Coming Home

Fourteen

I’d been to Earth a few years earlier and hadn’t enjoyed the arrival process. As was normal routine throughout the Confederacy, we turned control of the Belle-Marie over to their operations center so they could bring us in. At other worlds, that was pretty much the end of it. Not at Earth’s Galileo Station.

“Belle-Marie,” said a radio voice, “what is the name of the pilot, please?”

“Chase Kolpath.”

“Ms. Kolpath, are you carrying any passengers?” The voice was a bored baritone.

“One. Alex Benedict.”

“Please spell the last name.”

I spelled it for them.

“How long do you expect to be here?”

“We’re not certain. Possibly a month or so.”

“And what is the purpose of your visit?”

“We’ll be doing some historical research.”

“Do you have any animals on board?”

“No.”

“Very good. Thank you.”

“I’ve a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’d like to take our lander groundside instead of using the shuttle. Can we arrange that?”

“Just a moment, please.”

The Earth filled the sky. We were on the nightside. The globe sparkled with lights. But I couldn’t be sure which continents we were looking at.

“Belle-Marie, did you make prior arrangements to use your lander?”

“No. Should I have done that?”

“I’m sorry. It’s required.” His voice softened. “Air traffic is heavy. Unless you have a good reason, they aren’t likely to allow it.”

“Let it go,” said Alex.

As far as I know, the home world is the only place with customs and immigration operations. Everybody is a citizen of the Confederacy, but Earth has laws left over from the old days, when they had serious problems with population, pirates, terrorists, smugglers, and I’m not sure what else.

We docked, and I opened the hatch. A customs officer was waiting. “Ms. Kolpath,” he said, “do you have anything of value that you plan to leave behind?”

“No, sir.”

“How about you, Mr. Benedict?”

“No, I don’t.”

He scanned the luggage. Then he pointed at one of Alex’s bags. “Open this one, please.”

Alex complied, and the officer looked in, moved some clothes around, and retrieved Alex’s scanner. “Why do you need this?”

“We’ll be doing some archeological work.”

“I see. Do you have a license?”

Alex produced it, but the officer shook his head. “This is not applicable here, sir. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take this. Privacy restrictions.” He produced a ticket and handed it to us. “You can pick it up when you’re leaving.”

Alex put the ticket in his pocket. “How can I get a license?”

“You can apply for it in the services office, sir, which is located in the Altair concourse. But be aware that approval will take a while. They’re a little nervous about devices like this.”

“I guess I can understand why,” said Alex.

“You’ll be staying about a month? Is that correct?”

“That’s right,” said Alex.

He entered the information into a computer and produced two red cards, which he gave to us. “I’m allowing you six weeks. If you expect to remain longer, follow the instructions on the back of the card.” He smiled and made it clear he was being generous. “When you leave, you’ll want to turn this in.”

We walked under a large sign blinking WELCOME HOME and strolled out into the Centauri Concourse, where we joined a crowd of sightseers, mostly young couples and families. Our shuttle would be taking us down to Arkon. But we were looking at a ten-hour wait.

“Do you want to get a room?” he asked.

“It’s okay. We don’t have our luggage, and I can sit around out here as easily as in a hotel.” It was midmorning Eastern Time on the American continent, which was our destination, so I’d reset the time on the Belle-Marie to match. Which is to say we’d gotten up shortly before coming into port.

Pictures of major cities and tourist sites lined the walls, along with exhortations to look good by using Miranda Body Spray for healthy skin. The tourist sites included the Grand Canyon, New York Island, Mt. Everest, Berlin Park, the pyramids, and the Great Wall of China.

Major cities, places like Balaclava, Yung-Wei, Kladno, and Tucson ran programs explaining why tourists would enjoy visiting. They displayed historical and cultural sites, theaters and parks, silver towers glittering in sunlight and kids splashing around in pools. “We should turn this into a vacation,” I said

Alex looked pleased at the suggestion. “If we can figure out where Baylee got that transmitter,” he said, “I’ll be happy to spring for a week off.”

We wandered through gift and clothing shops. I couldn’t resist buying an aqua-colored blouse with both faces of Earth emblazoned on it. There were game shops and entertainment centers. Eventually, we went into the Vanova Dining Room, found a table near the window, and ordered lunch.

I think we were both a bit overwhelmed. We’d been there before, but there’d been distractions then. This was the first time I really had an opportunity to just sit around contemplating the home world, the place where everything had begun. I tried to imagine what life had been like when we were confined to a single planet. Or, to go back even earlier, to a time when we thought the Earth was the center of the universe.

It got me thinking about how much we take for granted. Sightseeing in those early years was restricted to what you could see from a boat or an aircraft. If you wanted to get a look at, say, Saturn, you needed a telescope. People sometimes talked about the end of the world. And for a while, during the atomic standoff of the twentieth century, it looked as if it might happen. I know if we started piling up nuclear weapons on Rimway, I’d move somewhere else. I sat there and looked down and thought how lucky I’d been to have been born when I was.

The sandwiches came, and we exchanged comments on the food. “How’s yours?”

“It’s good. I thought about getting the pork roll, but the tuna was probably a better idea.”

Now we’re spread out across several hundred worlds, and we’ve left our footprints on countless others. I wondered whether, in those ancient times, when they made those first flights to the Moon, if they’d ever dreamed of going to the stars. They knew by then how far the closest stars were, so it must have seemed impossible. The first off-world flights had required three days to get to the Moon. Incredible. The Moon was only a quarter million miles away. You could almost have walked it. They’d have needed over a year to get to Mars.

I couldn’t help wondering why they would even have bothered. There was nothing on Mars. And the rest of the solar system had looked sterile. If they’d tried to go to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, at those velocities, it would have taken fifty thousand years.

What would have happened if they’d just given up? They’d come close. But they’d stayed with it. Manned flights had eventually headed out for Mars and then moved to Europa and beyond. They’d lost a few people along the way. But the vehicles had gotten better, and Maureen Caskill, in the twenty-fifth century, had figured out how to break the rules, to get past light speed. And after that, the stars had opened up.

“Makes you proud,” I said.

Alex didn’t ask for an explanation. “It’s why we need to hang on to our history. It tells us who we are.”

I sat there, munching my sandwich, thinking what Alan Shepard would have given to have known that one day I’d be visiting from another place so far away that no one in his time could have dreamed of going there. The restaurant wall carried photos of some of the early astronauts. Neil Armstrong, of course. And Viktor Patsayev. Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman. Gus Grissom. Gordon Cooper. John Glenn.

What would they have thought? Did they have any sense they were preparing the way for people who’d think of interstellars as yachts?

Science had been on the move in those years. It was the Golden Age, but they probably never realized it.

And maybe not so much simply because of the scientific advances, especially the breakthrough work in physics and medicine, the arrival of communications technology and advances in engineering, but because they had the people who knew how to make it pay off. They’d gotten past the nuclear threat, extended life spans, and generally made their world a better place. It hadn’t been perfect. Wars continued. They had problems taking care of their poor. They had lunatics who thought God wanted them to commit mass murder. But on the whole they did pretty well. And Alex and I were collecting the benefits.

“Chase, are you there?” He was looking at me, his brow creased. “You all right?”

“Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking.”

“They want to know if you’d like some dessert.”