The Long Sunset

by Jack McDevitt

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  For Holly McClure and Jack Gonzalez, friends of a lifetime

  Acknowledgments

  I’m indebted to my son, Christopher McDevitt, who read and helped repair early drafts; to David DeGraff, Walter Cuirle, Larry Wasserman, Frank Manning, and Jonty and Deron Jackson for technical assistance; and to my agent, Chris Lotts.

  Prologue

  We can make our lives sublime,

  And, departing, leave behind us

  Footprints on the sands of time.

  —Henry W. Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life,” 1838

  Charlie looked up at Saturn and its dazzling rings. Iapetus was in tidal lock, so the giant planet was fixed over a distant ridge, permanently emplaced. The statue, which the first visitors had named Jennifer, never looked away from the gas giant. He wasn’t sure whether it was the planet or the statue that commanded his attention. He stared first at one, then at the other. “You okay?” asked Hutch.

  “Yeah. I’m fine, Mom.” The sculpture depicted a creature with half-folded wings, ominous claws, and eyes that seemed almost alive. They were locked on that distant ridge, watching the planet that never moved. The thing was carved of rock, utterly alone on that barren plain, a product of unknown visitors who’d left this existential landmark thousands of years earlier.

  Charlie’s attention shifted again, to the ground module left behind by the Steinitz mission, which had come in on the first manned flight to Iapetus. It was open to visitors, revealing little other than a bare metal interior. Two of the cushions had been ripped from the seats and presumably taken home as souvenirs. If anything else had been left, it was gone. A US flag was painted on the hull.

  He put his hands on his helmet, which was the lone piece of hard material the Flickinger suit allowed. Inside the force field, he was wearing fatigues and a Capital University pullover shirt. He looked as if he’d just arrived after a casual walk from the campus.

  The statue was a self-portrait of one of the Monument Makers. It had been possible to make that determination from a set of footprints, which had matched the sculpture’s feet. Three lines of symbols, which had defied all efforts at translation, were carved into the base. In later years it had been discovered that the mysterious race had left sculptures, shrines, cones, and pillars all over the Orion Arm. But no other statues of the creatures themselves had been found. Hutch wondered whether the creature who’d arrived there had been a loner of some sort. There’d been only one set of prints. If that were true, it seemed likely she’d been trying to send a message. There was something familiar in that alien figure, something in the eyes, in the way it stood looking out at Saturn. Intelligent beings were few in a wide universe that didn’t give a damn for their welfare.

  Maybe that was how the symbols translated.

  “You know, Mom, you were right.” Charlie bore such a close resemblance to his father, to Tor, that it was almost painful. Dark eyes, chiseled features, charming smile.

  “About what?”

  “The virtual stuff. Sitting in the living room at home looking at this doesn’t work the same way.” He raised a fist. “You have to be here. I wish Dotty could have seen this.” Dotty was his current girlfriend. Hutch had offered to bring her along too, but her parents had declined. Too dangerous.

  “Happy birthday, son.”

  “You’ve made it unforgettable. Maybe it’s time I told you something.”

  “Uh-oh.” She glanced around at the other tourists. There were eleven altogether. A couple were looking inside the ground module. The rest were standing on the viewing section in front of the statue, some pointing at the wings, others at the claws or trying to make something of the symbols. “Is there a problem?” She knew, of course, there wasn’t. But she and Charlie played games whenever they could.

  “When I get through school—”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to follow your career. Become a pilot.”

  That was news. He was majoring in art and seemed to have much of his dad’s talent in that area. “Glad to hear it, Charlie. You’ll be a good one. When did you decide that?”

  “Well, actually, years ago.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “You’ve always been a tough act to follow.” He came over to her and they embraced. The truth was, she had mixed feelings about it. There wasn’t much need for pilots anymore. Not for the interstellars, anyhow. It was like the twentieth century, when we found out there were no canals on Mars and Venus was an oven. During that period enthusiasm had declined. There was nothing left to get excited about, funding got cut from NASA, and the space programs all but died. Then the Iapetus statue was discovered, and there was a second breakout movement, which led eventually to the development of the FTL drive. But in the long run, even that had gone nowhere. We traveled to other stars, but the vast majority of worlds located in the habitable zones were as desolate as Mars. We reached a point where the exciting finds consisted of occasional cellular life. For a time people wondered whether they were actually alone. Then, on Pinnacle and Quraqua and a few other places, ruins were discovered.

