Captain Ahab routine all these years because you knew this thing was down here.”
“I suspected it, son,” Yeats said. “Now we know. This is the happy ending we’ve been working for ever since I found you. You’re going home.”
Home? Conrad thought. It was the first time in years he had ever even considered that he had a real home anywhere, much less not of this Earth.
Zawas cut in, “Surely you don’t expect me to let you take off with the Solar Bark, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Yeats said.
Yeats’s left arm swung up, holding a small remote control. He looked at Zawas with the coldest pair of pale blue eyes Conrad had ever seen. “I go or we all go,” Yeats said. “I’ve got enough C-4 in here to blow us all to First Time without any starship.”
Zawas’s eyes darkened. “You’re bluffing.”
“Oh?” Yeats flicked one of the buttons, and a stereophonic beeping filled the silo as a circle of red lights in the shadows began to blink. “Go ahead, take a closer look.”
Conrad watched as Zawas walked over to the nearest blinking box, bent over, and froze. Slowly he straightened and returned to his men. “Let Doctor Serghetti go.”
“And the scepter, Colonel. Give it to her.”
Conrad watched Zawas hand her the Scepter of Osiris and nudge her toward Yeats. “I’m sorry, my flower,” Zawas said.
Yeats immediately grabbed her and pulled her toward the rotunda at the base of the Solar Bark. “Come on, Conrad.”
But Conrad didn’t move. He looked at Yeats and Serena and said, “I think I’ve just figured out the way to stop the earth-crust displacement. But the answer is back at the star chamber. Not there.” He was pointing at the Solar Bark.
A bewildered look crossed Yeats’s face. “It’s too late. Let’s go.”
“No. I’m staying.” He looked at Serena. “But I need the scepter and Serena.”
Yeats shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. We need the scepter to take off.”
Conrad could feel the fury building inside. “And what the hell do you want Serena for?”
“An incentive for you to reconsider,” Yeats said, dragging her away toward the Solar Bark. “You want her, then come get her.”
Conrad, desperate to run after her, looked on as she shot a quick glance back at him, her eyes filled with uncertainty. Then she disappeared inside the giant starship.
A moment later the ground started to rumble as the launch sequence began. Zawas could only watch in furious admiration at his former teacher before shouting to his soldiers to evacuate the silo.
“What about you?” Conrad shouted to Zawas. “Where are you going?”
“For cover,” Zawas said. “If this alleged disaster should strike the planet, we are in the safest place of all. We can find survivors and rule a new world. If nothing happens, we have captured an unlimited energy source and will rule the world anyway.”
“What about me?” Conrad asked.
“You can go to hell, Doctor Yeats,” Zawas told him as two Egyptians tied Conrad to a pillar near the Solar Bark base. “Either the prospect of your death will force your father to abort his plans, or you’ll depart this life in a blaze of glory when this Solar Bark of yours lifts off and its fires consume you.”
Conrad watched as Zawas led his men out of the silo, leaving him alone. He strained at the ties that bound his hands. And he burned with desperation as he watched the Solar Bark rumble to life and prepare to lift off with Serena and the obelisk.
Inside the Solar Bark, Serena found herself with Yeats on a circular platform surrounded by four magnificent golden columns of light. Each column throbbed with energy. Yeats, still holding the remote to the C-4 in one hand, set the scepter down with the other. Suddenly the platform began to take them up.
“Yeats, if we don’t reset the star chamber the whole earth will shift,” she said, her voice spiked with anger and desperation. “Billions will die. You can’t just take off.”
“It’s futile to go back,” he said dismissively. His gaze was locked on the chamber above them. “You heard Conrad. Whatever the Secret of First Time is, it sure as hell ain’t on earth. The survival of the human race dictates that we launch.”
She looked at him. He wore the expression of a cocky warrior, pleased with himself and sure that nobody could stop him. His jaw was set and his eyes glinted in the dim glow of four light-filled columns. It made her furious-his complete unconcern for people who were about to lose their lives.
She said, “How do you know we’ll even get off the ground?”
“What you see all around you is some kind of heliogyro system,” Yeats said. “Those massive columns are an array of four unbelievably long heliogyro blades, like a helicopter’s but on a massive scale. As soon as we leave Earth’s orbit on an escape trajectory into space, they’ll fan out and unfurl the solar sail.”
Clearly she was in Yeats’s world now, and however crazy the former astronaut was, he was the native in the terrain and she was the alien.
“Once deployed,” Yeats went on, “the sail will function like a highly reflective mirror. When photons hit the surface, they impart pressure on it, creating a force to push the sail. The bigger the sail, the greater the force. And by tilting the mirror in different directions, we can direct the force wherever we choose.”
“Don’t tell me you actually think you can fly this thing.”
“Like Columbus sailed the Pinta,” he said. “I’m sure all measurements, orbit determinations, equations of motion, and velocity corrections have been factored into the ship’s navigation system.”
She said nothing as the platform locked. Yeats shoved her with the tip of the obelisk down a long corridor that ended in a metallic door with strange carvings.
“Why would they build the ship like this?” she heard herself asking. She had to keep him talking, had to buy time so she could figure out a way to stop him.
“You’ll have to ask them when we get there,” Yeats said. “But I’m assuming this ship was built as a lifeboat and designed to travel long distances with minimal power. That’s the beauty of this baby: it may be low thrust, but it has infinite exhaust velocity, since it uses no propellant. The solar sail is the perfect vehicle for interstellar travel.”
“Except that it requires sunlight,” Serena observed, “which we’ll run out of as soon as we leave the solar system. Just like a sailboat on a windless ocean.”
Yeats stopped at the door and said, “Gravity assist.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s how we’ll coast without light,” he explained. He spoke so calmly and rationally it both frightened and infuriated her. “We’ll fly around Jupiter close enough to use its gravity to boost ourselves into a faster trajectory toward the sun. Then we’ll slingshot around the sun and pick up even more speed as we exit the solar system. At any rate, I’m sure this thing is packing an array of masers and lasers whose microwaves can generate huge accelerations and speeds in the sails.”
“You seem to have convinced yourself, Yeats,” she said. “How long will it take?”
Yeats paused. “At conventional speed, probably a year.”
A year? Serena thought. “At that speed we wouldn’t reach the next star for…”
“Anywhere between two hundred fifty to six thousand six hundred years.”
Serena didn’t even want to think how long it would be until they reached the target star. Or who would be there to greet them. “Any plans on staying alive in the meantime?”
“Yes.”
Yeats stabbed the scepter into the wall and the door split open to reveal a chamber filled with cool mist. Serena stared inside and could make out what looked like an open coffin in the rear. The mold was of a shapely woman about Serena’s size.
“Seems the builders thought of everything,” Yeats said. “Welcome to your cryocrypt.”
An alarm went off inside Serena’s head as it dawned on her that Yeats expected her to lie inside that machine. She stiffened at the door and refused to go in. Then she felt a clammy hand on her neck. There was no way in hell she was stepping into that chamber.
“You first,” she said, stomping the heel of her boot onto Yeats’s toe and jabbing him in the stomach with her
