Boredom is a Space Marine's worst enemy, but these Marines were not bored.
"Close in! You squinty-eyed offspring of a BASIC program. So what if you've lost your outside video! You've still got radar and ground plots! Close in!"
The words came from deep inside a short, chunky, round-faced woman with dark-black skin, a close-cropped head of curly black hair, and a crisp Marine Officer's uniform seemingly tattooed on her muscular body.
General Virginia Jones punched her supervisory keyboard as her parade-ground voice echoed off the naked beams and taut pressurized walls of the crowded cubicle. Crammed into the compact control room of a Space Marine Lightsail Interceptor, the programmers were short-circuiting the software in the ship's computer to optimize an "unwilling capture" trajectory between their low acceleration twenty-five kilometer-diameter sailcraft and the radar image of a lumbering cargo hauler. The huge heavy-lift vehicle was rising slowly from its launch pad deep in Soviet Russia on its way to resupply one of the Soviet bases in geosynchronous orbit.
"Boarding party!" General Jones roared to the deck below. "You've got ten minutes to do the fifteen-minute suiting drill! Move it!"
There was a bustle as hammocks were stowed to give a little more room in the tiny communal barracks. Suits were lifted from lockers and donned—rapidly, but carefully. General Jones looked sternly around at the organized pandemonium and took a bite of her energy stick. She looked at it in distaste, thought blissfully of the excellent mess back at the Space Marine Orbital Base, then stoically took another bite of the energy bar. If it was good enough for her Marines, it was good enough for her.
Like the PT boats in World War II almost a century ago, the Interceptors had to be fast. With only the light pressure from the Sun to push them, that meant keeping weight down. It was battle rations every meal when the Space Marines were on Interceptor duty.
General Jones carefully watched the captain of the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly around. Captain Anthony Roma was short and handsome, with dark flashing eyes and a youthful wave of hair over his forehead that had Jinjur's mind wandering slightly. Captain Roma was the best lightsail pilot in space (with the possible exception of Jinjur herself).
The lightsail scooped, dumping its cross-orbit excess speed in the upper atmosphere by using its huge expanse of sail like a sea anchor. It tilted to maximize the solar photon pressure and rose again in a pursuit trajectory of the bogey. Ten minutes later General Jones called a halt to the hunt of the phantom fox.
"Freeze program," she said, then turned and tapped a code word into her command console. The computer memory of the practice pursuit was locked until she released it. The primary purpose of this exercise had been to test the reconfiguration skills of the human element of her computer-operated spaceship—the programmers. By reconfiguring the software in the computer to take into account its loss of components and capabilities, the programmers could hopefully tune the program to obtain its optimum response time. She wished the Interceptors could have the latest in self-reprogramming computers, or at least the touch-screen input terminals, but that was many fiscal-budget cycles away.
The study of the programmer responses could take place later. General Jones lifted herself up in the weak acceleration, coiled her short, powerful legs under her compact body, hooked the toes of her corridor boots under the command console, and launched herself toward the "sortie" port. There was more to a Space Marine Interceptor than sail, computer, and programmers, and she was the preventive maintenance technician for that fourth component.
The Space Marines were still frozen at attention in the sortie port, their 'stiction boots firmly attached to the deck. Their commander swam in free-fall among them, the lieutenant of the boarding party close behind her.
She approached the first Marine, punched a code into his chest-pack and read the result.
"Fine, Pete," she said. "Shuck the suit and take a break." She moved to the next one.
"Hi, Amalita." She punched the Marine's chest-pack and read out the performance index.
"Good timing!" she said. Her eyes grinned up at the proud Marine. "Seven minutes, thirteen seconds, and no suit flags! I'm proud of you!"
