Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

They walked across the red sands and sometimes they found turtles and sometimes lizards and once they even found tall red-skinned natives with saucer eyes who’d chased them while they yelped and ran for their lives.

“Frank and Alice,” said Harold, “probably never asked about the lander. It’s no secret that it kept us all going. There’s not a house or a farm that doesn’t have a piece of it out in its barn, or holding its windows together, or keeping its furnace running. You want the lander, son? It’s all around you.”

They were racing above the southern hemisphere, gazing down on an ocher desert that stretched out forever when Tom raised the question. “Yeah,” said Frank. “I knew that.”

Mars vanished, and Tommy looked with dismay at his copilot.

“Sure, Tommy. Everybody here knows. Right, Alice? We’ve got some pieces of it in our kitchen. Or is it the furnace? I forget.”

They were in the living room at Alice’s house and suddenly Tommy could smell the oil lamps. Without moving, Alice pointed to a cushion on the sofa. It was old and worn and black, but it was soft like leather except that it wasn’t leather. “ That came out of the lander,” she said. “My ma wants to toss it because she says it doesn’t look right. But Pa won’t hear of it.”

Tommy stared at them. “You knew? All this time you knew what they did?”

“What’s the big deal?” Frank asked. “I thought you knew. Everybody knows.”

“They should have kept it,” said Tommy. “They should have taken care of it.”

“It was out on the runway.” Alice was getting annoyed. “It would have rusted out. What difference does it make?”

And Tommy couldn’t explain. They should have kept it because one day we’ll be going back. Because it was part of something important and you don’t just tear things like that apart to make hoes and rakes. Because they didn’t know whether the astronauts would come back or not and suppose they had?

Alice was the tallest of the three. She had freckles and red hair and blue eyes. And she tried to tell him he was making too much of it, that what else would you do with a wreck sitting in the middle of the runway? That they just flat out needed the metal.

They didn’t play the Mars game anymore after that. And a couple of days later Alice tried to kiss him but he didn’t let her.

The freeze came early. Tommy helped with the horses, chopped firewood, brought in water, and occasionally took the wagon over to Rob’s feed store to pick up supplies.

They had a few books in the house, some novels that he read over and over, David Copperfield and Northanger Abbey and one about the end of the Civil War. There was a history of the United States, which everybody insisted still existed out there somewhere, and a Bible, a book on needlecraft that had belonged to Aunt Emma, and the book that Tommy especially liked, a big volume called Galaxies , with lots of pictures.

They’d had only a Bible at his mother’s house and he hadn’t even realized there were other books until Uncle Harold had come after Ma’s death and brought him here.

He understood that the galaxies were very far, and that the Columbia could never have reached them. But he liked to imagine going out to them anyhow, taking a right turn at Mars, and snuggling warm and happy in the cockpit while he watched the stars grow in number and size.

Columbia is still up there. Docked at the station. And on nights when it’s clear, you can see it, a bright light in the south that never moves, that keeps its place while the stars race past.

Out of reach now. Forever.

We should have saved the lander.

He rode out on Poke one night close to Christmas, back to the place where he’d sat with Uncle Harold. It was unseasonably warm, the stars were bright, and there was no moon in the sky. The station sparkled in its accustomed place, above the old interstate.

Uncle Harold didn’t like him riding out here alone after dark. Minutes after he’d left, he heard the outside kitchen door slam and knew his uncle had missed him, knew he’d follow pretty soon.

He looked back toward the east and watched the lander drop slowly out of the sky, brighter than any star. Brighter even than the station. It had four lights, one on each wingtip, one on its belly, and one atop the tail. He didn’t really know whether that had been so, and nobody he’d asked knew either. But it didn’t matter. That was the way he imagined it, so it had become the only truth there was.

It came in slow and the lights were visible the whole time. A few people rode out of town to see what was happening. He could hear them talking, asking one another whether help was coming at last. From the government.

The lander dropped down through the night, and the blaze of its lights silhouetted Uncle Harold, coming easy on Monty. Its engines roared and the wings waggled slightly as a gust of wind hit them. The airstrip lay open and clear before the descending spacecraft.

Tommy inched up in his saddle so he could see better. Poke dug at a piece of sod with his front hoof.

It touched down and rolled along the runway, maybe jouncing a bit because it was coming too fast and braking too hard.

The riders watched it slow and tip over and stop. For a long time nothing happened. A few of the horsemen approached and hatches popped open. The lights went off, first the ones on the wingtips, and then the others. Three astronauts climbed out and stood looking around.

“You okay, Tommy?” Uncle Harold was still riding slow.

There were tears in the boy’s eyes. “You shouldn’t have taken it apart,” he said.

His uncle came up alongside him, clamped a big hand down on his shoulder, and squeezed. “Tommy, it’s time to let it go.”

Tommy just sat on his horse.

Uncle Harold nodded. “You warm enough, son?”

“ You think they did the right thing. That makes you just as bad.”

“Why is it so important? That the lander was broken up?”

“Because of where it’s been. Because maybe we can go back one day. Because we need it.” Tommy was trying to keep his voice level, to keep the strangled sounds out of it.

“Tommy.” Harold held out a kerchief, and waited while the boy took it and blew his nose and wiped his eyes. “Tommy, people here did what they had to. I’m not saying we wouldn’t have made it otherwise, but the rest of the world was dead, as far as we knew. Everything that would give us an edge, we had to use.”

“ Not the lander. That’s what takes us back.”

Harold looked up at the sky. At the station. “No,” he said, “it’s not the lander. We can make a new one when the time comes. What we have to have, what we absolutely cannot do without, is you . And Alice. And Frank.” He pulled his collar up around his neck. The temperature was starting to drop. “We survived, boy. That’s what matters. First things first.”

Tommy was silent.

“We will go back. Maybe you will. But you’ve got to be alive to do it.”

“No. It’s not going to happen.”

Uncle Harold pulled his scarf up around his face. His gaze moved past Tommy and fastened on the house. They could see the glow of the oil lamp in the living room. He tugged gently on Tommy’s reins and started back. Tommy pressed Poke’s flank and followed.

Uncle Harold glanced back up at the sky. “Which one’s Mars?” he asked.

Tommy showed him.

“Duller than I thought,” he said.

Poke picked up the pace and they trotted at a leisurely clip beneath the stars.