  The big news came when a race of theoretically intelligent beings was discovered on a world whose name made it into English as Nok. They had primitive guns and cannons and spent most of their time killing one another. Except for that, they were boring. There was little art to speak of, virtually no literature, nothing to invite anyone’s interest. Since then, a couple of other intelligent species had been found, but a decision was made to stay away from them to avoid causing any damage. And, of course, there had always been concern over the possibility of confronting an unfriendly civilization thousands or millions of years ahead of us. In the words of the celebrated comedienne Marla Wallace: “The first flight to the nearest star found nothing. The smart thing for us would have been to travel no farther. To stay where we were and never go west of Centauri.”

  Eventually, Hutch hoped, there’d be a change of heart somewhere. And the enthusiasm she’d seen in her early years would return. If for no other reason than the strides that had been made in life extension, which had seriously intensified the population problem. Humanity needed to expand.

  Quraqua was one of three worlds now available for colonization. But politicians were arguing that we were reproducing faster than we could ever hope to move people off world. So why bother? It was an argument that made no sense to her. Anyhow, if we got serious about constructing interstellars, we could turn things around. Or at least stabilize the situation.

  • • •

  Charlie was taking pictures of the sculpture. Hutch had always thought that Jennifer was a pedestrian name for a creature that she thought of as an
angel. “Kind of irrelevant, I suppose,” he said, “since we already have one at home.” It was framed and had a center place in Hutch’s office, surrounded by acclamations and awards for services rendered as an Academy pilot, back in the days when there was an Academy.

  “Best to have your own, son.”

  “I guess. What I’d really like to see is a picture of me on the bridge taking us back to Earth.”

  Priscilla’s Journal

  I’d have loved to meet that young woman. (And she is a woman. That she has wings and belongs to a different species are details.) Standing out there this most recent time, by her side, I couldn’t help thinking that, in a very real sense, we have met. I know exactly what was going through her mind when she created that figure, and I suspect she knew precisely who her audience would be.

  —Thursday, December 27, 2255

  1.

  Ah! Then, if mine had been the Painter’s hand,

  To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,

  The light that never was, on sea or land,

  The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;

  I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile

  Amid a world how different from this!

  Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;

  On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

  —William Wordsworth, “Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm,” 1807

  On the day that everything changed, it rained. Derek Blanchard’s car eased into the faculty parking lot while precipitation poured down across the University of Pennsylvania. A few students were hurrying through the storm. Otherwise, the campus looked empty. Derek pulled on his raincoat, tugged the hood into place, grabbed his briefcase, and got out of the car.

  Ten minutes later he was seated at a table in the Gateman Conference Room with a half dozen doctoral candidates. He was an African American, tall, with a close resemblance to Hollywood star Alan Parkman, and a baritone voice that people took seriously. Guessing ages during an era when almost no one looked more than thirty was tricky, but most of his students had done the research, so they knew he’d been around a long time.

  They were discussing theses. Each was targeted on aspects of stellar evolution. Derek outlined the requirements for a reasonable analysis, laid out the time limits, and went over other technical details. The candidates, three men and three women, submitted their topics. Derek supported some, recommended a completely different approach for two, and added a few general suggestions. It was hard to keep focused because of what was coming next.

  When they’d finished, he closed his notebook. “There’s something else,” he said. “For anyone who’s free, we’ll have access to the Van Entel this morning from eleven fifteen to twelve thirty.” The Van Entel was the supertelescope, which was in solar orbit. “We’ll not only be able to look through it, but we’ll be controlling it. If you’d like to sit in, stop by the Data Collection Center. But come early. And I’m sorry about the last-minute notification, but none of us saw this coming.”

  Derek was an astronomer, a physicist, a mathematician, and a WSA consultant. The latter gave him a few benefits, like the Van Entel, which he enjoyed passing on to his students. He was also a frequent guest speaker at scientific conferences. When he got in front of a microphone and looked out across an audience, he almost changed character. No one would ever have called him reserved, but he was not inclined to take over a conversation. On stage, however, he held his listeners’ attention, provoked laughter, and enjoyed himself immensely.

  Of the students, Karen Blum had probably the most potential. She showed serious analytical capabilities, she was ambitious, and she had an IQ that topped 160. She followed him out of the room. “Professor Blanchard,” she said, “may I ask what project you’ll be working on? With the Van Entel?”

  “I don’t have a specific project, Karen,” he said. “You might think of me more as an eavesdropper. They’ll be looking out at the Kellerman Cluster today. At some stars nobody’s ever paid much attention to. They’re trying to get them cataloged.”

  Karen literally hugged herself. “How far are they?”

  “Seven thousand light-years. Give or take.”

  “Beautiful. Is there anything special about them?”

