The Year’s Best

Here’s a compelling look at the struggle to launch a privately funded starship, in spite of all the legal and logistical challenges that must be overcome, including some potentially deadly ones …

Allen Steele made his first sale in 1988. In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel, Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locus poll as Best First Novel of the year, and soon Steele was being compared to Golden Age Heinlein by no less an authority than Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Clarke County, Space; Lunar Descent; Labyrinth of Night; The Weight; The Tranquility Alternative; A King of Infinite Space; Oceanspace; Chronospace; Coyote; Coyote Rising; Spindrift; Galaxy Blues; Coyote Horizon; Coyote Destiny; Hex; and a YA novel, Apollo’s Outcast. His short work has been gathered in five collections, Rude Astronauts, All-American Alien Boy, American Beauty, The Last Science Fiction Writer, and Sex and Violence in Zero-G: The Complete “Near Space” Stories. His most recent book is a new novel, V-S Day. He has won three Hugo Awards, in 1996 for his novella “The Death of Captain Future,” in 1998 for his novella “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” and, most recently, in 2011 for his novelette “The Emperor of Mars.” Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he has worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines, covering science and business assignments, and is now a full-time writer living in Whately, Massachusetts, with his wife Linda.

The Gulfstream G8 was an old aircraft on the verge of retirement. Its fuselage creaked whenever it hit an air pocket, and the tiltjets had made a rattling sound when it took off from San Juan. At least the Caribbean looked warm. Matt figured that, if something went wrong and the plane had to ditch, at least he and the other passengers wouldn’t freeze to death in the sun-dappled water that lay below. Provided that they survived the crash, of course.

Matt looked away from the window to steal another glance at the young woman sitting across the aisle. She’d said nothing to him over the past couple of hours, and he couldn’t decide whether whatever she was studying on her slate was really that fascinating or if she was merely being standoffish. The aircraft jounced again, causing her to briefly raise her eyes from the screen. She caught Matt looking at her, favored him with a polite smile, then returned her attention to the slate.

She was beautiful. Dark brown skin and fathomless black eyes hinted at an Indian heritage. Her build was athletically slender, her face solemn yet her mouth touched with subtle laugh-lines. And there were no rings on her fingers.

“Rough flight,” he said.

She looked up again. “Excuse me?”

“Rough flight, I said.” Searching for something to add, Matt settled on the obvious. “You’d think the foundation could afford a better plane. This one looks like it came from the junkyard.” He picked at the frayed upholstery of his left armrest.

“They’re trying to save money. This is probably the cheapest charter they could afford.”

Her gaze went back to her slate, her right hand pushing away a lock of mahogany hair that had fallen across her face. She was plainly uninterested in making conversation with a fellow passenger. Or at least the young guy about her own age seated beside her. But Matt had learned how to be persistent when pursuing attractive women. Sometimes, the direct approach was the best.

He stuck out his hand. “Matt Skinner.”

She eyed his hand for a second before deciding to take it. “Chandraleska Sanyal.”

“Chandalre…” He fumbled over the syllables

“I’ll settle for Chandi.”

“Okay. So what are you doing with the … y’know? The project.”

“Payload specialist, Nathan 4. I’m with the checkout team.” She nodded toward the handful of other men and women sitting around them. Most were in their late twenties or early thirties, although two or three were middle-aged or older. “Same as everyone else … except you, I suppose.”

“Oh yeah … checkout team.” Matt had no idea what she meant by that, other than it had something to do with the rocket carrying Galactique’s components into orbit. Leaning across the armrest, he peered at her slate. Vertical columns of numbers, a bar-graph with multicolored lines rising from left to right, a pop-up menu bar. They could just as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics. “Fascinating.”

Chandi wasn’t fooled for a second. “I didn’t know tourists still visit Ile Sombre. Or are you the new kitchen help?”

It was an insult, of course, but at least she was talking to him. “Oh, no,” he said, “I’m coming down to visit my parents. They work on the project. Ben and Jill Skinner … maybe you know them?”

Matt had the satisfaction of watching Chandi’s eyes widen in surprise. “Dr. Skinner’s your father?” she asked, and he nodded. “That means you’re with the Arkwright family.”

“Why, yes. That’s my middle name … Matthew Arkwright Skinner.” He said this with deliberate casualness, as if it was the most unremarkable thing he could have mentioned. “Nathan Arkwright was my great-great-grandfather. He started the Arkwright Foundation about seventy years ago, when…”

“I know the foundation’s history. I’ve even read a few of his novels.” Chandi nodded towards the other passengers. “It’s a good bet everyone has. Which book was your favorite?”

The soft chime of a bell saved Matt from having to admit that he’d never read any of Nathan Arkwright’s science fiction novels. The seat-belt lights flashed on and the pilot’s voice came through the speakers: “We’ll be coming in for landing, folks, so if you’ll return to your seats and stow your belongings, we’ll have you on the ground in just a few minutes.”

The other passengers began collapsing their slates. Matt felt his ears pop. Chandi saved her work, then slipped her slate into her travel bag. “If you look out the window, you might see the launch site.”

Matt turned to look. For a moment he saw nothing, then the plane banked to the right and Ile Sombre came into view. He caught a glimpse of a ciudad flotante, one of the floating towns common in the coastal regions of the southern hemisphere; this one was Ste. Genevieve, a collection of prefabs, huts, and shacks built atop pontoon barges above the flooded remains of the island’s former capitol. Then the aircraft moved away from the coast and he saw, rising from the inland rainforest, something that looked like a giant yellow crayon nestled within a gantry tower: a cargo rocket, perched atop its mobile launch platform.

“Nathan 2.” Chandi leaned across the aisle to gaze over his shoulder. “Scheduled for lift-off the day after tomorrow … if all goes well, that is.”

Glancing back at her, Matt couldn’t help but see down the front of her blouse. It was a pleasant sight. “That’s … um, the microwave beam thing, isn’t it?”

Chandi noticed the direction he was looking and quickly sat up straight again. “No. The beamsat went up six weeks ago on Nathan 1. It’s being assembled in Lagrange orbit and should be ready for operation in about four months. Nathan 2 is carrying the service module.”

“Oh, okay. Right…”

A bump beneath their feet as the landing gear came down, followed a few seconds later by the trembling shudder of the engine nacelles swiveling upward to descent position. About a thousand feet below, a paved airstrip came into view. Chandi gave her seat belt a perfunctory hitch to make sure it was tight. “Mind if I ask a personal question?”

Matt smiled. “I can give you the answer. Yes, I’d love to have dinner with you tonight.”

She didn’t return the smile. “What I was going to ask was, why are you here?”

“Come again?”

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t know anything about Galactique. This is no vacation spot. The island lost its beaches years ago, and there’s no one at the hotel except the launch team. So trying to use your family name to pick up girls isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

Matt’s face became warm. “I didn’t … I wasn’t…”

“Sure you weren’t.” Chandi’s expression was knowing. “So what brings you here?”

He suddenly found himself wishing the plane would crash, if only because death might save him the embarrassment of this moment. Chandi was watching him, though, waiting for an answer, so he gave her the only one he had that was honest.

“My grandmother thought it was a good idea,” he said.

Matt’s grandmother was Kate Morressy Skinner, the Arkwright Foundation’s executive director, and as Matt stood in the customs line of what was laughably called the Ile Sombre International Airport, he once again reflected that it had been a mistake to call her asking for money.

He’d always gotten along well with Grandma, but he should have known that her wealth was an illusion. The foundation had been established by a bestowment left by her grandfather; it was worth billions of dollars, but all of it was tied up in investment capital associated with its principal goal: building and launching the first starship from Earth. Grandma had been made its director when she was about Matt’s age, and although she received a generous salary, she was hardly rich. So she shouldn’t have been expected to give her grandson a “loan” they both knew would probably never be repaid.

Matt watched the customs inspector open the backpack he’d brought with him from the states and began to carefully sort through his belongings. The airport terminal was a large single room in a cinderblock building; customs was a row of folding tables behind which the inspectors stood. The place was humid, with the ceiling fans doing nothing but blow hot air around. It was springtime in this part of the world, but it felt like mid-summer anywhere else. Through the open door leading to the airstrip came the roar of another battered Air Carib jet taking off. Except for the passengers who’d disembarked from Matt’s flight, everyone in the building was black; he’d later learn that the native inhabitants were descended from African slaves who’d escaped from French and Spanish plantations elsewhere in the Caribbean and made their way to this remote island just south of Dominica, which the Europeans avoided because it had once been a pirate stronghold.

Grandma had done enough for him already by lining up his most recent job as an orderly at the Philadelphia hospital where Grandpa had worked as a doctor before he passed away. But that job lasted only about as long as all the others before it: part-time actor, recording studio publicist, store clerk, a couple of positions as assistant associate whatever. He’d keep them until he got bored and his boss noticed his lack of commitment, and then the inevitable chain of events would follow. The carpet. The warning. The second warning. The final warning. The unapologetic apology, the dismissal form, the severance check. And then the move to another city, another apartment, and another job found on another employment Web site.

When the hospital fired him, Matt called his grandmother in Boston and asked if she could front him a few hundred bucks. Just so he could make ends meet until he found work again. She’d sent him a plane ticket to Ile Sombre instead, telling him that his parents had a job for him down there. Which was why a customs inspector was now asking him to empty his pockets.

Matt pulled everything from his jeans and denim jacket and put it on the table. Cell, wallet, key ring holding keys that no longer belonged to anything he could unlock except a storage locker in Philadelphia, a lighter and a pack of Rockys. The inspector, a tall black man with a purple-dyed ‘fro, picked up the smokes and glared at him.

“This is not allowed, sir,” he said, his deep voice inflected with a Caribbean accent.

“I thought marijuana was legal here. It is where I come from.”

“You’re not in America. Do you have any more, sir?”

“No. That’s my only pack.”

The inspector turned to another uniformed man standing behind the table and said something in French creole. The other islander gazed at the pack and shook his head. “We will let you go, sir,” the inspector said to Matt as he dropped the pack in a nearby wastecan, “but you’ll have to pay a fine. One hundred dollars, American.”

“I only have sixty.”

“That will do.”

Matt removed the last money he had in the world from his wallet and gave it to the inspector, who carefully counted the bills before tucking them in his shirt pocket. “Thank you, sir.” He handed Matt’s passport back to him. “You may go now. Have a pleasant visit.”

Third world graft. The inspector probably would have shaken him down for something else if he hadn’t found the smokes. Matt zipped up his back, slung it across his shoulder, and headed for the exit door. At least he wouldn’t spend his first night on Ile Sombre in jail.

Chandraleska Sanyal had already gone through customs. She was standing outside with the other new arrivals, waiting to board a dilapidated solar van parked at the curb. Matt caught her eye and she gave him a brief smile. Apparently he hadn’t turned her off entirely. He was about to go over and make an excuse to spend more time with her by seeing if he could hitch a ride on the bus when a woman’s voice called his name.

He looked around and there was his mother, walking toward him. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him. “Have a good flight?”

Jill Skinner was in her early fifties, but the gene therapy she and her husband had undergone a few years ago had erased at least a decade from her apparent age. She now looked more like she could have been Matt’s older sister rather than his mother. “Okay, I guess,” he said, returning the hug. He decided not to tell her about the customs hassle. “Where’s Dad? He’s not coming?”

“He’s busy at the space center. Nathan 2 goes up in a couple of days, or haven’t you heard?” She glanced at his pack. “Is that all you brought with you?”

“Didn’t think I’d need anything else.” No sense in letting her know that it contained nearly everything he had left. The stuff in the storage locker would probably be auctioned once he failed to pay the rent. “Where are you parked?”

“This way.” She turned to lead him across the airport’s pitted car park. “I’m afraid I’ll have to drop you off at the hotel. I’m needed at work, too … although I’m hoping I can get you to start helping me after Nathan 2 gets off.”

