Frank made coffee. He delivered cups to the others then gave Glad a sideways nod and wandered out to the veranda, studying her red Mini parked in the driveway, dwarfed by the army truck beside it. Glad ambled out after him, cup in one hand, the thumb of the other hooked in the belt loop of her jeans. They’d known each other for years and stood in silence a while surveying the scene. Then he said quietly, ‘C’mon Glad. Spill ’em.’
‘Spill what, Frank?’
‘The beans. I saw you in there. I reckon you know more than you’re letting on.’
‘Am I?’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Aren’t you too?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I haven’t heard any mention of Alice since I got here.’
‘Alice? What’s my sister-in-law got to do with it?’
‘Didn’t she claim she’d seen a spaceship in the bush just before that meteorite hit?’
‘Yeah, well, you know what Alice is like. Not the most reliable witness. Between you and me, I’ve always reckoned she’s a couple of cans short of a six-pack.’
‘I hear she’s doing an interview tonight.’
Nine News had been promoting it all day. An exclusive interview with Alice Jones, recorded – the promos emphasised – the day before Monday’s extraordinary events. “Extraordinary claims. Extraordinary coverage. Nine News at 6:00pm.”
‘We didn’t know she’d done that. She never said.’
‘Well, she may be a bit loopy in other respects, but she was right about the ship, Frank. I know. I saw it.’
‘What?’
‘I even went inside it. I know what those people and their medical facilities can handle, which is why I’m not worried about Tim.’
Frank stared at her, his mouth open.
Glad set her cup down on the balustrade. ‘Or perhaps you think I’m a couple of cans short of a six-pack too?’
* * *
They watched the latest news from Earth sitting round Tim’s bed in the medical bay, communicating with him via headsets as they slurped on drink bulbs and shared a plate of crunchy pastry chips that shattered when you snapped them and sent the cleany-crawlies scuttling back and forth.
It was interesting to watch the helicopter footage, repeated endlessly, in regular and slow-motion. TV stations around the world had snapped it up, and every one of them had an expert or analyst with a different view of what was going on. An alien invasion. First Contact gone wrong. The beginning of the end of the world. Earth getting dragged into a galactic conflict. Some claimed it was just a publicity stunt for an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster. Others that it was proof that governments had been in touch with aliens for years.
‘Whoa, that was Alice!’ Tim said, insisting Coral stop channel surfing and go back. They caught the end of a promotional clip for an item that was due to screen in a few hours; the interview with Alice they’d secretly watched being filmed several days before.
It was followed by pictures of the reserve and the town of Rata, of the barricades on Rata Road preventing unauthorised access, of dozens of reporters, and a long telephoto shot of the army presence at the Townsend farm. More than anything, that seemed to underscore the reality of their predicament and why they couldn’t return.
‘You guys could go,’ Tim said to Coral. ‘You and Norman.’
‘Albert won’t let anyone leave. You heard him.’
‘Who says we want to anyway?’ Norman said.
‘But you know what it means if you don’t. It’s a fifty light-year trip to Eltheria. If we go and come straight back, we’ll only be six weeks older, but a hundred years will have passed on Earth.’
Norman bit his lip. Of all of them, he understood that well enough, but to hear someone say it out loud somehow made it real. He looked at the pictures of his home town with RAGS, his mum’s shop, in the foreground, dropped the pastry chip he’d just picked up and sank back into his seat. The chip hung in the air, tumbling gently for a couple of seconds before a cleany-crawly zoomed past and whisked it away.
‘Is almost as bad for us,’ Alkemy said. ‘We have been away twenty-five year. Much will have changed back home.’
‘There is always Albert’s time-injection idea,’ Tim said. ‘You know, that stuff about adding extra time as we travel and making it go backwards.’
‘I can’t see how it can,’ Coral said. ‘It does my head in just thinking about it. If it works – if – then technically we’d get to Eltheria before we were even born on Earth! And if we came back again, where would we be then?’
They considered that in silence.
‘But imagine if it does work,’ Tim said. ‘How cool would that be? After all, Albert is supposed to be some sort of super brainbox. Remember that footage we saw after we recovered his memory bulb? How that guy Krilen called him the greatest thinking machine Eltheria had ever produced?’
Coral turned to Ludokrus. ‘Did you say he built his ideas into the new Temporal Accumulator?’
Ludokrus nodded as a cleany-crawly brushed past Norman’s face at eye level, scooping something up. Tim saw it and opened a person-to-person link to his friend. ‘Hey, are you all right?’
Norman looked away. ‘Yeah, I’m cool.’ Another cleany-crawly brushed past his cheek. Then his voice broke and he said in a choked voice, ‘I was thinking about Mum. I might never see her again.’
He slipped off his headset, pushed away from the chair and drifted from the room.
‘Where are you going?’ Coral said.
‘He’ll be back in a minute,’ Tim told her. Whatever happened, he thought, they still had each other. Norman was on his own.
After kicking off, Norman let himself drift up to the observation deck. The ship, sensing his arrival, switched on the lights, but he muttered, ‘Lights off, please,’ and sat in the dark, staring out at the stars.
It was a dream come true, being on a real spaceship, heading for another planet, but it came with a cost.
He called Tim his best friend, but in reality Tim only came in second. His best mate was his mum. Always had been, always would. The fact that he might never see her again choked him up inside and he wiped away more tears before the cleany-crawlies could get to them.
Then he thought about what she would say if she knew his predicament, and smiled to himself: ‘Go for it, Norman!’ The words came to him so clearly it was like she was there in the darkness with him. She’d never held him back from chasing any dream or pursuing any idea. And she never would.
He’d go for it all right, but he wouldn’t go quietly. Not without telling her all that was in his heart, and not without saying a proper goodbye first. To hell with Albert and his stupid rules!
He returned to the medical bay wearing a pair of pink gravity slippers. They made a comical contrast to his gingery hair, but his expression was sombre.
‘OK,’ he addressed them all, ‘we can’t go home. I accept that. But we can’t just go without saying goodbye. That wouldn’t be fair on ...’ his voice grew unsteady and he cleared his throat ‘... on the people we leave behind, would it?’
He looked from one to the other. No one spoke till Ludokrus said gently, ‘We cannot make the broadcast, Norman. You know this. Everyone on Earth will hear. The Thanatos too. Maybe even use it to fix our location.’
‘Who said anything about a broadcast? I’m not talking about that sort of message. I’m talking about what started this whole business in the first place.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mammals. Human beings. You know.’
The others exchanged looks. He wasn’t making any sense.
‘The thing that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago and gave us, mammals, our big break.’
‘You mean a meteorite?’
Norman nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’