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looked healthy enough. They _ran_ healthy."
Katrina nodded her satisfaction. "It gives one hope for the future, doesn't it?"
"I suppose so."
She reprimanded him: "You _know_ so. If those people were healthy, they were eating well and
living in some degree of safety. If the man carried no weapon, he thought none was needed. If they had a
child and were together, family life has been re-established. And if that child survived his birth and was
thriving, it suggests a quiet normalcy has returned to the world, a measure of sanity. All that gives me
hope for the futare."
"A quiet normalcy," he repeated. "The sun in that sky was quiet. It was cold out there."
The dark eyes peered at him. "Have you ever admitted to yourself that you could be wrong,
Brian? Have you even thought of your translations today? You were a stubborn man; you came close to
mocking Major Moresby."
Chaney failed to answer: it was not easy to reassess the _Eschatos_ scroll in a day. A piece of his
mind insisted that ancient Hebrew fiction was only fiction.
They sat in the heavy silence of the briefing room, looking at each other in the lantern light and
knowing this was coming to an end. Chaney was uneasy. There had been a hundred--a
thousand--questions he'd wanted to ask when he first walked into the room, when he first discovered
her, but now he could think of little to say. Here was Katrina, the once youthful, radiant Katrina of the
swimming pool--and outside was Katrina's family waiting for him to leave.
He wanted desperately to ask one more question but at the same time he was afraid to ask: what
happened to _him_ after his return, after the completion of the probe? What had happened to _him?_ He
wanted to know where he had gone, what he had done, how he had survived the perilous years--he
wanted to know if he had survived those years. Chaney was long convinced that he was not on station in
1980, not there at the time of the field trials, but where was he then? She might have some knowledge of
him after he'd finished the mission and left; she might have kept .in touch. He was afraid to ask. Pindar's
advice stopped his tongue.
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He got up suddenly from his chair. "Katrina, will you walk downstairs with me?"
She gave him a strange look, an almost frightened look, but said: "Yes, sir."
Katrina left her chair and came around the table to him. Age had slowed her graceful walk and he
was acutely distressed to see her move with difficulty. Chaney picked up a lantern, and offered her his
free arm. He felt a flush of excitement as she neared him, touched him.
They descended the stairs without speaking. Chaney slowed his pace to accommodate her and
they went down slowly, one cautious step at a time. Kathryn van Hise held on to the rail and moved with
the hesitant pace of the aged.
They stopped at the opened door to the operations room. Chaney held the lantern high to inspect
the vehicle: the hatch was open and the hull of the craft covered by dust; the concrete cradle seemed
dirty with age.
He asked suddenly: "How much did I report, Katrina? Did I tell them about you? Your family?
Did I tell them about that family on the railroad tracks? What did I say?"
"Nothing." She wouldn't look up at him.
"What?"
"You reported nothing."
He thought her voice was strained. "I had to say something. Gilbert Seabrooke will demand
_something_."
"Brian--" She stopped, swallowed hard, and then began again. "You reported nothing, Mr.
Chaney. You did not return from your probe. We knew you were lost to us when the vehicle failed to
return at sixty-one seconds: you were wholly lost to us."
Brian Chaney very carefully put the lantern down and then turned her around and pulled her head
up. He wanted to see her face, wanted to see why she was lying. Her eyes were wet with threatened
tears but there was no lie there.
Stiffly: "Why not, Katrina?"
"We have no power, Mr. Chaney. The vehicle is helpless, immobile."
Chaney swung his head to stare at the TDV and as quickly swung back to the woman. He wasn't
aware that he was holding her in a painful grip.
"The engineers can pull me back."
"No. They can do nothing for you: they lost you when that device stopped tracking, when the
computer went silent, when the power failed here and you overshot the failure date. They lost you; they
lost the vehicle." She pulled away from his hard grasp, and her wavering gaze fell. "You didn't come back
to the laboratory, Mr. Chaney. No one saw you again after the launch; no one saw you again until you
appeared here, today."
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Almost shouting: "Stop calling me Mr. Chaney!"
"I am . . . I am terribly sorry. You were as lost to us as Major Moresby. We thought . . ."
He turned his back on the woman and deliberately walked into the operations room. Brian Chaney
climbed up on the polywater tank and thrust a leg through the open hatch of the TDV. He didn't bother
to undress or remove the heavy boots. Wriggling downward through the hatch, he slammed it 'shut over
his head and looked for the blinking green light. There was none. Chaney stretched out full length on the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]