Джек Макдевитт - A Voice in the Night

I would have liked to wander around the Excelsior i n uniform, soliciting reports from my crew, the way they did in the science fiction films. And welcome a few passengers on board. Glad you chose Brightstar Transport, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you enjoy the trip. Beverages will be served as soon as we reach cruising speed…in another day and a half.

Actually, there wouldn’t have been much space available for visitors.

Later that first evening, Liberty called again. It was Morris. “How you doing, Sara?”

“Need a chess partner, Morris.” Actually he didn’t play chess. But he understood.

I was pretty sure Calkin frowned on Morris’s inclination to talk informally with me. He undoubtedly saw it as a character flaw, a weakness. It was something lower-level employees do, and Calkin would have thought that Morris was demeaning himself, or maybe worse if he was actually listening to our exchanges.

I had to wait almost four minutes for his response. “Mary’s coming for the weekend, with Adam and Mike.” His wife and kids. Erika had fought her way back after the accident, and had returned to college. “We’ll be looking for a place.” I wondered whether he’d be buying, since NASA’s future was so uncertain. “When we get settled, we’ll have you over. Make a party of it.” That was the kind of remark guaranteed to get him in trouble with Calkin. He’d think Morris was losing his mind.

“Adam will want something on the beach,” I said. The time delay meant nothing to me, of course. But I could imagine Morris, hooked up from his office (where it was close to noon), trying to keep the conversation coherent.

Standard operating procedure required me to check in twice daily. I complied, informing Liberty each time that everything was on schedule.

I was still accelerating on the second day when I passed the orbit of Mars. The Excelsior had gone seventy-two million miles when, at midnight of Day 2, I finally shut the drive down and we went into cruise mode.

I could have put everything on automatic and gone to sleep at that point, waking when we got into the vicinity of Minetka, or when we received a transmission, either from Liberty or, if we were very lucky, from Lucy. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Even though I took no pleasure in being alone in that ship, I knew I would not get there again, and I could not rationalize throwing my chance away. The day would come when I would wish very much to come back, to live again in the Excelsior ’s cockpit, riding through the night. So I stayed awake. I asked Liberty to forward some radio programs, which they did. They knew I enjoyed the talk shows, so they kept me well-supplied with them. I even heard my own voice, talking with the space station. “Everything on schedule.” “All systems five by.” “Saw an asteroid today.” Nothing very exciting.

I continued to ask about the Coraggio, and those clips also got played. One female host commented that my apparent concern was “touching.” She emphasized apparent. Of course she would. There was really nobody aboard the Excelsior.

The talkers had always seemed to me narrowly focused and out of touch with reality. And from my perspective approaching the asteroid belt, that hadn’t changed. But they had voices. And maybe that was all that mattered. I didn’t care if they were talking about a celebrity’s wedding dress or a corrupt politician. They had voices, and I, simply by listening, became part of the conversation.

Unfortunately, a flight through the solar system isn’t likely to be what most people expect. I’d have loved to soar past Mars, pick my way through the asteroids, get a good look at Jupiter, and glide through Saturn’s rings, but my course to Minetka wasn’t going to take me close to anything…other than Neptune.

I was cruising at three million miles per hour, so even had I gotten within a reasonable distance of Saturn, which I would have given much to see, I wouldn’t have been there long.

My reports acquired a boring sameness. Liberty, this is Excelsior . Running warm and still on schedule.

The operators always responded, “Copy that, Excelsior .” One of them, a woman whose name I never learned, asked me a couple of times if I was okay. Unlike the others, she seemed to realize, or allowed herself to pretend, that she was really talking to somebody. Soon, I didn’t hear her anymore and I wondered whether she’d gotten into trouble. I didn’t ask the other operators about her because, if something had happened, I didn’t want to risk getting her in deeper. I tried to convince myself that she’d simply been promoted, or had run off with an English teacher. But that was the incident that made me realize I seriously disliked Denny Calkin.

I never found out what, if anything, had happened.

I spent a lot of time just watching the basic image coming in on the forward scopes and portrayed on the monitors: a black canopy full of lights. Where’s a good comet when you need one?

My exchanges with Morris diminished as I cleared Jupiter orbit. By then the delay in any exchange was preposterous. If I’d asked Morris how he was doing, I would have had to wait an hour and a half for my answer. We kept communicating, though, but it was occasional.

“The world is watching, Sara. You’re getting constant coverage. Right up there with America First and Wild for You . Harry Pavlo, on a talk show yesterday, said you should write a book. Mary thinks the book thing is a good idea. Anyhow, Adam’s teachers have asked if you’d be willing, when you come back, to talk to some of her students at the high school. We haven’t tried anything like that before, but I don’t see a problem with it if you don’t.”

On Day 8, I left Saturn behind. Or would have had it been in the area. I mentioned earlier that I’d wished I could have seen it up close. Actually, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t. I’d refrained from checking its position because I wanted to keep the possibility open. But the odds were remote. And they held: it turned out to be on the other side of the sun somewhere, which meant I wouldn’t even have a shot at it on the way back.

In the meantime, the talk shows lost interest in the Eagle mission. We were replaced by Tim Hurst, the popular comedian, who’d been photographed at an orgy when he was supposed to be working on a new film; and by the on-again/off-again corruption scandal of Senator Brickhouse, who’d built his career as a crusader against lawbreakers of all stripes.

I knew that Morris had liked the press we were getting, and had hoped that interest would remain high. And I’ll confess I’d enjoyed the attention myself. So I manufactured an image of an asteroid flashing by, and sent it on to Liberty. It created a mild sensation. And of course no harm was done.

To really make a splash, though, I needed something more stirring than a chunk of rock. I was seriously tempted to arrange a close passage with a comet, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t get away with it.