He’d had one of these aboard the Resnick.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY was emblazoned in black letters on the hull, along with the familiar logo, Socrates’ scroll circled by a star. The after section carried the school’s name, with the seventeenth-century four-master that served as their motif, along with their sports designation EXPLORERS in script. A sudden gust of wind pulled at the trees, and he drew his jacket around him. A car eased into one of the parking places. An older woman got out and marched into the school building. A parent, he thought. And judging by her expression, the kid was in trouble.

Some things never change.

He followed her inside, signed in at the office, and collected a teenage escort who took him to the library. Julie was there, talking to a small group of students. She saw him, smiled brightly, and came over. “Good to see you, Matt,” she said. “You’ll have two eleventh-grade classes to start. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

“Can I get you something?”

They had fresh-squeezed orange juice. While he sampled it, bells rang, the room emptied, the hallways became active, and a fresh batch of kids began pouring into the library. Some of them looked curiously in his direction, but for the most part they were preoccupied with each other. Julie gave them a couple of minutes, asked if he was ready to go, strode to the lectern, and called them to order.

They settled in, and she introduced him. Matt Darwin. “He’s a retired star pilot.”

Not really retired. Unemployed. That sounded better.

Matt never used lecterns. They got between him and his audience. He’d been seated on a tabletop, and he stood upright as the audience’s attention swung his way. “Mr. Darwin flew Academy missions. You know what the Academy was, right?” A few hands went up. Julie looked at a tall, dark-eyed girl in back.

“They used to do exploration missions,” the girl said.

In front, a male student rolled his eyes.

“Very good, Sylvia.” Julie looked down at the male. “Mr. Darwin, Harry, has been farther from Alexandria than anyone here could imagine.”

She took a seat along the side where she could watch Matt and her students.

Matt thanked her and looked around at the audience. “You have a lander out on the lawn in front of the school,” he said. “I’d like to tell you a little about it.”

ARCHIVE

The people who argue that we confront a vast unknown, that it has already shown itself to be dangerous, and that therefore we should hide under our beds, do not speak for me. Nor do they speak for the Prometheus Foundation.

That’s not to say there’s no risk involved in exploration. We don’t know what’s out there, and we don’t know what we might blunder into. But there’s a risk in just sitting home, as well. For one thing, if there are predators loose, we’ll be better off if we find them, rather than the other way around.

Moreover, if we decide to wait things out, our technological progress will slow. What’s more important is that we’ll lose any claim to greatness. We’ll become an embarrassment to our grandkids. Eventually, a generation with some courage will show up, and they’ll hold us in contempt.

—Priscilla Hutchins, addressing State Librarians

Association at Athens, Georgia, April 11, 2254

chapter 7

RUDY AND HUTCH looked at four interstellars and settled on a Grosvenor 352, the Happy Times, which the Foundation bought from Orbital at auction. The ship was forty-two years old, had hauled freight and passengers out to Serenity and the other stations, and on one occasion had been immortalized by Whitmore Covington in his Quantum Dialogues, conversations on the state of the human race supposedly conducted on the ship during a flight to Nok, whose idiotic inhabitants continued to kill one another over dwindling resources with early-twentieth-century weapons.

Despite its claim to fame, the cost was minimal because the ship’s Hazeltine engines were inoperable. That was, of course, irrelevant to Rudy. So he saved substantial money, and in addition picked up a vehicle whose historic value, if the Locarno Drive went nowhere, would allow it to be resold later. “Of course,” his occasional companion Ellen Simons told him, “if the Locarno’s a flameout, the Foundation’s going to have to shut down anyhow.”

Mouths of babes. Ellen was a pessimist, and was always ready to explain why something wouldn’t work. It was the reason she and Rudy would never get serious. But about this, she was right. The Foundation was on its last legs. Poking around the vast unknown with one Hazeltine ship wasn’t going to get anyone excited. They needed the Locarno.

PAYING FOR THEHappy Times, as well as financing the installation of the new drive, drained the Foundation’s resources. Silvestri virtually moved onto the station to assist the work of a team of technicians. That part of the operation didn’t go well. The technicians didn’t really need him, and they quickly took offense at his presence. “We’ve got the basic unit,” one of them complained to Rudy. “All we have to do is tie it in to the ship’s systems. We just don’t need him looking over everybody’s shoulder all the time.”

So Rudy arranged a series of public presentations for Silvestri. He’d be doing guest appearances at colleges and universities and talking to Rotary groups and press associations and whomever else Rudy could round up. When he presented the package, Silvestri smiled. “They’ve been complaining to you, haven’t they?”

“Yes,” he said. “Come on home. We can use the PR.”

In fact, Rudy would have kept the project quiet had he been able. He’d have preferred to present the world with a successful test rather than hang himself out there to look silly if the Locarno fizzled. But with so many people involved, word would inevitably leak out, so he called a press conference and announced what they were trying to do. It became a big story for about two days. But other events, a grisly murder in a Chicago teknopark, followed by a fresh bribery scandal involving several congressmen, pushed it aside. Meanwhile, several physicists gave interviews. All admitted they saw no reason to suppose a better drive was impossible. Nonetheless, they were uniform in predicting failure. Eliot Greeley, the renowned cosmologist from the University of London, remarked that, “Hell, anything is possible, unless it’s specifically prohibited. But that doesn’t mean you can do it.”

When he called Hutch, pretending to be upbeat, she caught his mood and pointed out that the experts had been saying much the same thing about FTL travel in general until Ginny Hazeltine had proven them all wrong.

As a counterbalance, Paul became increasingly enthusiastic with each passing day. “I think we’re going to make it happen, Rudy,” he said. “Keep the faith.”

Ah, yes. And so he did. When the Foundation’s contributors got in touch to urge Rudy on, he told them he was confident, but they should keep in mind it was a gamble. It may not work. Whether it does or not, we’ll still need your support.

The most stinging rebuke came from Joe Hollingsworth, who had been one of the Foundation’s founders. Hollingsworth arrived in his office one morning to excoriate him for wasting resources on a crank project. He was one of those intimidating figures who commands everyone’s attention when he enters a room. He didn’t stand out physically in any way. He was not quite six feet tall, part African, part Massachusetts Yankee, part Mexican. Dressed impeccably. But you knew he was there, and you always got the feeling he’d just come from advising the president. “Rudy,” he’d said, “you’re throwing money away and, more significantly, you’re demolishing the Foundation’s reputation. When the Happy Times goes out there and blows up, which is what’s going to happen, nobody will ever take us seriously again.”