Damon Knight - Orbit 21

Jones was out there. He had taken to spending almost all of his time at the site; I had even chanced upon him lying between two pieces of the Fallen Lith, fast asleep. For days he hadn’t spoken to anyone, not even—or especially not—to me. Brahms coursed through his intercom all the time.

This night, our last night on Pluto, he was sitting at the center point of the henge. I walked up to him, sat down beside him. The sight of the Six Great Liths left me numb.

We sat in silence for a long time. Eventually I switched to the common band. “Did you hear about the new theory from Waystation?”

He nodded. Put his arm around my shoulder.

“Jones,” I said in a conversational tone, though my voice was quavering (I didn’t know why), “Jones, what do you think happened here?”

He chuckled. “Still at it, are you? . . . I’m like the rest of us, I suppose. I think much as I thought before. I think . . . that more has occurred at this place than we can understand.”

“And you’re content with that?”

“Yes.”

I was shivering, crying a little. “I just don’t know why I did all this!”

After a while: “It’s done.” We sat. “Come on, Edmond, let’s go back. You’re tired.” He stood up, put a hand to my shoulder. “Let’s go back.”

When we got to the low hill between the site and the landing vehicle, we turned and looked at it. Tall white towers against the night. . . .

“What will you do,” asked Jones.

I shook my head, blinked away tears. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it. Maybe—I’ll go back to Terra. See my father. I don’t know!”

Jones’s bass chuckle, rumbling in the vacuum’s silence. “That’s probably as it should be.” He put his arm around my shoulders, steered me around. We began walking toward the landing vehicle, going back to the others, going back. Jones shook his head, spoke in a sort of singsong: “We dream, we wake on a cold hillside, we pursue the dream again. In the beginning was the dream, and the work of disenchantment never ends.”