Last Exit Before the Final Frontier

Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

When I’m off duty, I like to go up on Carver’s Peak and watch the really big ships come in. I remember the last time I saw Ashley’s Charm, all five kilometers of her, slowly being brought in by the tugs to the huge interstellar spaceport here on Cameron. As I watched her gain size against the background of diamond-bright stars, she slowly turned as the tugs oriented her for parking orbit insertion, and the doors of the thousands of individual spacecraft berths came visible.

I looked at my watch. Two more hours.

In two more hours, I’d be back on duty, and as a senior port loadmaster, I’d be responsible for assigning transport slots to the multitude of individual ships that had come from deep down the well of the Solar System—from Earth, from Mars, the inner asteroid belt, and the satellite systems of the gas giants—craft bearing families intent on leaving this star system to vault into the vastness of the Universe and build a life out there under the light of other suns.

One of those ships coming up from Earth—Luna actually—would be carrying my Mom and Dad and little sister. They’d be arriving on Cameron later in the day, and I’d assign their ship a berth on Ashley’s Charm.

And the arguments would start again as they tried to get me to go with them.

Cameron happens to be the largest minor planet in the outer asteroid belt close enough to the inner edge of the Hague Limit to serve as a port for the transport starships. Her size is not only important to provide enough room for adequate facilities to service the now dozens of ships that arrive and depart from her each week, but also to provide the psychological sense that she is, in fact, a world, with myriad diversions for the travelers to partake of just before beginning the long trek through interstellar space. She has two sister worlds, also ports, spaced around the System. But Cameron is the best and biggest.

One of the consequences of the invention of the hyperdrive was the growing kinship of the people of the interstellar age with those of the days of sailing ships. Maximum speed in hyperspace is two light-years per month, so it takes more than two months to get to the nearest star, and most of the interesting worlds are at least a six month’s journey away.

Hyperphysics is an interesting thing. One suitable hyperwarp engine can lift even a ship the size of Ashley’s Charm into hyperspace with a rather small amount of energy, but only outside the Hague Limit, which for the Sun is 57.4 astronomical units out. Inside the Hague Limit, two hyperwarp engines can be employed in resonance to provide a marvelous sublight drive, and personal spaceships for trips around the Solar System become more and more common each day.

For economic reasons, people like to take their spaceships with them when they get the itch to head out for the stars. For economic reasons dictated by hyperphysics, it’s a lot cheaper to build huge interstellar transport ships to travel from Hague Limit to Hague Limit than from star to star.

Though on duty when my parents’ ship came in, I was able to take a late lunch and meet them at their spaceport berth. I knew Mom and Dad had gotten a new ship last year, but this was my first chance to see it. Their previous ship had been twenty years old when they bought it, but it had served to take my sister and me all over the Solar System. It wasn’t until I’d gotten out on my own and moved to Cameron that I actually spent two consecutive years of my life without visiting another world.

I had to admit that the folks had picked a nice ship. Big one, too, compared to most of the jobs I was used to slotting onto the transports. A Capitol Products System Sailor, the ship was forty meters long and ten across at the widest, which would leave it with habitable space about the same as a three-bedroom apartment. Miss Michiko was emblazoned across the bow. She was perfect for jaunts around the planets, but a bit close for trips with travel times between stops reaching into months. Hence, the big transports for the long journeys.

The ship came in smoothly, settled, and I saw Dad wave to me from the pilot bubble. It was only a few minutes more until the hatch slid up and Mom barreled out and launched herself at me. “Joey! Joey!” she said, trying to smother me in a hug. “I’m so glad to see you!” She pulled back. “What’s that on your face? You’re not growing a beard, are you?” She hugged me again. “Your father and I have missed you so much.”

“Well, me too,” I heard, and saw my little sister Penny coming down the ramp wearing a stylish blue jumpsuit. I hadn’t seen her in person in almost five years. She was fifteen when I left. Her hair was still long; she was a little taller but had much more of an hourglass figure than the last time I’d seen her. Baby sister was a woman now.