Matt’s mother was the Arkwright Foundation’s press liaison at the Ile Sombre launch site; his father was mission director. They’d met many years ago when Jill Muller was a reporter assigned to do an investigative story about the foundation; once she discovered the nature of Ben Skinner’s family business, she’d left journalism to marry him and become the foundation’s media relations director. Matt had grown up with the foundation, but he’d never shared his parents’ commitment to it. This was the first time in many years Mom had even intimated that she’d like to have him join her and Dad.

“Yeah, well … I was sort of thinking I’d just like to take it easy for a while.” He didn’t look at her as they crossed the car park. “Kinda catch my breath, decide what my life’s goals should be.”

His mother didn’t answer that, or at least not at once. Instead, she pulled a key-remote from her shorts pocket and thumbed it. A short distance away, a Volksun beeped to remind her where she’d parked it; its engine was already humming by the time she opened its hatchback and let her son throw his pack in.

“Twenty-eight is a little late to be making up your mind what you want to do, isn’t it?” she said as she got in behind the wheel. “First there was journalism school…”

“That was your idea, not mine.”

“… then there was acting, then the music business, then the idea of working in a hospital while going to med school…”

“A lot of guys I know take a while to settle into something.” Through the side window, Matt spotted the van Chandi was riding; it was pulling away from the terminal, heading for parts unknown.

“A lot of guys you know probably aren’t flat broke.” His mother didn’t look at him as she backed out the parking space. “Oh, yes, I know … Grandma told me you’d tried to hit her up for money.”

“It was just a loan.”

“Maybe … but I promise you, you’re not going to get a dime from her, or your father and me either, unless you work for it. So don’t count on getting a tan while you’re here.” She left the car on manual control and started driving toward the airport gate. “You’ve been a grasshopper for much two long. Time for you to become a busy little ant, just like the rest of us.”

Jill Skinner had always been fond of Aesop’s Fables; she’d been referring to it for as long as he could remember. Nothing ever changes. Matt slumped in his seat and regretted letting the customs inspector take away the only thing that might have made this trip bearable.

III

The Hotel Au Soliel was a former resort dating back to the last century, when tourists still came to Ile Sombre for winter getaways. That era had come to an end just as it had for much of the Caribbean; rising sea levels and catastrophic hurricanes had wiped out scenic beaches and pleasant seaside villages, and the subsequent collapse of the cruise ship industry had been the final blow. Fortunately, the Au Soliel was far enough away from the water that it hadn’t shared the same fate as Ste. Genevieve. The port town lay submerged beneath the flotante anchored above its ruined buildings and streets, but the hotel had survived. Run-down and in crying need of a fresh coat of paint, it now functioned as living quarters for the space center which, along with coffee and citrus, had become one of Ile Sombre’s principal industries.

Modeled in the plantation style, the hotel sprawled across ten acres abutting the island’s undeveloped rain forest. Shaped like a H, its two-story wings surrounded gardens, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. Matt was pleased that he’d been given a poolside cabana room until he discovered that it wasn’t quite as luxurious as it sounded. The room was small, its bed not much more than a cot, and the pool itself had long-since been drained and covered by a canvas tarp. His parents, on the other hand, had taken residence in one of the cottages that had once been reserved for the wealthiest guests and were now occupied by senior staff.

“That’s where we’re staying,” Jill said, pointing out the cottage to him as she led him down the outside stairs to the cabanas. “Sorry we can’t give you one of the spare bedrooms, but your father and I are sharing one as an office and the other one is used by Grandma when she visits.”

Matt watched as she ran a passcard across the door scanner. “Is she here often?”

“Not really. She doesn’t like to travel very much these days.” His mother stepped aside to let him press his thumb against the lockplate; the door beeped twice as it registered him as the room’s rightful occupant. “But she’s planning to come down soon. Probably when we launch Nathan 5. She wants to be here when we send Galactique on its way.”

Matt thought that his mother was going to leave him alone to unpack and maybe catch a nap, but she had other plans. He had just enough time to cast off his unneeded jacket, drop his pack, and give his quarters a quick look-see before she hustled him out the door and back to the car. By then it was almost dusk. He hadn’t eaten since he’d changed planes in Puerto Rico, and he asked if they’d be getting dinner any time soon.

“We’ll be coming back here to eat,” she said as they drove away from the hotel. “Everyone has their meals together in the dining room … buffet-style, but it’s still pretty good. Right now, I’m taking you to Operations and Management. Your father would like to see you.”

The Ile Sombre Space Launch Center was located on a high plateau about five miles from the hotel, not far from the island’s eastern coast. Matt’s mother passed the time by telling him about the place. It had been established earlier in the century by PanAmSpace, the consortium of South American countries that provided launch services for private space companies in the Western Hemisphere. For several decades it sent communications, weather, and solar power satellites into Earth orbit, but then Washington moved to protect the American space industry by passing the Domestic Space Access Act, which forbade use of overseas launch sites by U.S. companies—a law that was idiotically short-sighted, considering that Cape Canaveral and Wallops Island were being lost to the rising sea levels and the New Mexico spaceport was overwhelmed by the subsequent demand.

When the DSAA came down, Ile Sombre lost most of its space business. The launch center fell into disuse and might have been abandoned altogether had it not been for the Arkwright Foundation and the Galactique Project. It had taken some shrewd political manipulation by the foundation to gain an exemption from the DSAA, but in the end they’d won. Ile Sombre was now Galactique’s principal launch site; it was from there that the starship’s microwave propulsion system had been sent into space, soon to be followed by its four-module hull.

A chain-link fence surrounded the space center, its entrance gate guarded by islanders in private-security uniforms. As Jill slowed down for the checkpoint, Matt noticed a handful of people squatting beside a couple of weather-beaten tents erected just outside the fence. Hand-lettered plywood signs that looked as if they’d been through several tropical showers leaned haphazardly on posts stuck in the ground: STOP GALACTICK!! and GOD WILL NEVER FOREGIVE YOU and EARTH IS YOU’RE ONLY HOME. The protesters were all middle-aged white people; they glared at the Volksun as Matt’s mother flashed her I.D. badge and the guards waved her and Matt through.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Morons.” She said this as if it explained everything, then she caught his questioning look. “They’re from the New American Congregation, a fundamentalist megachurch in North Carolina. They’ve been opposed to the project from the beginning. Shortly after we began launch operations, they sent down some so-called missionaries to give us a hard time.” She shrugged. “They’re harmless, really. Just don’t talk to them if you happen to run into them.”

She drove to the Operations and Management, a flat-roofed building not far from the hemispherical Mission Control dome and, a short distance away, the enormous white cube that was the Vehicle Assembly Building. Work had ended for the day, and men and women were streaming through the front doors, each of them wearing badge lanyards over linen shirts and spaghetti-strap dresses. Jill stopped at the security desk to get a visitor’s badge for Matt—“We’ll get you a staff badge tomorrow”—then they went upstairs and down a hall to a door marked Mission Director. She didn’t bother to knock but went straight in, and there was Matt’s father.

Like many sons, Matt had often wondered if he’d resemble his father when he got older. Now he was sure of it. Dr. Benjamin Skinner had taken retrotherapy as well and so didn’t look his age, and the cargo shorts and short-sleeve polo shirt he wore were more suitable for a younger man. Only a few strands of grey in his mustache attested to his true years. His office, though, was the sort of cluttered mess only a senior project engineer would have, its shelves choked with books, the desk buried beneath reports and spreadsheets; his father still preferred to read paper. Through the corner windows could be seen the distant launch pad. The sun was going down, and floodlights at the base of the pad were coming on to bathe Nathan 2 in a luminescent halo.

“There you are.” Ben stood up and walked around the desk, carefully avoiding a stack of binders on the floor. “Good trip down?”

“It was all right.” Matt shook hands with him. “You need to get a better plane, though. I thought it was going to fall apart.”

“Yeah, isn’t it a heap? But we made a good deal with Air Carib, and every penny we save goes to what counts.” He cocked his head toward Nathan 2.

“Maybe you should write a press release about that, Mattie.” Jill picked up a pile of books from an armchair and sat down. “It could be the first job you do for me.”

Matt didn’t know which he liked less, the prospect of becoming a media flack or being called by his childhood name. “I don’t know if I’m going to be here that long.”

“Did Grandma send you a round-trip ticket?” Ben asked, and smiled when Matt shook his head. “Well, there you have it. You can’t go home until you can buy a ticket, and you can’t buy a ticket unless you work for us.” A shrug. “I don’t know what’s so bad about that. There’s dozens of people who’d love to be working here … even writing press releases.”

“I gave up that stuff when I quit the music business.”

“Fired, you mean.” His mother wasn’t letting him get away with anything. As usual.

“It’s a job, son … and I bet you’ll come to like it, if you’ll give it a chance.” Ben crossed his arms and leaned against his desk. “We’re making history here. Launching the human race’s first true starship, sending our species to a new world twenty-two light-years away … I don’t know how anyone can’t be excited about a chance to participate in this.”

Even after all these years, his father still didn’t get it. His dreams—his lifelong obsession, really—wasn’t shared by his son, and never had been. Matt had grown up in a family that had devoted itself to a goal that his great-great-grandfather set out for them, but he’d never understood why. They could have lived a life of ease with the money the Arkwright Foundation had earned over the years from its investments in the launch industry, asteroid mining, and solar power satellites. Instead, he’d watched his father, mother, and grandmother throw it all away on—again, he glanced out the window at the distant rocket—that.

“Yeah, well…” He looked down at the floor. “So long as I’m here, I guess I’ll try to get excited about it.” He knew what they were thinking. He’d been through this countless times already, even before he’d left home to find his own way in the world.

“The prodigal son returns,” his mother said drily.

“What?”

“Never mind.” She pushed herself out of the chair. “I’m sure you’re hungry, and it’s almost dinner time.” Jill looked at her husband. “Honey, c’mon … time to go home and eat. Sorry, but I’m not letting you get dinner out of the vending machines again.”

“Guess you’re right.” Ben looked at the papers on his desk, obviously reluctant to leave his job even for a little while. “I can always come back later, I suppose.” Standing up, he took his son by the arm. “The food at the hotel is actually pretty good. We cheaped out with the airplane, but spared no expense with the people we hired to cook for us.”

Matt remembered the remark Chandi had made, when she’d suggested that he might be someone who was coming down to take a job in the kitchen. “So I’ve heard.”

“T-minus ninety seconds. The launch director has given permission to end the hold and resume countdown.”

The voice from the ceiling speakers was accentless, almost robotic; Matt wondered if it was computer-generated. Although he was seated on the other side of a soundproof window separating the visitors gallery from the launch control center, he could see his father. Benjamin Skinner stood behind his console in Mission Control, his gaze fixed upon the row of giant LCD screens arranged in a shallow arc across the far wall of the windowless room. In keeping with a tradition established by mission directors of the NASA era, he wore an old-fashioned necktie from a collection of atrocious ties. Matt had seen this particular tie earlier that morning, at breakfast: a topless Polynesian girl in a hula skirt, dancing beneath a palm tree. He thought it was amazingly stupid, but apparently his father believed that it would bring them good luck.

All the other controllers were decked out in dark blue polo shirts with the Galactique Project logo embroidered on the breast pockets. Their attention was focused entirely on the datastream coming from Nathan 2. In the center wallscreen, the cargo rocket stood fuming upon the launch pad, wreathed in hydrogen fumes seeping from ports along its canary-colored hull. Above the screen, a chronometer had come alive again: -00.01.29, the figure getting smaller with each passing second.

“Why did they stop the countdown?” Matt asked.

“They always go into hold at the ninety-second mark.” Chandi cupped a hand against her mouth even though no one in the firing room could possibly hear them. “Gives the controllers a chance to catch up with their checklists, make sure they haven’t missed anything.”

“I thought computers controlled everything.”

“At this point, they pretty much do.” She smiled. “But only a fool would completely trust a computer when it comes to something like this.”

