top wheel.
With an expectant grin on his neatly bearded face, he asked the four of them, “Are you ready for your debriefing?”
“Debriefing?” Corvus asked. “Now?”
“Yes, it has to be now,” Archer said, starting along the passageway.
“Can’t we eat first?” Deirdre pleaded.
“Yeah,” said Yeager. “I’m hungry.”
Dorn said calmly, “Debriefing is best immediately after the mission, of course, but we haven’t had any solid food in days.”
Archer said, “Well, I don’t know…” But he was grinning even more widely than earlier, and Deirdre saw a twinkle in his eyes that she had never seen before.
Feeling confused, she walked with the men along the passageway and quickly realized that they were approaching the galley. Deirdre glanced at her wristwatch and saw that it was midafternoon; the galley would be closed. They’d have to settle for prepackaged snacks from the dispensers.
Andy Corvus said, “Let’s have a quick bite and then we can go through the debriefing. Okay?”
Archer broke into a laugh. “Why not?” he said, as he trotted up to the galley’s doors and slid them open.
Almost the entire station staff was jammed into the galley, all of them on their feet. They broke into applause as Archer led the four returning explorers into the galley. The assembled men and women roared and cheered, they clapped their hands together and pounded Deirdre, Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn on their backs as they stepped into the galley. There were still more people on the wall screens’ displays, all of them cheering ecstatically.
“I guess the debriefing will have to wait,” Archer hollered over the noise of their reception, laughing like a boy at a surprise party.
Deirdre felt tears of joy filling her eyes as Red Devlin came up to them, wearing a dazzling fresh white chef’s outfit, and led them to a table groaning with food and drink.
It was late. The party had simply gone on and on. Scientists from Michael Johansen down to the golden- skinned Dahlia came up to Deirdre and the others to express their happiness at the mission’s success. News reporters from Earth and the Moon asked for interviews. Even Deirdre’s father, gruff old George Ambrose, sent a message of congratulations from the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres.
“You’ve made the biggest breakthrough since the invention of writing,” Johansen told them, sloshing beer from the mug in his fist. “Meaningful contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. This is history!”
Archer seemed to be floating on air. With his lovely, dark-haired wife beside him, he raised his voice above the din of the party and announced, “We owe these four volunteers a debt of gratitude that can never be fully repaid. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m willing to give them anything they want.”
The crowd roared its approval.
“Ms. Ambrose—Deirdre—what can we do for you?”
Deirdre gulped and thought swiftly. “You’ve already offered me a scholarship at the Sorbonne…”
“Right,” said Archer, smiling amiably.
“Could you keep a position open for me until I return? I’d like to work with the leviathans once I have my degree.”
“Don’t you think you’ll want to stay on Earth?”
It was Deirdre’s turn to smile. “I want to see Earth, of course. I want to experience it. But more than that I want to come back here and learn more about the leviathans.”
Archer’s face grew serious. “Fine. We’ll be waiting for your return.”
Then he turned to Andy. “Dr. Corvus? What about you?”
Without an instant’s hesitation, Corvus answered, “I need to develop sensors that can scan the leviathans’ bodies. We need to find out where their brains are, and how we can make contact with them with the DBS equipment.”
Nodding, Archer said, “You want to learn how their brains work.”
“More than that,” Andy said, “I want
With a puff of exhaled breath, Archer said, “That’s a lifetime’s work, Andy.”
“I know.”
Turning to Yeager, who had the petite blonde Linda Vishnevskaya clinging to his arm, Archer said, “I think I know what you’ll be doing, Max.”
“Building another compression shell for
“And get married, too,” said Vishnevskaya, beaming up at Yeager.
The engineer blushed, broke into an embarrassed grin, and nodded vigorously.
“What about you, Dorn?” Archer asked.
The cyborg hesitated. Looking around at the sea of expectant faces, Dorn finally answered, “My wish is to remain here and pilot the missions into the ocean.”
“Really? That’s all?”
“It’s quite enough,” Dorn said. “I’ve found a purpose in my life. Helping to make meaningful contact with an alien intelligence is more than I had ever hoped to achieve.”
Archer nodded slowly. “Me, too,” he said softly. “Me, too.”
FAREWELL
Andy Corvus walked alongside Deirdre down the passageway where their quarters stood a few doors apart. It was nearly midnight. They walked slowly, exhausted from the day’s excitement, his arm around her waist, her head tilted against his.
“You’re really going to Earth?” he asked, in a whisper.
“I’ll come back, Andy.”
He turned toward her and nuzzled her auburn hair. “I’m heading Earthside, too. Back to Dr. Carbo’s lab at Rome.”
They stopped at Deirdre’s door. “We’ll go on the same ship?”
With a nod, Corvus said, “No sense sending two separate ships out here.”
“No, of course not.”
Deirdre looked into Andy’s soft blue eyes and saw her future in them. Without a word, she took him by the hand and began leading him back up the passageway, along the way they had come, away from their compartments.
Puzzlement showed clearly on his slightly awry face. “You’re not going to … uh, sleep?”
“Not yet,” Deirdre said.
“Then where … where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Katherine Westfall had not attended the party. She was in her suite, preparing to leave station
