"I'm not saying it just to be nice. For Knoedler to be right, it would require the Phinons to know that we had a James Christian Dykstra on the scene to figure things out for us. I don't see how that's possible."
"There's something else though, isn't there, Chris?" Samantha asked. "You think you've figured out something about the Phinons that no one else has, and that's why you're willing to have uswhat? Violate orders and steal the first FTL spaceship to do things your way."
They all looked at Dykstra then, even Hague, and waited.
"Yes," he said. "I have been pondering their technology, burying myself in it. I've tried to think like they think, tried to reconstruct the pathways by which they arrived at their level of physical understanding, because presumably they didn't have the technology fall into their laps like we did. I've marveled at their astuteness in some instances, and been dumbfounded at their blindness in others.
"I don't know for certain, but I'm fairly sure that I do know what they are. But I can't very well walk into the strategy room and explain to the generals that the Phinons have no souls and so Knoedler's concerns are simply anthropomorphic paranoia."
"No, I guess not," Sammi said ironically. "But are you going to explain it to us?"
"In time I will," Dykstra said. "But you're right, Sammi. I'm asking all of you to commit what will be called treason by some if things turn out badly. It's not by convincing you of the logic of my view about the Phinons that's going to get you to agree to do this. After all, I might be wrong. It's . . ." he stammered, unsure of what to say next.
This is hard for him, Sammi thought. He's used to explaining everything in full. And he's too kind to say we won't understand his explanation. He doesn't know how to ask us if we'll just do it out of faith. She made it easy on him. "I'm with you, Chris. Just tell me what you want me to do. You told me about Steve even when it could have gotten you sent back to Earth in disgrace. I owe you."
"I was there when you faced down the major," Rick said. "I've seen what you can do. I'm in."
"Me, too," Bob said. "I don't think I owe you anything, and I'm not bright enough to appreciate your intelligence. But you're a rarity in another way, Chris. You're a genuinely good man. I've met very few."
"Thank you, my friends," Dykstra said. "But there is one voice we have yet to hear from. Dr. Hague?"
Hague was still at the autochef. He was lying on his back on the counter, surrounded by a dozen glasses of hot chocolate, which ran the range of color from a nearly black, high concentration chocolate, to an almost white, fifty-fifty marshmallow/chocolate mix. He had the cover off the guts of the machine and was tinkering with it. The others had noticed what he was doing earlier, but they'd long ago learned to let Hague be Hague.
At Dykstra's call he stopped his work momentarily, looked at them all, and without a redundancy of phrase or a surplus yes, said, "You are my friends. I'm in, too." In that instant Sammi thought he looked solemn, thought she caught a glimpse of the Arie Hague that could have been had he not been caged by the cross-circuitry of autism. Then his ready smile returned and he gleefully turned back to the autochef.
Sammi was the last to leave. Dykstra had told her he had a few additional things to discuss.
"Once the others leave in the ship, Dr. Hague and I will return to the Moon. But while we're gone, there's something I'd like you to see if you can work on. We'll probably need a way to keep a Phinon unconscious if we're to bring any back alive."
"That shouldn't be a problem, Chris. Have you been keeping up with the biological work?" He shook his head no. "Well, they've figured out where the brain is. It's distributed throughout the body. Little knots of brain tissue are locked away inside cavities in the bones, and they're all tied together by specialized nerve cells. But apart from the odd geometry, the brain material itself isn't much different from terrestrial types."
"I see. So you think we may already have a serviceable knockout drop?"
"Promenidepromaine. PMDP. The stuff will put out anything from an elephant to a jellyfish. My guess is it will work on Phinons, too, but I'm going to have to think over what the dosage should be. I'll have to tell you about that later somehowsome way that we won't be found out."
"That problem is solved. Lieutenant Nachtegall will visit periodically. You can convey your findings to me through him."
"Okay," Sammi said. But she wasn't ready to leave yet. "I have something else I want to ask you."