Matt glanced at his slate. It displayed the Nathan 2 factsheet his mother had sent him a little while earlier. Galactique’s service module—the 110-foot segment containing the ship’s guidance and control computers, fission reactor, maneuvering thrusters, laser telemetry and sail control systems—was being transported to geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above Earth by an unmanned Kubera heavy-lift booster manufactured in India by Lokapala Cosmos, the kind used to launch solar power satellites. The rest was data: reusable single-stage-to-orbit, 233 feet in height, gross lift-off weight 4,750 tons with a 400,000 pound payload capacity, powered by eight oxygen-hydrogen aerospike engines.

That was it looked like to an engineer, though. To Matt, the rocket resembled nothing more or less than an enormous penis. The Giant Space Weiner, worshipped by a roomful of people with a Freudian phallic fixation.

“Why is it yellow?” It was the only thing he could say which wouldn’t have offended the young woman sitting beside him.

The people seated around them cast him patronizing looks, as if he was a child who’d asked an obvious question. “So they can find it easily when it splashes down after re-entry,” Chandi said, visibly annoyed. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

Matt almost laughed out loud. It wouldn’t do, though, to explain what he thought was so funny. “That’s something Mom and Dad are interested in,” he said, keeping the joke to himself.

“T-minus sixty seconds and counting.”

Chandi raised an eyebrow, and Matt distracted himself by glancing over his shoulder. His mother sat a couple of rows behind him, surrounded by the handful of reporters who’d flown down to Ile Sombre for the launch. She caught Matt looking at him and gave him a brief nod, then cupped an ear to the journalist who’d just asked her a question.

Matt knew that he should be sitting with his mother, learning the job he’d soon be taking. But he’d spent all yesterday with her doing what little he could to help the press office get ready for the launch, and he’d become tired of being attached to her elbow. So when he’d seen Chandi enter the gallery along with the other specialists who’d been on the plane, he contrived a reason to take the seat beside her: he’d told her that he wanted to watch the launch with someone who’d explain things to him.

Chandi didn’t seem to mind, although he caught hostile looks from a couple of other guys who’d aspired to be her companion. Matt told himself that he didn’t really have a crush on her. He might even believe it, if he repeated it to himself long enough.

“T-minus thirty seconds and counting.”

“They’re retracting the gantry arms,” Chandi said quietly, bending her head slightly toward him as she pointed to the center wallscreen. “The rocket’s now on internal power.”

“That means it’s pulling juice from only itself?” Matt asked and she nodded. “Okay … um, so what happens if something goes wrong?”

“Shut up,” growled an older man sitting behind them.

“Hey,” Matt said, glancing back at him, “I’m just asking.”

“Don’t.” Chandi scowled in disapproval. “It’s bad luck.” She paused, then went on. “They can abort the launch right up to the last two seconds, but that’s only if the computers pick up a mission-critical malfunction. After main-engine start, we’re pretty much committed to…”

“T-minus twenty seconds.”

She abruptly stopped herself, and Matt was startled to feel her nervously grab the back of his own hand. She’d apparently meant to grasp the armrest only to find it already occupied, because she immediately jerked her hand away.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “You can, if you want.”

Chandi gazed at him, her dark eyes embarrassed. She returned her hand to the armrest without shaking him off.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“T-minus fifteen seconds.”

All of a sudden, she rose from her seat. “Follow me,” she said, still clutching his hand.

“What are you…?”

“Hurry!” She pulled him to his feet, then turned to push her way past the other people seated in their row. “Excuse me, excuse me…”

Matt dropped his slate, but Chandi didn’t give him a chance to pick it up. He caught a glimpse of his mother’s face; she stared at him in bafflement as Chandi tugged him toward the gallery’s side entrance. Chandi let go of his hand to shove open the door; Matt followed her as she raced down the stairs leading to the control center’s rear door. In seconds, they were outside the dome and running around the side of the building.

Although he was a newcomer, Matt was aware of the safety rules which mandated that everyone witnessing a liftoff had to do so from inside Mission Control. The pad was less than three miles away; if the Kubera blew up, the dome would protect them from the blast. He knew he was going to catch hell for this from his mother, but Chandi hadn’t given him any choice.

“T-minus ten seconds.” The voice came from loudspeakers outside the dome. “Nine … eight … seven…”

“Stop.” Chandi grabbed him by the shoulders, halting him in mid-step. “Watch.”

“Six … five … four…”

They had a clear view of the launch pad. From the distance, the rocket was almost toy-like, dwarfed by its gantry and the four lightning-deflection masts surrounding the pad. Matt had just enough to regret no longer having the close-up view afforded by the control room screens when a flare silently erupted at the bottom of the rocket, sending black smoke rolling forth from the blast trench beneath the platform.

“Three … main engine ignition … two … one … liftoff!”

The Kubera rose from its pad atop a torch so bright that it caused him to squint. The eerie quiet that accompanied the ignition sequence lasted only until the rocket cleared the tower. The silence ended when the sound waves finally crossed the miles separating him from the rocket, and then it was as if he was being run over by an invisible truck: a crackling roar that grew louder, louder, louder as the rocket ascended into the blue Caribbean sky. Seagulls and egrets and parrots took wing from all the palmettos and cocoanut trees around them as Nathan 2 became a fiery spear lancing up into the heavens. It was no longer the Giant Space Weiner, but something terrifying and awesome that seemed to take possession of the sky itself.

Breathless, unable to speak, Matt watched as the rocket rose up and away, becoming a tiny spark at the tip of a black, horn-like trail forming an arc high above the ocean. The sudden, distant bang of the sonic boom startled him. He wasn’t aware that Chandi was quietly observing him, savoring his fascination. It wasn’t until the spark winked out, and the loudspeaker announced main-engine cut-off and that Nathan 2 had successfully reached low orbit, that he remembered she was standing beside him. His ears were ringing when he looked at her again.

“That was … incredible,” he said.

“Yes, it was.” Chandi nodded knowingly. “Now you see why we’re here?”

The launch team celebrated with a party that night at the hotel. Instead of the customary buffet in the former restaurant, a cookout was held by the swimming pool. A propane grill was brought out of storage and tiki lamps were lit, and a couple of hundred pounds of Argentine beef, purchased by the foundation and stashed away for special occasions, emerged from the kitchen’s walk-in freezer. Hamburgers and steak fries and cocoanut ice cream and an ice-filled barrel of Red Stripe beer: Nathan 2’s foster parents were in the mood to party. Their child had finally left home.

Matt went to the party expecting to hook up with Chandi, only to find that she was less interested in him that evening than she’d been that morning. She smiled when he approached her, and didn’t object when he brought her a beer and asked if she’d join him for dinner, but no sooner had they sat down at one of the patio tables when a half-dozen other scientists and engineers carried their paper plates over to their table. They sat down without asking if they were interrupting anything, and the conversation immediately shifted to technical matters: integration of Galactique’s beamsail within Nathan 3’s faring, the timeline for recovery and turnaround of the Kubera booster once it returned to Earth, the problems anticipated with meeting the schedule for final testing and checkout of the Nathan 4 module.

Matt tried to keep up as best as he could, but it was all above his head. Within minutes he was lost, and no one at the table was willing to stop and provide explanations. Chandi made a polite effort to include him in the conversation, yet it was as if he was dull schoolboy who’d been mistakenly invited to eat at the teachers’ table. No, worse than that: everyone at the table was his age, more or less, but some of them were probably earning their doctorates about the same time he was working in a convenience store.

After Matt asked Chandi if she’d like another beer—she impatiently shook her head and returned to the discussion of maintaining Galactique’s extrauterine fetal incubation system during the mission’s cruise phase—he quietly picked up his plate and left. He tossed the plate in the recycling can, fished a couple of Red Stripes from the beer barrel, and found another place to sit, a neglected chaise lounge on the other side of the pool. And there he proceeded to drink, listen to the reggae music being piped over the loudspeaker system, and wonder again what he was doing here.

He was on his second beer when his father came over to join him. Ben Skinner ambled around the end of the covered swimming pool and into the place where his son had chosen to hide. By then he’d removed his dress shirt and absurd tie and replaced them with an equally ugly Hawaiian shirt, and he stopped at the foot of Matt’s lounger to gaze down at him.

“Care for some company?”

“Sure.” Matt regarded him with eyes that were becoming beer-fogged. “Have a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Ben eased himself into the chair beside him. “Saw you earlier. Thought you were making friends. Now…”

“Now I’m here,” Matt said, finishing his thought for him. “They’re nice enough, but…” He shrugged. “Y’know, you’ve heard one conversation about the quantum intergalactic microwave whoopee, you’ve pretty much heard ‘em all.”

“Oh, yeah, that. I think I read a paper about it in BIS Journal just the other day.” A grin appeared, and quickly faded when he saw that Matt wasn’t appreciating the joke. “Can’t blame you. If you’re not on their wavelength, it’s going to be pretty hard to understand what they’re talking about. Here, let me see if I can cheer you up.”

He reached into his breast pocket, and Matt was astounded to see him pull out a joint. “Dad? Since when did you…?”

“Before you were born.” His father smiled as he juggled the hand-rolled spliff between his fingers. “I don’t indulge all that often, but I picked it up again when we came down here. I don’t mind if anyone here smokes, so long as it’s after hours and they don’t do it at the space center. Got a light?”

“I thought marijuana was illegal here.” Matt dug into his shorts pocket, searching for the lighter he habitually carried. “That’s what the customs guys told me when they took away my smokes.”

“Old island law from the smuggling days that’s still on the books. Only time the cops enforce it is when they get it in mind to shake down a gringo. Otherwise, no one cares.” Nonetheless he gazed at the crowd on the other side of the pool, wary of anyone spotting him smoking pot with his son. “I don’t do this very often, really. Just on special occasions. Then I go down to Ste. Genevieve and buy some of the local stuff.”

Matt handed his lighter to his father. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Just be careful to take someone with you if you go. Someone who doesn’t look like a white guy from the states.” Ben flicked the lighter, stuck one end of the joint in his mouth. “Maybe the young lady you were with tonight.”

“Chandi.”

“Umm-hmm.” The joint flamed as his father touched it with fire. It burned unevenly as he took a long drag from it. “Dr. Chandraleksha Sanyal,” he went on, slowly exhaling. “I recruited her myself, from Andru & Reynolds Biosystems. Very smart woman.”

“Out of my league, you mean.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Ben leaned over to pass the joint to him. “Sure, you’ll have to run a little harder to catch up with her, but … well, she must see something in you if she’d taken the trouble of dragging you out of the dome during the launch.”

“You know about that? Your back was turned to … oh. Mom must have told you.”

“Yes, she did.” His father frowned. “That’s against safety regs, by the way. Don’t let me catch you doing it again.”

Matt drew smoke into his lungs. It was unexpectedly strong; not harsh at all, but still more robust than the processed and preserved commercial stuff to which he was more accustomed. He felt the buzz as soon as he let it out. Nice. “It was her idea.”

“I’m not going to bust your balls over it. So how did you like it? The launch, I mean.”

“It was…” Matt struggled for the right words. “Awesome. Just … I dunno. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

His father smiled, “Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of rockets go up, but I’ve never gotten used to it.” He paused. “Y’know, you could have asked me anytime to take you to one of these things, back when I was still working for NASA. I could have arranged for you to get a visitors pass for a launch before they went bust.”

It was an old story, Matt’s lack of enthusiasm for that which his parents had devoted their lives. There was a brief period, when he was a child, when he had been fascinated by space. He’d even wanted to be an astronaut. But he’d left that behind along with his toy spaceships and astronomy coloring books. Now he was back where he’d started, and the last thing he wanted was to have his father pushing at him again.

“Guess I wasn’t interested,” he said.

