Alexis Latner: A Pillar of Stars by Night

“Maybe, maybe not. He’s bigger than us. Mark, this might be somebody trying to stop us from reaching the starship.”

Mark broke out in a sour sweat. The idea of leaving Earth had given Mark nightmares in plenty, but not even the worst one had included a scenario like this.

An instrument beeped shrilly. Ev muttered, “And that’s a signal from somewhere…” Ev cross-checked the strange signal. “Somebody’s feeding us a false navigational signal. I think it’s our anonymous friend. Well, the Merlin’s smart enough not to buy it ” Ev patted the instrument panel affectionately.

A moment later, the jet dived. Mark clutched the mouse carrier, from which came alarmed squeaks.

Ev cursed. “They’re trying to force-land us!”

“Can they?” Mark almost shouted.

“Get the hell out of my fly wires!” Ev punched in a reprogramming sequence.

Desperately Mark wondered if being forced to land in San Antonio would be so bad. It would mean not having to leave his world after all, and a final end to nightmares and frantic plans, and getting out of the sickening air.

The Merlin leveled off. A radio transmission must have come to Ev through the slender headset he wore. His face looked startled as he listened to whatever was coming through the earphone. With abrupt motions of his hand, Ev changed the radio receiver to a different frequency. “It’s a Pennington corporate jet,” he said to Mark. “I thought we got away from that company spy before we took off. Apparently not.”

Ev sent the Merlin into a climb, a steep one. In their carrier, the hapless mice lost their footing and slid across the carrier’s floor, scrabbling for footing.

“Are you important enough that they’d send a company jet after you?”

“Yes,” Ev said curtly. “So are the mice.”

Urgently Mark asked, “What can he do to us?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out. Sit tight. I’m going into afterburner.”

The climbing Merlin’s nose already pointed toward a star above the red horizon. The engines screamed and the jet leaped toward the star. Its rocketing ascent pushed a load of gravity on Mark. He sank deep into his seat.

Ev grunted, “Ha! Can’t catch us now!”

Mark felt his face sag on its bones.

“Pushover!” Ev’s jet dipped its nose back toward the horizon. Mark’s stomach tried to somersault. A distressed noise escaped from him.

“Swallow to get your innards back on line,” Ev said. “Damn! He’s coming after us—let’s see you do this , you bastard!” Ev’s hand twitched on the sidearm control stick.

Urgently wanting to follow what was happening, Mark looked out the window to his right. He was shocked to see the whole, wide purple sky in that direction. The jet was pivoting on its left wing.

The Merlin bolted toward the southwest. Mark’s stomach settled, squashed, into the wrong internal place. He clamped his teeth against retching. Leveling off, the jet streaked across darkening land with its nose pointed just south of the setting Sun.

“I outmaneuvered him!” Ev crowed. He looked at Mark. “Feeling OK?”

Sweating profusely, Mark snapped, “No! Them either,” Mark added, meaning the mice. “I think they’re dead.”

Ev hastily took the mouse carrier and peered into it. “They’re OK. They just fainted, the climb in addition to the low cabin pressure got to them. Poor mice,” he crooned over them. “If I’d meant you to fly, I’d have given you wings.”

Making a last-ditch fight against airsickness, Mark stared at the horizon with its brilliant puddle of Sun. Shades of red stretched from horizon to zenith, flaming ocher to vermillion to maroon. Mark saw the spectacular sunset as a barrier, forbidding and insurmountable.

The Merlin was a very expensive and capable private jet, but not orbital. They might reach Star Field. But they would never make it past the red sea of air that was the sky.

Mark looked pale but relieved, leaning back with his eyes closed. Ev concluded that Mark was through being sick. “Since I wasn’t replying to him, and since I outmaneuvered him, the Pennington jet gave up and flew back to San Antonio,” Ev told Mark. “We’re approaching the Mexican border now. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble in the air. That was what pilots used to call ‘yank and bank’! It’s not recommended for this jet, but she turned the trick beautifully, didn’t she?”

“I still don’t like flying with you,” said Mark. It was his first complete sentence in the last fifteen minutes.

“I had to evade that guy. I’m sorry”

Ev was aware that he did not sound sorry. Exuberance had leaked into his tone, for in flying, Ev was very much at home. People on Titan rarely traversed the nitrogen ice fields on the surface of that world, but flew everywhere instead, using blunt-winged craft to ply Titan’s dense atmosphere. Ev clapped a solicitous hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Feel better now?”

“At least we made it to Mexico,” Mark muttered.

“So we did. But since the Desesperacion, the government of Mexico is for most intents and purposes a puppet of the U.S. The U.S. government pulls the strings and makes things happen in Mexico. I won’t be surprised if there’s trouble of some kind later today.”

Mark groaned.

“Don’t worry. The Foundation won’t be surprised either,” said Ev. “We’re more prepared than you realize.”

Below them now was the dammed Rio Grande, a trickle finding its way from one jagged drying lake to the next. Ahead, the setting Sun glared on the Mexican desert. “God damn it all” said Mark suddenly. “I remember the first starship, when we were kids. The videos of the ship under construction and the crew in training, blue uniforms and all. Everything was grand and heroic. Just before they left there was that ceremony, broadcast to the whole Solar System. Flags and music and holo-convocation and all. When Berry left, on the second starship, I guess there were some critics, one political party disapproved of it, but there was still a ceremony. Why do we have to scheme and steal and run away at night?”

Ev pulled a sheaf of papers out of the personal-effects pocket beside the pilot’s seat. He extended to Mark the flimsy netnode printout pages from The Wall Street Journal “Scan that editorial.”

STARSHIP BRAIN DRAIN said the headline.

Mark grunted. “No wonder you printed it out. It’s about your hero, Norden.”

“Read on ” Ev had practically memorized the article. It held that Norden’s departure on the last starship, seven years ago, had constituted an unacceptable loss to science and civilization. Norden exemplified the young scientists who had deserted the Earth for the stars—some of the brightest, best-educated, and most highly motivated minds of their generation. The tap had been left open and irreplaceable brainpower had drained away. This time, the Journal declared, it was the responsibility of government, industry, and citizens to firmly close the tap. The starship should be stopped, the departure of Earth’s best minds prevented. By whatever means necessary to do so.

“I’m no Joe Norden,” Ev said frankly, when Mark seemed to have reached the bottom of the page. “But I’m good at what I do. You’re a very good ecologist. Read the part about disease.”

Mark read aloud. “ ‘If a sudden new disease selectively struck down a comparable fraction of the first-rate talents and first-born achievers in the upcoming generation, an outcry would be raised around the world, and there would be an urgent search for amelioration and cure.’ ”

“Harsh metaphor, isn’t it?” Ev sighed.

Encountering clear-air turbulence, the jet bounced. With slight movements of the control stick in his hand, Ev shepherded the jet through the bumps in the air, into smoother air. Beside him, Mark held on to the carrier with its precious mice, buffering the bounces for them.