It was Penny’s turn for a hug and we held each other like—well, like we’d never held each other. (I think I gave her a punch on the shoulder when I’d moved out.) She gave me a kiss on the cheek then whispered, “I need to talk to you alone.” I only had time to nod that I understood before Dad came out.

Dad looked great. Why shouldn’t he? He was about to do what he’d always wanted—head out for the stars and begin to see the Universe. The Solar System just wasn’t big enough for him. Penny and I had learned that very, very early in life. Big and rangy, with the bushy beard I’d never seen him without, the man weighed in at a hundred kilos and hadn’t gained nor lost one during my lifetime. He had his hand thrust out, but when I reached for it he slapped my hand away and threw his arms around me. “None of that, boy. God, it’s good to see you. So, you want to come along?”

I was ready for that. “Can’t. My plants will die,” I said. “Besides, I’d have to give two-weeks notice and you’ll be gone by then.”

“Ho ho, always with the jokes,” Dad said. “But we’ll be here a couple of days, Son. I am going to try to talk you into coming. Besides, don’t you want to be with your sister again? You haven’t seen her in years. She’s growing up without you.”

Though Mom and Dad had been out to Cameron a few times since I’d left home, Penny had always been at school or, later, on an archeological dig (her passion). But I didn’t miss that Dad had said “growing up.” Grown up, Dad, I thought. Grown.

“Are you going to take us around, Joey?” Mom asked.

“Afraid not, Mom,” I said. “I have to go back to work. I took a late lunch as it is just to come see you in.”

“That’s a shame,” Dad said. “When will you be finished?”

“About three hours from now. Tack on another hour for me to get presentable and I’ll come find you all back here then. In the meantime, I’ll walk with you down to Information and you can take your pick of what you’d like to see, or maybe get something to eat. This place is quite the cosmic Las Vegas.”

“I remember,” Dad said.

“Well, I don’t,” Penny said, and as we emerged from the corridor to the central information square, she ran ahead to one of the casino alcoves.

I left Mom and Dad there and returned to work. Shannon’s Virtue, sister ship to Ashley’s Charm, was being loaded today.

The big ships are rather easy to load. They’re so large that the mass of any individual ship along for the ride is practically negligible, at least from a safety standpoint. But the proper arrangement of several thousand ships into an efficient mass distribution can still, over the course of a voyage, save the company a couple million credits in operating costs. More than enough to pay loadmasters like me and still have, well, a couple of million credits left over. (My salary was practically negligible, too.)

The rest of my shift went quickly. I rather liked my job. I’d started on Cameron as a pilot, flying other people’s ships into their assigned berths on the liners. But I’m a climber, and first chance I took the test and made it to assistant loadmaster. As a senior loadmaster, I was only one rung on the ladder away from having my own office.

I don’t know if Mom and Dad ever understood me. For them, every horizon crossed just egged them on to go and cross the next one. Sure, Dad’s trading company had made us a wealthy family, and helped to quench some of his thirst for traveling, but once he’d retired as president, he and Mom were going to be on the go for the rest of their lives.

I like the sea of space just as much as they did, but I’m perfectly content to stop on an island just offshore within sight of the mainland, and make a life for myself there.

No way was I going to go with my parents.

Just like on the big starship transports, visitors to Cameron have the option of either staying at a room at the spaceport or staying in their ships and using them as apartments. In fact, almost everyone willing to make a star journey buys a ship big enough to serve as home along the way. Although a family-sized spaceship isn’t large enough to spend half-a-year in if you can’t go outside, on board the big liners they’re just right to serve as home when you have a portable world five kilometers long to walk around in.

When I got to the berth, Dad showed me around his new ship. “See? Master bedroom right here for your mother and me. This other room is for Penny, and we have all of her course work loaded in her workstation so she can continue her studies.”

“Did you include a sandbox so she can work on her digging skills?” I asked.

“What? Oh, hah hah. Always with the jokes, you,” he replied then took me up to the control bubble and then insisted on showing me the drive room. Even though I’d seen thousands of drive rooms and control panels, I muttered the usual comments about how nice and special the ship was. Hell, it was a fine ship, no doubt about it, but hardly novel to someone like me.

