McClennon had been relating his memories for months.
“Christ, Mouse. I’m sick of it. Why can’t people
be satisfied with the deposition tapes?”
Mouse moved a pawn, trying to initiate a trade. “Because
it’s so damned fascinating. It’s like meeting somebody
who can wiggle his ears. You want to see him do his trick. I
can’t help it either. I wish I could get inside your head.
Man, remembering what the galaxy looked like before Old Sol was
formed . . . ”
McClennon refused the trade. He moved a knight to support his
own pawn, glanced at the time. “Four hours. I’m
beginning to dread it. They’ll do the whole debriefing
routine. For two years of mission. And they’ll stay on me
about my starfish memories till they know the whole physical
history of the universe.”
Mouse glanced at the clock too. Marathon would be
dropping hyper soon, preparatory to decelerating in to Luna
Command. “Debriefing doesn’t excite me either. On the
other hand, we’ll get to see a lot of people we haven’t
seen for a long time. They’ll all be changed.”
“Maybe too much. Maybe we won’t know them
anymore.” McClennon tried to focus on his friends in Luna
Command. Max would be older. Greta would be a different animal. He
might not recognize her now.
His thoughts kept fleeing to the memories. He found something
new each time he checked them. They were intriguing, but he could
not shed the disheartening parts.
There were not just five warfleets coming out The Arm. There
were eighteen. And the galaxy was infested by not one, but four
Globulars. He could not console himself with the starfish view
that, in the long run, the enemy was never entirely successful. He
did not care that this was their third scourging of the Milky Way,
that life always survived, and that sometime between the grim
passages, over the eons, new intelligence arose to contest the
world-slayers’ efforts. He could not be consoled by the
knowledge that the enemy would not reach Confederation in his
lifetime.
If there was a God, He was cruel. To have allowed the creation
of such all-powerful, enduring
monstrousness . . .
“Chub thought he was giving me a gift,” McClennon
said. “He knew I was curious about the past. And he knew his
species had information we wanted. It was a gift of despair. It
just showed us how hopeless the whole thing really is.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You’re down too
far.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You told me the fish said they can be stopped. That it
had been done before. The Stars’ End people were working on
it when the plague got them.”
“They were working on us, Mouse. Trying to breed some kind
of killer race of their own.”
Mouse shrugged. “Hi, Tanni.”
McClennon glanced up into laughing green eyes.
Mouse suggested, “Why don’t you take my friend for a
walk? He’s down again.”
The woman laughed. “That’s what I had in mind. Or
would you rather play chess, Tom?”
McClennon grinned. “Let’s flip a
coin . . . Ouch! No fair pinching.”
“Come on, you. I’ve got to go on station in an
hour.” She undulated out of the wardroom.
“Wait till Max gets a look at that,” Mouse said.
“Hey. She better not. Not ever. Hear? The fireworks would
make the nova bomb look pitiful.”
Mouse laughed. “I’m looking forward to it, old
buddy. I can’t forgive you for snagging that before I
did.”
“You can’t win them all, Mouse.” He hurried
after Tanni Lowenthal, Stars’ End, the mission, starfish, and
centerward enemies forgotten.
He spent a month in the bowels of Old Earth’s moon. The
mind-butchers demolished his soul and on its foundations rebuilt to
saner specifications. The first three weeks were horror incarnate.
He was forced to face himself by mind mechanics who showed no more
compassion than a Marine motor pool man for a recalcitrant
personnel carrier.
They did not accept excuses. They did not permit stalling. And
even while he slept they continued debriefing him, tapping the
incredible store of memories given him by Chub. They were
merciless.
And they were effectve.
His sojourn among the Seiners had mellowed his memories of the
cold determination of his Navy compatriots. He had come in
unprepared. He was less ready to fight the reconstruction.
It went more quickly than his doctors anticipated.
When he was past crisis they opened him up and repaired his
ulcerated plumbing.
He was permitted visitors on day twenty-nine.
“Two at a time,” his nurse protested. “Just
two of you can go in.”
“Disappear,” Mouse told her.
“Yes sir. Captain. Sir.”
Mouse was nearly trampled by two women. He dropped his portable
chess set. Chessmen scattered across the floor. “Oh,
damn!”
Greta plopped her behind on the edge of the bed, flung herself
forward, hugged McClennon. “I’m glad you’re back.
I’ve been calling every day since I heard. They
wouldn’t let me come before.”