“Hmm … no, I suppose you weren’t.” Ben took another hit from the joint and was quiet for a moment, as if contemplating the years gone by. “Maybe I made a mistake, trying to get you involved with all this too soon. I’ve lately thought that … well, if you hadn’t grown up with me and your mother constantly discussing this stuff over the dinner table, it might not have killed your interest. That and your grandmother…”

“I’m not blaming her for anything.” The joint was half-finished and he was enjoying the high he already had; he shook his head when his father tried to pass it to him again, and reached for his beer instead. “Grandma’s … y’know, Grandma. The foundation is her life. But you and Mom … I mean, with you two, this whole thing is like some kind of religion. The Church of Galactique. Praise the holy starship, hallelujah.”

His father scowled at him. “Oh, c’mon … it’s not that bad.”

“Yes, it is,” Matt insisted, “and you’ve had it for as long as I can remember. That’s why I went away. I had to find something else to do with my life than follow this obsession of yours.”

Despite himself, he found that he was getting angry. Maybe it was just a headful of marijuana and beer, but it seemed as if a lot of pent-up frustration was boiling out of him, whether he liked it or not. On impulse, he pushed himself off the lounger, nearly losing his balance as he stood up again on legs that suddenly felt numb. “Maybe I better take a walk,” he mumbled. “Get some fresh air or something.”

“Sure. Okay.” His father was hurt by the abrupt rejection, but he didn’t try to stop him. “Whatever you want. But Mattie…?”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“I know … sorry.” Ben shook his head. “Look, just a little advice, all right? You can knock this so-called obsession of mine all you want, but…”

He lowered his voice as he cast a meaningful look across the pool to where Chandi and her friends were still seated. “If you want to get anywhere with her, you’re going to have to learn to appreciate the things she’s interested in. And she joined our religion a long time ago.”

Even if he didn’t care to follow his father’s advice, Matt had no choice in the matter. His mother found him in the dining room the following morning, nursing a hangover with black coffee and an unappealing plate of scrambled eggs. The party was over, and so was any hope he might have still had of making this trip into a tropical vacation. It was time for him to go to work as her new assistant.

Before he’d left college to pursue a half-baked fantasy of becoming a movie actor, Matt had been a journalism major. That hadn’t worked out either, but he’d learned enough to know a little about what it took to work in a media relations department. This was Jill Skinner’s job at the Arkwright Foundation, and even before Matt had decided to come down to Ile Sombre, she’d been complaining about being short-handed. So his arrival had been fortunate, for her at least. She now had someone to do scut-work for her, giving her a chance to take care of more important tasks.

Over the course of the next several days, Matt tagged along with his mother as she went from place to place in the Ile Sombre Space Launch Centre. A large part of her job involved keeping up with daily events and writing press releases about them for the news media; since she wanted him to start doing some of this for her, it was important that he learn the Galactique Project from top to bottom, beginning with the preparations leading up to the launch of Nathan 3, scheduled for six weeks from then.

It was more interesting than he thought it would be. Nathan 3 was being checked out in a dust-free, temperature-controlled clean room in the Payload Integration Building next to the VAB. The clean room was the size of a basketball court, and everything in there was spotless and white, down to the one-piece isolation garments that made everyone wearing them look like surgeons. Matt couldn’t go in there, but his mother showed him where to stand quietly in the observation gallery overlooking the floor.

From there, he could see Nathan 3. Resting within an elevated cradle, it was an enormous, tightly-wrapped cylinder made of tissue-thin carbon-mesh graphite, dark grey with the thin silver stripes of its lateral struts running along its sides, resembling a giant furled umbrella. Galactique’s microwave sail had been built and tested in the same southern California facility that manufactured solar power satellites, but it served a completely different purpose. Once Galactique was completed in orbit and ready to launch, the sail would gradually unfold to its operational diameter of a little more than 62 miles. It seemed unbelievable that something so big could be reduced to a payload only 120 feet long and 22 feet wide, but the sail material had a density of only the tiniest fraction of an inch. Still, it would take all of the Kubera’s thrust to successfully get it off the ground.

Three days after it carried Nathan 2 into space, the cargo rocket returned to Earth. On Jill’s insistence, Matt accompanied the recovery team when they set forth on an old freighter to the spot where the rocket splashed down in the Caribbean about a hundred miles east of Ile Sombre. There they found the Kubera floating upright on its inflated landing bags, looking very much like a giant fishing bob. He watched as divers in wet suits swam out to drag tow cables to the booster; once that was done, the ship slowly hauled the Kubera back to the island, where the freighter docked at Ste. Genevieve’s commercial port. Over the next several days, the rocket would be lifted out of the water by derrick cranes, loaded onto a tandem tractor-trailer, and driven back to the space center, where it would be refit for the Nathan 3 mission.

Meanwhile, preparations for Nathan 4 were underway. In another white room, Galactique’s incubation module was being checked out for its primary purpose, carrying cryogenically-preserved sperm and egg specimens from two hundred human donors to the ship’s ultimate destination, the distant planet still officially known only as Gliese 667C-e.

Galactique’s final module, Nathan 5, was still being assembled in northern California. It contained two major segments: the 90-foot landing craft that would transport the newborn infants to the planet surface, where they would be raised by what were affectionately being called “nannybots” until they were old enough to fend for themselves, and the biopods that would precede them, complex machines capable of transforming Gliese 667C-e into a human-habitable world. Next to the vessel itself, this was probably the most challenging aspect of the project, one which was pushing human technology to its farthest limits.

When Matt’s parents had explained the foundation’s plan many years ago, he’d had a hard time understanding it. Why send sperm and eggs when, with a bigger ship, you could send living people instead? But he was thinking in terms of the science fiction movies he’d seen as a kid, where huge starships carrying thousands of passengers easily leaped between the stars with the help of miraculous faster-than-light drives. Reality was another matter entirely. FTL drives didn’t exist, nor would they ever. Furthermore, the larger the ship was, the more energy would be required for it to achieve even a fraction of light-speed. If its passengers were to remain alive and conscious during the entire flight, such a vessel would have to be several miles long, a generation ship capable of sustaining these passengers and their descendents for a century or more. So even if a ship that large were built—such as from a hollowed-out asteroid, one early proposal—the amount of fuel it would have to carry would comprise at least half of its mass. It would be like trying to move a mountain by providing it with another mountain of fuel.

Making the issue even more complicated was the fact that no one knew how to build a closed-loop life support system that could keep people alive for such long periods of time. The sheer amount of consumables they’d need—air, water, and food—was daunting, and could not be produced or recycled, without fail, for decades or even centuries on end. Nor had anyone successfully come up with a means of putting people into hibernation and reviving them again many years later. Perhaps one day, but now…?

The solution to all this was obvious: remove people from the ship entirely, and instead build a smaller, lighter vessel which could carry human reproductive material to the new world, where it would be gestated and brought to term within the extrauterine fetal incubators. This process was better understood and more feasible, and therefore made it more likely that a starship could be built if it didn’t have to devote so much of its mass to keeping its passengers alive. And since Galactique wouldn’t have its own engines, but instead rely on the microwave beamsat in Lagrange orbit to boost the ship to .5c cruise velocity, it would be able to make the voyage to Gliese 667C-e in a little less than half a century.

Even so, there was nothing simple about Galactique’s EFI module. Just as large as Nathan 2 and 3, the heavily-shielded cylinder was an AI-controlled, robotically-serviced laboratory. From the observation gallery, Matt watched as clean-suited technicians worked on the module through its open service ports; there was only a small crawlspace running down its central core, and that had been provided more for the spidery robots which would maintain the ship than for the humans who’d built it.

Matt liked visiting this place, and often stole time from writing press releases or making travel arrangements for visiting journalists to view Nathan 3 being prepared for its journey. But it wasn’t just his growing interest in Galactique that brought him to the gallery. It was also being able to watch Chandi at work. Her outfit should have made her indistinguishable from the rest of her group, but nonetheless he could always tell who she was; she just seemed to move just a little differently from her colleagues. And although she acknowledged his presence only once with a brief wave, even that small gesture was enough.

They’d see each other in the evenings, after dinner when the launch team would get together on the patio for drinks and perhaps a joint or two. By then, Matt had become better acquainted with some of the other people working on the project. They’d come to accept him as a non-scientist who had his own role to play, and he made an effort to keep his skepticism to himself in order to assure their friendship.

Yet one evening, something slipped out of his mouth that he hadn’t meant to say. And that got him in trouble with Chandi.

Matt was sitting at a poolside table with her and a couple of other team members: Graham Royce and his husband Rich Collins, both of them British space engineers who specialized in beam propulsion systems. The three men were sharing an after-dinner joint—Chandi didn’t smoke, but politely tolerated those who did—and watching the crescent moon come up over the palms. By then, Nathan 3 was on the launch pad, with countdown scheduled to commence in just four days. The Brits were relaxed, knowing that their job was done for a little while; they wouldn’t have to go back to work again until Nathan 3 was docked with Nathan 2 and the orbital assembly would attach the sail’s rigging to the service module.

“You’re hoping on a lot, aren’t you?” Matt asked, passing the joint to Rich. “I mean, the way I understand it, the beamsat has to fire constantly for … what is it, two and a half years?”

“Pretty much, yes,” Rich said.

“Nine hundred and twenty days.” Graham was the older of the two—although with retrotherapy, it was hard to guess his true age—and had a tendency to be annoyingly precise.

“Whatever … so for two and half years, the sail has to catch a microwave sent from Earth even as it’s moving farther and farther away. Meanwhile, the ship’s moving faster and faster…”

“Acceleration rate is 1.9 meters per second, squared.”

“… until the ship is about half a light-year from Earth.” Graham took a brief drag from the joint, gave it to his mate. “By then it’ll be well out of the solar system and travelling half the speed of light, so we can turn off the beamsat and let the ship coast on its own. Any course adjustments will be accomplished by the onboard AI, using maneuvering thrusters. When it reaches Gliese 667C-e…”

“Eos.” Chandi smiled. “I think everyone’s pretty much settled on that name.”

“Until the International Astronomical Union approves,” Graham said, “it’s officially Gliese 667C-e.”

Rich coughed out the hit he’d just taken. “You’re … hargh! hargh!… such a prick, you know that?” Graham smirked and Rich went on. “So what’s your question … or did I miss something?” His eyes narrowed in stoned confusion.

“Well,” Matt said, “it’s just that it seems like you’re counting on everything going exactly the way you’ve planned. The beam not getting interrupted or missing the sail the entirely…”

“That’s why the sail is so bloody big,” Rich replied. “The beam spreads as it travels outward, so the sail has to be large enough to receive it.”

“But if something punches through it, like a meteorite or…”

“Meteoroid,” Graham said. “It’s not a meteorite until it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. The sail is large enough it can take a few punch-throughs without losing efficiency.”

“The reason why the beamsat is being located in Lagrange orbit is to minimize the number of occasions the beam will be interrupted by Earth’s sidereal orbit around the Sun.” Rich handed the joint back to Matt. “Everything is being automatically controlled by synchronized computers aboard both the beamsat and Galactique, so there’s little chance of the beam getting lost.”

“But you’re still putting everything on faith.” The joint was little larger than a thumbnail by then, and Matt had to gently pluck it from Rich’s fingers. “I mean, it’s almost like religion for you guys.”

No one said anything. Although it was a warm evening, it seemed as if the temperature had suddenly dropped a few degrees. “Is that what this seems like to you?” Chandi asked after a moment. “Religion?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” Matt carefully put the joint to his lips, inhaled what was left of it. “I used to call it the Church of Galactique when my mom and dad were talking about it.”

“Oh, bollocks.” Graham shook his head in disgust. “No wonder they tossed you out of the house.”

Matt glared at him. “I left on my own. They didn’t…”

“There’s a difference between religion and faith,” Chandi said. “Religion means you’ve accepted a set of beliefs even if those beliefs would appear to be irrational to anyone who doesn’t buy into them. Faith means you’ve chosen to accept something that you’ve given yourself the chance to question. It might still be something greater than you, or even God if you decide to go that way, but it’s not irrational. So, yes, we’re operating on faith … but it’s faith in something we’ve done ourselves, not divine providence.”

