by Ben Bova
“He’s alive?” Jade asked.
“Yes! Yes!” Goodman seemed ecstatic. “He found aliens on the other side of the black hole. An intelligent extraterrestrial species! They’ve provided him with the means to come back through the space-time warp!”
“Sacre dieu,” Jade breathed.
“He’s alive and coming back to us!” Goodman was almost capering around the comm center now. “He’s discovered intelligent extraterrestrial life. It’s a miracle. Two miracles! Miraculous, the whole thing is miraculous!”
“The time distortion,” Jade asked. “How long will it take before Sam is back with us?”
Goodman sobered, but only slightly. “We’re working on that. Trying to get a Doppler fix on the raw data. It’s only a rough estimate, but from what we’ve got now I’d say that Sam will pop out of the event horizon in another twenty to twenty-five years.”
“Years?” Spence gasped.
“He’s been gone for more than fifteen,” Goodman said. Then he fell to musing. “Maybe there’s a symmetry here. Maybe it’ll take him exactly as long to return as it did to go through the other way. Still, it’ll be fifteen years, at least. Unless ...”
Jade turned to Spence and clutched him by the shoulders. “He’s alive! Sam’s alive!”
“And on his way back. The little SOB is coming back to us.”
“And he’s met intelligent aliens.”
“Holy cow,” said Spence, fervently.
TWO DAYS LATER Jade and Spence stood at the observation bay of the torch ship as it sped away from Titan, heading back toward civilization and the Earth-Moon system.
Holding one arm protectively around the tiny young woman he loved, Johansen pointed with his free hand: “There’s Jupiter, the big bright one. And Mars, the smaller red star, down to your left.”
Jade nestled into the crook of his arm, rested her head against his chest. “And Earth? Can we see Earth?”
“Yep. Kind of faint at this distance, but it still looks distinctly blue. See it, out there to the left of Jupiter.”
Jade saw the distant blue speck and knew that her mother lay buried there. And there was another woman on Earth, Jade realized, still alive. But for how long? The one thing she had learned in the past year or so was that life surges along, always changing, whether you want it to or not. Nothing remains the same.
“Spence?” she asked, turning to look up into his face. “Would you mind if we went down to Earth? Just for a few days.”
“Earth? I thought you couldn’t....”
“I can wear an exoskeleton for a few days. And attach myself to a heart pump.”
“But why?”
“My adoptive mother lives in Quebec. I want to see her. I want to tell her that I understand why she had to leave me.”
“I thought you hated her.”
“I thought so, too. Maybe I did. But I don’t anymore. I can’t. Not anymore.”
He gazed down into her lovely green eyes, knowing that he could not deny her anything.
“Couldn’t you speak with her on a video link? It’s just as good, almost.”
Jade shook her head gendy. “No. This has to be in person. For real. Flesh to flesh.”
He shrugged. “I might need an exoskeleton myself. Been a long time since I faced a full g.”
The ship was accelerating at just under one-sixth gravity. They had weeks of leisure ahead of them. Solar News was planning an elaborate special series on Sam Gunn, now that the news of his return had broken. Raki had promised Jade that she would narrate the entire series and be the on-camera star. Her career was assured, even though she had carefully withheld the information that she was probably Sam Gunn’s daughter.
“Will you go out to the black hole for the show?” Spence asked.
“No,” said Jade. “We can record that with the remote cameras already on station at Einstein and patch me into the scene. There’s not much to see, really. No point going out there until Sam’s about to emerge, and he won’t be coming out for another fifteen or twenty years.”
“But he’s on his way back.”
“I wonder if he’s aged? Maybe I’ll be his age when he comes out.”
Spence let a little grin show on his face.
“It’s so like Sam,” Jade went on. “He has the whole solar system in a commotion. Intelligent alien life! All these years the astronomers have been searching and Sam’s the one to find them.”
Spence made a sound that might have been a barely suppressed laugh.
Jade took no notice of it. “The scientists, the politicians, the military— they’re all in an uproar. To say nothing of the world’s religious leaders.”