She moved on to the next. The readout had no flags, but her instincts knew something was wrong. She stared at the face of the Marine through the visor. His bewildered eyes indicated something unknown was bothering him. She grabbed him by both arms, planted herself on the deck, lifted him bodily, and turned him around. He felt oddly out of balance. She examined the tell-tales on his support pack. They were fine—both tanks full of air. She stopped and raised a sharp pale-brown knuckle and gave the rounded ends of the two air tanks a rap. One tinked like a fiber-wound titanium balloon stretched to its utmost. The other tonked.
In her rage, she smashed the offending tell-tale with her fist and jerked the poor Marine around until he was facing her. Tears welled from her dark brown eyes.
"Everlasting elephants, Mike!! If it doesn't feel right, don't put it on!!! Even if the blazzflaggin' thing says it's OK! I want you alive!!"
She jammed the stricken Marine back down to the floor where his 'stiction boots took hold again. Then pushing against him, she rose up and grabbed a handhold in the ceiling of the crowded port.
"I want you ALL alive!" she roared, looking around at the ranks of cowed killers.
"The next time one of you blue-nosed monkeys puts on a bad suit, I'll personally kick you from here to PLUTO!"
She turned, and sucking the back of her hand, swam out the lock, leaving a thoughtful lieutenant to finish the inspection. General Jones had not yet mentioned his responsibilities in this infraction, but he expected to hear about it as soon as they were where the troops couldn't overhear. He wasn't looking forward to it, for General "Jinjur" had not gotten her nickname by being lenient with officers that allowed her troops to get into danger.
General Jones was half-way through the analysis of the interception exercise when a message came through from the Space Marine Orbital Base. The Russians had announced a launch to resupply one of their geosynchronous-orbit manned space stations. The Interceptor that Jinjur was inspecting was in the best position, and was assigned the job of monitoring the launch. She carefully watched the Captain of the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly around. The sunlight hit the sail, the acceleration built up to a few percent of Earth's gravity, and the floating objects in the room drifted downward. The Captain called on one of the orbiting space forts above him for more power, and there was a blinding flash in the video monitor as a powerful laser beam struck the sail with a light beam five times brighter than the Sun. The acceleration rose to one-tenth gee and they skimmed rapidly above the Earth's atmosphere, gaining speed by the minute.
Soon the sailcraft's trackers had the Russian booster on their screens. Jinjur watched as the massive payload pushed its way slowly up out of the sea of air, rising vertically to over two thousand kilometers. As it reached the peak of its trajectory, the tiny image began to grow wings. The wings became larger and larger until they dwarfed the twenty-five kilometer diameter sail of the Interceptor. Jinjur admired the deployment speed of the lightsail. The pilot must be Ledenov or Petrov with a new deployment program.
The huge sailship caught the Sun's rays and started its climbing spiral outward to the distant space station thirty-six thousand kilometers overhead. Unlike the Interceptor, which was built for speed, this was a tug. It would take almost a month to haul its heavy load into the heavens.
The Interceptor Captain glanced at Jinjur and she nodded approval. He reached for a microphone and made a call to the U.N. Space Peacekeeping Authority. UNSPA had no forces. They used those of the spacefaring nations instead. The United States had put Jinjur's sailcraft in a position where it could carry out an interception to check and make sure that no unauthorized weapons were in the enemy cargo. But not all ships were searched, only a random sample. The keeper of the random number generator was UNSPA.
"This is Captain Anthony Roma of the Greater United States Space Marine Interceptor Iwo Jima calling United Nations Space Peacekeeping Authority. I have intercepted a cargo light-tug of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Request permission to board for Space-Peacekeeping inspection," he asked.
There was a pause as the UNSPA operator consulted a UN official. The official pushed a button on a carefully guarded machine.
"Permission granted," came the reply.
"GONG!" shouted Jinjur. "We've hit the jackpot!"
"Attention all hands!" said Captain Roma. "Prepare for an authorized inspection of a foreign spacecraft." There was a bustle as the control room filled up, while down below, spacesuits recently stored away in lockers were removed again, checked over carefully, then just as carefully donned.