We went to eat at the Last Exit Saloon, and it was fun to have dinner with the whole family again.

“Is there anyone special in your life, Joey?” Mom asked during dessert.

I’d disappointed her twice before when she and Dad had visited, but this time I had more hopeful news. “I think so. Her name is Angela. I would have invited her to eat with us, but she’s at our sister station a hundred twenty degrees around the outer Belt.”

“How serious is this?” Dad wanted to know.

“Neither of us is seeing anyone else. I’d like to keep it that way,” I said.

“I guess I won’t bring up you coming with us again,” Dad said. “I don’t think I can overcome your attitude and a woman’s charms. Congratulations, Son. I hope you make that life for yourself here that you say you want.” He hoisted his wine glass. “To Joey and his future here.”

We drank up and I couldn’t believe how good I felt. Fighting with my folks about my future had been going on since I was fifteen. To have Dad finally call a truce and accept my terms was a welcome but unexpected victory.

Penny drank the toast with us and smiled, but somehow it seemed to me it was a sad smile. After dessert she said, “Take me dancing, big brother?”

“Dancing?” Dad exclaimed. “Not me. I’m beat. You kids go along. Your mom and me will go back to the ship.” Dad never noticed that Penny hadn’t asked him to come along, but there wasn’t any reason to point it out.

Our folks went their way and Penny and I went ours. “You don’t really want to go dancing, do you? You just want to talk?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll go to my apartment.”

We went through my door and Penny flopped down on my bed. She used to do that when we were kids. “I can’t go with Mom and Dad. I don’t want to go with Mom and Dad. My life has to be on Earth. I can’t live it anywhere else!”

“Bad as all that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m an archeologist, dammit! What am I going to dig up on some other planet? We haven’t found another world yet with a civilization on it. The Phinons saw to that. And so what? I want to figure out what our ancestors were up to, not some other species.” She rolled over onto her stomach. “But it’s no use. Dad isn’t going to let me stay. I’m too young to just up and leave, and I sure can’t afford school without Mom and Dad’s money.”

“But Penny, even if you can’t get them to agree now, in less than a year you’ll be twenty-one. And you’re already way ahead of your peers.” Penny had finished high school at fifteen, her undergraduate work by nineteen. She was in her second year as a graduate student while most of her friends hadn’t even gotten through college. From my advanced position of five years her senior, I smiled at the impatience of youth. “You could go with Mom and Dad, finish your course work with them, then come on back after you’re old enough. They know they can’t stop you forever. You have to remember that you’re the baby of the family. I bet a lot of Dad’s objections have to do with that more than with any rational arguments. I mean, what exactly did he say when you told him you wanted to stay?”

From Penny came a most unexpected and disconcerting pause.

“Oh, shit. You didn’t tell him anything, did you? He said you’re all going and you sulked silently while you packed your bags and didn’t say a peep to him about staying.”

“No, I didn’t! Oh, poop! I’m a wimp. I admit it. It’s learned helplessness. I knew that if I said anything he’d just talk me out it. You know how convincing Dad can be. I’m not like you, Joey. Mom and Dad were always proud of you. Even after you said you were leaving, and did, they admired you for it. Dad would make jokes about you fleeing the nest rather than leaving it, but he never sounded like he was bitter or hurt. I think he did the same thing to Grampa himself.”

“You think they aren’t proud of you? C’mon, Penny. One of the reasons I left was because I couldn’t compete with my baby sister. When we were in high school together my teachers used to ask me why I couldn’t be more like my little sister. I knew you were going to make a huge mark in the world. I don’t begrudge you that. But the last thing I wanted was to be close enough for comparisons to be made. I would have been just a junior executive in Dad’s company while you were making headlines around the world.”

“I find it hard to believe that you left home so you wouldn’t have to suffer in comparison with me,” Penny said, sounding for all the world just like Dad. Higher voice, but the same choice of words.