Spence made no reply.
“Well,” Jade said, with a sigh, “at least we have fifteen or twenty years to get ready for it.”
“Maybe,” Spence said at last.
She looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he replied. “But there’s a strange flavor to all this.”
Jade knit her brows.
“I mean,” said Spence, “Sam disappears while a shipload of lawyers are on their way to strip him naked. Then fifteen years later he pops up again claiming he’s met intelligent extraterrestrial creatures.”
“You don’t think....!”
“Before we left Titan I used the university library access system to look up the status of all the lawsuits filed against Sam. The statute of limitations runs out on the last one next year.”
“But the signals from the black hole!”
“He’s Sam Gunn, honey. He’s been hiding out someplace for the past fifteen years. Maybe he really did fall into a black hole.” Spence pulled her tighter and gazed out at the wide starry universe. “I wouldn’t put any money on it, though.”
She smiled up at him. “And you claim to be his friend.”
“I knew Sam pretty well. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“He couldn’t have! It just isn’t possible.”
Spence grinned and looked out at the stars again. “He’s Sam Gunn, honey. Unlimited.
Reviews
SAM GUNN BIO IS SMASH HIT
Amid rumors that he’s not dead after all, Solar News’s biographical series about Sam Gunn has swept the ratings across the solar system.
Produced by neophyte Jane Inconnu, of Selene, the biography is told through the voices of men and women who knew Sam Gunn over the many years of his exploits on Earth and in space.
Widely regarded as an adventurer who operated on the ragged edge of the law, Sam Gunn ...
-HOLLYWOOD INTERPLANETARY
THE LITTLE GIANT: THE SAM GUNN SAGA
The public loves success stories, and none more than the saga of an ordinary person who struggles against giant corporations and government bureaucracies—and wins. This accounts, no doubt, for the wild success of Solar News’s biographical series on space entrepreneur Sam Gunn.
Widely reviled during his lifetime as a con man, a womanizer, and an out-and-out crook, the Sam Gunn depicted in Solar’s biopic series comes across as daring, sharp-witted and, yes, lovable. His adventures span the
solar system, from Earth out beyond Pluto
-NEW YORK TIMES-DAILY NEWS
SAM GUNN SERIES “A FRAUD” SAYS CORPORATE MAGNATE
“Sam Gunn was not the daring Robin Hood he’s depicted to be on Solar News’s series,” claims Pierre D’Argent, CEO of Rockledge Industries, Inc.
“He was a conniving little schemer who wouldn’t stop at anything, including blackmail, to get what he wanted.”
Mr. D’Argent, who had tangled with Mr. Gunn several times in the past, hinted that Rockledge may take legal action against Solar News for defamation, libel and fraud.
Asked what he thought of the rumors that Mr. Gunn is returning to Earth, Mr. D’Argent said only, “God help us!”
-WALL STREET JOURNAL
NOVICE PRODUCER WINS EMMY
Jane Avril Inconnu, producer of the smash-hit series
Sam Gunn, won the Emmy Award for Best Producer of a Nonfiction Series at last night’s awards ceremony in Beijing.
Wearing a cermet exoskeleton because she is unaccustomed to the full gravity of Earth, Ms. Inconnu, who recently married former astronaut Spencer Johansen, was overcome with emotion as she accepted the award....
-ALL CHINA NEWS SERVICE
IS SAM GUNN DEAD?
WAS HE EVER?
With all the hype raised by the Solar News biography of Sam Gunn, the question of his alleged death has come to the forefront of the public’s attention.
According to reports, Gunn was sucked into a mini-black hole in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was widely regarded as a oneway journey: either Gunn was crushed by the immense gravitational tidal forces of the black hole, or he was propelled into a different space-time dimension, forever separated from our own continuum.
But rumors are flying that Gunn is on his way back! Either he has found a way to return through the black hole, or he never fell into it in the first place. Physicists, astronomers—and lawyers—are debating the possibilities hotly.
