Bob Shaw: Orbitsville Departure

If that were the case, if Mikel had been uniquely prepared to lead new generations to the stars, it could be seen as a curious atonement for Mathieu's original crime. Thinking back to the awesome events nine years in the past, Dallen could find in himself no residue of the hatred which had dominated and disfigured a part of his life. When Gerald Mathieu had been reeled back into the Hawkshead ’s airlock he had been found to be dead, with no apparent physiological cause. His body had been consigned to the Orbitsville sun and it was as though Dallen's negative emotions had gone into that stellar crucible with it. Now the entire episode seemed like a dream, and all that remained to him from it were echoes of feelings, stray reflections of things that might have been.

Had the group which reached the portal also been in mental contact with the Ultans? Dallen posed himself the familiar, unanswerable questions as he sipped his coffee. Were they telepathically appraised of their situation? Or bad they been mystified when the drip and all connected to it bad ceased to exist and strange constellations bad flared beneath their feet? Had Silvia and Renard had children? What was she doing at that very moment, forty billion years ago in a different universe?

"You seem a little quiet this morning," Nancy said. "Worried about Mikel?"

"No, the Columbus is a good ship," Dallen replied, glancing at his son who was still munching toast. "And hell only be gone lor two months."

"Two months for thy trip," Mikel said, his eyes growing darkly rapt in the way that Dallen remembered so well. "In that time we'll travel farther than anybody has ever done, but that's just for starters. Soon well be able to do anything… cross the galaxy… go hunting for Ultan spheres…"

Nancy gave a delighted laugh. "Dream on , child!"

"It isn't as far-fetched as you might think," Mikel said, a solemn expression appearing on his face as he tapped into his prodigal's intellect. "Here's a possible scenario for you to consider. We know that the Ultans put a minimum of eight spheres into this galaxy, and we were also told that they selected locations favourable to the development of intelligent life. Well, when we have improved our knowledge of this region of space sufficiently we will be able to decide what characteristics it has that make it a good site for a sphere. Then we can search for other similar areas in the galaxy and track down other spheres."

"Easy as pie," Nancy said scornfully, "but what happens if you bump into the Ultans themselves?"

Dallen enjoyed the way in which Nancy and Mikel were consciously playing word games, building an edifice of purest fantasy, but at some point they had begun to stray close to the chimerical never-never land of his old recurrent dream. He found himself oddly intent as he waited for the boy's answer.

"But that's what we'd be trying to do," Mikel said. "The spheres themselves are of no value to us. What we want is to find the Ultans, study them, learn from them, communicate with them."

"And what great message would you pass on?"

Mikel frowned, and for an instant his boyish features were overprinted with the face of the man he was Co become. "For one thing — I’d let them know we don't appreciate being treated like cattle."

Dallen turned away thoughtfully, realising he was almost afraid of his own son, then it came to him that he was listening to the voice of a new age. The Orbitsville phase had ended. In future when men set out to straddle the galaxy they would be searching for more than just areas of grass on which to pitch their tents. Equipped with superb tachyon ships, girded with mindon science, consciously immortal, they would have aims which could be incomprehensible to men of Dallen's generation. But there was nothing wrong with that, he reasoned. It was a sign that mankind was on the move again, and he should feel nothing but gladness that he had contributed to the process of vital change.

In the afternoon Dallen stood with one arm around Nancy at the Winnipeg spaceport, watching the shuttle carry his son up to an orbital rendezvous with the Columbus. There was no denying the sadness he felt over parting with the boy, at the idea of Mikel spending his eleventh birthday farther from Earth than men had ever been before. But the transcendental mood of the morning still lingered, sustaining him as the shuttle dwindled to a silver point and disappeared in the wind-scoured blueness of the sky. Ultans, he thought, we'll see you around.