Matt was already regretting what he’d said. Especially since he’d spoken while under the influence of Ile Sombre marijuana. “But at some point, it’s still something that’s no longer under your control. Once Galactique gets away from here, by the time you hear about anything going wrong, there won’t be much you can do about it.” He grinned. “Doesn’t make much difference if it’s not God … you’re still praying to a machine, right?”

“Oh, Holy Galactique, please render thy blessings…” Rich began, then shut up when he caught Chandi scowling at him. “Sorry.”

“That’s why we’re working so hard to make sure everything aboard checks out while we’ve got a chance to lay our hands on it.” Chandi was no longer looking at Rich; her dark eyes were angry as they fastened on Matt. “And that’s not just a machine I’m working on. It’s a vessel carrying what will one day be a human colony … my descendents included.”

“Yours?”

“Yes. Mine.” Chandi continued to stare at him. “I’ve donated my eggs, too. So far as I’m concerned, I’m sending my children to Eos. So I’m doing everything I can to make sure they arrive safely, and I’m placing faith in my efforts and everyone else’s that they will. So, no, this isn’t religion to me … and I’ll thank you to keep your bullshit analysis to yourself.”

An uncomfortable silence. Rich broke it by clearing his throat again. “I could use some ice cream. Anyone care to…?”

“Love to.” Chandi stood up from her chair, crooked her elbow so that he could take it. “Lead the way.”

Matt watched as Rich gallantly escorted her across the patio, heading for the dining room where desserts were customarily laid out at the end of the meal. He might have been jealous if he didn’t know Rich was gay, but nonetheless he disliked seeing her being taken away by another man.

“You rather stepped in it there, didn’t you?” Graham idly folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Word to the wise, lad … never accuse a scientist of practicing religion with his or her work.”

“I’ll make it up to her.”

“Sure you will. May I suggest how?”

“I’ll apologize. Maybe some roses, too.”

“Apologies would be proper, yes, although I doubt you’ll find a florist in Ste. Genevieve. Besides, I was thinking of something a bit more … um, symbolic, shall we say?”

“Such as?”

Graham smiled. “Donate a sperm sample.”

Matt stared at him. “You gotta be kidding. Do you know what that sounds like?”

“I know what it would sound like if it was anyone else but her. In Chandi’s case, though, it would mean that you’re willing to believe in the same things she does … that you’ll take the same leap of faith she has.”

“That’s too weird for…”

“Just an idea.” Graham shrugged. “Think it over.”

VII

Graham’s suggestion was strange, and Matt might have disregarded it as the sort of thing someone might have said while buzzed. Yet he remembered it the next morning, and the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. There was a poetic sort of appeal to the idea of donating sperm to the mission; as Graham said, it would mean that Matt had come around to Chandi’s way of thinking to the point that he was willing to send his genetic material on the same journey. Together with an apology, it might go far to heal the wound he’d made.

Yet when he went to his father and told him what he wanted to do, Ben turned him down. “Sorry, son,” he said, “but your seat’s already taken … by your grandparents.”

“What?”

Ben Skinner stood up from his desk and walked over to the coffee maker. “Grandpa and Grandma were two of the very first people to donate sperm and egg specimens to the mission, way back when the Arkwright Foundation was getting started. In fact, I think they did it right after they got engaged. You know the story about the Legion of Tomorrow, don’t you?”

“That’s the club my great-great-grandfather belonged to, isn’t it? The one with all the science fiction writers?”

“Umm … sort of.” His father poured another cup of coffee for himself, then held up the carafe and raised an eyebrow, silently asking Matt if he’d like coffee, too. Matt shook his head and he went on. “There were only four people in the Legion, and just two of them were writers, both of them your great-great-grandfathers. We named you after Grandpa Harry’s pseudonym, in fact.”

“I know, but what does this have to do with…?”

“Because your grandfather and your grandmother both made donations, their genomes are already represented in Galactique’s gene pool. They’re carrying the seed, so to speak, for three members of the Legion … Nathan Arkwright, Margaret Krough, and Harry Skinner. If any of their descendents were to also donate egg or sperm specimens, this would introduce an element of uncertainty to the colony. What if your descendents met and fell in love with your grandmother’s descendent, and they decided to have kids?”

“I don’t see how that would … oh. You’re talking about inbreeding.”

“Right. They wouldn’t even know it, but they’d be effectively marrying within the family … and that would cause all sorts of problems in a small founding population.” His father walked over to a bookcase, pulled out a thick binder, and held it up. “This is our record of everyone who’ve made donations. We’ve spent many, many hours making sure no one who did is directly related to anyone else. Your mother was allowed to make a donation because she doesn’t belong to our bloodline, but I wasn’t, as much as I’d love to. So I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

“Oh, well … it was just a thought.” Matt tried to hide his disappointment with a shrug.

“Nice to see that you’ve taken an interest in this, though.” Ben returned the notebook to the bookcase. “May I ask why?”

Matt was reluctant to explain his reasons. He was afraid his father would have found them childish. “Never mind. Just something I thought I’d like to do.”

“Yes, well…” His father sighed as he went back to his desk. “Believe me, I wish I could help you, but the EFI system is going to be dicey enough as it is. I’m a little afraid of how things are going to work out once Galactique reaches Eos and it gets a closer look at the lay of the land. The genetic alterations that may have to be made…”

His voice trailed off, but not before Matt’s curiosity was raised. “What sort of alterations?”

Ben said nothing for a moment. Standing behind his desk, he turned to gaze at the launch pad. “It’s not something we’re really talking about in public—we’ve had enough trouble with the fundamentalists already—but it’s possible that the specimens may have to be genetically altered in the pre-embryonic stage to suit the planetary environment. Gliese 667C-e is a M-class red dwarf, smaller and cooler than our sun, while Eos itself is about one-third larger than Earth, with an estimated surface gravity about half again higher. We know that it probably has a carbon dioxide atmosphere with traces of water vapor, but even after Galactique drops the biopods and the place becomes habitable, in all likelihood any humans we put there will have to be changed in some very basic ways in order to survive.”

“What sort of ways?”

“The AI will make that determination once it surveys the planet. We’ve supplied it with the necessary parameters and given it some options which we believe are suitable, but…” His father paused. “Well, what comes out of the EFI cells will be probably different from what most people normally think of as human beings.”

Matt felt a chill. He tried to imagine the sort of people his father described, but could only come up with a race of deformed children, shambling and monstrous. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. Remaking humans, I mean.”

“Really?” His father turned to give him an inquisitive look. “What do you think you’d see if you went back in time … say, four million years … and met your earliest ancestors, the australopithecines who were living in northern Africa? They didn’t look very much like us, either. And they’d probably by shocked by us, too. But evolution changed them. They adapted to their environment. That’s much what we’d be doing here … just a lot faster, that’s all.”

Matt didn’t know what to say to this. He was still searching for a reply when his father sat down again. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. Like I said, thanks for the offer, but…”

“Sure, okay. No problem.” Suddenly, Matt wondered if it had been such a great idea after all.

VIII

As it turned out, his notion didn’t make much difference anyway. The next time Matt saw her, Chandi had apparently forgotten all about their quarrel. Either that, or she’d simply decided to put it behind her. In any case, she was friendly toward him again, as if nothing had ever happened. He decided that it wasn’t worth mentioning to her that he’d tried to donate sperm to the mission, and so nothing was ever said again about the disagreement they’d had.

Nathan 3 lifted off on schedule, a flawless launch that carried the Kubera and its payload away from Ile Sombre and into the black and airless ocean that Galactique would soon sail. This time, Matt watched the lift-off from inside the dome; he sat with his mother and the journalists they were hosting, but when the rocket cleared the tower and rose into the deep blue sky, he looked over to where Chandi was seated. Their eyes met and she smiled as if she, too, were remembering the previous launch and the moment they’d shared. He realized then how much he missed sitting with her.

He saw her again at the post-launch party that night, and this time he was able to keep up with the poolside conversation among the launch team members. Matt decided not to smoke pot at the party—after all, it was marijuana that had caused so much trouble last time—and he nursed the one beer he had, and she seemed to appreciate that because she remained at his side most of the evening. In the warmth of a moonlit tropical night, she couldn’t have looked lovelier. Matt was sorely tempted to whisper in her ear and ask if she’d like to come back to his room with him, but held back. He didn’t want to risk offending her again … and deep inside, he’d come to realize that he wanted more from her than just a one-night stand.

More journalists had travelled to Ile Sombre for the Nathan 3 launch. Now that Galactique wasn’t just a single module in geosynchronous orbit, the press was paying more attention to the project. The half-finished vessel was large enough to become a naked-eye object in the night sky, and Jill asked Matt to send a press release to news media, telling them how to inform the public where and how to look for it. Before long, even those who’d paid little attention to the project became aware that a starship was being built above Earth, and suddenly Galactique became an object of interest to even those who didn’t care much about space.

Not all the attention was welcome. Until then, the protesters from the New American Congregation who’d camped outside the Ile Sombre Space Launch Center had numbered no more than a half-dozen or so. But when he came to work in the morning, Matt began noticing more tents, more signs, more people. He didn’t know if they all belonged to the church or if some were opposed to the project for other reasons, yet technicians flying in from the states reported meeting protesters at the airport, and the ongoing demonstration outside the space center became increasingly aggressive, with angry shouts greeting launch team members as they approached the front gate. The foundation hired more security guards, but when some of the protesters began showing up at the Hotel Au Soliel to harass team members when they came home from work, private cops had to be posted there as well.

And that wasn’t all.

The day Nathan 4 was finally transferred from the clean room to the VAB to be loaded aboard the Kubera, its checkout team decided to throw a little celebration of their own. It was noticed that they didn’t have enough marijuana for a proper party, though, so someone would have to go into Ste. Genevieve to acquire some local herb. Matt was tapped for the job, and he didn’t mind; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d bought weed, and he’d been told the name of an islander who regularly sold cannabis to project members and where he could be found. He borrowed his mother’s Volksun and drove into town, but before he left, he asked Chandi if she’d like to come along.

His father had once suggested that he bring her because she wasn’t a white male American, and therefore might be able to get a better deal from the locals, but that wasn’t the reason. He wanted to do something with her that would take them away from the project and its people, if only for a little while. It wasn’t exactly a date, but at least it was better than sitting around the pool again. To his surprise, Chandi agreed. She was a little tired of seeing little else but the clean room and the hotel, and like Matt, she’d never been to Ste. Genevieve. So they left just after dinner, and as the sun was going down they parked the Volksun at the municipal wharf and walked onto the floating pier leading to the flotante.

The inhabitants of Ste. Genevieve had saved their homes from destruction by rebuilding them atop a collection of rafts, barges, and pontoon boats anchored above the flooded remains of the original town. Narrow boardwalks kept afloat by barrels connected shanties and shacks, which in turn were tied together by submerged cables. In some instances, the upper floors of preexistent brick buildings were still being used, their rooftops supporting a forest of solar collectors, satellite dishes, and freshwater tanks that collected rain and distilled it. The walkways were illuminated by strings of fiberoptic Christmas lights strung across tar-painted poles, and rowboats, canoes, and kayaks were tied up in slips between buildings. Smoke rose from tin ducts that served as chimneys; the salt air held the mixed aromas of burning driftwood and fried fish.

Matt and Chandi made their way through the flotante, trying to locate the bar where the weed dealer was said to hang out. Hand-painted signs nailed to shanty walls showed them where Ste. Genevieve’s original streets had once been located; Matt had been told to look for a place called Sharky’s, located on what was still called Rue Majuer. Islanders sitting in old lawn chairs silently watched them; their expressions hinted at amusement, suspicion, or curiosity, but no one said anything. Foreigners from the space center didn’t come to town very often, and while the locals didn’t have anything against them, they didn’t necessarily have anything for them either.