Jinjur watched through the next hour as Captain Roma closed in on the Russian sail. They zoomed in with their video camera and explored the outside of the payload section. It was nearly lost in the immense sea of shining aluminum film.
"Looks like a perfectly ordinary cargo hauler to me," said Jinjur to the Captain. "But the way to keep those Ruskies honest is to give them a good shakedown whenever we get permission. I want one of the crew to take a remote flyer over every square centimeter of that sail, and I want computer backup, so that no little package stuck out in some rigging tens of kilometers from here is missed."
"The communications operator has established contact with the Russian ship, General," the Captain said. "Do you wish to talk to them yourself?"
"If you don't mind," said Jinjur. "I think I know the Captain."
The call was transferred to her console and the face of a handsome middle-aged Russian filled the screen.
"I thought it was you, Petrov," she said. "I compliment you on your sail deployment. You're going to be a formidable opponent at the next Space Olympics in the light-sail races."
"Jost practice, Jinjur," said Captain Petrov. "I hear from our UN friends that you will be paying us a visit."
"Yes. I apologize for having to bother you, but it's part of the job."
"I understand," he said. "But with you coming it will be a pleasure instead of a bother. I look forward to seeing you again. It has been almost three years since we worked on the Space Weapons panel for the last disarmament talks."
"See you soon," said Jinjur, turning off the console and heading for the locker that held her personal space-suit.
Within an hour, the small boarding crew was floating on tethers outside the Interceptor. Captain Roma kept his sail trimmed to match the speed of his light-weight Interceptor with the larger tug. Both ships were still accelerating in the sunlight, however, so they all held on to keep from drifting away. A small jet scooter was unlashed from the rigging. It had a number of handholds along the side, and soon, looking like a cluster of white grapes, the scooter and boarding party jetted the few kilometers that separated the two tiny payload capsules.
Jinjur, being just a visiting General, kept out of the way as the boarding party searched the outside of the cargo ship. There were a few unusual cylinders found, but a flash x-ray and a scan with a Forward Mass Detector showed that they only contained the usual emergency gear in a new package shape. They boarded, and while the crew proceeded with their hours-long methodical inspection, Jinjur met with Petrov in his cabin.
"This is certainly a lot nicer than an Interceptor," said Jinjur as she admired the view of her distant ship out the large glass port.
"Running a cargo ship does have its amenities," replied Petrov. "By the way. While you were removing your suit, we received a call from your ship requesting to speak with you."
Jinjur looked puzzled, then asked, "May I use your console?"
Petrov padded over to the console, pushed a few buttons, then backed off to let her use it. Captain Roma was on the screen.
"You have a message from the Marine Commandant," he said. "It's encoded and marked 'Personal' "
"It'll have to wait till I get back," she said. "We can't be discussing codes over the air."
She signed off, and turned to Petrov. He was holding a small sheet of paper.
"Permit me to be of service," Petrov said. "Here is your message. Congratulations! I only wish I were going in your place."
Jinjur frowned as she took the piece of paper. A concerned look grew on her face as she realized that the Russians had intercepted her message and broken the code in the time it took for her to get out of her suit. She began to wonder if she would be allowed to get back to report the fact.
"Relax," said Petrov with a smile. "From the latest intelligence briefing I received about you when I learned you were on the Interceptor, I was pretty sure what was in the message, so I asked one of our people to feed it to our computer. With the hints I gave it on content, it only took five minutes of computer time to unscramble it. Too bad you change your codes randomly for every message, it might have proved useful."
Relieved that there was no permanent breach in communications security, Jinjur allowed herself to read the message.
"I'm Commander of the Barnard expedition!!" she cried.
"As I said: Congratulations!" said Petrov. "Could you use a good deck-hand?"
"I'm already stuck with somebody for my second-in-command, a Lieutenant Colonel George G. Gudunov. Sounds Russian. Do you know him?"
"Lieutenant Colonel Gudunov is the one who pioneered the idea of laser-driven sailcraft for interstellar travel," said Petrov.