And Max, the old girlfriend, “Christ, Walter. What the
hell did they do to you? You look like death on a stick.”
“That’s why I love you, Max. You’ve always got
a pleasant word.” He squeezed Greta’s hand. “How
are you, honey? How’s Academy?”
She started babbling. Max got on about some new stamps she had
at her hobby shop. She had been saving them for him.
Mouse recovered his chessmen, deposited the set on the
nightstand, took a chair. He crossed right leg over left, steepled
his fingers before his mouth, and watched with a small smile.
McClennon turned his head, trying to hide his eyes.
Softly, Max said, “Walter. You’re crying.”
McClennon hid behind his hand.
“Max . . . It was a rough one. A long one
and a rough one. I was lost for a long time. I
forgot . . . I forgot I had friends. I was
alone out there.”
“Mouse was there, wasn’t he?”
“Mouse was there. Without him . . . He
brought me through. Mouse. Come here.” He took Storm’s
hand. “Thanks, Mouse. I mean it. Let’s don’t let
it get away again.”
For a moment Storm stopped hiding behind the masks and poses. He
nodded.
Greta resumed babbling. McClennon hugged her again.
“I’m having trouble believing it. I thought you’d
have forgotten me by now.”
“How could I?”
“What am I? A sentimental fool who helped a pretty girl in
trouble. We never knew each other.”
She hugged him a third time. She whispered, “I knew you.
You cared. That’s what matters. When you were gone, your
friends were always there to help.” She buried her head in
his shoulder and blubbered.
McClennon frowned a question at Max, who said,
“Your Bureau took care of her like family. She’s got
to be the most pampered Midshipman in Academy.”
“And you?”
Max shrugged. “I did what I could.” She seemed
embarrassed. “Well, how else was I going to keep track of
you? I don’t have connections.”
“I’m glad you’re going to be all right,”
Greta murmured. “Dad?”
More tears escaped McClennon’s eyes.
“Did I do wrong? I didn’t
mean . . . ”
“It’s all right, honey. It’s all right. I
wasn’t ready for that.” He squeezed the wind out of
her.
“Just get the hell out of my way, woman!” someone
thundered in the passageway outside. Beckhart kicked the door open.
“See if you can’t find a bedpan over around Tycho
Crater, eh? Go on. Get scarce.”
The nurse beat her second retreat.
The Admiral surveyed the room.
McClennon stared at his professional paterfamilias.
“Looks like everything’s under control,”
Beckhart observed.
“Place is drawing a crowd,” McClennon said.
“Must be my animal magnetism.”
Beckhart smiled with one side of his mouth. “That’s
one crime they won’t convict you of, son. Lay out that board,
Mouse. I’ll beat you a game while we wait for the
females.”
The game had hardly started, and McClennon had hardly gotten
Greta’s eyes dried. The door swung inward again. The nurse
watched with a look of despair.
Tanni Lowenthal’s face rippled with emotions. It selected
an amused smile. “Tom. I thought I’d get here first. I
guess you don’t run as fast when you’ve got short
legs.” She crossed gazes with Max. The metallic
scrang of ladies’ rapiers meeting momentarily
tortured the air. Then Max smiled and introduced herself. She and
Tanni got past the rocky part in minutes.
Beckhart checked his watch. “Damn it, they’re late.
I’m going to have
somebody’s . . . ”
The harried nurse stepped in. She carried a portable remote
comm. “Call for you, Captain McClennon.”
“Let me have that,” the Admiral said. He seized the
comm. “Jones? You find her? Got her on the line? All right.
Thomas, your mother.” He handed the comm to McClennon and
returned to his game.
McClennon did not know what to do or say. He and his mother were
estranged. She was Old Earther born and bred, and they had battled
fiercely ever since his enlistment. Their last meeting, just before
the Seiner mission, had ended bitterly.
“Mother?”
“Tommy? Is it really you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d been killed. When they came to the
apartment . . . God. They say you were mixed up
in this war business that’s got the whole world turned upside
down. The spikes are everywhere. They’re grabbing people off
the streets.”
“I was in it a little.” She had not changed. He
hardly had a chance to get in a word of his own.
“They said you got married. Is she a nice girl?”
“It didn’t work out. But yes, she was. You would
have liked her.” He checked his audience. Only the Admiral
seemed to know his mother’s half of the conversation.