“OK, no, it wasn’t just for that. But that was a part of it. I wanted to go and do my own thing and it didn’t have anything to do with Dad’s business. I also didn’t want him and Mom constantly trying to sell me on the romance of going to the stars and all that. They’re dreamers—I’m not. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Why does it have to be now? Why can’t you go with them for a year? Our folks aren’t getting any younger, you know. And you are their baby. Would it be such a big deal to humor them for one year of your life? Like I said, you’re way ahead of all your friends in school. Even if you took three years off, you’d still have your doctorate before any of them are done.”

“I can’t go now because there is this really big find that I want to be a part of,” Penny said.

I waited but she didn’t supply any more details.

“Well? What kind of big find?” I prompted.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s not just you, Joey,” Penny said. “I can’t tell anybody. This is big. This is the biggest thing in archeology ever and the whole crew of us are sworn to absolute secrecy. It involves the Phinons and if Professor Towner found out I told anybody he’d skin me alive. If this isn’t handled right, instead of making our careers, we might just get ourselves ostracized from archeology!”

“How do you get ostracized from—”

“It happens, Joey. It happens. You don’t find what you’re supposed to find and the journals won’t publish you and the other archeologists gang up on you. Dr. Towner says he’s so far out on a limb right now as it is that it might break all by itself even if we do everything right.”

I couldn’t get any more out of her about the find. Everyone has heard about the Phinons. We defeated them in a war a century back, and the hyperdrive came out of that war. But the Phinons never came inside Hague Limits unless it was to wipe out civilizations just getting close to star travel. They dwelt among the cometary haloes and they’d been doing it for about a billion years. I didn’t know what in the world one could dig up on Earth that would have anything to do with Phinons, and press as I might, Penny wouldn’t tell me.

“OK, OK,” I said, giving up the interrogation. “But the bottom line is that we have to try to convince Dad to let you stay but we can’t tell him why it is you have to stay now. He’s going to want to know why you can t just take a year off same as I wondered.”

How to convince Dad? I didn’t have a clue as I went to work the next morning, though Dad was going to be coming up to the station to see just what it was I did now (I’d had different, better, jobs each time my folks had visited). Still, it made me feel good to “play” the big brother for Penny as well as just being one.

The control station is a big sphere atop the main tower. Though it can be made transparent, when we’re working the interior of the sphere is all projection, and though we stay safely on the surface of Cameron, it looks like we’re flying through space.

My way to travel!

I was figuring out assignments for the loading of Ashley’s Charm when it occurred to me that maybe the best thing to do was just to show Dad how successful I was becoming on my own, and then start hinting around about how Penny deserved the same chance. I had doubts about it working, though. Promising to help and being able to are very different things.

I had Ashley’s Charm about a third loaded before Dad showed up. The first third is always the easiest—we load up the tail end with all the smaller ships which pretty much all mass the same and so there’s very little jiggering around to do.

Dad walked into the globe and gave that most satisfying double-take that people do when they come out of the dark elevator and find themselves apparently floating kilometers out in space. He stared around, taking everything in, and I knew I’d just gone up in his estimation simply by virtue of where I work.

“Boy, Joey, I can see why you like your job so much. I could get used to this pretty fast myself,” he said.

“It is magnificent,” I admitted. “Look over there, Dad. Our pilots are just starting to berth some of the bigger ships on Ashley’s Charm.” A pretty cruiser almost as big as Dad’s was positioning itself for insertion into the landing bay, looking like a gnat preparing to land on an elephant.

“Wow! Is the owner piloting that boat, or is one of your guys doing it?”

“One of our guys, always,” I said.

“But I was hoping to dock Miss Michiko myself.”

“Sorry, Pop. Our insurance won’t cover it. It’s not only your ship we have to worry about, it’s the liner, too. If we let a thousand different owners do their own docking, how long do you think it would be before one of them blew it? I trained for months before I got to berth my first tiny launch. And I don’t even want to think about the possibility of some terrorist deliberately flying his boat into the liner.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?”

“Not everyone loves the stars like you do, Dad. There are plenty of people who don’t think we should be going at all. They think the Phinons and the Hague Limit are God’s quarantine.”

“Nuts,” Dad said. I wasn’t sure if he meant the people I was characterizing or if he was just disappointed at not getting to berth his own boat.