"I was in high school when the first interstellar probes went out," said Jinjur. "I remember thinking how I wished that I were riding on them. Now it looks as though I'm going to get my wish." She paused and shook her head in puzzlement. "But, this can't be the same Gudunov, if he were still in the service he would be a general by now. I guess this George is his son, or one of his relatives. The last thing I need on this trip is a political appointee."
"I have been thoroughly briefed," said Petrov, his massive iron-grey brows furling. "Your George Gudunov is not a general, and will probably never see his star. He is the one that sent out the probes twenty-five years ago."
"But that would mean that he was in his early twenties at the time, and at most a captain," said Jinjur. "He wouldn't have been able to order such a major undertaking. There must be some mistake."
"I'm sure of my sources," said Petrov.
"Well, that can wait until I get back to my ship," said Jinjur. "Meanwhile, we have a more serious problem. The lieutenant in charge of the inspection party reported to me that you have a secret compartment in your cabin."
"Secret compartment?" exclaimed Petrov. He was indignant, yet worried.
"Yes," said Jinjur, moving over to a wall filled with equipment. "This section here," she said, "is hollow."
"Hokay! You win," he said. "But not even the KGB knows about that one." He moved over next to her, then pushed quickly on the side next to the bulkhead. The panel swung open to show a small refrigerator and an eight-inch Questar telescope. He opened the cooler to display a rack of bottles.
"My private vices," he admitted. "California champagne and an American telescope." He pushed back to the cabin door, locked it, barked a few commands in Russian to his crew over the intercom and closed it down.
"I have turned over the ship to my second-in-command," he said. "But first I had them rotate the ship to give us a different view." He took out the telescope and mounted it on the frame of the port. They watched as the stars twirled slowly by the window, then stopped as the ship came to rest again. He lined up the telescope, then pushed back.
"Have a look," he said. Jinjur put her eye to the eyepiece and looked for a long time.
"It's just a small red star," she said. "Nothing unusual about that."
"Except for its speed and its name," he said. "That is Barnard, the fastest moving star in the heavens."
She heard a pop, then turned around. Petrov was an expert at drinking champagne in free-fall. Keeping the cork almost in the neck, he let the bubbling liquid ooze out a little at a time to form small grape-sized balls in the air. The trick was to catch them in your mouth before they settled to the carpet in the low acceleration of the light-tug. Jinjur had to dive within centimeters of the floor to get one of them.
Barnard set behind the limb of the Earth, followed by the Sun. Night fell. The champagne flowed till dawn—forty-five minutes later.
A large, slightly overweight, middle-aged man in a well-worn Air Force officer's uniform walked slowly into the cavernous Pentagon anteroom of the Air Force Chief of Staff. His round, smiling, ruddy-complexioned face was topped by a thick mane of white hair. George wasn't surprised that he'd been summoned, for the pressure had been building up for the past three years since the data started coming in from the Barnard system. His only concern now was his age. At forty-nine he was getting awfully old. It had been decades since he had been in the Pentagon. Being stuck as a flight instructor in the hottest corner of Texas for the past twenty-five years sort of kept you out of things.
George checked in with the secretary in the front office. A civilian, she was gowned like a dress-maker's mannikin and made up as carefully as a Vogue model. He wondered if the Chief of Staff had chosen her for looks or intelligence. He knew the answer as soon as she glanced up and batted her lashes at him.
"You must be Col-o-nel Gud-o-nov!" she exclaimed, her bright eyes glowing behind the fluttering fan of her eyelids. "Weren't you on the Jimmy Collins show? Such excitement! A whole new universe to explore, and you were the one that shot us there with lasers!"
George started to explain that Barnard wasn't a new universe, just another star system. But another look at her depthless eyes, with the shining excitement tingling on their surface, made him hesitate. She, in her own feather-brained way, had learned as much as she was ever going to learn about the Barnard planetary system. Any attempt now to explain the difference between a universe and a planetary system would only destroy whatever appreciation she had of the topic.
