Space Stations

“You'd better go.” He gulped and wiped at his hollow eyes. “I must stay to learn what I can, and hope to get that warning back to Earth.” He limped around the easel to give me a quick embrace. “I always loved you, Sandy. It's great that I know enough to solve that problem for you.”

He gestured me away from the easel. When I looked back, he was standing on that white-chalked circle. He waved a quick farewell. I caught a glimpse of some object in his hand. I heard a click, and he was gone.

I searched and failed to find him anywhere. I ran back to the ship and got there gasping for breath, with nine minutes to spare. We took off at once. The first long skip brought us in sight of the sun. The second let us pick out Jupiter and Saturn. The third revealed the tiny point of Earth. The last brought it close enough to let us see the whole blue globe, the bright lace of clouds, the familiar continents.

“It looks too green.” McKane made a sour face. “I see no cities. I think we've been gone too long.”

My own eagerness to see the fruit of change was edged with pain as I recalled all I'd known and loved that the centuries must have erased. He called Earth from low orbit.

Watching as he listened, I saw him frown and shake his head, frown and listen again. At last he passed the headphones to me.

“We're expected,” he said. “A Director Ivor Cheung wants to talk to you.”

I heard a snatch of strange music and then a woman's voice.

“Sir, will you hold for just a moment?”

In only a moment I heard a hearty boom.

“Sandor Fenway! I speak for the Arkwood-Fenway Foundation.” Accents had changed, and I begged him to slow his speech. “Your father told us to expect you.”

“My father? How? When?”

“After his return from NBH, two hundred years ago.”

I felt dazed. “With no ship?”

“With Arkwood science, he required no ship.” I heard a genial chuckle at my confusion.

“We're here to welcome you home. A briefing has been prepared. It will cover Dr.

Fenway's return and its historic aftermath. A pilot craft is now on the way to guide you in.”

The pilot craft was a little silver globe that spoke in a crisp robotic voice. It guided us down, but not to the shabby old brick-and-mortar building my father had leased for it on the outskirts of Atlantica. We landed on a flying island like the one my father had shown me on his easel. It floated over the Gulf Stream, a hundred miles off Sandy Hook. A final skip brought us low above it.

McKane held us there, staring. Its sleek white hull was a full mile long. Green parkways edged its decks. It had no funnels, but a gold-hued spiral dome towered out of its superstructure. Tiny silver globes whirled like birds around it. Our pilot craft brought us through them, down to an open platform.

McKane opened the lock. Rousing music greeted us, tantalizingly half familiar. A little group of men and women stood waiting. All wore neat white jackets with red-black patches on the breasts. Smiling, a tall, dark man advanced to greet us.

“Mr. Sandor Fenway? Captain McKane?” He paused to see which was which. “I am Director Cheung.” He turned to gesture at those behind him. “These are fellow foundation officials, all members of the Black Light Society.”

McKane muttered a question.

“You'll be learning,” he said. “The society is devoted to the study and teaching of what Dr. Fenway knew of Ark-wood science and culture. Their mastery of space and time may surprise you. They were even conquering gravity, but too late to save themselves.”

He turned to me.

“We'll be briefing you on the historic consequences of his return. Before we go in, however, we have a gift left for you.”

He stepped aside. A slender young woman came forward, holding a white plastic box.

She lifted it toward me, checked herself, and stepped back, flushing pink.

“Mr. Sandor—” She stopped to take a breath, and I had time to note how well the white jacket became her. “Your father left this message with his gift.” She read it from a strip of yellow plastic.

“‘Dear Sandy,

“‘I understood your doubts. Don't brood about them. You'll learn to like Mr. Other. You'll find him a great science teacher and a master at the game.’”

She held the box for me to open. The lid snapped back at my touch, and I saw the jade-and-jet chessmen I had last seen on my father's desk at Black Hole Station.

“Shall we take care of them for you?” she asked. “The update is ready for you now.”

Director Cheung took us through a little park where he showed me a statue of my mother, and on to the Lily Arkwood Hall. He spoke to us there, from a stage where the whole wall behind him became an enormous window that could look out on another city, a ship in space, another planet, even Black Hole Station.

Through the first centuries since we left, the skipships had carried colonists out to terraform new planets while Earth itself was in decline. With resources depleted and opportunities rare, it had been almost abandoned. Back from NBH, my father had been its savior.