Former U.S. Senator and Associate Justice of the International Court Jill Meyers, who was once an astronaut and worked with Gunn, has outfitted a fusion torch ship to go to the Kuiper Belt and meet Sam as he returns.
-SELENE GAZETTE
Torch Ship Hermes
THE TWO WOMEN WERE SITTING ALONE IN THE COMFORTABLE lounge aboard the fusion torch ship as it accelerated at a half-g toward the outer reaches of the solar system.
Jade felt mildly uncomfortable at the gravity load, three times what she was accustomed to on the Moon, but the medics had assured her that her bones could stand the strain—although not much more.
Jill Meyers looked startlingly like Sam Gunn, Jade thought: short, almost elfin in stature, with a plain round face and a snub nose sprinkled with freckles. But her eyes were a clear and steady tawny gold, and she wore her straight mousy-brown hair shoulder length.
“I really appreciate your inviting me to make this trip with you,” Jade began.
Meyers shrugged lightly. “You’ve earned it. I watched your entire series, beginning to end. I don’t remember when I’ve laughed so much—and cried, too.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“You really captured Sam, Ms. Inconnu.”
“Please call me Jade.”
“Good. And I’m Jill.”
Jade had been stunned by Meyers’s invitation to accompany her on this flight to the Kuiper Belt. It had come as she was leaving the Emmy ceremonies in Beijing and starting back to Selene. Does she know that Sam might be my father? Jade asked herself immediately. She reasoned that Jill Meyers didn’t know, couldn’t know. Sam himself didn’t know it. Still, she wondered.
“Your quarters are satisfactory?” Meyers asked her.
“Completely! Spence says it’s the best honeymoon suite he’s ever seen.”
Meyers laughed graciously and Jade figured she had no idea how many honeymoon suites Spence had actually used.
“So what can I tell you about Sam that you don’t already know?”
Jade clicked her belt recorder and pretended to think about the question for a few moments. Then she answered, “You were involved when Sam tried to sue the Pope, weren’t you?”
“More than that, Jade. Much more than that. After all, I knew Sam back in the days when we were both astronauts working for the old NASA.”
“Just how old is Sam?”
“His age? Well, Sam must be just about my own age. Never mind what that is. Suffice to say we’ve both been around a long time. And neither of us is anywhere near finished yet. I never did believe that he died out at that mini-black hole beyond Pluto’s orbit. Not Sam.
“That’s why I’m riding out there. He promised to marry me, even though I haven’t seen the little sonofagun in almost twenty years.”
Jade looked down at her wrist computer.
“What’re you doing, trying to calculate his age? Or my age? If you want me to tell you about Sam you’d better pay attention and stop the figuring. All right, Sam must be nearly a hundred, maybe more. It’s hard to tell. He acts like he’s twelve or thirteen, most of the time. I’m younger, of course.
“Yes, he’s a womanizer. And yes, he’s made and lost more fortunes than I’ve got freckles on my nose. So what? He’s Sam Gunn, the one and only.
“You want to know about the time he tried to sue the Vatican?”
Jade nodded vigorously.
“All right. But stop trying to calculate my age!”
Acts of God
WHO ELSE BUT SAM GUNN WOULD SUE THE POPE?
I’d known Sam since we were both astronauts with NASA, riding the old shuttle to the original Mac Dac Shack—but sue the Pope? That’s Sam.
At first I thought it was a joke, or at least a grandstand stunt. Then I began to figure that it was just the latest of Sam’s ploys to avoid marrying me. I’d been chasing him for years, subtly at first but once I’d retired from the Senate, quite openly.
It got to be a game that we both enjoyed. At least, I did. It was fun to see the panicky look on Sam’s Huck Finn face when I would bring up the subject of marriage.
“Aw, come on, Jill,” he would say. “I’d make a lousy husband. I like women too much to marry one of ‘em.”
I would smile my most Sphinx-like smile and softly reply, “You’re not getting any younger, Sam. You need a good woman to look after you.”
