Space Stations

He wouldn't. He composed himself and said, “No, God didn't punish us back then. We did. It was a wonderful world, Tom, a wonderful place. It wasn't perfect and many people did ignore God, did ignore many good things… but we did things. We fed people and cured them and some of us, well, some of us planned to go to the stars.”

He went up to the wall, took down the picture of the International Space Station, the Big Boy himself, and pointed it out to Tom. “Men and women built that on the ground, Tom, and brought it up into space. They did it for good, to learn things, to start a way for us to go back to the Moon and to Mars. To explore. There was no evil there. None.”

Tom looked at the picture and said, “And that's the dot of light we saw? Far up in the sky?”

“Yes.”

“And what's going to happen to it?”

He looked at the framed photo, noticed his hands shaking some. He put the photo back up on the wall. “One of these days, it's going to get lower and lower. It just happens.

Things up in orbit can't stay up there forever. Unless somebody can go up there and do something… it'll come crashing down.”

He sat down in the chair, winced again at the shooting pains in his hips. There was a time when he could have had new hips, new knees, or—if need be—new kidneys, but it was going to take a long time for those days to ever come back. From his infrequent letters from Brian, he knew that work was still continuing in some isolated and protected labs, to find an answer to the Final Virus. But with people starving and cities still unlit, most of the whole damn country had fallen back to the late 1800s, when power was provided by muscles, horses, or steam. Computers would just have to wait.

Tom said, “I hope it doesn't happen, Mister Monroe. It sounds really cool.”

Rick said, “Well, maybe when you grow up, if you're really smart, you can go up there and fix it. And think about me when you're doing it. Does that sound like fun?”

The boy nodded and Rick remembered why he had brought the poor kid up here. He got out of his chair, went over to his bookshelf, started moving around the thick volumes and such, until he found a slim book, a book he had bought once for a future child, for one day he had promised Kathy Meserve that once he left the astronaut corps, he would marry her…. Poor Kathy, in London on a business trip, whom he had never seen or heard from ever again after the Final Virus had broken out.

He came over to Tom and gave him the book. It was old but the cover was still bright, and it said, MY FIRST BOOK ON SPACE TRAVEL. Rick said, “You can read, can't you?”

“Unh-hunh, I sure can.”

“Okay.” He rubbed at the boy's head, not wanting to think of Kathy Meserve or the children he never had. “You take this home and read it. You can learn a lot about the stars and planets and what it was like, to explore space and build the first space station.

Maybe you can get back up there, Tom.” Or your children's children, he thought, but why bring that depressing thought up. “Maybe you can be what I was, a long time ago.”

Tom's voice was solemn. “A star man?”

Rick shook his head. “No, nothing fancy like that. An astronaut. That's all. Look, it's getting late. Why don't you head home.”

And the young boy ran from his office, holding the old book in his hands, as if scared Rick was going to change his mind and take it away from him.

It was the sound of the horses that woke him, neighing and moving about in his yard, early in the morning. He got out of bed, cursed his stiff joints, and slowly got dressed. At the foot of the bed was a knapsack, for he knew a suitcase would not work. He picked up the knapsack—which he had put together last night—and walked downstairs, walked slowly, as he noticed the woodwork and craftsmanship that a long forgotten great-great-great grandfather had put into building this house, which he was now leaving.

He went out on the front porch, shaded his eyes from the hot morning sun. There were six or seven horses in his front yard, three horse-drawn wagons, and a knot of people in front. Some children were clustered out under the maple tree by the road, their parents no doubt telling them to stay away. He recognized all of the faces in the crowd, but was pleased to see that Glen Roundell, the store owner and one of the three selectmen, was not there, nor was Henry Cooper. Henry's wife Marcia was there, thin-lipped and perpetually angry, and she strode forward, holding something at her side. She wore a long cotton skirt and long-sleeve shirt— and that insistent voice inside his head wondered why again, with technology having tumbled two hundred years, why did fashion have to follow suit?—and she announced loudly, “Rick Monroe, you know why we're here, don't you.”

“Mrs. Cooper, I'm sure I have some idea, but why don't you inform me, in case I'm mistaken. I know that of your many fine attributes, correcting the mistakes of others is your finest.”