Ben Bova - Voyagers

In the White House, the President had rushed down to the communications room, where the radio transmission was coming in over the private link from Moscow. A wide-eyed aide told the President that Walter Cronkite was on the phone. The President took it immediately, and frowned with disappointment that it was actually only Cronkite’s producer screaming incoherently into the phone.

A few calming words and Cronkite himself came on. They chatted hurriedly and the President agreed to have his technicians relay the words being spoken in space to CBS. Cronkite hesitated a moment, then asked that the same favor be done for the other networks, as well. The President smiled and nodded.

“Barbara’s going to love you, Walter,” he said.

It sounded to the President as if Cronkite sputtered. “Thank you, Mr. President,” said that famous voice. “If you’ll excuse me now, sir, I should get back to the cameras.”

“Certainly, Walter,” said the President. “God bless you.”

Jo sat stunned at her computer console. All through the vast control center everything seemed to groan to a halt, as if each of the hundreds of men and women working there had simultaneously stopped breathing.

She looked up at Markov’s stricken face.

“He’s going to kill himself.”

“You must stop him,” Markov said. “You must!”

“How can I…?”

“No one else can,” Markov said, bending over her, gripping her shoulder, speaking urgently. “He loves you. You are his only link with life. Speak to him! Quickly!”

Numbly, Jo answered, “But this console isn’t wired for transmission…”

Markov turned to Zworkin, fidgeting nervously beside him. “Do something! Please! She must get through to him!”

Zworkin licked his lips and glanced uncertainly at the guards around them. “I’ll try…”

“You’re all going to have to work together from now on,” Stoner was saying. “All the nations of the world. It can never be the same for any of you. There are others out there, other races, other intelligences—and they’re just as curious and brave as we are.”

“Five minutes, Shtoner!”

“Five minutes, five hours…it doesn’t make any difference, Nikolai. It doesn’t.”

“Wait…communication from ground. On frequency two.”

“No,” said Stoner. “I don’t want to talk with them.”

“A personal message, from a woman. Miss Camerata. She sounds very upset, Shtoner.”

He debated within himself for half a moment, then pressed the button for frequency two.

“Keith! Can you hear me?” Her voice was shaking with anxiety.

“Yes, Jo, I hear you.”

Silence. Stoner realized it would take nearly twelve seconds for her answer to reach him. I’m already so far away that it’s impossible to hold a normal conversation with her.

“Please don’t do this! Don’t be a fool, Keith! Come back, please!”

“I can’t do that, Jo. Not now. If I stay here, I can send you more details about this ark, about our visitor. It’s a treasure house of knowledge. I can’t just leave it after a few lousy minutes and allow it to sail away from us forever.”

He stared hard at the distant blue-white crescent of Earth as his words sped to her and her answer came back.

“But you’ll kill yourself!”

“I’ll have more than an hour’s time before Federenko gets too far away to pick up my suit radio and relay it to you. I can describe everything in this chamber in detail.”

He waited, counting the seconds, preparing what he would say next.

“And then you’ll die!” Jo said. “You’ll die up there!”

“That’s not such a terrible thing. My life hasn’t meant very much to anyone.”

It was better this way. He had time to think, time to get ready for her voice, to freeze his emotions and guard against hers.

“Your life is important, you damned idiot! You can’t throw it away!”

“I’m content to die out here, Jo,” he said. “It’s not such a bad way to go.”

He noticed that frost was forming on the edges of his visor again, despite the suit heater’s highest setting. The cold was seeping into him; he could taste its metallic bitterness.

“No, Keith, no!” There were tears in her voice. “Come back! Come back to me! You have so much to live for…”

“No, I don’t, Jo. This is the climax of my life. This is what it’s all been leading up to. What would I do for an encore?”

“You can’t throw away your life like this! We have our whole lives ahead of us!”

“You have your life, Jo. You’re young, the whole world lies ahead of you.”

The time stretched, and then, “But you said that the world can never be the same now that we’ve contacted the alien.” Her voice was fever-pitched. “We’re not the same! I’m not and you’re not. It’s a new world, Keith. We need you here. I need you here, to be with me.”

“Three minutes, Shtoner.”

Before he could answer either one of them, a new voice spoke in his earphones:

“Switch to frequency three. Priority message from Kwajalein.”

Almost glad to get away from Jo’s voice, Stoner clicked on frequency three as if cutting an umbilical cord.

“Go ahead Kwaj,” he said flatly.

“Dr. Stoner!” The voice was breathless, familiar. “This is Dr. Reynaud, from Kwajalein.”

For a moment Stoner felt almost giddy. He wanted to laugh. Reynaud, our chubby monk. Is he going to try to save my soul?

“Listen to me, please!” Reynaud shouted in his earphones. “I’ve examined the plot the computer has made of the alien spacecraft’s course. It will not be irretrievably lost once you leave it. Do you understand me? It will not be irretrievably lost!”

“You mean we’ll be able to track it on radar?” Stoner asked. “What good is that?”

“That is very important! Vital!” Reynaud’s voice was shrill with excitement. “We can go out and reach it again. We can recapture it and bring it back into an orbit near the Earth!”

Stoner shook his head inside his helmet. “It would take years to build the hardware to retrieve this craft. We just barely got this far and it took six months of planning. And we screwed it up anyway.”

“But we have years!” Reynaud insisted. “The alien will slow down as it moves outward, away from the Sun. We have perhaps five years before it reaches the orbit of Pluto…”

“Five years,” Stoner echoed.

“We can recapture the alien,” Reynaud repeated. “There’s no need for you to stay there.”

Federenko’s heavy voice interrupted. “Two minutes, Shtoner. I must start automatic sequencer now.”

“Yeah…”

“Bring back camera,” Federenko commanded. “Must return photographs to Earth. They are too valuable to throw away.”

“We can recapture the alien ship,” Reynaud said again.

Jo’s voice broke in on the same frequency. “Come back to me, Keith. Please come back.”

And Markov’s. “Keith, dear friend. Don’t be so stubborn. Dead heroes are of no value to anyone. From what Reynaud is saying, you can fly back to our visitor within a few years.”

Shuddering from the growing cold, Stoner realized he still held the stereo camera in his hands.

“The photographs, Shtoner. Now.”

He reached out and touched the spacecraft’s bulkhead, pushing himself toward the hatch. Where the hell is it? he asked himself. The entire hull was so transparent…

He felt it, a circular rim, open to space. Clipping the camera to his belt, he started to pull himself up and out of the alien ship.

Markov was still talking, “We can build new rockets and train new crews. And you will be the natural leader of such a program. You must come back and lead us. We all need you.”