Sam looked square into my eyes. “You certain of that?”
I almost laughed. “What’s a few hundred million bucks? I don’t need that kind of money.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, dammit, I’m certain!” I snapped. It wasn’t easy tossing away all that money, and Sam was starting to irritate me.
“Okay,” he said, breaking into that lopsided smile of his. “I believe you.”
Sam got to his feet, his right fist closed around the chip.
“What will you do with it?” I asked.
“Pop it out an airlock. A few days in hard UV should degrade it so badly that even if somebody found it in all this emptiness, they’d never be able to read it.”
I got up from my desk chair. “I’ll go with you,” I said.
So the two of us marched down to the nearest airlock and got rid of the chip. I had a slight pang when I realized how much money we had just tossed out into space, but then I realized I had saved Amanda’s life, most likely, and certainly the life of her baby. Hers and Fuchs’s.
“Fuchs will never know,” Sam said. “I feel kind of sorry for him.”
“I feel sorry for her,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
As we walked down the passageway back toward my compartment, curiosity got the better of me.
“Sam,” I asked, “what if you weren’t sure that I’d keep her message to myself? What if you thought I’d sneak off to Humphries and tell him what was on that chip?”
He glanced up at me. “I’ve never killed a man,” he said quietly, “but I’d sure stuff you into a lifeboat and set you adrift. With no radio.”
I blinked at him. He was dead serious.
“I wouldn’t last long,” I said.
“Probably not. Your ship would drift through the belt for a long time, though. Eons. You’d be a real Flying Dutchman.”
“I’m glad you trust me.”
“I’m glad I can trust you, Gar.” He gave me a funny look, then added, “You’re in love with her, too, aren’t you?”
It took me a few moments to reply, “Who wouldn’t be?”
So we flew to The Rememberer with Judge Myers and all the wedding guests and the minister and boys’ choir, the caterers and all the food and drink for a huge celebration. Six different news nets were waiting for us: the wedding was going to be a major story.
Sam snuck away, of course. He didn’t marry Jill Myers after all. She was so furious that she . . .
But that’s another story.
AFTERWORD: 1491
One of the attractions that lures writers to tackle science fiction stories, as opposed to other genres of fiction, is science fiction’s connection with the real world.
What? I can hear you gasping. Stories about the distant future or the remote past have a connection with the real world? Aren’t they fantastic tales, wish fulfillments, or dreams about the utopias (and dystopias) that our descendants may encounter?
Some are just that, of course. But the best science fiction tales are like telescopes that show us the possibilities of the future. Predictions, warnings, visions of what might happen to the human race in coming years. Or centuries. Or millennia.
For example, cast your mind back to the year 1491. I know, that’s in the past, not the future. But bear with me for a few moments.
In 1491, Europe was a collection of losers. The great and wealthy powers of the world lay to the East: the Muslim nations of Turkey, Persia, and such; fabled India, mysterious and remote China.
Europe was where the losers were shoved. Over the ages the original Stone Age inhabitants of Europe were drowned in newcomers from the East, who had been pushed away from the wealth and knowledge of the great empires of the Orient until they ran into the barrier of the Atlantic Ocean and could retreat no farther.
Losers.
The Atlantic was truly a barrier in 1491. Europeans ventured out onto its stormy seas just a little bit. A few of the Vikings—brave and desperate for land—actually crossed the ocean and established colonies in the lands they found on the other side of the Atlantic, but they told no others about their discoveries, and their colonies eventually withered.
So the Europeans huddled in their crowded lands, bickering and fighting with one another, while the rich and powerful nations to the east prospered.
Until 1492.
The Europeans learned to build ships that could cross the Atlantic safely. They sailed west, hoping to reach the fabled wealth of China and India.
Instead, they found a New World. And built new nations, new civilizations that changed the entire world, eventually. Changed it for the better.
The greatest discovery they made was the realization that they had no need for kings and hereditary gentry. They could govern themselves. They discovered (invented?) democracy.
We are the inheritors of that discovery. We have been born into a world that is far richer in wealth and freedom than any of the civilizations that preceded us, thanks to the treasures of new resources and new freedoms that our forebears have developed.
And today, we stand on the edge of a new sea, just as dark and dangerous as the Atlantic once was. And even more promising. A new sea that begins a hundred miles above your head.
The new sea of space.
This generation of humankind—our generation—has an opportunity that has not been offered to humanity since 1492. In merely the brief forays into space that we have made so far, we have found treasures of natural resources large enough to completely transform civilization, to erase poverty and build a new global civilization of wealth and freedom.
A few bold and farsighted humans have already begun this quest. They are the leaders of humankind’s new era of expansion, outward to the moon and Mars, then farther until we have reached all the bodies of the solar system. And ultimately to the stars themselves.
Our future is limitless.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
the end . . . of the beginning