"Yes," he admitted, "Jimmy is certainly an interesting person."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "General Winthrop said to send you right in as soon as you came." She glanced up and down his uniform. Her eyes hesitated at his shoes. He took the implied hint and looked down to find, sticking in the narrow seam between the stiff leather soles and the mirror-buffed top of his regulation Air Force shoes, a tiny ball of fluff picked up in his traverse across the deep acres of Air Force blue pile. He grinned thankfully at her, brushed the offending blue clump away on the back of his trouser leg, and headed for the ornately carved door as she pushed an intercom button and announced his arrival.
George walked smartly into the room. He skirted the huge oak conference table, carefully avoided the seal of the Air Force Chief of Staff woven into the blue rug, and headed for the large desk flanked by two flags. One flag had a field of blue carrying the Air Force Emblem. The other was the Stars and Stripes of the Greater United States with its fifty-nine stars in four rows of eight alternating with three rows of nine. Next year there would be sixty stars as the Northwest Territories finally became populous enough to become a state. That only left the Yukon to go (and of course, Quebec, if they ever came to their senses). He came to attention in front of the desk and saluted, his eyes straight ahead.
General Winthrop glanced up from the papers in front of him, the glitter of four silver stars broadening his shoulders. There was a momentary flicker of raw hatred in his eyes, which faded into a formal politeness.
"Good afternoon, George," he said. "Sit down."
Colonel Gudunov perched on a nearby straight chair and listened.
"Saw you and Senator Maxwell on the Jimmy Collins show last night," Winthrop started. "Quite some company you keep there."
"They wanted someone that could explain what there was in the Barnard system that justified the interstellar expedition, and Senator Maxwell suggested me."
"I've got to admit you did an excellent job of explaining the laser drive in terms even my secretary could understand. She talked about nothing else for the entire coffee break this morning." He shuffled some papers, then drew one out.
"Your friends in Congress have been good to you again, Gudunov." His tone chilled a little. "By all rights, no forty-nine-year-old should be allowed on the Barnard expedition, especially since you're not a regular, but ROT-C." Winthrop didn't even have the courtesy to spell out the initials of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, but gave it the slang pronunciation he had learned at the Academy.
"He must've been pushing one of his people for the position," thought George.
Winthrop straightened and became more formal. "Lieutenant Colonel Gudunov. You have been selected to participate in the Barnard expedition to take place in two years. You are hereby promoted to Colonel and will be second-in-command, reporting to Major General Virginia Jones, Space Marine Corps."
George winced and grinned internally at the same time. He had never met "Jinjur", but had heard a great deal about her. He had wistfully hoped that he would be chosen to lead the expedition, but that was politically impossible. His many friends in Congress could protect him from the vengeful types in the military, but they didn't have enough clout to go over their heads, especially at his age. He didn't care, he'd got what he wanted—a chance to go to the stars. He only half-listened as General Winthrop dropped his formal tone and verbally lashed out at him.
"...and I'm goddamned glad you're going. You've been a goddamn thorn in the flesh of every goddamned Air Force Chief of Staff since you were twenty-three, starting with my father, General Beauregard Darlington Winthrop the Second. I don't know why you stayed in the goddamned Air Force anyway after that stupid goddamned trick you pulled in 1998 when you were a goddamned Captain.
" 'Why don't we test out the laser forts by using them to push a sail-probe to the nearest stars?' you said. Unfortunately, my father agreed with you and approved the test. You made a fool out of him when ten percent of the nation's defense capability failed in the first goddamned minute..."
"...As it would have if it'd been a real attack instead of a test," George reminded him, uncowed.
"ALL RIGHT!!!" shouted the General. "Since then you've been protected by your goddamn friends in the goddamn Congress. I can't touch you, but I don't have to promote you any GODDAMN faster than necessary."
He subsided and sat back in his chair. He smiled grimly. "You realize that if you accept this appointment, Colonel Gudunov, you'll be going on an expedition from which you'll never return. There will be life-extending drugs available, but at your age there is no chance of you ever coming back."
