Ben Bova - Voyagers

He thought about it as they stepped clear of the buildings and out under the trees that fringed the beach. The sand lay white and warm, the surf murmured distantly to them.

Finally, Stoner answered, “It’s my career, Jo. The path I’ve chosen. The work I do.”

“No,” she said. “There’s more to it than that. It’s not a job, it’s…it’s a drive. A fierceness to get into space and leave everything else behind.”

“I’ve got nothing to keep me here,” he said. Then, before she could reply, he added, “Except you.”

Jo put a hand on his arm. “But even…no, Keith, that’s not true. You still want to go out there and meet this alien visitor, no matter what, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Why? Why does it have to be you, personally?”

“Because I want to know ,” he said with quiet ferocity. “That’s what every scientist wants—to know, to discover, to be the first to uncover a new piece of knowledge, a new chunk of territory.”

“But you could learn that even if somebody else goes on the mission,” she said.

“Not the same! I want to touch it with my own hands, see it with my own eyes. Like a caveman, Jo. Like Doubting Thomas from the Bible. I’ve got to see it for myself. That’s the bang of it. The drive.”

She stared up at his face as they walked along the beach. The sky was lit by the aurora, gleaming, dancing, calling.

“Think about all the people you know,” Stoner said to her. “How many of them realize that the atoms of their bodies were created inside distant stars? We’re all stardust, every one of us. Every atom of your body, Jo, was built up inside a star, eons ago. We’re part of the universe, kid. It’s inescapable.”

She laughed softly. “There’s a poet inside you, somewhere.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But there’s a practical side to all this, too. Down here, I’m just another astrophysicist. An overtrained specialist in a field that’s filled with men and women who’re better trained, younger and brighter than I am. I’m only a mediocre scientist, at best.”

“Now you’re being modest.”

“I know my limitations. I’ll never get close to a Nobel Prize or a fat fellowship. I’ll plug along and teach at some second-rate university in total obscurity.”

“Unless…”

“Unless the space program opens up again.” He jabbed a thumb skyward. “I’m good up there. I can lead a team of engineers and scientists. I know both ends of the job and I’m not afraid of living inside a pressure suit at zero gravity.”

“I don’t think I’d be afraid, either.”

Grinning, “No, I don’t think you would, Jo. It’s our milieu, or ecological niche. That’s where my career lies, and maybe yours, too. That’s where we can make the best contributions to the human race’s storehouse of knowledge.”

“And that’s where the alien is.”

“Yes. Like a godsend. We can’t let him pass us by without making contact with him.”

“Or her,” Jo kidded.

“It,” he said.

Jo laughed and suddenly kicked off her sandals. “Come on, take those shoes off, Keith Stoner. Break down and have fun for once in your life.”

He frowned at her. “I have fun…”

“You call chopping boards with your hands fun ?” And she dashed away from him, down along the beach, bare feet splashing in the lapping waves.

Stoner watched her for a few moments, then bent down and yanked off his shoes and socks, nearly tumbling onto the sand as he hopped on one foot to finish the job. Then he raced after her, under the glowing sky.

He splashed along the waters of the lagoon, laughing as he caught up with her. Grabbing her by the wrist, Stoner hauled her along at his pace until she shrieked with breathless laughter and they both collapsed onto the shining sand.

“Keith, you’re not fair,” she panted. “Your legs…are so much longer…”

“Oh, jeez, you make me feel like a kid again, Jo. You make me forget everything else and want to play.”

He raised himself up on one elbow and lifted her head toward him. Jo wound her arms around his neck and felt his hands caressing her, warm, strong hands against her bare skin. She could hear the pulsing beat of the distant surf against the reef, but it was quickly lost in the thunder of her own heart. Eagerly they pulled their clothes off and she pressed her naked body against his, wanting him, wanting all of him inside her. She clutched his hair and stifled the scream of ecstasy inside her by pressing her lips against his.

Then they lay side by side, spent, watching the shimmering curtains of pastel lights that flickered across the sky while the warm, tideless waves of the calm lagoon lapped at their feet.

Jo turned her head on the sand and saw Keith staring a million miles off into that sky.

He forgot everything else for such a little while, she thought sadly. Such a little while.

“And why is the General Secretary not present?” asked the Minister of Industrial Production.

Borodinski, seated at the head of the long, polished table, replied, “He is indisposed. He asked me to preside over this meeting in his place.”

They glanced at each other uneasily. Of the sixteen places around the table, five were conspicuously empty. Their usual occupants would never see the inside of the Kremlin again.

Borodinski introduced Academician Bulacheff, sitting at the very foot of the table, and opened the discussion on the topic of the alien spacecraft.

“Then we are going through with this scheme of sending cosmonauts to greet the alien?” asked the Foreign Minister.

“It is the General Secretary’s plan,” Borodinski said.

“But with an American astronaut aboard our Soyuz?” grumbled the Minister of Internal Security. He sat close to the head of the table, but the chairs on either side of him were empty.

“Yes,” said Borodinski.

“He’ll be able to spy on our launch facilities, our rocket boosters—everything!”

“He is no spy,” said Bulacheff, his voice surprisingly strong. “He is a scientist, not a hoodlum.”

Dead silence fell over the conference room. Borodinski barely suppressed a laugh. The academician is too new to these meetings to show the proper respect for our chief pesticide, he thought. Then he reflected, Or he is old enough so that he doesn’t care about running the risks, perhaps? This alien visitor must be very important to him.

The Security Minister glared at Bulacheff, then leaned back in his chair and slowly put a long, filtered cigarette to his lips.

“We will fly out to meet the spacecraft,” Borodinski said firmly, “and the American will be aboard our Soyuz. Every precaution will be taken, of course, to see to it that he does not gain any information that we do not wish him to have.”

General Rashmenko grinned heartily at them all. “Not to worry. Our missiles can blow the alien out of the sky—and the American with it. All I have to do is make one phone call.”

The Minister of Internal Security held the wine glass up to the light from the chandelier. The deep red liquid glowed within the crystal goblet. Slowly, cautiously, he took an experimental sip of the wine.

With a smack of his lips he put the goblet down on the damask tablecloth and pronounced, “Excellent. Truly excellent!”

His host, across the table from him, beamed with satisfaction. “It’s from our comrades in Hungary. They call it ‘The Blood of the Bull.’ ”

The Minister laughed. “A dramatic people, the Hungarians.”

“But they make good wine,” said his host, nodding to the servant standing behind the Minister.

The servant began ladling a stew of freshly caught rabbit into the Minister’s china plate. The Minister was a small, bald man, with the tiny, delicate hands of a watchmaker. But his face was heavy, almost gross, with thick lips, a bulbous nose and narrow deepset eyes that were often impossible to fathom.