How convenient.“So ... what is it you want me todo?”

“Simple,” Riker said without hesitation, his blue eyes flashing. “Conduct your warp flight tomorrow morning, as you planned.”

Apparently, they only wanted him to do what he’d already spent years—not to mention countless lives—trying to accomplish. Had they wanted to stop him, they could have [147] done so easily. Still, their exacting requirements—and the nervous glances thrown toward Riker by Deanna and La Forge—roused his suspicions.

“Why tomorrow morning?” Cochrane wanted to know.

Riker paused thoughtfully before answering, as though he’d just made some irrevocable decision. If he really is from the future, and has to decide just how much he can afford to tell me without screwing up the timeline, then maybe he has.

“Because,” Riker said at length, “at eleven o’clock an alien ship will begin passing through this solar system.”

That was the last thing Cochrane wanted to hear. “Alien. You mean extraterrestrials. More bad guys?” The effects of the alcohol he’d consumed earlier seemed all at once to multiply. With some effort, he took a seat on a flattened tree stump. He found himself hoping that it had been either these new E.T.s or the zombie cyborgs Riker had spoken of earlier who had been responsible for the destruction of the O’Neill habitats.

Otherwise the blame has to land squarely on me and my goddamned egomaniacal warp-drive project.

“Good guys,” Deanna said. “They’re on a survey mission. They have no interest in Earth. Too primitive.”

“Oh,” Cochrane said. It made sense, given how little remained of human civilization, even though the war itself already lay a decade in the past. Hell, if I were an alien, I wouldn’t even stop off here to take a leak.

Riker approached him, a fervor in his eyes that was both frightening and exhilarating. “Doctor, tomorrow morning when they detect the warp signature from your ship and realize that humans have discovered how to travel faster than light, they decide to alter their course—and make first contact with Earth, right here.”

Cochrane considered the patch of perfectly ordinary ground that surrounded the stump on which he sat. “Here?”

“Actually, over there,” La Forge said, gesturing a short distance to his left.

[148] “It is one of the pivotal moments in human history, Doctor,” Riker continued, pacing as he spoke, moving behind Cochrane. “You get to make first contact with an alien race. And after you do, everything begins to change.”

La Forge approached more closely, looking almost worshipful. “Your theories on warp drive allow fleets of starships to be built, and mankind to start exploring the galaxy.”

“It unites humanity in a way that no one ever thought possible, when they realize they’re not alone in the universe,” said Deanna. “Poverty, disease, war—they’ll all be gone within the next fifty years.”

Riker spoke again. “But unless you make that warp flight tomorrow morning—before eleven-fifteen—none of it will happen.”

They were treating him as though he were the savior of mankind, and it was making him distinctly uncomfortable. And yet ... their story made a bizarre sort of sense. After all, if they really were saboteurs from ECON or some other faction, they could simply have killed him and ended Project Phoenix without having to resort to subterfuge. But they seemed sincere in their stated desire to see him succeed.

Cochrane’s eyes lit from face to face before he spoke again. “And you people—you’re all astronauts, on some kind of star trek.”

La Forge’s expression became grave. For the first time, Cochrane noticed the unnatural-looking blue tint of his irises. “Look, Doc, I know this is a lot for you to take in, but we’re running out of time here. We need your help.”

Zefram Cochrane turned, leaving the future-people standing behind him. He gazed heavenward, his eyes seeking the lightless Trojan point around which the destroyed space habitats had orbited, now a silent graveyard in space. The people who’d lived and worked in those colonies had died trying to make his dream of warp flight a reality.

Perhaps now he could redeem those deaths, as well as [149] those pieces of his own soul that had died along with the O’Neills. For the first time since that horrible day, he felt eager to greet the future.

“What do you say?” Riker asked.

“Why not?” Cochrane whispered to the waxing half-moon.

“I’ll tellyou why not,” Baruch said. “Because we have no idea who else might be listening in on us.”

Zafirah could hardly believe what she was hearing. Now, after more than four and a half years, Vanguard had finally achieved self-sufficiency, despite having been stranded two-hundred light-years from home.

And in defiance of the brutal reduction of its population by two-hundred and fifty-two souls when those snaggle-tusked aliens had tried to plunder the asteroid’s resources.

Zafirah had to admit that it had not been humanity’s better angels that had won the day then. Rather, it had been the suspicious natures of current Director Avram Baruch and the late engineer Kerwin McNolan—along with their hastily improvised explosive projectile weapons—that had convinced the tusk people to depart in search of easier prey.

But the raiders had never returned, and Zafirah and others—including head geneticist Claudia Hakidonmuya, the only other survivor from the initial first-contact party—reasoned that Vanguard had turned inward to lick its wounds long enough. After having lost nearly a third of the habitat’s population to the raid, after having worked so hard subsequently to survive and adapt to the harsh conditions of trackless interstellar space, it made sense finally to make restoring contact with Earth a priority. Even if the effort was destined to take centuries to come to fruition.

Surely Earth and its teeming, war-ravaged billions would still need help, even if that help took centuries to come to fruition. And the advanced technologies that sustained Vanguard in the interstellar dark could provide that help.

[150] “We’re not sending any signals toward Earth or anywhere else,” Director Baruch repeated, rising from behind the great desk he’d inherited from the slain Dr. Mizuki after Vanguard’s conservative, ultracautious majority had swept him into office. “The risk of calling attention to ourselves is simply too great. We’re still way too vulnerable out here.”

Zafirah threw up her left arm in frustration, a gesture which made her empty right sleeve flap like a banner being carried into battle. The missing limb, lost to the injuries she’d sustained during the alien raid, served as a constant reminder that a little distrust could be a very positive thing. Unless,she thought, it’s allowed to be taken to extremes.

Aloud, she said, “Using yourlogic, Avi, Earth should have been invaded a hundred years ago, when those old I Love Lucybroadcasts first started reaching the stars.”

“There’s always a first time for everything,” the morose Israeli said, shrugging. “We’ve already suffered one attack that nearly crippled us. We’d be fools to invite more of the same.” His unapologetic use of the word “cripple” prompted a phantom pain to shoot through her right sleeve.

Zafirah felt her anger at last beginning to boil over. “I’m so sorry to burden you with these radical ideas, Avi. But I thought we were supposed to be Earth’s last, best hope. After we got stuck out here, Director Mizuki made it fairly clear she considered that her life’s work.”

“And we all saw how short the rest of that life was.”

Zafirah regarded Baruch in silence. Only now did she really perceive how haggard and drawn he’d become over the past few years. His salt-and-pepper beard had gone almost white. The weight of responsibility for every human life inside this asteroid had rounded his shoulders, which reminded her of pebbles worn smooth in a riverbed.