Dykstra looked at her, seemed to be looking into her, and said: "I expected you would."
"Why?"
"You remind me of someone. Her name was Jenny. She would have had some things to ask me, too."
Sammi smiled at that. "Do you know what the question is?"
"I'm not that good," Dykstra said, smiling.
"Did you really worry that any of us wouldn't go along with you?" Sammi asked.
"It's a big risk," Dykstra replied. "The Patrol will come down hard on us if they find out what we're going to do. Our only hope of avoiding jail time or perhaps even execution is if the men return with something valuable. I would understand if someone didn't want to go along with that."
"But you knew all of us would, didn't you? We all gave you our reasons, I know, but you really don't think that's the whole of it, do you?"
"No." This time he looked at her with soft and approving eyes. "You and the others are feeling something, and I feel it, too."
"Is it supposed to include feeling that Steve died when he was supposed to?" Sammi asked, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She didn't wait for an answer. "As much as I loved Steve, as much as I miss him terribly, I . . . I . . . can't get the thought out of my head that his death . . . that in some way it was important to the Universe that he die exactly when he did."
Dykstra put an arm around her shoulder. "I understand," he said. "Christians are fond of saying that no matter what happens, somehow it's in God's plan. We just don't expect it to seem obvious to us.
"Yes, Sunshine, Steve died exactly when he was supposed to. And right now, you, and the others, and I are all feeling that we're at a turning point. That the world we knew is soon going to be replaced with another. And more. We are all feeling that we are the ones playing the pivotal roles."
"I feel like I'm being dragged in," Sammi said. "Against my will. I don't want the fate of the world to rest with me."
"Nor I," Dykstra said. "But would you rather it rested with someone else? A long time ago a country called the Soviet Union fell apart practically overnight. When many of the leaders gathered together to see what they could make out of the pieces, an archbishop admonished them to be wise, because what they were about to do would be remembered before God and history.
"It is the same with us."
Though it had still been morning when the ship left the System Patrol High Command on Luna, the sun was near setting over Lake Michigan as the sleek military courier boat sliced through the high clouds on its way to a landing at West Michigan Spaceport. It killed its speed over a landing pad, then gently drifted down on repulsors.
Dykstra came out first, waving his characteristic cane in front of him. He stood up straight at the bottom of the step and took in his surroundings. He looked up at the sky which was pale blue and sporting archipelagoes of clouds. "My boyhood home. It's been a long time."
Rick stepped out of the boat, only backwards. He was trying to coax Hague along. "C'mon, Arie. Trust me. You don't need a helmet."
In the door of the boat appeared the short, pudgy figure of Dr. Hague. The little man looked out, tentative, unsure. He looked from side to side to side, took a sniff, waved his hand through the air as if convincing himself that it really wasn't vacuum. Then a broad smile broke across his face like a wave impacting the shore and he gleefully hopped down the two steps to the ground.
"Yes, yes, Earth, Earth. Yes, Earth! Blue skies! Oh yes. Trees." Something caught his eye and he followed it as it swooped slowly past, close to him then up and over the courier ship. It was one of the sea gulls so prevalent around the inland seas of Michigan. "A bird! Oh, yes! A bird! How does it work?"
"It's alive, Arie," said Lieutenant Nachtegall, finally debarking himself. Hague seemed about to pursue his studies of Earth immediately, but Rick caught him by the arm and the three came over to join Dykstra.
"Smell the air, Chris," Rick said. "Brings back memories, eh? I used to camp out on the beach not five miles from here."
"P.J. Hofmaster State Park?" Dykstra asked.
"Of course!" Rick said, laughing.
"You guys can compare notes on the way to the black docks," Nachtegall said. "I think that's our transportation coming."
The ground car drove up and they set out for the Capitol Products building, under which was the subway system that would take them to the shipyard.
There was a sense of rightness about it all, Dykstra thought. He looked at his fellow travelers. These were the right players; they were on the right stage.
He watched the sun set like the curtain at the end of act one.