And he’d arrange to disappear. I swear, his first expedition out to the Asteroid Belt was as much to get away from me as to find asteroids for mining. He came close to getting himself killed then, but he created the new industry of asteroid mining—and just about wiped out the metals and minerals markets in most of the resource-exporting nations on Earth. That didn’t win him any friends, especially among the governments of those nations and the multinational corporations that fed off them.
I still had connections into the Senate’s intelligence committee in those days, and I knew that at least three southern hemisphere nations had put out contracts on Sam’s life. To say nothing of the big multinationals. It was my warnings that saved his scrawny little neck.
Sam lost the fortune he made on asteroid mining, of course. He’d made and lost fortunes before that; it was nothing new to him. He just went into other business lines; you couldn’t keep him down for long.
He was funning a space freight operation when he sued the Pope. And the little sonofagun knew that I’d be on the International Court of Justice panel that heard his suit.
“Senator Meyers, may I have a word with you?” My Swedish secretary looked very upset. He was always very formal, always addressed me by my old honorific, the way a governor of a state would be called “Governor” even if he’s long retired or in jail or whatever.
“What’s the matter, Hendrick?” I asked him.
Hendrick was in his office in The Hague, where the World Court is headquartered. I was alone in my house in Nashua, sipping at a cup of hot chocolate and watching the winter s first snow sifting through the big old maples on my front lawn, thinking that we were going to have a white Christmas despite the greenhouse warming. Until Hendricks call came through, that is. Then I had to look at his distressed face on my wall display screen.
“We have a very unusual... situation here,” said Hendrick, struggling to keep himself calm. “The chief magistrate has asked me to call you.”
From the look on Hendricks face, I thought somebody must be threatening to unleash nuclear war, at least.
“A certain ... person,” Hendrick said, with conspicuous distaste, “has entered a suit against the Vatican.”
“The Vatican!” I nearly dropped my hot chocolate. “What’s the basis of the suit? Who’s entering it?”
“The basis is apparently over some insurance claims. The litigant is an American citizen acting on behalf of the nation of Ecuador. His name is,” Hendrick looked down to read from a document that I c
ould not see on the screen, “Samuel S. Gunn, Esquire.”
“Sam Gunn?” I did drop the cup; hot chocolate spilled all over my white corduroy slacks and the hooked rug my great grandmother had made with her very own arthritic fingers.
SAM WAS OPERATING out of Ecuador in those days. Had himself a handsome suite of offices in the presidential palace, no less. I drove through the slippery snow to Boston and took the first Clipper out; had to use my ex-Senatorial and World Court leverage to get a seat amidst all the jovial holiday travelers.
I arrived in Quito half an hour later. Getting through customs with my one hastily packed travel bag took longer than the flight. At least Boston and Quito are in the same time zone; I didn’t have to battle jet lag.
“Jill!” Sam smiled when I swept into his office, but the smile looked artificial to me. “What brings you down here?”
People say Sam and I look enough alike to be siblings. Neither Sam nor I believe it. He’s short, getting pudgy, keeps his rusty-red hair cropped short. Shifty eyes, if you ask me. Mine are a steady brown. I’m just about his height and the shape of my face is sort of round, more or less like his. We both have a sprinkle of freckles across our noses. But there all resemblance—physical and otherwise—definitely ends.
“You know damned well what brings me down here,” I snapped, tossing my travel bag on one chair and plopping myself in the other, right in front of his desk.
Sam had gotten to his feet and started around the desk, but one look at the blood in my eye and he retreated back to his own swivel chair. He had built a kind of platform behind the desk to make himself seem taller than he really was.
He put on his innocent little boy face. “Honest, Jill, I haven’t the foggiest idea of why you’re here. Christmas vacation?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“You didn’t bring a justice of the peace with you, did you?”
I had to laugh. Every time I asked myself why in the ever-loving blue-eyed world I wanted to marry Sam Gunn, the answer always came down to that. Sam made me laugh. After a life of grueling work as an astronaut and then the tensions and power trips of Washington politics, Sam was the one man in the world who could make me see the funny side of everything. Even when he was driving me to distraction, we both had grins on our faces.