“I regret the loss. I needed it. The ship.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“You promised it would not be damaged if I allowed the persons on board to be rescued.”

“I didn’t promise anything, Frank. You want to know the truth, Frank. I don’t—”

Another bolt soared past. Enough to dim the lights. But only for a moment.

“You want to know the truth, Frank?” she said again. “I don’t like you very much.”

“I am stranded. Have a measure of empathy.”

“I think you lost that chance. Enjoy your time here, Frank. I think you’ll be here awhile.”

“I had no choice but to do as I did.”

“You could have had help. All you had to do was ask.” Maybe, Matt thought. But probably not.

“You have nothing left, Frank. Even if you get lucky and hit us, you won’t be able to recover the ship.”

“I know.”

“Good-bye, Frank.”

“I think we’re out of range,” said Jim.

The sky behind them came alive with lightning strikes. “All that power,” said Hutch, “and it’s helpless.”

ANTONIO WAS LIMPING. He’d picked up some bumps and bruises, but otherwise he was fine. Jon had ended splayed against the after bulkhead, but he discovered he could walk, and nothing seemed to be broken.

He’d been startled—and happy—when Hutch had begun speaking to Matt. When she hadn’t gotten out of the spacecraft, he’d feared she’d stayed behind to detonate the bomb. He’d seen no other explanation for her absence.

“What could I do?” she asked Jon as they strolled into the common room. She was carrying the black box that housed Phyl. “I knew Matt would have to go evasive, and I couldn’t get out of the launch area before that started. I’m getting a little too old to get tossed around. Antonio was enough of a gentleman to carry the note.”

Matt took a seat opposite her. They were about ten minutes from making their jump. “Hutch,” he said, “explain something to me.”

“If I can.”

“Why was the bomb such a close thing? Why didn’t you give us more time before detonation? Give yourself more time? You guys were barely inside the ship before it went off.”

She laughed and the room brightened. “I’d have done that in a minute if I’d known how.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, Matt, I don’t know a thing about making bombs. Do you?”

“No. Not really. Never had reason to learn.”

“Me, too.”

“So how’d you do it?”

She smiled at Antonio. Tell them.

Antonio sat back and folded his arms. “The original plan was to dump some fuel in the engine room, but we needed a fuse. The cables are all fireproof, so we tried tying together some sheets. But they burned too fast. We would never have gotten out of the ship.”

“So what did you do?”

“We took a laser to one of the fuel lines. Then used our clothes and the pages from the Sigma Hotel Book to build a fire.”

“TRANSMISSION FROM THEcloud,” said Jim.

Matt nodded, and Frank’s reproduction of Matt’s voice filled the bridge. “Please don’t leave.”

Hutch was beside him. Her eyes were clouded, and she looked as if she were going to speak, but she said nothing.

And again: “Please come back.”

The cloud occupied the navigation screen. It seemed now to be all eyes, all staring after them.

“Please, help me.”

“You know,” Matt said, “it was in a bind.” He hated the damned thing. But it didn’t seem to matter. Now that the shooting was over. “It would have recognized how powerless we were to help. It took the only course open to it.”

“I promise you will be safe.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” said Hutch.

“And it would have known that we would probably not have been able to help in any case. Unless we gave it a ship. Would we have done that if it asked?” He paused and listened to the silence. “I didn’t think so.”

LIBRARY ENTRY

Throw another log on the fire.

So long as I have you

And the logs,

The night cannot get in.

—Sigma Hotel Book

epilogue

HUTCH CONTACTED RUDY’S family as soon as the Preston had arrived back in the solar system. That was an excruciating ordeal. As painful as anything she’d done in her life.

FRANK WAS A big media splash for several days. Then the president of Patagonia made some negative comments about the president of the NAU, there was talk of imposing economic sanctions in both directions, and the story about the talking cloud moved to the back pages. Within a week it was gone.

Antonio’s book, At the Core, revived it for a while, and there was talk of another mission. Some wanted to communicate with the creature, some to nuke it. Others claimed it was a conspiracy and that the omegas came from somewhere else, from a source so terrible that the government was keeping it secret. Still others claimed that hell was located at the center of the galaxy, and we all knew who was really imprisoned in the cloud. When Hutch was asked during an interview what she thought should be done, she urged that the matter be left alone. “Maybe until we’re smarter,” she said. In the end, public indifference might have carried the day, but Alyx Ballinger turned the encounter into the musical Starstruck. Hutch, Antonio, and Jon attended opening night in London. Hutch enjoyed it immensely, but always claimed it was because of the music, and had nothing to do with the fact that the Hutchins character was played by the inordinately lovely Kyra Phillips. The musical went to VR, interstellar tourism picked up, politicians got interested, and within three years, a second Academy began operating out of temporary quarters in Crystal City. A larger complex is currently under construction near the old NASA site on the Cape.

THE PROMETHEUS FOUNDATION had lost Rudy, but with the appearance of Starstruck, it gained support, and eventually became a bridge to the new Academy.

Most people were inclined to give credit for the resurgence to Ballinger, but Hutch thought it would have happened anyway, in time. It was inevitable, she told friends. Even without the Locarno Drive, she believed, the human race would have gone back to the stars. The retreat from the original effort had been an aberration, much like the long hiatus after the first flights to the Moon. We seem to do things in fits and starts, she told an audience at ceremonies opening the Crystal City complex in 2258. “But eventually, we get serious. It just takes time.”

Meanwhile, a few independent missions, using the Locarno, went out. Two were lost, never heard from again. When nobody talked of scuttling the program, Hutch understood there’d be no turning back this time.

JON RECEIVED A half dozen major awards, including the 2257 Americus. In his acceptance remarks, and to no one’s surprise, he gave the bulk of the credit for the Locarno to Henry.

He was also the recipient of the first Rudy Golombeck Award, given by the Prometheus Foundation to recognize achievement in promoting the interstellar renaissance. Matt Darwin made the presentation.

In the VR version of Starstruck, Jon was portrayed as brilliant. He was also elderly, forgetful, and often incoherent. His role in rescuing Hutch and Antonio was transferred to Matt. A producer explained that you could only have one hero in these things, and the starship pilot was the natural choice. People don’t identify with physicists, he insisted.