IT WAS SOME time after the contact, after that lecherous Doctor Switzer was through examining her, and the exoarch leaders had debriefed her, that Julie Stone finally got a chance to lie down on her bunk and work it through in her head. Not that she understood it all, by any means; but at least she could go over the events in detail, and the words, and try to put them into some sort of perspective. She had made contact with an alien presence, or rather it had made contact with her. And though the physical details of the contact were a blur to her now, she knew that the translator had conveyed to her some terribly disturbing thoughts—only some of which she had shared in turn with her colleagues. There were other things she didn't dare speak of, not until she had thought them through.
Something out there which is trying to destroy your world . . .
She was virtually certain she had heard those words, though she could not now visualize the moment of receiving them. The thought was ominously reminiscent of what John Bandicut had related to her in his letter, explaining why he was doing those crazy things—stealing a spaceship from Triton Orbital and flying off on a suicide mission across the solar system. But John hadn't said anything about something trying to destroy the Earth; he'd just talked about a rogue comet. And maybe, just maybe, he had managed to save the Earth from it.
Maybe?
That was just it; no one knew for sure. The official position here at the MINEXFO camp was that Bandicut had gone crazy, probably as a result of that old neurolink injury, and killed himself. A few people—Georgia Patwell, Julie, maybe John's friend Krackey and a few others—believed what John said. There was no question that the ship had vanished from the immediate neighborhood in a way that nobody could explain. And how could John have faked that radio transmission from halfway across the solar system? And the propulsion flame—he'd said put a telescope on it. Someone had—not officially, of course, the officials were all too busy explaining why it wasn't possible—but someone up in Triton Orbital had gotten pictures, very strange pictures. And none of it made any sense unless you took some pretty peculiar technology into account. Like alien technology.
Earth-based observers had spotted the comet, too, just coming out from behind the sun relative to the home planet. It could have been on a collision course with Earth—but they didn't have enough data to establish its orbit with much precision, and anyway, no one at that point could have predicted the effects from solar heating and subsequent vapor eruptions on the comet and its trajectory. No one saw the stolen spacecraft emerge from the glare of the sun, if it was there at all. But several telescopes caught the flash, the explosion, way in near Mercury's orbit. And no comet ever came out, though a cloud of fine dust and debris was observed.
Maybe saved the Earth?
Julie blinked and stared at the ceiling over her bunk. No maybe, not anymore. It told me, she thought. What John said was true, every word of it. He took the ship and collided with the comet. She ought to be happy, knowing that he hadn't died for nothing. That he was a hero. And she would have been, except . . . now the translator wanted her to do something, too. Something crazy, like what John had done?
Mission yet to fulfill . . . require your assistance . . .
And the clear sense that it wanted her to keep it to herself.
She rolled over and grabbed her pillow, and clutched it to her. And, as she thought about John, her tears began to flow once more.