They did not talk long. There had been little to say since he
had gone his separate way. It was enough that, for all their
differences, they could show one another they still cared.
McClennon handed the comm to the Admiral when he finished.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I owe you, Thomas. One mission and another, I put you
through hell for four years. I won’t apologize. You’re
the best. They demanded the best. But I can try to make it up a
little now. I can try to show you that I didn’t take it all
away . . . ” Beckhart seemed unable to
say what he meant.
“Thank you, sir.”
A baffled, resigned nurse opened the door. A youth in Midshipman
blacks stepped in. “Uncle Tom?”
“Horst-Johann! Jesus, boy. I hardly recognize you.
You’re half a meter taller.”
Jupp von Drachau’s son joined the crowd. The boy had been
closer to McClennon than his father since his parents had split.
The boy was in his father’s custody, and resented him for
being absent so much. Thomas did not understand the reasoning
behind the feeling. The boy saw Jupp more often than
him . . . He thought of his mother and
reflected that children applied a special logic to that species of
adult called a parent.
He lay back on the bed and surveyed the gathering. Not a big
circle, he thought, but all good friends. Surprisingly good
friends, considering what he had been through the past few
years . . . Friends whom, most of the time, he
had not known he had.
He really had been way out there, lost in the wildernesses of
his mind, hadn’t he?
The universe now seemed bright and new, specially made for him.
Even his starfish memories and his knowledge of the doom
approaching from centerward could not take the gleam off.
Horst-Johann was first to leave, after a promise to visit again
come the weekend. Then Mouse, who had to return to his own extended
debriefing. Then Tanni, who had to get back for her watch aboard
Marathon. She departed after a whispered promise that left
him in no doubt that his masculinity had survived the hospital
weeks.
Beckhart sat his chair silently and waited with the
patience of a statue of Ramses.
A half hour after Tanni’s departure, Max announced,
“We have to leave, Walter. Greta has to get back for morning
muster. You be good. And try not to collect any more little
blondes.”
McClennon grinned self-consciously. “You coming
back?”
“For sure. I’m keeping an eye on you. You’re
not sneaking off on me again . . . It’s
been a long time, Walter.”
Greta blushed.
“Thanks for coming. And Greta. Thank you. Come
here.” He hugged her, whispered, “I’m there when
you need me.”
“I know.”
“It’s important to have somebody who needs
you.”
“I know. I’ll be back Saturday.”
After the women left, Beckhart sat in silence for several
minutes. McClennon finally asked, “Aren’t they going to
miss you at the office?”
“I’m not as indispensable as I thought, Thomas. I
come back after six months in the field and find them caught up and
not a problem in sight.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I really said it before, about as well as I can. That
I’m sorry I had to do what I did.”
“Sorry, but you’d do it again.”
“If something comes up. I don’t think it will.
Things are damned quiet now. The war has everybody’s
attention.”
“Will we be able to do anything with Stars’ End? Or
what I learned from the starfish?”
“About the fish info I don’t know. It does prove
there’s a hope. Stars’
End . . . Our Seiner friends have gotten it
straightened out. The place is almost a high-technology weapons
museum. Some of the simpler systems will be available when next we
engage.”
“The gods are dead. Long live the gods,” McClennon
murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“A long time ago, in another life, I promised you a
vacation. I sent you to Payne’s Fleet instead. This time
I’m sending you home. I’ve already sent word to Refuge
to get your house ready. Take Mouse along.”
“Mouse?”
“Mouse took care of you when it got tough. It’s your
turn. He’s slipping. The Sangaree are gone. That hate kept
him glued together since he was a kid.”
“All right. I understand.”
A mountain of paperwork was needed to close out the mission and
put the Board of Inquiry into motion. The latter would be handled
entirely by deposition. Thomas rolled through it. Nothing daunted
him. The Psychs seemed to have rebuilt him better than original
issue. He worked like a slave, and had energy left to flit from
friend to friend evenings and weekends. He reminded himself of
Mouse in days gone by, when Storm had been everywhere at once,
pursuing a hundred interests and projects.
Mouse was the opposite. He could not finish anything.
Then it was all done. Marathon took them aboard and
spaced for the quiet Cygnian world called Refuge, which was home
for millions of retired civil servants and senior Service
personnel.
But for Tanni Lowenthal the journey might have been
depressing.