“I’m glad you realized that I’m not like you and Mom, Dad. I was afraid when you told me you were going to stop here it was to try to get me to go along.” Even as I said it, I felt I was being entirely transparent. I wanted to segue into Penny’s situation, but I was half afraid Dad was suddenly going to say, “Penny’s going and that’s it.”

But he didn’t. “That’s OK, Son. Mom and I knew you were different very early on. You never wanted to go on trips, even when you were a little kid. You completely ignored my science fiction books. That’s one of the reasons we had Penny. We wanted to see if we’d have better luck the second time around.” Then he turned to look at me, both smiling and serious. “You do realize I’m joking, don’t you? Your mother and I are proud of you.”

“I know. But how was Penny so much different from me?”

“Oh, we knew immediately that she was like us. Penny always wanted to go along. You couldn’t take a walk with her without her wanting to round just one more curve or look over just one more hill. She always needed to see what was on the other side of the horizon. Problem with her was that Mom and Dad always had to come along. If she’d gotten a little more of your independence and you a little more of her romantic streak….” he trailed off.

“What?”

“Then I’d have somebody else’s children. Anyway, your Mom and I couldn’t love either of you any more than we do.”

“Me and Penny know that. But what I was trying to say is that Penny is studying to be an archeologist. Does she really want to interrupt her studies to see the stars?”

“She’s young, Joey. She has lots of time to finish up. She’s years ahead of her friends. Besides, she hasn’t said a word to us about not going along. I mentioned she could probably continue her class work on the ship and she went right out looking for study files to take along.

“No, Joey, you’re reading your own feelings into your sister. She’s not a little girl anymore. I find it hard to believe that if she didn’t want to go, she wouldn’t have said something.”

At that point I knew there was nothing else I could say to Dad to convince him that Penny wanted to remain behind. Penny was either going to have to tell him herself before tomorrow morning or she was going to the stars.

Later that day Miss Michiko was flown up to her berth. Dad didn’t get to pilot, but he insisted on being aboard when she went up. I had a chance to tell Penny that I’d gotten nowhere with Dad during his visit to the control center before she and Mom went shopping one last time, passing the time while waiting for Dad to return on the shuttle from Ashley’s Charm. I was too busy to give the issue much more thought, anyway. I knew I’d be supportive of Penny tonight at our parting dinner, but my saying anything would depend upon whether or not she found it in herself to tell Dad she wanted to stay.

She hadn’t been too good at that yet.

I had just come off shift and was heading back to my apartment to clean up before dinner when I ran into Mom and Penny.

“Is Dad’s shuttle in yet?” Mom asked.

“It was just getting ready to leave Ashley’s Charm when I left the control center,” I told her. “Dad should be down in about ten minutes.” Penny was carrying a bag. Mom hadn’t bought anything. “What’d you get, Penny?”

She took it out of the bag. It was a toy—an action figure, of a slim, monstrous thing with arms and legs that bent the wrong way. She held it out to me.

“Why did you buy a toy Phinon?” I asked, taking it from her.

“I asked her that, too,” Mom said. “That toy costs three times as much out here as it does insystem.”

“I bought it for inspiration,” Penny said, taking it back and slipping it into her bag. “Either that, or as a reminder.”

“Reminder of what?” Mom asked.

Penny just smiled.

Mom and Penny went to meet Dad at the shuttle dock, and I went to clean up, promising to meet them at dinner in half an hour. I showered, looked in the mirror, then shaved off the beard I’d started to surprise Angela. That was for Mom. Even though she’d married a bearded man, maybe because she had, she liked me looking well-scrubbed and clean-shaven, and she wasn’t going to see me again for at least a couple of years.

On the way to dinner it began to sink in that this time it was my folks who were leaving me behind. I had only fled the nest for another branch on the same tree, but they were heading to an entirely different forest.

The family was already seated when I arrived, and just about to have their orders taken. I slid into the seat to Dad’s right. He finished talking to the waiter then said, “Hello, Joey. You were right about the piloting. That berth is kind of narrow. I’m glad I didn’t have to try to fly into it myself.”