George looked at General Winthrop with a slight air of bewilderment. He then realized that even though the General had been well-briefed on the interstellar mission, he apparently had not allowed himself to recognize the full truth about the expedition.
"Sir..." said George, hesitantly, "As planned—the mission will take over sixty years. Forty years to get there and twenty years of exploration. Even with life-extending drugs, most of the crew will be old and well into retirement age before the work there is done. Besides, there is no provision for a return flight. This first expedition is a one-way mission."
Hearing, but refusing to hear at the same time, General Winthrop brushed off George's statement and launched into the final sentences that he had been saving.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that you realize you're too old to return from this mission. I hope you recognize, however, that after this latest assignment, that you can't transfer to a command position that rates a general's rank."
He paused to savor his next words.
"You may have used your influence to bribe your way onto this mission and into a promotion, Colonel Gudunov..." he paused on the word "Colonel", letting it sneer out of the side of his mouth like it was the name of a particularly loathsome disease, "...but you'll never get your star!"
George rose, saluted, and turned to walk back across the carpet. The glitter of hate flared back in General Winthrop's eyes as he stared at George's departing back.
"Within one month after he was fired as Air Force Chief of Staff, my daddy died," muttered Winthrop. "...and you killed him! I don't care how long it takes or what it costs or who else gets hurt—but, one way or the other, I'm going to see you suffer, Gudunov—you're not going to escape me by going to the stars."
Colonel Gudunov was waiting in the VIP lounge when the flight from Cape Kennedy landed at National Airport. He fished a thirteen-sided two-dollar coin from his pocket, bought a plastican of Coke, pulled up the sip-tab, and wandered over to the window to inhale his morning dose of caffeine and phosphoric acid. It was a windy fall day. The leaves were beautiful, but the dust was terrible. He heard the clamor of an approaching group of press reporters and photographers outside the door of the lounge. Underneath the yapping of reporters and the whirr and snap of cameras there was a firm tenor voice.
"No comment."
"Excuse me, please."
"No comment."
The door to the suite opened. A pair of huge Marine guards seemed to fill the opening—then they were gone, herding the press away in front of them. George lowered his eyes to see a slightly disheveled female Marine officer slapping the dust off her uniform with her overseas cap. She suddenly noticed him and stopped.
"Are you Gudunov...?" she asked.
"I hope so," said George, with a broad smile, taking the unfair advantage that his name sometimes gave him against the fair sex.
"I'm glad to meet you," said Virginia, extending a pudgy black hand to cancel the sexual overtones of the previous exchange. "I've heard a lot about you in my briefings. I'm glad you got to go on the mission. After all, if it hadn't been for you there wouldn't be a mission. What's next?"
"Choosing the rest of the crew," said George. "You and I were picked by the President and Congress. The choice of the rest is up to us. Actually, the Space Agency doctors and evaluators have prepared a list of those qualified for each specialty needed. Mostly it will be a matter of following their guidelines."
"Good," said Jinjur. She walked to the door of the VIP suite and looked through the peephole.
"The reporters are gone," she said. "Let's take the Metro to the Space Administration headquarters. It'll be faster than waiting for a VIP limo."
George tossed the thick stack of folders onto the table.
"They're all good," he said.
"I'm going to take the one that the evaluators gave the highest grade," said Jinjur. He not only is an excellent general practitioner and surgeon, but he has a Ph.D. in leviponics."
"That could come in handy in the hydroponics gardens. What's his name?"
"Dr. William Wang," she said. "It's spelled W-A-N-G, but as he said in his application — 'You'll always get it right if you remember to pronounce it Wong.' "
Dr. Susan Wang climbed slowly up the short flight of steps to her large home in rural Virginia, opened the front door, and closed it tiredly behind her. She looked over the letters left on the hall table for her. There was a message from the maid—little Freddie had been in trouble at school again, and she was supposed to see the teacher. She glanced through the mail and picked up an electro-mail message in its distinctive blue and white envelope. Her tired face fell even further when she saw it was from GNASA. This was the letter she had been dreading, although she knew in her heart that its arrival had been inevitable.
