Ben Bova: Voyagers

To Kathy and Bob, who care about the important things.

Professor Ramsey McDermott leaned back in his creaking old leather chair and idly looked out his office window. The Yard was the same as it had been since the first day he had seen it, almost half a century ago. Trees bright in their October colors, students hurrying along the cement paths toward their classrooms, or dawdling on the grass in little groups of two or three, deep in earnest conversations.

A soft knock on his door snapped him out of his comfortable reverie. It’s her, he thought.

As gruffly as he could, he called, “Come in!”

Jo Camerata stepped into the musty little office. I didn’t realize she’d be so attractive, McDermott mused to himself. No wonder she’s getting away with murder.

Jo was tall, with the dark, lustrous hair and ripe figure of a Mediterranean beauty. She wore the student’s inevitable jeans and sweater, but they clung to her in a way that sent a surge through McDermott’s blood. Her eyes were deep and midnight black, but wary, uncertain, like a trapped animal’s.

McDermott smiled to himself.

“Put your books down and take a seat,” he commanded. There! That’ll convince her she’s in for a long, tough grilling.

Jo sat in the straight-backed chair in front of his desk and held the books on her lap, as if they could defend her. Looking at her, so young, so luscious, McDermott realized that his office was gray with dust, littered with piles of old papers and stacks of books, heavy with decades worth of stale pipe smoke.

He leaned forward slightly in his chair. “I hear you’ve become quite a stranger to your classes these days.”

Her eyes widened. “Dr. Thompson said it was all right…”

“He did, did he?”

“I’ve been helping him at the observatory—with the new signals they’ve picked up.”

“And flunking out of every class you’re in,” McDermott groused.

“I can’t be in two places at the same time,” she pleaded. “Dr. Thompson asked me to help him.”

“I’m sure he did.” McDermott picked a pipe from the rack, toyed with it, enjoyed the way her frightened eyes followed every move his hands made.

“You’ve been helping Dr. Stoner, too, haven’t you?”

“Dr. Stoner?” She looked away from him, toward the window. “No…not really. I’m working for Dr. Thompson.”

McDermott felt a flush of heat go through him at the way the sweater pulled across her breasts, the helpless look in her eyes.

“You did some typing for Stoner. Don’t try to deny it.”

“Oh…yes, I did.”

“What was it?” he demanded. “What’s he written?”

“I don’t know. I just typed it, I didn’t read it. Not in detail.”

Jabbing the pipe at her, “Don’t try to play games with me, young lady. You’re on the verge of being thrown out of this university. What did Stoner want typed?”

“It’s…it’s a paper. A scientific paper. For publication in a journal.”

“Which journal?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

McDermott leaned back, and the old leather chair groaned under his weight. “A paper about the radio signals?”

She nodded.

“And this object he’s discovered?”

“That was in the paper, yes.”

For a long moment McDermott said nothing. He sat back in the old leather chair, calmly stripping Jo with his eyes. Enjoying the fact that she obviously knew what he was thinking, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Finally he asked, “And what else have you done for Stoner?”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing? Really?”

“No…”

He pulled his face into its most threatening frown and growled, “Didn’t you ask one of the secretaries in this department about making a hotel reservation in Washington?”

Jo shook her head. “That was only for Dr. Stoner. Himself. Not for me.”

“Then you have done something else for Stoner, haven’t you?”

“I thought you meant typing…mailing…”

“What about this Washington trip?”

“I don’t understand what that’s got to do with my status as a student, Professor.”

He snarled back, “You don’t have to understand, Miss Camerata. All you need to know is that I can toss you out on your pretty little rump if you don’t answer my questions completely and honestly. Instead of getting your degree next June you’ll be waiting on tables in some greasy spoon restaurant.” He hesitated, leaned back, smiling. “Or maybe dancing at a topless joint. You’d be better qualified for that.”

She glared at him, but answered sullenly, “Dr. Stoner is going down to Washington Sunday night. He has an appointment to see his former boss at NASA Headquarters on Monday morning. He wants to take his paper about the new discovery with him.”

“He does, does he?” McDermott rumbled. It was just what he’d feared: Stoner was trying an end run. The ungrateful bastard. “Well, we shall see about that !”

He reached for the phone, picked the receiver off its cradle. “You can go,” he said to Jo.

She blinked, surprised. “Am I still…you’re not going to flunk me out?”

“I ought to,” he growled. “But as long as Thompson vouches for you, I’ll be lenient. Providing you can pass the finals.”

She nodded and quickly got to her feet. As she headed for the door, McDermott added, “But you just keep away from that man Stoner.”

“Yes, sir,” she said obediently.

As soon as the door closed behind her, McDermott started dialing the special number in Washington that he kept taped under the phone’s receiver.

Jo drove straight to the observatory. Out through the narrow, traffic-clogged streets of Cambridge, past Lexington’s Battle Green, past the bridge at Concord, out into the apple valleys and rolling hills bursting with colorful autumn foliage, her mind seething:

That slimy old bastard is going to hurt Dr. Stoner. I’ve got to warn him. I’ve got to warn him now .

But Stoner was not in his office when Jo got to the observatory. The little cubicle on the second floor of the observatory building was as neat and precisely arranged as an equation, but he wasn’t in it.

Jo saw a stack of photographs carefully placed in the center of Stoner’s otherwise bare desk. They were face down, and the back of the topmost photo bore the blue-stamped legend: PROPERTY OF NATIONAL AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE AGENCY—NOT TO BE RELEASED WITHOUT OFFICIAL WRITTEN APPROVAL.

She turned the pictures over, one after another. The paper was stiff, heavy, very expensive. The photographs showed views of a fat, flattened ball striped by gaudy bands of color: red, yellow, ocher, white. An oblong oval of brick red glowed down in the lower quadrant of the sphere.

The planet Jupiter.

Jo thumbed through all two dozen photographs. All of Jupiter. On some, two or three of the giant planet’s moons could be seen: tiny specks compared to Jupiter’s immense bulk.