Space Stations

As they have images of Earth, Hoshi thought. Eight months worth of images and sound, things quietly captured from an abandoned fog-gray box called Auriga's Streetcar. For what purpose had someone… something been watching us? she wondered, as she followed Keith Polanger through the doorway and down one corridor after the next, to an area she hadn't explored. It contained an egg-shaped pod, just big enough for two.

Outside it were several of the lenses she'd recovered, including the large antique ones.

So Keith Polanger had meant to take the valuables away in the pod when he discovered his ship gone. But he'd come back for her. Guilt? Too much humanity in his heart?

“So you're not a pirate,” she mused, as she watched him float the alien telescope into the pod, followed by some of the smaller lenses. There wouldn't be room for the precious Yerkes lenses.

He turned to motion to her, reached out to tug her inside with him. She watched as a mix of horror and surprise flooded his face, saw how quickly his fingers fumbled to reconnect his oxygen tube. She held the other end in her gloved hands.

“So sorry,” she told him. “But there is not room for both of us on the pod—and Yerkes'

lenses. The lenses and the alien scope must return to Earth.”

He flailed about for the tube, which she'd managed to rip free. An old woman could be strong in zero-G. Fortunate he had not invested in a new suit with wholly internal workings. She probably couldn't have taken him then. “Sorry,” she repeated. “So sorry, Keith Polanger.”

There was one good telescope remaining on the Streetcar. It had not been the best of the lot, and so had escaped the prying fingers of Hoshi and Keith Polanger.

Hoshi was training it now to what she sensed was east of the Perseus constellation. She'd made sure the young man was safely stored aboard the pod, and that the oxygen was flowing freely inside. It would revive him soon. She made sure the lenses were carefully fastened down, and that the alien telescope would be able to weather the brunt of the reentry force. He would have left them behind to save her— a woman well into the winter of her life.

Then she'd released the pod and returned to the observatory, and to this one remaining good telescope.

The lenses were far superior to the pair of old forty-inch ones racing away in the pod, though there was no historical significance to them.

East of Perseus, as seen from the middle-north latitudes of Earth. East and…

“There!” she exclaimed. Auriga the Charioteer. The last of the autumn constellations, as would have been seen from her homeland on Japan's coast had there not been so much artificial light from the cities to block the stars. Auriga in all his glory. Capella, the bright triple star, the Goat. The kids. The open clusters almost three thousand light-years away.

That was where the Streetcar was headed, the largest of the three alien ships towing it.

The stars twinkling hotly and intensely beautiful all around.

“Wonderful,” Hoshi said.

FALLING STAR

by Brendan DuBois

Brendan DuBois is an award-winning author of short stories and novels. His short fiction has appeared in Playboy, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, and numerous anthologies.

He has twice received the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America for his short fiction, and has been nominated three times for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

He's also the author of the Lewis Cole mystery series—Dead Sand, Black Tide, Shattered Shell, Killer Waves, and the upcoming Buried Dreams. His most recent novel, Betrayed, is a suspense thriller that finally resolves the POW-MIA mystery of the Vietnam War. He lives in Exeter, N.H., with his wife Mono, where he is at work on a new novel. Please visit his website, www.BrendanDuBois.com.