Ben Bova - Voyagers

“You are an astronomer?”

Schmidt’s enthusiasm turned sour. “I was,” he said, growing gloomy. “Now I am a prisoner.”

“So are we all,” said Reynaud. “But don’t worry, the plane will land soon enough on Kwajalein and then we can walk in the sunlight.”

“You don’t understand,” the young man said. “All the others on this plane—astronomers and astrophysicists from all over Europe—they volunteered for this assignment. They are happy to be going to Kwajalein, to study the alien signals.”

“You are not?”

Schmidt shook his head slowly. “I discovered the radio signals. But I’ll never get credit for it.”

Reynaud made a sympathetic noise.

“I was working for Professor Voorne at the big dish in Dwingeloo, last summer. I picked up the signals before the Americans or anyone else did,” Schmidt explained, his voice going almost sulky. “We checked on their dates; I had the signals before they did.”

“Then you should get the credit,” Reynaud said.

“Fat chance! Voorne is so slow and conservative that your grandmother could run circles around him. He refused to let me send a note in to the astrophysics journal until we had triple-checked everything. By that time the NATO bureaucrats came around and put secrecy stamps on every piece of paper I had. They wouldn’t let me publish anything, not one word.”

“Too bad,” said Reynaud.

“And now they’ve exiled me to this blasted little island. I don’t want to go. They forced me to! I have my girl in Leiden; we were going to be engaged in another few weeks. But the government said either I go to Kwajalein or I go into the Army and get sent to Kwajalein anyway.”

Reynaud shook his head.

“It’s the Americans,” Schmidt muttered. “They’re behind all this. They want to get all the credit for themselves and make sure that I don’t get any.”

Reynaud pursed his lips, then replied, “Don’t you think that the matter of finding an intelligent extraterrestrial race is the really important thing?”

“Sure! That’s why the Americans want all the credit for the discovery.”

“Well…I’ve been ordered to Kwajalein, too. I had no desire to go, but my superiors have sent me anyway. That’s why I’m on this plane, just as you are. But I don’t think it’s an American plot, really.”

Schmidt said nothing.

“I’ve been sent on this mission by the Holy Father himself,” Reynaud added.

“The Pope?”

“Yes.”

“Why is he interested in astronomy?”

Reynaud chuckled, bitterly. “He isn’t. Nor are the cardinals that surround him. They are merely interested in preserving their power, and keeping the truth from the people.”

Schmidt stared at him in disbelief. “You are a priest and you say such things?”

“A priest? Me? Oh no! Not a priest. I’m not even a monk, really. I’ve taken no vows.”

Confused, Schmidt said, “I thought…we had heard that you had retired to a monastery…”

“Yes. Yes, I had. But His Holiness has brought me out of retirement. Here I am in the world again—and it’s a very different world from the one I left, years ago.”

The two men talked as the night faded from the sky and the sun rose over the endless gray waters of the Pacific. The other passengers slowly stirred out of their sleep, stretching cramped muscles, yawning, groaning, lining up at the plane’s lavatories.

Stewards started moving along the aisle, helping people get rid of their blankets and pillows. Over Schmidt’s shoulder, Reynaud noticed that the stewards were all young men. Eventually they brought little plastic trays of breakfast. Reynaud couldn’t bear to look at the stuff once it was set before him: it was gray and dead, as plastic as the receptacles on which it was served.

The pilot came on the intercom and cheerfully announced that in a few hours’ time they would be landing at Kwajalein.

“If I can find it,” he added with a chuckle.

Reynaud shuddered a little. He looked over at Schmidt, who had eaten every scrap of food on his tray and closed his eyes to sleep. With a sad shake of his head, Reynaud turned to stare out at the featureless gray expanse of ocean so far below them, wishing that he could sleep without dreaming.

He awoke with a cold, gasping start as the plane thumped and banged.

“Landing gear,” said Schmidt, now wide awake. “I was going to wake you…”

Reynaud thanked him and looked out the window. A ring of islets showed green and white against the sea.

The plane circled the largest island of the group and finally landed with a thump that seemed more like a controlled crash than a true touchdown. But Reynaud was grateful for small miracles: purgatory was over and he could enter paradise.

The scientists were ushered off the plane and into the blindingly hot sunlight of the equatorial island. The airport seemed to be filled with Americans, many of them in military khakis, the rest in open-necked shirts and shorts.

Smiling, efficient, broad-shouldered young men led the scientists across the crushed coral rock rampway and into a cement block building. It was air-conditioned to the point of chilblains. Americans, Reynaud thought. Always so extravagant. Papers were examined, luggage picked up. Reynaud let himself be bundled into a jeep with Schmidt and another man.

“Your luggage’ll be on th’ truck,” said their driver, an energetic-looking sailor. He put Reynaud on the seat beside him; the other two had to crawl into the rear seats.

As he gunned the jeep’s motor to roaring life, the sailor asked, “You a Catholic priest, sir?”

“No,” Reynaud replied in English. “I am a lay brother of the Order of St. Dominic.” The Order of Thomas Aquinas, he added silently. And of Torquemada.

The jeep lurched into motion. “Oh. I was wonderin’, with your black suit and all,” the driver yelled over the motor’s howl. “We got a chaplain on the island but he ain’t Catholic. They fly the Catholic padre in on Sundays from Jaluit to hear confessions and say Mass.”

“You are a Catholic?” Reynaud asked, clutching the edge of his seat as the jeep barreled along the dusty road.

“Ah, well, sometimes, yeah,” the sailor stammered. “You know how it is.”

Reynaud said nothing, but thought, I know exactly how it is.

After a few terrifying minutes of racing past featureless blurs of cement block buildings, the driver pulled the jeep over to the side of the road in a grinding, squealing, skidding stop.

“Kwajalein Hilton,” he announced.

Reynaud saw a three-story gray drab building.

“Bachelor Officers Quarters,” the sailor explained as a swirl of coral dust drifted past the jeep. “BOQ is the way most people say it. Not for you, Father…” He tugged at Reynaud’s sleeve and said to Schmidt and the other scientist, “You two guys are gonna be stayin’ in here.”

They climbed out of the jeep as Reynaud remained in his seat.

“Yer luggage’ll catch up with you in a couple minutes.” The sailor put the jeep in gear and left them standing in a spray of dust. “You rate special, Father. You got a whole trailer to yerself.”

“I’m not a priest,” Reynaud said. “You should call me Brother.”

The driver gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Sounds kinda funny. But if that’s the way you want it…okay, Brother, here we are.”

He skidded the jeep to a stop and pointed grandly to a house trailer, one of a dozen standing in a row on the sandy soil, gleaming metal under the hot sun.

“All for you, Fa…eh, Brother.”

The sailor came into the trailer with Reynaud, showed him the sink and the refrigerator, the narrow, cotlike beds, the built-in cabinets, the toilet.