Sharky’s turned out to be the rusted shell of a double-wide trailer that had been relocated to a barge, with a wraparound porch outside and a screen door leading inside. A few island men were seated on the porch; they quietly observed the Americans as they stepped onto the barge, and it was clear that they appreciated seeing Chandi. She did her best to ignore their stares, but Matt wasn’t surprised when she took his hand.

The barroom was small and dimly lit with shaded florescent bulbs and cheap beer signs. Incredibly, there was a state-of-the-art holoscreen on the wall; it was showing a soccer match, the volume turned down low. Everything else was run-down, with the same particle-board tables and plastic chairs as the outside deck. The bar was little more than wood planks laid across a couple of oil barrels; the bartender impassively watched the visitors as they approached the bar, saying nothing as he continued to wipe clean a chipped beer mug.

“Hi. I’m looking for someone named Parker … is he here?”

“Lots of folks named Parker.” The bartender wasn’t giving him anything. “You have a first name?”

“James Parker.”

An indifferent shrug. “I know someone named James Parker. What do you want with him?”

“We understand he sells something we’d like to have.”

The bartender finished cleaning the mug, then put it down and fished another one from the tub beneath the bar. “He’ll be here soon. Have a seat, mon. Would you like a beer?”

“Yes, thanks. Red Stripe.”

The bartender turned to a cooler and pulled out two bottles of beer. There were no stools, and Matt was beginning to look around for a place for him and Chandi to sit when a voice behind them said, “Care to join me?”

Another man was in the bar, sitting at a table in the corner near the door. Surprisingly, he was the first white person they’d seen since entering Ste. Genevieve. Middle-aged and thick-set, with iron-grey hair and handlebar mustache, he had on the kind of outfit only a tourist would wear: khaki hiking shorts, a photographer’s vest over a long-sleeve safari shirt, a bush hat and waterproof boots. Like he was expecting to spend time in the jungle, hacking his way through the rain forest with a machete.

There was something about him that Matt immediately distrusted. He didn’t know why, except perhaps that this character was even more out of place than he and Chandi. There was no polite way to refuse, though, so he led Chandi over to the table.

As they sat down, Matt noted a couple of empty Dos Equis bottles on the table, along with the one the stranger was currently drinking. Obviously he’d been there for a while. “Frank Barton,” the stranger said as they sat down. “And you are…?”

“I’m Matt, she’s Chandi.” Matt shook hands with him. “Down for some sightseeing?”

“Something like that.” Barton picked up his beer. “I’ve come to see where all the action is. You folks work at the space center?”

“We’re with the project, yes,” Chandi said.

“I see.” Barton took a long slug from his beer, wiped his mustache with a finger as he put it down again. “So what is it you two do there?”

“I’m an engineer. He’s a consultant.” Apparently Chandi was suspicious as well. Glancing at her, Matt saw the wary expression on her face.

“I see, I see.” Barton slowly nodded. “I’ve heard you people sometimes come into town. I sorta figured if I sat here long enough, I’d eventually meet one of you.” He smiled. “Guess I’m lucky … here’s two.”

Matt didn’t like the way he said this. Now he noticed something else; half-hidden within the open collar of his shirt was a silver chain holding a gold crucifix. It might mean nothing—he knew plenty of people who had crosses just like it—but it might also portend trouble.

“Why is that lucky?” he asked. “You want to know something about the project?”

“I already know all there is.” Barton leaned back in his chair. “You, on the other hand, are in need of enlightenment, for the sake of your souls.”

That settled it. Frank Barton belonged to the New American Congregation, and he’d staked out Sharky’s in hopes of cornering someone from the project. Matt’s father had warned him against engaging the church’s “missionaries” and now he knew why.

Matt started to push back his chair. “Well, it’s been nice to meet you, but…”

“What does my soul have to do with this?” Chandi made no move to get up. She leaned closer, resting her elbows on the table and propping her chin on clasped hands. “Please, enlighten me.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Barton fixed her with an unblinking stare. “What you’re doing is blasphemous. Sending forth the human seed into God’s creation, there to foist our sins upon other worlds. We were never meant to…”

“Really? Where in the Bible does it say that?” She smiled. “I’ve been to church, too, and I don’t remember ever hearing space exploration was inherently sinful.”

Barton’s eyes narrowed. “God clearly intended Man to live on Earth and Earth alone. He created this world for his chosen, and the other worlds were to be left alone.”

“Again, where does it say that?” She looked over at Matt. “I must have missed something in Sunday school, because that’s an interpretation I’ve never…”

“There are many interpretations of the Gospel.” Barton clearly didn’t enjoy being challenged. “For you to rip children from their mother’s wombs and put them aboard rockets…”

“Oh, c’mon … do you really think that’s what we’re doing?” Chandi was grinning by then; she was toying with him, and relishing every second. “Hate to say it, but you’re the one who needs enlightenment. You’ve got everything wrong and don’t even know it.”

“So you’re aware of the word of God and still you commit a mortal sin!” Even in the bad light of the bar, Matt could see that Barton’s face was becoming red. His anger was growing in proportion with Chandi’s amusement. “I thought I could save you, but I see now that you’re beyond redemption.”

Matt closed his eyes. Barton was a familiar type: more than just a zealot, he was a cranky, middle-aged man who’d long since decided that he was right about all things and couldn’t tolerate any difference of opinion. There was no point in arguing with someone like this, but Chandi wasn’t giving up. She was enjoying herself too much.

“Yup. Sinner and proud of it.” Chandi picked up her beer. “Better that than an old fart who thinks he speaks for God.” She started to take a sip. “Jesus would’ve laughed his ass off if he’d ever met you…”

“How dare you take His name in vain?” Barton leaped up from his chair. Before Matt could stop him, he reached across the table to slap the bottle from Chandi’s hand. “Miserable whore, you have no right to…!”

It had been many years since the last time Matt punched someone, and the last time he’d been in a bar fight he’d been ashamed of himself later for doing so. But not this time. There was something very satisfying about slamming his fist into Barton’s hillbilly mustache, and it was even more gratifying when Barton fell back over his chair, hit the wall behind him, and sagged to the floor.

Chandi was still regarding Matt with wide-eyed shock when the bartender came out from behind the bar. “Out!” he yelled, half-raising the cricket bat that had materialized from somewhere. “No fights in my place! Leave before I call the police!”

“Hey, look, he…”

“Let’s go.” Chandi took Matt’s arm, pulled him away from the table. “You’ve done enough.”

Matt looked down at Barton. He was still conscious, but stunned enough that he wasn’t going to get up for another minute or so. When he did, though, things would probably get worse than they already were. And Matt didn’t want to have to deal with the island police as well as an angry bartender. It wouldn’t be easy explaining why two Americans from the space center were in a dive like Sharky’s.

He pulled a couple of dollars from his pocket and dropped them on the table by way of apology, then let Chandi lead him from the bar. The islanders sitting out on the deck must have heard the fight, for they were standing just outside the door, silently watching him and Chandi as they came out. Among them was a tall, skinny fellow with dreadlocks who appeared as if he’d been just about to come in; Matt wondered if this was James Parker, but decided not to stop and ask. There wasn’t going to be a chance to buy weed tonight, that was for sure.

Neither he nor Chandi said anything to each other as they walked back through Ste. Genevieve. Matt’s hand had begun to throb, and when he flexed his fingers he discovered that he’d jammed his middle knuckle. He still had to drive, though, because the Volksun was keyprinted to his touch. He’d also need to find some aspirin and maybe a bandage once they returned to the hotel.

The ride back was largely in silence. Matt tried to make a couple of jokes about what had happened, but they fell flat. From the corner of his eye, he could see Chandi quietly studying him; she said little, but her gaze never left his face. In the pale light from the dashboard, though, it was hard to tell her expression.

He parked near his parents’ cottage. When he and Chandi climbed out, they could hear party sounds coming from the pool, just out of sight from behind the trees. “They’re not going to like it when I tell ‘em I didn’t get any weed,” Matt murmured as he started to head for the flagstone path leading to the patio.

Chandi lay a hand upon his arm, stopping him. “We’re not going to the party,” she said quietly.

“We’re not?”

“No. We’re going to my room.”

And then she pulled him close for a long, lingering kiss.

It didn’t go unnoticed that Matt and Chandi failed to show up at the party. Every eye turned in their direction when they came down for breakfast together the following morning, and quite a few knowing smiles were cast in their direction. Although Graham gave him a salacious sink, no one said anything; it was as if everyone had been quietly waiting for the two of them to pair up, with the only surprise being that it hadn’t happened earlier.

Nor was it the one-nighter Matt had feared it might be. Chandi slept with him again the next night, this time in his room. She had a queen-size bed, though, and the cabanas were visible from the patio, so after that they agreed her place was more comfortable and offered a little more privacy. He returned to his room each morning to shower, change clothes, and brush his teeth, but after awhile they decided that he might just as well move in with her. Which was fine with him; he never liked the cabana anyway.

Their relationship was gloriously erotic, but it wasn’t just the fun they had in bed which kept them together. It had been many years since the last time either of them had been in love. Like Matt, Chandi had her share of failed relationships; she told him that she’d once been engaged, but had broken up with her fiancé when she’d discovered that he was secretly having an affair with another woman. And until she met Matt, she’d never had anyone willing to stand up for her. Matt was relieved; his last girlfriend would have been disgusted if she’d seen him get in a bar fight, even if it had been to defend her.

They were ready for each other. Their meeting on the flight to Ile Sombre may have been a happy accident, but Matt’s parents seemed to believe that Chandi was just the sort of person their son needed to have in his life. Matt was nervous when he reluctantly accepted their invitation to bring Chandi over for dinner—to be sure, they hadn’t liked his previous girlfriends—yet it turned out for the better. His mother enjoyed meeting her, and while his father already had respect for her intelligence, he was apparently surprised to find that she was charming as well. Matt hadn’t been necessarily seeking their approval, but nonetheless he came away from the dinner pleased that they thought well of her.

As it turned out, it was fortunate that he and Chandi hadn’t waited any longer to begin a romance. Nathan 4 went up a couple of weeks later, a perfect lift-off followed by a problem-free rendezvous and docking with Galactique. When this occurred, Chandi’s role in the project came to an official end. There was no practical reason for her to remain on Ile Sombre; her contract with the Arkwright Foundation was fulfilled, and she was free to go. Yet she wanted to stay on the island until Galactique was completed and launched, and now that she and Matt were living together, his room could be taken over by one of the Nathan 5 technicians scheduled to arrive soon. So Ben Skinner found enough money in the budget to allow her to stay on the payroll as a part-time consultant, and that problem was fixed.

It wasn’t until then that Matt realized that he, too, could leave any time he wanted. He’d saved up enough money not only to buy a plane ticket back to the states, but also to pay the rent while he searched for a new job. But he no longer wished to leave … and when he thought about it, he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t simply because of Chandi. Over the past months, he’d developed an interest in Galactique and the Arkwright Foundation that hadn’t been there before. Although he was still skeptical about the mission’s chances for success, his cynicism had disappeared; Chandi’s enthusiasm had rubbed off on him. He found that he, too, wished to remain on Ile Sombre to witness the beginning of Galactique’s long voyage to Gliese 667C-e.

But after that? He and Chandi still had to figure out if and how they’d have a future together. This worried him … but it was far from the largest concern anyone had.

Until then, the schedule had proceeded smoothly. Each of Galactique’s modules had been launched and docked without any major problems, but their luck couldn’t last. When the time came for Nathan 5 to be launched, the project’s good fortune ran out.

Construction work on Nathan 5 had already been running behind schedule. Ground tests of the landing craft’s main engine had revealed flaws serious enough for subcontractors in California to dismantle the engine and replace several critical components, which in turn necessitated another series of tests before they were satisfied than the craft was flightworthy. Because of this, loading of Nathan 5 aboard the freighter which would carry it down the Pacific coast to the Panama Canal and through the Gulf of Mexico was pushed back by more than a month … and this delay caused concerns of its own.