The letter was addressed to her husband William. No... not her husband. He wasn't her husband any longer, for she had insisted on getting a divorce to improve his chances of being selected for the Barnard expedition. With a heavy heart, she went through the rest of the mail, took out the letters for William and put them in on his study desk. She went off into the kitchen to see how the maid was coming with dinner.
"Good evening, Dr. Wang," said the maid. "Did you see my note about Freddie?"
"Yes, I suppose I'll have to take time off from work tomorrow and go in and see his teacher," Susan said, "I'm sure it's just because he's worried about his Dad leaving him. Well—he's just going to have to get used to it."
They both heard the door open in the front hall. A cheery voice rang out, "Hi there! This is your friendly neighborhood sneak thief. Anybody home?"
A thin oriental man with big ears and a smiling face came bouncing into the kitchen, his youthful-looking features belying his forty years and his triple doctorate in organic chemistry, leviponics, and medicine.
He came over, put his arm around his wife's shoulder and asked, "How'd it go at the labs today? From the way you look, I would think that one of your ten-day syntheses had blown up on the heater or gotten poisoned by a side-reaction."
"No, William," she replied, forcing a smile, "Actually things worked out fairly well at the lab today. There was a little trouble with Freddie at school though."
"Oh, he's just a mischievous thirteen-year-old." William said. "He'll grow out of it."
"I hope so," she replied. She paused, then continued, "There was also a letter from the Space Agency."
His face took on a wide-eyed expression, then he looked at her thoughtfully. "What'd it say?"
She said, "I haven't opened it yet, but I'm sure I know what's in it." She gave a weak smile, "Come on, let's go read it."
They walked into his study together. He picked up the envelope and quickly slit it open. As he pulled out the letter he glanced at her and felt a combination of exhilaration, fear, and sorrow. He read the letter aloud, "Dear Dr. Wang, You have been chosen to go on the first interstellar expedition to the Barnard planetary system..."
This was the culmination of his life's ambition—yet it was going to tear them apart. Still holding the letter in his hand, he put his arms around the woman that used to be his wife. He held her close.
"How much time do they give you?" she asked.
"Not very long," he said. "I'm going to be ship's doctor for the entire crew. I have to go to GNASA headquarters tomorrow morning to help choose them. Then after a break to close out my affairs, I'll spend more time learning their entire medical histories, as well as brushing up on my leviponics and organic chemistry."
"I can help with the organic chemistry," she said.
"So you could!" he said, glad to have something else to talk about. "What's the latest?"
Susan started to give him a history of the advances that had been made in the field of organic chemistry since he had stopped working as a research chemist to study for his M.D. They walked out of the room into the immense yard of their rural Virginia home.
With two incomes well in the upper brackets, the Wangs could afford a big home. Their back yard was not only huge, it was built along the lines of a zoo, for William Wang loved animals, the more exotic the better.
"It's going to be hard leaving you and Fred," he said.
She smiled. "It's going to be even harder for you to leave this menagerie of yours. As you well know, I really don't want to keep them."
"I know. I know," he said. "I'll just have to find good homes for them."
"You've only got a few months," she reminded him. "How many people want pygmy elephants and Bengal tigers, other than zoos?"
"Well, it's a matched pair of pygmy elephants," he replied. "Surely somebody will want them."
William, still holding the letter, walked over to the cages. He patted the Bengal tiger, while the furry beast brushed its huge catlike face against the thin yellow hand reaching through the bars and lowered its head to have its ears scratched.
"I'm going to miss you, Ben," said William. He turned and looked around the yard at the other animals in his private zoo.
"I'm going to miss all of you," he said. "But I've got to go to the stars..." He paused. "...and I'm never coming back."