Going home. His showing for the mission some money, some stamps
and coins for his collections, some new and old memories, and an
armistice with himself. Somehow, it did not seem enough.
But he had found his friends, the people he had thought missing
so long. So why was he disappointed?
There had been one soul-scar the Psychs had not been able to
heal completely.
He could not forget Amy.
They had never really finished. They had not said the
end. They had just gone separate ways.
He liked things wrapped up neatly.
Time passed. Cygnian summer faded into autumn. Fall segued into
winter. Mouse and McClennon played chess, and waited, growing
closer, till Mouse revealed the whole story of his past, of the
origins of his hatred for the Sangaree. Gently, McClennon kept his
friend’s spirit from sliding away completely. Gently, he
began to bring Mouse back.
The report of the Board of Inquiry, delayed repeatedly, drew no
closer.
From Cygnus it did not seem there was a war. Luna
Command had expanded its forces six-fold, and had begun building
new weapons and ships, but otherwise Confederation seemed to be
going on as before.
Tanni visited occasionally. Max and Greta kept in touch.
And yet . . .
Some nights, when the dark winter skies were terribly clear,
McClennon would put aside his stamp collection, coins, or the novel
he had begun writing, and would go out on the terrace. Shivering,
he would stare up at stars burning palely in unearthly
constellations and picture huge ships like flying iron jungles. He
would think of swarms of gold dragons, and a million-year-old beast
he had taught to tell a joke.
He never loved her more than he did now that she was lost
forever. Mouse had told him . . . She might use
his name to frighten his own child. She would not hate him now. She
would understand. But there would be appearances to be maintained,
and social winds with which to sail . . .
Life never worked out the way you wanted. Everyone was
victimized by social equivalents of the theories of that dirty old
man, Heisenberg.
The comm buzzed. McClennon answered. A moment later, he called,
“Mouse, Jupp’s coming in to spend a few days.” He
returned to the terrace. The ship burned down the sky, toward where
the city’s lighted towers made fairy spires that soared above
distant woods. McClennon pretended it was a shooting star. He made
a wish. “Want to play a game while we’re
waiting?”
Mouse grinned. “You’re on.”
“Stop smirking. I’m going to whip you this time, old
buddy.”
And he did. He finally did.
McClennon had been relating his memories for months.
“Christ, Mouse. I’m sick of it. Why can’t people
be satisfied with the deposition tapes?”
Mouse moved a pawn, trying to initiate a trade. “Because
it’s so damned fascinating. It’s like meeting somebody
who can wiggle his ears. You want to see him do his trick. I
can’t help it either. I wish I could get inside your head.
Man, remembering what the galaxy looked like before Old Sol was
formed . . . ”
McClennon refused the trade. He moved a knight to support his
own pawn, glanced at the time. “Four hours. I’m
beginning to dread it. They’ll do the whole debriefing
routine. For two years of mission. And they’ll stay on me
about my starfish memories till they know the whole physical
history of the universe.”
Mouse glanced at the clock too. Marathon would be
dropping hyper soon, preparatory to decelerating in to Luna
Command. “Debriefing doesn’t excite me either. On the
other hand, we’ll get to see a lot of people we haven’t
seen for a long time. They’ll all be changed.”
“Maybe too much. Maybe we won’t know them
anymore.” McClennon tried to focus on his friends in Luna
Command. Max would be older. Greta would be a different animal. He
might not recognize her now.
His thoughts kept fleeing to the memories. He found something
new each time he checked them. They were intriguing, but he could
not shed the disheartening parts.
There were not just five warfleets coming out The Arm. There
were eighteen. And the galaxy was infested by not one, but four
Globulars. He could not console himself with the starfish view
that, in the long run, the enemy was never entirely successful. He
did not care that this was their third scourging of the Milky Way,
that life always survived, and that sometime between the grim
passages, over the eons, new intelligence arose to contest the
world-slayers’ efforts. He could not be consoled by the
knowledge that the enemy would not reach Confederation in his
lifetime.
If there was a God, He was cruel. To have allowed the creation
of such all-powerful, enduring
monstrousness . . .
“Chub thought he was giving me a gift,” McClennon
said. “He knew I was curious about the past. And he knew his
species had information we wanted. It was a gift of despair. It
just showed us how hopeless the whole thing really is.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You’re down too
far.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You told me the fish said they can be stopped. That it
had been done before. The Stars’ End people were working on
it when the plague got them.”