Galactique’s launch schedule had been carefully timed to occur before the beginning of the Caribbean’s annual hurricane season. The drawback of using the Ile Sombre Space Launch Center was the fact that it lay within a tropical zone prone to major storms. Indeed, quite a few PanAmSpace launches had been postponed because of hurricanes that had suddenly developed in the South Atlantic. The mission planners were aware of this when they’d devised the launch schedule; they’d hoped that, if all went well, the last module would be sent into orbit before the weather interfered.

Now that the final launch was being postponed to late summer, though, there was an increasing risk of it being disrupted by a hurricane. Meteorologists had already noticed indications that just such an event may occur; the waters of the South Atlantic were warmer than usual, and several large tropical storms had already blown through the Lesser Antilles. The Kubera could be kept within the Vehicle Assembly Building until the weather was calm enough for a launch; what everyone dreaded was Nathan 5 being at sea when the freighter carrying it was caught by a hurricane. The loss of the module carrying the biopods and landing craft would be a major setback; it would take years for replacements to be built, during which time Galactique would have be mothballed in orbit … both of which would be very expensive.

Ben Skinner met with the other mission planners, and over the course of a six-hour boardroom session they came up with a solution. Instead of putting Nathan 5 aboard an ocean vessel, the foundation would rent a cargo jet to fly it down to Ile Sombre. There was just such an aircraft suitable for this purpose: the C-110 Goliath, built by Boeing as a heavy-lift military transport. Its cargo bay was 130 feet by 40 feet, more than big enough for the module … and as it turned out, Boeing maintained two Goliaths in Seattle for private lease.

There was only one problem with this. Until then, the previous modules had been brought to Ile Sombre aboard ships, where they could be offloaded at the same port where the Kubera was retrieved. The port was protected by chain-link fences and armed guards, and lay close enough to the space center that security had never been a problem. But if Nathan 5 was flown in, the plane would have to land at the island airport, where the module would be offloaded onto the tractor-trailer rig used for transporting the Kubera and be driven across Ile Sombre … all on public roads, where it could be easily blocked by the protesters who were steadily gaining numbers outside the space center.

“And to make matters worse, the rig’s going have to go slow,” Ben said, sitting at the end of the table where he’d just had dinner with his family. “You know the roads around here … they haven’t been resurfaced in years. They’re like washboards. So the driver will have to take it easy to keep Nat from being damaged en route from the airport, and if the protesters know it’s coming…”

“They will. It’s already in the news that we’re doing this.” Jill didn’t pause in clearing away the dinner plates. “But I don’t think they’re going to give us much trouble. They’ll probably just stand on the side of the road and wave those idiot signs of theirs. They’ve never been violent before.”

Hearing this, Matt looked across the table at Chandi. They’d started coming over for dinner once a week, but he still hadn’t told them about what happened that night in Ste. Genevieve. They weren’t aware that at least one member of the New American Congregation was capable of violence.

Chandi didn’t say anything, but she shook her head ever so slightly when their eyes met. “It might be smart to take precautions anyway,” Matt said. “Maybe get some of our people to walk alongside the truck to keep them away.”

“Yeah, that could work.” Ben slowly nodded. “Nice idea. I’ll talk it over with the planning team.” He picked up the bottle of merlot on the table and poured another drink. “Maybe your grandmother will have some other suggestions once she gets here.”

“Grandma’s coming down?”

“The week after next,” Jill said. “I thought I told you.” She smiled as she returned to the table. “In fact, I’m sure I did.”

“Yeah. I just forgot.” Matt shrugged. “I’ve been kinda busy…”

“Yes, you have.” Ben’s gaze shifted from him to Chandi, and Matt could have killed him for the sly grin on his face. “In fact, I think she wants to have a talk with you about what you’re going to do once we close down operations here. Have you given any thought to that?”

Again, Matt traded a look with Chandi. This had been something they’d discussed more than once lately, usually as late-night pillowtalk. “A little.”

“Yes, well … talk to Grandma when she gets here.” Again, a coy smile. “I think she has a something in mind.”

Grandma Kate had aged well for a woman in her eighties who’d never taken retrotherapy. Although she’d undergone the usual geriatric treatments available to the elderly, including cardiovascular nanosurgery and organ-clone transplants, genetic revitalization had come along too late for it to be effective for a woman of her years. Unlike her children, Kate Skinner looked her age, but nonetheless she managed to get around, albeit slowly and carefully.

Matt and his mother met Grandma when she arrived at the airport. She was the last person to come off the plane, and once she endured the indignity of being helped down the stairs by a flight attendant, she gratefully took a seat in the two-wheel mobil that had been carried in the G8’s belly compartment. Once in the chair, though, she returned to her old self. The customs official who’d given Matt a hassle a few months earlier quailed before the old woman who wasn’t about to let him waste her time by opening each of her suitcases, and even her daughter-in-law knew better than to keep her waiting long at the curb for the van she’d borrowed from the space center to take her to the hotel. Kate didn’t suffer fools gladly.

To Matt’s surprise, though, Grandma treated him with a little more tenderness. She insisted that he ride with her in the back of the van, and once she’d dispensed with the small talk, she turned her attention to her grandson.

“So … you took a job here after all.” Not a question; a statement of fact.

“I didn’t have much choice, Grandma. The plane ticket was one-way.”

“I know … I bought it, didn’t I?” A tight-lipped smile. “You didn’t need a handout from me, kiddo. You needed a chance at a fresh start. Ben tells me you’ve done pretty well with it, too.”

“He has, Kate.” Jill turned her head slightly without taking her gaze from the road. “I couldn’t have done without Matt. He’s done everything from write news releases to manage press conferences to book flights for reporters. Everything you’d want from a good right-hand man.”

Matt said nothing. His mother was exaggerating; his first few weeks in the media relations department had been a train wreck, and even now he was still committing the occasional gaffe. Yet if she wanted to give Grandma a good report, he wasn’t about to argue.

“Are you enjoying the work?” Grandma asked.

“Yes, I am.” About this, he didn’t have to lie. “I’ve learned a lot, and I think I’ve got a better appreciation of what the project is all about.”

“Do you really?” She seemed to study him. “You’re not just saying that, are you?”

He decided not to reveal his remaining doubts about the feasibility of terraforming a planet and populating it with children raised by robots. “I think Galactique will get there,” he replied, and hoped she’d be satisfied to let it go at that.

Apparently she was, because she only nodded and shifted her gaze to the rain forest they were driving through. Yet the conversation wasn’t finished. She picked it up again once they’d arrived at the Hotel Au Soliel and she was taken to the cottage she’d be sharing with her children. Believing that he was no longer needed, Matt was about to leave, but then she raised a hand.

“Stick around a minute. I want to talk to you a little more.” She looked at Jill. “You can go now. He’ll catch up with you later.”

His mother was a little surprised by this, but she didn’t object. She left the cottage, closing the front door behind her. Grandma waited until she was gone, then she turned to Matt again. “So … thought about what you’re going to do once we close up shop here?”

Matt remembered his father raising the same question over dinner a couple of weeks earlier. “I dunno. Do what everyone else is doing, I guess … go home and get another job. I might stay in media relations, turn that into a career…”

“Yeah, you could do that. Your job here will be a short item on your résumé, but I’m sure it’ll help you land a position somewhere. Maybe you’ll even keep it for awhile, if you don’t get bored and quit. That’s always been a problem for you, hasn’t it?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of.” She repeated what he’d said flatly, as if she had little doubt that he would. “Well, if you want to go back to drifting, that’s your right. I won’t stop you. But I can offer you something better.”

She paused, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she went on. “Even after Galactique is on its way, the foundation’s work won’t be done. It’s going to take almost fifty years for the ship to reach Eos, but it’s not like we’re just sticking a note in a bottle and tossing it into the sea. It’ll regularly report back to us, telling us what’s going on, and even though those reports will get further and further apart, we’ll still have to listen for them, just in case something happens that we should know about.”

“You want me to do that?”

“I’d like for you to join the tracking team, yes. The foundation is taking over an old university observatory in Massachusetts, out in the Berkshires not far from where your great-great-grandfather used to live. This is where the laser telemetry received by the lunar tracking station will be relayed. It’s rather isolated, but we’ll be keeping a small staff there, paying them from foundation funds to maintain contact with Galactique.”

“I don’t know anything about…”

“You can learn. Ben can teach you. In fact, he’s probably going to be running the operation … didn’t he tell you this already?” Matt shook his head and his grandmother sighed. “Oh, well … I guess he was expecting me to tell you about it. Anyway, he’ll be in charge, but he’s not going to be around forever. Sooner or later, someone will have to take over for him.”

Grandma gave him a meaningful look. Matt said nothing, for he didn’t know what to say. He’d been half-expecting her to offer him a job with the Arkwright Foundation, but a lifetime commitment was something else entirely. He didn’t know if he was ready to spend years on a mountain out in the middle of nowhere, listening for signals transmitted from a spacecraft receding farther and farther into the interstellar distance.

“I don’t know…” he began.

“You don’t have to say yes or no right away.” Grandma shook her head. “Just think about it awhile, all right? The job’s there if you want it. We won’t have any trouble finding someone else if you decide to give it a pass, but…” She smiled. “I’d like to keep it in the family, if you know what I mean.”

He did. But he was unsure whether he wanted to become part of that legacy.

Nathan 5 arrived the following week, flown in aboard a Boeing C-110 so large that an Air Carib G8 could have fit within its bulbous cargo hold. The enormous tiltjet, resembling a cucumber which had sprouted wings, touched down at Ile Sombre International with a roar that rivaled a Kubera launch. A large crowd of islanders had gathered at the airport to witness the landing of an aircraft that they’d probably never see in these parts again; they watched from the edge of the runway as the Goliath made its slow vertical descent, alongside the space center staffers who’d volunteered to shepherd its payload across the island.

Matt and Chandi were among them, as was Matt’s father. The planning team had decided to take up Matt’s suggestion, and recruited members of the launch team to walk alongside the truck which would carry the module from the airport to the space center. At first, many people thought it was an unnecessary precaution … but anyone who still believed this only had to look over their shoulders, where a mob of protesters from the New American Congregation and their supporters waited on the other side of sawhorses erected and patrolled by island police. As Matt’s mother had predicted, the protesters had known all along that Galactique’s landing module would be arriving by air instead of by sea, and they were taking advantage of this change of plan.

“Think we’ll have any trouble from them?” Chandi eyed the protesters nervously.

“No doubt we will,” Ben Skinner said quietly. “The question is, how much? If all they do is hold up their signs and yell, everything will be okay. But if they go further than that…” He nodded toward the private security force waiting nearby. Some carried sonics as well as the usual batons and tasers. “They’ll break it up if things get bad. I’m not going to worry too much.”

Matt watched as the Goliath’s bow section, three stories tall, opened and swiveled upward beneath the cockpit, revealing the cargo bay. The module lay on a wheeled pallet, sealed within an airtight plastic shroud. The tractor-trailer rig was already backing up to the plane, waved into position by the runway crew. The flatbeds had been jacked up to same height as the cargo deck; once the tandem trailers were in place, the pallet could be rolled straight onto the truck from the plane. Once it was tied down and covered with tarps, the module would be ready to leave the airport.

That was the easy part. At a walking pace, it would take a little more than an hour for the truck to make the trip to the space center. If only the roads were better, but that couldn’t be helped. Like most Caribbean islands, Ile Sombre’s public roads weren’t maintained very well; the truck had to move slowly, or else the module might rock about and be damaged. To make matters worse, the road between the airport and the space center narrowed until it barely qualified as a two-lane thoroughfare; islanders were known to reach through open driver-side windows and briefly shake hands with friends whom they passed.

The island police were closing the road to local traffic, but nonetheless it would be during this part of the passage that the truck and its previous cargo would be particularly vulnerable.

Matt hoped his father was right.