Dad was buying. I ordered first and I went for the steak and lobster. We grow our own lobsters on Cameron so they don’t cost that much more than on Earth, but even if they did, Dad could afford it, and he had never been cheap.

In fact, Dad also ordered the steak and lobster, Mom got the chicken, and Penny ordered the vegetarian salad. “Is that all you’re having?” Dad asked.

“It looks like a pretty big salad,” she replied. Penny isn’t a vegetarian, but you can pick at a salad for a long time without actually eating much of it. She was nervous about the showdown with Dad, I was sure. Nervousness always killed her appetite. At exam time she used to live on water and air.

It was a fun meal during the main course. We recalled fond memories of trips we’d taken as a family. “Remember when we flew through the rings of Saturn?” “How about the hiking we did on Miranda?” “My favorite was the skiing trip to Titan.”

Dad talked about their coming trip to the stars. “First stop, Tau Ceti, and the sunny seas of Tropic,” he said. “If I like it there enough we may not even leave.”

“What? And not see what’s at the next star? Hah!” I said.

“You have your old man pegged,” Dad laughed. “The Universe is the limit. And after we finish with this Galaxy, there’s a bundle of others to see.” He raised his glass. “To the final frontier,” he toasted, and we all, even Penny, clinked glasses.

We were well into dessert and I was wondering if Penny would say anything at all when it finally happened. We were just making small talk and Dad said, “I hope you don’t miss the three of us too bad while we’re gone,” when Penny put down her spoon and said: “Dad, I can’t go.”

No preamble. No indication it was coming. No distant sound of thunder to warn of coming storms. Just a bolt from the blue.

“Dad, I can’t go.”

Dad’s last spoonful of ice cream didn’t make it to his mouth, just stopped halfway there and then returned to the plate. I don’t know what I expected him to say. I knew he wouldn’t just blow up. If it was anything like my breaking-away time, the blow-up wouldn’t happen until after the calm discussion had escalated into an argument and Dad realized he was losing.

But it was Mom who went first. “What’s the matter, honey? What’s wrong?”

“I just can’t go.”

“Don’t you think you could have brought this up a little sooner?” Dad finally asked.

“Daddy, I’m sorry. I really am. I should have said something before. I should have told you before we left. But… I just can’t go.”

“Well, why not?”

Penny was ready for that. “My work on Earth is at a critical point. And more than that, Dr. Towner is sitting on the biggest find of the last hundred years. I want… no, I need to be a part of this. It will make my career. It will make everyone’s career. It will rewrite our entire understanding of human history,” she said, and as her thoughts turned to her work, her confidence soared.

“Oh, really? Big as all that, huh?” Dad said, and I could hear the sarcasm coming. “So immensely huge that you waited until we were an hour away from going to the stars before bringing it up. Why was that, Penny?”

The confidence went away. She looked into her plate. Very softly: “Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of you.”

“Why?”

“Now, Father—” Mom started to interrupt.

“No, let her answer,” Dad said, cutting Mom off. “If Penny wants to stay behind and fend for herself, she’d damn well better start speaking for herself.

“Now, Penny, why are you afraid of me?”

I, of course, was lending my moral support by eating my dessert quietly.

“I said that wrong,” Penny continued. “I’m not afraid of you, Dad. I was afraid of disappointing you. I know you’ve… you and Mom, I mean… have always counted on me being the one that’s like both of you. You know, always looking over the next horizon. I knew the minute you brought up the star trip that you’d just assume I’d love to go as much as you and Mom. I knew all you were thinking about was whether or not you could convince Joey to go.”

“Good thing that’s all settled,” I interjected, not wanting it to come up again as an issue.

“No. I knew I’d ask Joey, maybe even try to pressure him a bit. But I never expected I’d succeed. I know my children better than that. At least I thought I did. You’re right—I assumed you wanted to go. You’ve always ‘wanted to go.’ So now I’m mystified—why don’t you want to go over this next horizon with your Mom and me?”

Right around then I noticed that the spoon I’d been lifting to my mouth kept coming up empty, so I set it down and started playing with my napkin instead.

“Because there’s another horizon I want to cross,” Penny answered.