“They were working on us, Mouse. Trying to breed some kind
of killer race of their own.”
Mouse shrugged. “Hi, Tanni.”
McClennon glanced up into laughing green eyes.
Mouse suggested, “Why don’t you take my friend for a
walk? He’s down again.”
The woman laughed. “That’s what I had in mind. Or
would you rather play chess, Tom?”
McClennon grinned. “Let’s flip a
coin . . . Ouch! No fair pinching.”
“Come on, you. I’ve got to go on station in an
hour.” She undulated out of the wardroom.
“Wait till Max gets a look at that,” Mouse said.
“Hey. She better not. Not ever. Hear? The fireworks would
make the nova bomb look pitiful.”
Mouse laughed. “I’m looking forward to it, old
buddy. I can’t forgive you for snagging that before I
did.”
“You can’t win them all, Mouse.” He hurried
after Tanni Lowenthal, Stars’ End, the mission, starfish, and
centerward enemies forgotten.
He spent a month in the bowels of Old Earth’s moon. The
mind-butchers demolished his soul and on its foundations rebuilt to
saner specifications. The first three weeks were horror incarnate.
He was forced to face himself by mind mechanics who showed no more
compassion than a Marine motor pool man for a recalcitrant
personnel carrier.
They did not accept excuses. They did not permit stalling. And
even while he slept they continued debriefing him, tapping the
incredible store of memories given him by Chub. They were
merciless.
And they were effectve.
His sojourn among the Seiners had mellowed his memories of the
cold determination of his Navy compatriots. He had come in
unprepared. He was less ready to fight the reconstruction.
It went more quickly than his doctors anticipated.
When he was past crisis they opened him up and repaired his
ulcerated plumbing.
He was permitted visitors on day twenty-nine.
“Two at a time,” his nurse protested. “Just
two of you can go in.”
“Disappear,” Mouse told her.
“Yes sir. Captain. Sir.”
Mouse was nearly trampled by two women. He dropped his portable
chess set. Chessmen scattered across the floor. “Oh,
damn!”
Greta plopped her behind on the edge of the bed, flung herself
forward, hugged McClennon. “I’m glad you’re back.
I’ve been calling every day since I heard. They
wouldn’t let me come before.”
And Max, the old girlfriend, “Christ, Walter. What the
hell did they do to you? You look like death on a stick.”
“That’s why I love you, Max. You’ve always got
a pleasant word.” He squeezed Greta’s hand. “How
are you, honey? How’s Academy?”
She started babbling. Max got on about some new stamps she had
at her hobby shop. She had been saving them for him.
Mouse recovered his chessmen, deposited the set on the
nightstand, took a chair. He crossed right leg over left, steepled
his fingers before his mouth, and watched with a small smile.
McClennon turned his head, trying to hide his eyes.
Softly, Max said, “Walter. You’re crying.”
McClennon hid behind his hand.
“Max . . . It was a rough one. A long one
and a rough one. I was lost for a long time. I
forgot . . . I forgot I had friends. I was
alone out there.”
“Mouse was there, wasn’t he?”
“Mouse was there. Without him . . . He
brought me through. Mouse. Come here.” He took Storm’s
hand. “Thanks, Mouse. I mean it. Let’s don’t let
it get away again.”
For a moment Storm stopped hiding behind the masks and poses. He
nodded.
Greta resumed babbling. McClennon hugged her again.
“I’m having trouble believing it. I thought you’d
have forgotten me by now.”
“How could I?”
“What am I? A sentimental fool who helped a pretty girl in
trouble. We never knew each other.”
She hugged him a third time. She whispered, “I knew you.
You cared. That’s what matters. When you were gone, your
friends were always there to help.” She buried her head in
his shoulder and blubbered.
McClennon frowned a question at Max, who said,
“Your Bureau took care of her like family. She’s got
to be the most pampered Midshipman in Academy.”
“And you?”
Max shrugged. “I did what I could.” She seemed
embarrassed. “Well, how else was I going to keep track of
you? I don’t have connections.”
“I’m glad you’re going to be all right,”
Greta murmured. “Dad?”
More tears escaped McClennon’s eyes.
“Did I do wrong? I didn’t
mean . . . ”
“It’s all right, honey. It’s all right. I
wasn’t ready for that.” He squeezed the wind out of
her.
“Just get the hell out of my way, woman!” someone
thundered in the passageway outside. Beckhart kicked the door open.