  “Not really. Actually, they’re not so much interested in the stars as they are in the telescope. It’s still in its testing phase.”

  “Oh yes, of course.”

  “We’ll be using the Hynds as well.”

  “The ultra-radiotelescope.”

  “Right. It’s in orbit too, and it’s also aimed at the area. We’d like to see what else we can learn about what’s going on out there.”

  Her eyes brightened. “You planning on taking a trip to the area anytime soon?”

  That was a reference to Derek’s background, which consisted of several interstellar missions. That was one of the reasons he retained his situation with the World Space Authority while simultaneously teaching at Penn. “Maybe next week,” he said.

  “That’s a joke, right? They’re closing down the interstellar flights, aren’t they?”

  “If we let them.”

  “Do you think the Centauri Initiative will really pass?”

  “I hope not.”

  Karen’s amicable expression turned hostile. “Why do those idiots worry so much about alien invasions? There probably aren’t any aliens who would be interested in bothering us. There are hardly any aliens at all.”

  He managed a pained smile. “It’s an election year.”

  • • •

  The Data Collection Center was almost filled when he arrived twenty minutes early. Linda DuBreuil, the director, was standing guard by the group of seats reserved for the faculty. They were in front of the main screen. An additional eighty chairs were there to accommodate students and a few instructors not connected with the astronomy department. They were filling up as he walked in. The event had gotten coverage in the media, and he expected it to be picked up by the Science Channel.

  Linda saw him and got out of her chair. “Hello, Derek. You ready to go?”

  “Oh, yes.” He loved each new development in telescopes. Loved being part of the process, even when he was merely serving as a PR guy.

  They sat down and she handed him a microphone and an ear pod. “You want to do the intro?”

  “Sure,” he said. “If you like.”

  Linda had a smile that could light up the entire room. “It’s your party, Derek.”

  “Good enough.” He put the pod in his right ear so he could hear Ben, the AI, and turned the microphone on. “Ben, you there?”

  “I’m here, Professor. We’re on schedule.”

  Linda looked to their right, where a couple of people he didn’t know were getting seated with the science faculty. “We have some media,” she said.

  • • •

  The center filled and they had to bring in extra chairs, and finally just leave the doors open for any who wanted to stand in the rear. At five after eleven Derek got to his feet, turned to face the audience, and made some introductory comments about the Kellerman Cluster and the capabilities of the Van Entel. He was almost finished when Ben cut in. “Professor, we’ve received another alert from the Coordination Office.” The Coordination Office was located on the Union Space Station. “Control system will be transferred to us in one minute.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re apparently ready to go.” Derek lowered his voice. “Okay, Ben. Activate the display.” The screen lit up, as did a couple of smaller displays around the room. Derek looked out over his audience. “We’ll be handling the operation from here. You’ll notice, incidentally, when we tell the control system what to do, there’ll be a delay before it responds. You know why that is, of course?”

  Hands went up all over the room. Everybody knew the Van Entel was approximately five million kilometers away, so the radio signal would need about eighteen seconds to reach it. And consequently thirty-six seco
nds before there could be a response.

  One of his students, Bobby Dexter, raised his hand. “Really? Only half a minute?”

  “It’s pretty close right now, Bobby. Sometimes the process would take close to a half hour.”

  The screen filled with stars, two the size of small coins, the others no more than distant glimmers in the night. “Ben,” Derek said, “you know the target system. Take us to it, please.”

  “Transmission on its way. Hynds also activated.”

  Derek did a mental countdown. He reached nineteen before the stars began to move. From right to left, across the screen. The two coins slipped off the side of the screen. People were shifting in their seats behind him. He’d gotten so excited, he’d lost track of the fact he was still on his feet, blocking everyone’s view. He didn’t want to sit down, so he moved to the side of the room where he was out of the way.

  Derek loved this part of his profession, inflaming the passions of students. There might be another Polcrest or Sagan in the room. Somebody who’d lead the charge against the politicians who were trying to wreck everything humans had accomplished in space over the past three centuries. We’ve been down this road before, damn it. Went to the moon and forgot how to do it. And here we go again with people, including scientists, claiming that interstellar travel is too dangerous. That it should be stopped. We don’t know what’s out there. And it has gone to the heart of the current presidential campaign. We’ve looked around the local area. But stop it there. Do not go west of Centauri. It had become a maxim for the Progressives.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d been present for a demonstration of the capabilities of a supertelescope, but having his hand on the wheel added a dimension he hadn’t experienced in the past. He watched the stars drift by, saw a configuration that might have been a wrench, and knew where they were. More or less. The wrench reached the side and was gone, and he was lost again. But no surprises there.