Starhawk

Chapter 20

JAKE ARRIVED EARLY at Carmody’s. The back room had been reserved for the Astro Society. Approximately twenty people had gathered so far, and they were still drifting in. Sandra Coates recognized him immediately. She was in her thirties, with amiable features, auburn hair, and energetic brown eyes. “Captain Loomis?” she said. “So nice to meet you. We appreciate your coming. Just give us a few minutes, and we’ll be getting started.”

She introduced him around, identifying the participants as archeologists or botanists or nuclear physicists. It was clear she thought the specialty mattered to him. Nevertheless, they got quickly past the formalities, and Captain Loomis became Jake.

The place filled up, the servers arrived, and Jake was escorted to his place at the head table beside Sandra and Mike Hasson, the psychology chair at Brockton University. Sandra seemed genuinely delighted to have Jake in attendance, and she pointed out that the invitation had been Hasson’s idea. “I don’t think people really understand how the world changed,” Mike told him, “after we got into space. Well, maybe not so much got into space, but developed FTL. Some of us remember when we had our hands full getting out to Mars and Europa. But faster-than-light really changed the game.”

The meal was pretty much standard luncheon fare, potato salad and sandwiches and grilled carrots and an unidentifiable dessert that had cheese in it. When everyone had finished, Sandra ascended to the lectern and introduced Jake, “who has been to places most of us only dream about.” She held out a hand for him, the audience applauded with enthusiasm, and Jake took the mike.

“Thank you, Sandra.” He looked out over the diners. “I’m not sure what I can say that you’re not already aware of. I can tell you that I feel honored to be here, and how fortunate I’ve been to have been allowed to navigate our interstellars. It’s permitted me to visit places that we once thought were completely beyond our reach. I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know, but I’ll say this: Once you’ve traveled to another world, once you’ve walked on different ground, looked out across a new ocean, you can never be the same. The reality, though, is that you provided the opportunity. You provided the technology. And I want to take this opportunity to say thanks.

“What we have, we’ve received through the efforts of the world’s scientists. Starting back with the Greeks, I guess. You guys got us out of the caves and gave us the sky. In the end, we owe everything to men and women like yourselves, who explore the reality in which we live.” He described how it felt to watch a ringed world rising out of an ocean, to ride with a comet, to watch a star hurling giant flares into the night. “And maybe especially,” he said, “to go to a place like Iapetus and look at the figure left there thousands of years ago by someone I suspect you folks would like very much to have met.”

After about twenty minutes, he thanked his audience for listening and asked if anyone had a question.

Hands went up around the room. “Captain Loomis, do you think we’ll ever find a seriously advanced civilization? By that I mean one that’s maybe a million years old?”

“Where do you think we’ll be in another hundred years?”

“What’s the most spectacular thing you’ve seen out there?”

“Captain, Marian mentioned the possibility of a million-year-old civilization. What do you think that would look like?”

“Why do you think we’re so fascinated by the possibility of finding someone else we could talk to? I mean, high-tech aliens could be dangerous.”

The Talios story had not been released, so Jake did not mention it. “It’s in our genes,” he said. “What wouldn’t any of us give to sit down and have a beer and pizza with someone from the other side of the galaxy?”

The remark brought applause. Then a young woman seated near the front raised her hand. Jake looked in her direction, and she got up. “Captain Loomis, how do you feel about Project Rainbow?”

“I’m sorry. What’s Project Rainbow?”

“Selika,” she said. “Where they’re killing off the planet.”

“I think they should wait until they have better research. Until they can accomplish what they want without harming anything.”

More applause. And more hands went up. He was about to signal someone else, but the woman stayed on her feet. “Would it be fair,” she said, “to describe your feeling as outrage?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far. But I’m not happy with what they’re doing.”

“You’re not happy? They are probably killing off everything on that world, everything on Selika, and you’re not happy?” Her voice was rising. “I wouldn’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I won’t sleep much better tonight knowing that people like you are in charge.”

* * *

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