“See if you can’t find a bedpan over around Tycho
Crater, eh? Go on. Get scarce.”
The nurse beat her second retreat.
The Admiral surveyed the room.
McClennon stared at his professional paterfamilias.
“Looks like everything’s under control,”
Beckhart observed.
“Place is drawing a crowd,” McClennon said.
“Must be my animal magnetism.”
Beckhart smiled with one side of his mouth. “That’s
one crime they won’t convict you of, son. Lay out that board,
Mouse. I’ll beat you a game while we wait for the
females.”
The game had hardly started, and McClennon had hardly gotten
Greta’s eyes dried. The door swung inward again. The nurse
watched with a look of despair.
Tanni Lowenthal’s face rippled with emotions. It selected
an amused smile. “Tom. I thought I’d get here first. I
guess you don’t run as fast when you’ve got short
legs.” She crossed gazes with Max. The metallic
scrang of ladies’ rapiers meeting momentarily
tortured the air. Then Max smiled and introduced herself. She and
Tanni got past the rocky part in minutes.
Beckhart checked his watch. “Damn it, they’re late.
I’m going to have
somebody’s . . . ”
The harried nurse stepped in. She carried a portable remote
comm. “Call for you, Captain McClennon.”
“Let me have that,” the Admiral said. He seized the
comm. “Jones? You find her? Got her on the line? All right.
Thomas, your mother.” He handed the comm to McClennon and
returned to his game.
McClennon did not know what to do or say. He and his mother were
estranged. She was Old Earther born and bred, and they had battled
fiercely ever since his enlistment. Their last meeting, just before
the Seiner mission, had ended bitterly.
“Mother?”
“Tommy? Is it really you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d been killed. When they came to the
apartment . . . God. They say you were mixed up
in this war business that’s got the whole world turned upside
down. The spikes are everywhere. They’re grabbing people off
the streets.”
“I was in it a little.” She had not changed. He
hardly had a chance to get in a word of his own.
“They said you got married. Is she a nice girl?”
“It didn’t work out. But yes, she was. You would
have liked her.” He checked his audience. Only the Admiral
seemed to know his mother’s half of the conversation.
They did not talk long. There had been little to say since he
had gone his separate way. It was enough that, for all their
differences, they could show one another they still cared.
McClennon handed the comm to the Admiral when he finished.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I owe you, Thomas. One mission and another, I put you
through hell for four years. I won’t apologize. You’re
the best. They demanded the best. But I can try to make it up a
little now. I can try to show you that I didn’t take it all
away . . . ” Beckhart seemed unable to
say what he meant.
“Thank you, sir.”
A baffled, resigned nurse opened the door. A youth in Midshipman
blacks stepped in. “Uncle Tom?”
“Horst-Johann! Jesus, boy. I hardly recognize you.
You’re half a meter taller.”
Jupp von Drachau’s son joined the crowd. The boy had been
closer to McClennon than his father since his parents had split.
The boy was in his father’s custody, and resented him for
being absent so much. Thomas did not understand the reasoning
behind the feeling. The boy saw Jupp more often than
him . . . He thought of his mother and
reflected that children applied a special logic to that species of
adult called a parent.
He lay back on the bed and surveyed the gathering. Not a big
circle, he thought, but all good friends. Surprisingly good
friends, considering what he had been through the past few
years . . . Friends whom, most of the time, he
had not known he had.
He really had been way out there, lost in the wildernesses of
his mind, hadn’t he?
The universe now seemed bright and new, specially made for him.
Even his starfish memories and his knowledge of the doom
approaching from centerward could not take the gleam off.
Horst-Johann was first to leave, after a promise to visit again
come the weekend. Then Mouse, who had to return to his own extended
debriefing. Then Tanni, who had to get back for her watch aboard
Marathon. She departed after a whispered promise that left
him in no doubt that his masculinity had survived the hospital
weeks.
Beckhart sat his chair silently and waited with the
patience of a statue of Ramses.
A half hour after Tanni’s departure, Max announced,
“We have to leave, Walter. Greta has to get back for morning
muster. You be good. And try not to collect any more little
blondes.”
McClennon grinned self-consciously. “You coming
back?”
“For sure. I’m keeping an eye on you. You’re
not sneaking off on me again . . . It’s
been a long time, Walter.”
Greta blushed.