“What? There’s some boy back on Earth? One of your archeology buddies?” I knew what “horizon” Dad was thinking about.

“No-oooo… time! The horizon of time, Daddy. Geez, boys are a plentiful commodity. I’m surprised you even said that!” Penny’s disgust was evident (though likely feigned).

“OK, great, fine. So it really is this big dig you’re on. You should have brought this up before. So just what is it that you’ve found that’s so important that it can’t wait a year for you to come back to it? If it’s so great, the dig will be going on for years.”

“But I want to be there for the announcement, Dad. I want my face next to Towner’s on the news.”

“But what is the find?” Dad persisted as I knew he would. “If I don’t know all the facts, then I can’t make a decision. You’re still a minor and we’re still your parents…” (That was Dad, including Mom as a rhetorical equal in his decision. But they’d been married for thirty years by then, so who was I to say anything?) “…so if you’re going to stay behind, I, we, have to have a good reason why.”

Penny was silent for a long time. Everyone was silent. I certainly wasn’t going to say anything.

Penny drew a deep breath. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “I promised Dr. Towner… I promised everyone, we all promised… that I wouldn’t tell anyone about the find. The significance will be obvious once we go public, but before then… No, I can’t tell you, Daddy.

“If you can’t let me stay without knowing…” and she let out a big sigh, “…then I’ll just have to go.”

Penny stayed.

Sure, she’d played the martyr. Sure, Penny had put on for effect. But she was being honest, of that we’d had no doubt, and somehow in our years apart she had cultivated a nobility that I knew I’d never match.

That last meal had been an all-around family epiphany.

I’d love to be able to say Dad cheerfully relented when Penny so self-sacrificially stood her ground, but the fact is he grumbled and groaned and complained the whole time while he went to send a message to Rodney (the man now in charge of Dad’s company) about setting up a fund for Penny to draw upon. “We could have put a big entertainment center in your room if you’d just spoken up,” he told Penny. “Damn workstation in there cost a fortune,” he muttered.

But it was that he let her stay that counted, and Penny stood beside me on Carver’s Peak as we watched Ashley’s Charm depart.

You all know what happened.

Five months later the news broke. The archeologist Towner and his crew of graduate students had found, underneath a seventy-thousand-year-old layer of lava, the remains of an alien base. Absolute evidence that somewhere in the Universe another species had survived the Phinons and achieved star travel.

Penny’s face was right next to Towner’s on all the news shows.

A month after that word came from Tau Ceti that Ashley’s Charm had failed to arrive, though three months later still a debris cloud from the right direction showered the star system.

No one ever figured out what happened. Malfunction? Phinons? The debris yielded up no secrets.

It’s hard for me to believe Dad is dead.

I mentioned earlier that I sometimes wonder if my parents ever understood me. Now I wonder if I ever understood them.

In reading back through this I notice how Mom seems to play such a minor role. It wasn’t really like that through our lives together, but at that time and in that place, it was the ultimate relationship of a father with his children that had to be sorted out. During those last days together, Dad behaved in a way that, I now see, was typically Dad, though at the time Penny and I had misread him entirely.

Penny is “Doctor Penny” now, and she runs her own digs. Another alien site was discovered near Olympus Mons on Mars last year. She was terribly excited.

Penny and I inherited the family fortune, but I still work and I’m chief loadmaster with my own office now. Though all the passengers on Ashley’s Charm were declared dead, I sometimes wonder if that’s true.

Ships like Miss Michiko were quite something. Though the drives were not balanced for hyperflight, they had sufficient power to propel the ships to near-light velocity. Could the passengers have known what was coming? Could they have fled Ashley’s Charm before the calamity?

Could Mom and Dad be on their way back home?

Small ships do not carry hyper-waves, nor radios capable of transmitting billions of kilometers, so no word would have come from Miss Michiko. But it would have made far more sense for Dad to have gone on to Tau Ceti if he and Mom had somehow survived.

Still, I like to go up on Carver’s Peak and watch the big ships come in.

But now I look for little ones, too.

Editor’s Note: This story takes place a good while after “Sunshine, Genius, and Rust” (May 1993), and “Young Again” (December 1993).