It was almost an hour before the truck was ready to depart from the airport. As the massive flatbeds slowly moved away from the plane, a pair of Land Rovers belonging to the island police took up position in front and behind the truck. They stopped and waited for the walking escorts to take their own positions on either side of the truck. Matt and Chandi found themselves near the front; he watched as his father climbed into the cab to observe the driver and make sure that he didn’t go too fast. Private security guards were scattered among the walkers, carrying their sonics at hip level where they’d visible but not necessarily threatening. There was another long pause while everyone got ready, then there was a long blast from the truck’s airhorn and the convoy began to creep forward.

The protesters were ready, too. They’d remained behind the sawhorses the entire time, more or less quiet while the module was being offloaded from the Goliath, but when the truck slowly rolled through the airport’s freight entrance, they rushed to the roadside, placards above their heads, voices raised in fiery denunciation. Police and security guards did their best to hold them back, but the protesters were only a few yards from either side of the truck, and it was impossible for Matt to ignore either their shouts or their slogans.

“You’ll burn in Hell for this!”

NO SIN FOR THE STARS!

“Repent! Destroy that thing!”

DON’T SEND BABYS TO SPACE

“Blasphemy! You’re committing blasphemy!

JESUS HATES SCIANCE!

“Repent!”

Furious eyes. Shaking fists. Someone threw a rock. It missed the canvas-shrouded module and bounced off the side of the truck instead, but immediately a security guard raised his sonic and aimed it in the direction from which the rock had come. He didn’t fire—the guards had been ordered not to do so unless absolutely necessary—but the protesters in that part of the crowd quickly backed away. No more rocks were thrown … yet.

Chandi was walking in front of Matt, and although her back was to him, he could see her face whenever she turned her eyes toward the crowd. She was doing her best to remain calm, but he could tell how angry she was. The walking escort had told them not to engage the protesters, but he could tell that her patience was being sorely them tempted. Chandi has little tolerance for the willfully stupid … and there, just a few feet away, were the very kind of people she detested the most.

He trotted forward to walk beside her. “Having fun yet?” he said, raising his voice to be heard.

Chandi’s mouth ticked upward in a terse smile. “Loads. Hey, how come you can’t take me on a normal date just once?”

“Do you like to dance?” he asked, and she nodded. “Okay, once we get back to the states, I’ll take you to a place I know in Philly. You’ll love it. Candlelight dinner, ballroom orchestra, just like…”

The truck horn blared, a prolonged honnnk! honnnnnk! that sounded like the driver pulling the cord as hard as he could. At first, Matt thought he was trying to get the protesters out of the way. Then a guard ran past them, and when he looked ahead, he saw what was happening.

A rust-dappled pick-up truck, the kind used on the nearby banana plantations, had pulled out from a side-road about fifty yards ahead of the convoy. As he watched, it turned to face the approaching tractor-trailer. It idled there for a few moments, grey smoke coming from a muffler that needed replacing—Ile Sombre was one of the last places in the western hemisphere where gasoline engines were still being used—while police and security guards strode toward it, shouting and waving their arms as they tried to get the driver to move his heap.

“The hell…?” Matt said as the tractor-trailer’s air brakes squealed as it came to a halt. Everyone stopped marching; even the protesters were confused. “Didn’t this guy hear that the road’s closed?”

Chandi said nothing, but instead walked to the front bumper of the halted tractor-trailer, shielding her eyes to peer at the pick-up. “I don’t like it,” she said as Matt jogged up beside her. “Looks like there’s something in the back … see that?”

Matt raised his hand against the midday sun. Behind the raised wooden planks of the truck bed was something that didn’t look like a load of bananas. Large, rounded … were those fuel drums? “I don’t know, but it looks like…”

All at once, the pick-up truck lurched forward, its engine roaring as it charged straight down the road. The police Land Rover was between it and the tractor-trailer, but the driver was already swerving to his left to avoid it. Protesters screamed as they threw themselves out of the way; the police and security guards, caught by surprise, were slow to raise their weapons.

“Go!” Matt grabbed Chandi by the shoulders to yank her away from the tractor-trailer. The other escorts were scattering as well, but the two of them were right in the path of the pick-up truck, which nearly ran over a couple of protesters as it careened toward the flat-bed. “Run!”

Yet Chandi seemed frozen. She was staring at the truck even as it raced toward them, her mouth open in shock. Matt followed her gaze, and caught a glimpse of what startled her, the face of the driver behind the windshield: Frank Barton.

“Go, mon! Get out of here!” A security guard suddenly materialized behind them; he shoved Matt out of the way, then planted himself beside the tractor’s bumper and raised the sonic in his hands. Other hollow booms accompanied his shots, but this was a time when old-style bullets would have been more effective; the truck’s windshield fractured into snowflake patterns from the focused airbursts, but it still protected Barton.

“Chandi!” Matt had fallen to the unpaved roadside and lost his grasp on her. He fought to get back on his feet, but was knocked down again by a fleeing protester. “Chandi, get…!”

Then a well-aimed shot managed to shatter the windshield and cause Barton to loose control of the wheel. The truck veered to the right, sideswiped the Land Rover, tipped over on its side …

That was the last thing Matt remembered. The explosion took the rest.

XII

Matt later came to realize that he owed his life to the guard who’d pushed him out of the way. That alone kept him from being killed or injured when the gasoline bomb in the back of the stolen farm truck exploded. Matt had escaped the blast with little more than a concussion and a scalp laceration from the piece of flying debris, but the guard had lost his life, while Chandi …

In the days that followed, as Matt sat by her bedside in the Ile Sombre hospital where the blast survivors were taken, his mind replayed the awful moments after he’d regained consciousness. One of the first things he’d seen were two paramedics carrying away the stretcher upon which Chandi lay. His father had been kneeling beside him, holding a guaze bandage against his son’s head until doctors could get around to tending to the less critically injured. He’d had to hold Matt down when he spotted Chandi, unconscious, face streaked with blood, hastily being loaded into an ambulance parked alongside the tractor-trailer.

Everyone said that she was lucky. Five people died that day: the security guard, three protesters, and Frank Barton himself. There were numerous injuries, though, and hers were among the worst. The force of blast had thrown her against the tractor’s right front bumper, breaking the clavicle in her left shoulder and the humerus of her left arm, but also fracturing the back of her skull. She might have died were it not for the fact that there happened to be a doctor on the scene who was able to stabilize her until the ambulances arrived. It was no small irony that the doctor also happened to be one of the protesters, and he’d put aside his opposition to the project in order to care for the wounded.

The Ile Sombre hospital outside Ste. Genevieve was remarkably well equipped, staffed by American-trained doctors. Chandi underwent four hours of surgery, during which the doctors managed to relieve the pressure in her skull before it caused brain damage and repair the fracture with bone grafts. Yet she remained unconscious, locked in a coma which no one was certain would end.

Matt stayed with her. He left the hospital only once, to return to the hotel and change clothes, before coming straight back. He sat in a chair he’d pulled up beside her bed in the ICU, where he could hold her hand while nurses changed her dressings or checked on the feeding tube they’d put down her throat. Sometimes he’d sleep, and every once in a while he’d go to the commissary and make himself eat something, but the next five days were a long, endless vigil in which he watched for the first indication that Chandraleska Sanyal was coming back to him.

So he was only vaguely aware that the landing module had been unscratched by the explosion, or that once it arrived at the space center, clean-room technicians had worked day and night to make sure it was ready to be sent to the VAB and loaded aboard the waiting Kubera. Although the New American Congregation had formally condemned the attack, no one at the project was willing to bet that there wasn’t another fanatic willing to try again. Matt’s father and grandmother determined that the safest place for Nathan 5 was in space; the sooner it got there, the better. The launch date was moved up by a week, and everyone at the space center did their best to meet the new deadline.

The day Nathan 5 was rolled out to the pad, Chandi finally woke up. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Matt’s face. She couldn’t speak because of the plastic tube in her throat, but in the brief time before she fell asleep again she acknowledged his presence by squeezing his hand. Then the doctor who’d responded to his call bell asked him to leave, and he went to a nearby waiting room, fell into a chair, and caught the first decent sleep he’d had in almost a week.

Nathan 5 lifted off three days later. They watched the launch together, on the TV in the recovery room where Chandi had been taken. It was still hard for her to talk, and the doctors had told him that it would take time for her to make a full recovery; Matt had to listen closely when she spoke. Nonetheless, when the Kubera cleared the tower and roared up into the cloudless blue sky, she whispered something that he had no trouble understanding.

“Knew it … it would go up,” she murmured.

Matt nodded. He knew what he should say. He was just having trouble saying it.

XIII

A week later, Galactique left Earth orbit.

By then, Nathan 5 was attached to the rest of the ship, and Galactique had become a cylinder 430 feet long, its silver hull reflecting the sunlight as it coasted in high orbit above the world. Its image was caught by cameras aboard the nearby construction station and relayed to Mission Control, where everyone involved with the project had gathered for their final glimpse of the vessel they’d worked so long to create.

Although the gallery was packed, with all seats taken and people standing against the walls, this wasn’t where Matt and Chandi were. At Ben’s insistence, Matt had pushed her wheelchair to the control room itself, where he parked it behind his father’s station. His mother was there, and Grandma as well. Seated in her mobil, Kate Morressy Skinner regarded the young woman whose shaved head was still swaddled in bandages with a certain reverence Matt had never seen before. At one point, she took Chandi’s hands in her own and whispered something that Matt couldn’t hear, but which brought a shaky smile to Chandi’s face.

The final countdown was subdued, almost anticlimactic. Although the mission controllers were at their stations, most of them had their hands in their laps. Galactique’s AI system was in complete autonomous control of the ship; the ground team was there only to watch and be ready to step in if something happened to go wrong.

At the count of zero, tiny sparks flared from the nozzles of the maneuvering thrusters along the service module. Slowly, the ship began to turn on its axis, rotating like a spindle. Then, all of a sudden, long, narrow panels along Nathan 3 at the ship’s bow were jettisoned, and cheers and applause erupted from the men and women in the control room and gallery as the first grey-black panels of the microwave sail began to emerge.

It took hours for the sail to unfold, one concentric segment at a time, upon the filament-fine carbon nanotubes that served as its spars. As it did, the ship moved out of geosynchronous orbit, heading away from Earth and closer to the beamsat. No one left the dome, though, and the control team watched breathlessly as the sail grew in size, praying that the spars wouldn’t get jammed or that the rigging would tangle, which would mean that the assembly team would have to be called in. But that didn’t happen. Layer after layer, the sail unfurled, becoming a huge, concave disk even as the ship receded from the camera.

Finally, the last segment was in place. The thrusters fired again, this time to move Galactique into cruise configuration behind the sail, until it resembled a pencil that had popped a parachute. Once more the thrusters fired, this time to gently orient the ship in the proper direction for launch. On the control room’s right-hand screen, a plotting image depicted the respective positions of Galactique and the beamsat.

A dotted line suddenly appeared, connecting the starship and the machine that would send it on its way. The microwave beam was invisible, of course, so only control room instruments indicated that it had been fired.

A few moments later, Galactique began to move. Slowly at first, and then faster, until it left the screen entirely.

By then, everyone in the dome was shouting, screaming, hugging each other. Fists were pumped in the air, and Matt smelled marijuana as someone broke a major rule by lighting a joint. His grandmother was on her feet, pushing herself up from her mobil to totter forward and wrap her arms around her son and daughter-in-law.

Matt stood beside Chandi, his hand on her shoulder. They said nothing as they watched the departure-angle view from one of Galactique’s onboard cameras, the image of Earth slowly falling away. Then Chandi took his hand and pulled him closer.

“Still think … it won’t get there?” she asked, so quietly that he almost couldn’t hear her.

“No. It’ll get there.” He bent to give her a kiss. “I have faith.”

The author wishes to acknowledge the published work of Freeman Dyson, James Benford, Geoffrey A. Landis, and the late Jim Young, in whose memory this story is dedicated.