“Thanks for coming. And Greta. Thank you. Come
here.” He hugged her, whispered, “I’m there when
you need me.”
“I know.”
“It’s important to have somebody who needs
you.”
“I know. I’ll be back Saturday.”
After the women left, Beckhart sat in silence for several
minutes. McClennon finally asked, “Aren’t they going to
miss you at the office?”
“I’m not as indispensable as I thought, Thomas. I
come back after six months in the field and find them caught up and
not a problem in sight.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I really said it before, about as well as I can. That
I’m sorry I had to do what I did.”
“Sorry, but you’d do it again.”
“If something comes up. I don’t think it will.
Things are damned quiet now. The war has everybody’s
attention.”
“Will we be able to do anything with Stars’ End? Or
what I learned from the starfish?”
“About the fish info I don’t know. It does prove
there’s a hope. Stars’
End . . . Our Seiner friends have gotten it
straightened out. The place is almost a high-technology weapons
museum. Some of the simpler systems will be available when next we
engage.”
“The gods are dead. Long live the gods,” McClennon
murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“A long time ago, in another life, I promised you a
vacation. I sent you to Payne’s Fleet instead. This time
I’m sending you home. I’ve already sent word to Refuge
to get your house ready. Take Mouse along.”
“Mouse?”
“Mouse took care of you when it got tough. It’s your
turn. He’s slipping. The Sangaree are gone. That hate kept
him glued together since he was a kid.”
“All right. I understand.”
A mountain of paperwork was needed to close out the mission and
put the Board of Inquiry into motion. The latter would be handled
entirely by deposition. Thomas rolled through it. Nothing daunted
him. The Psychs seemed to have rebuilt him better than original
issue. He worked like a slave, and had energy left to flit from
friend to friend evenings and weekends. He reminded himself of
Mouse in days gone by, when Storm had been everywhere at once,
pursuing a hundred interests and projects.
Mouse was the opposite. He could not finish anything.
Then it was all done. Marathon took them aboard and
spaced for the quiet Cygnian world called Refuge, which was home
for millions of retired civil servants and senior Service
personnel.
But for Tanni Lowenthal the journey might have been
depressing.
Going home. His showing for the mission some money, some stamps
and coins for his collections, some new and old memories, and an
armistice with himself. Somehow, it did not seem enough.
But he had found his friends, the people he had thought missing
so long. So why was he disappointed?
There had been one soul-scar the Psychs had not been able to
heal completely.
He could not forget Amy.
They had never really finished. They had not said the
end. They had just gone separate ways.
He liked things wrapped up neatly.
Time passed. Cygnian summer faded into autumn. Fall segued into
winter. Mouse and McClennon played chess, and waited, growing
closer, till Mouse revealed the whole story of his past, of the
origins of his hatred for the Sangaree. Gently, McClennon kept his
friend’s spirit from sliding away completely. Gently, he
began to bring Mouse back.
The report of the Board of Inquiry, delayed repeatedly, drew no
closer.
From Cygnus it did not seem there was a war. Luna
Command had expanded its forces six-fold, and had begun building
new weapons and ships, but otherwise Confederation seemed to be
going on as before.
Tanni visited occasionally. Max and Greta kept in touch.
And yet . . .
Some nights, when the dark winter skies were terribly clear,
McClennon would put aside his stamp collection, coins, or the novel
he had begun writing, and would go out on the terrace. Shivering,
he would stare up at stars burning palely in unearthly
constellations and picture huge ships like flying iron jungles. He
would think of swarms of gold dragons, and a million-year-old beast
he had taught to tell a joke.
He never loved her more than he did now that she was lost
forever. Mouse had told him . . . She might use
his name to frighten his own child. She would not hate him now. She
would understand. But there would be appearances to be maintained,
and social winds with which to sail . . .
Life never worked out the way you wanted. Everyone was
victimized by social equivalents of the theories of that dirty old
man, Heisenberg.
The comm buzzed. McClennon answered. A moment later, he called,
“Mouse, Jupp’s coming in to spend a few days.” He
returned to the terrace. The ship burned down the sky, toward where
the city’s lighted towers made fairy spires that soared above
distant woods. McClennon pretended it was a shooting star. He made
a wish. “Want to play a game while we’re
waiting?”
Mouse grinned. “You’re on.”
“Stop smirking. I’m going to whip you this time, old
buddy.”
And he did. He finally did.