Despite himself, Brad felt his innards coiling tensely as the shuttlecraft approached Odysseus.
He was sitting in the shuttle’s command chair, up forward, surrounded by control panels and sensor readout displays that he ignored. His eyes were fastened on the view through the command center’s broad glassteel windows: the starship, an immense island floating in space, growing so huge that it filled the windows entirely.
Odysseus was really a city in space, Brad realized. Compared to it, the shuttlecraft was a seed, a piece of flotsam, a baby returning to its womb.
“Five klicks and approaching on the line,” said the unemotional voice of the flight controller from the screen in the center of the panel of consoles. It showed an oblong entry port in the smooth side of the starship, waiting for Brad’s craft to glide into the hangar inside.
Brad had nothing to do but watch. His approach to Odysseus was completely automated. If anything went wrong, the flight controller would take command of the shuttlecraft remotely. Like my dream of the tractor, Brad thought. I don’t know how to handle this craft. I don’t have to know how. Everything’s being done automatically.
So he sat with his hands in his lap as the entry port in the starship’s hull grew bigger, wider, like a mouth ready to engulf him.
My three-month exile is finished, he told himself. Now I go back to work as an anthropologist. Then he smiled to himself and added, Plus something more.
Brad had copied all the data that the probes had taken of the aliens swimming in Alpha’s ocean. Every squeak and twitter they uttered. Every move they made. He would hand the official files over to Kosoff, of course, or whoever Kosoff designated to receive them. Probably the head of the linguistics team, Brad thought.
But he had his own copy of all that data and he intended to study it himself, with Jonesey’s help. Brad was determined to make sense out of the octopods’ language.
“Touchdown.” The voice of the flight director jarred Brad out of his thoughts. “Velocity zero, grapplers connected. Flight is complete. Welcome home, Dr. MacDaniels.”
I’m back, Brad realized. Back aboard Odysseus. For the first time in three months he felt gravity tugging at his arms, felt his heart thumping to pump blood through his arteries.
Now let’s see if Kosoff’s allowed Felicia to greet me at the air lock.
It took nearly half an hour for the flight controller’s crew to seal shut the outer hatch and pump the hangar full of breathable air. Brad sat impatiently through the procedure until he heard the director’s voice announce, “You are free to leave the shuttlecraft.”
Brad got to his feet slowly, carefully, bending over to avoid bumping his head against the ceiling panels. He edged through the consoles toward the craft’s main hatch. The ground crew was swinging the hatch open when he got to it. Ducking through the hatch, Brad saw that the big hangar chamber was empty, except for the half-dozen members of the ground crew.
“Welcome back, Dr. MacDaniels,” said one of them, sticking out his hand. “Careful of the steps now.”
Clasping the man’s steadying hand, Brad made it down the metal ladder and onto the hangar floor. The half g of the ship’s gravity field felt good, solid, after his months of weightlessness. Back to normal, he thought.
“Dr. Littlejohn said he’s waiting for you in his office,” the crewman said.
Nodding, Brad asked, “Anybody else?”
“Nope. Just the pygmy.”
“He’s an Aborigine,” Brad snapped. “From Australia.”
The crewman laughed. “Yeah, we know. We just call him a pygmy for fun.”
Brad walked away from him, toward the hatch at the far side of the hangar. I wonder what they call me for fun, he asked himself.
The crewman called out, “We’ll have your personal stuff delivered to your quarters. Might take a half hour or so.”
“That’s fine,” Brad said over his shoulder. Then he added, “Thanks.”
There were berths for two more shuttlecraft in the hangar, but both were empty. Probably gone down to Gamma’s surface, Brad thought. Why isn’t Felicia here? It’s a working day, of course, but she could’ve taken a few minutes off to greet me.
He crossed the hangar floor alone and yanked open the hatch.
And there was Felicia standing on the other side, her smile radiant. Before Brad could utter a word she rushed into his arms and kissed him soundly.
“You’re here!” he gasped.
“Where else would I be?” Felicia replied, clinging to him.
Suddenly Brad felt embarrassed. This side of the hatch was a passageway with people walking briskly past, grinning at the young couple locked in each other’s arms.
“I … it’s good to see you,” Brad said, still holding her close.
“It’s wonderful to see you,” said Felicia.
They disengaged and she started walking along the passageway. “I’ve got to get back to my lab,” she said. “The ground team has sent up dozens of soil and plant samples from Gamma. We’re all working flat out analyzing them.”
“Great,” Brad said.
“Dr. Littlejohn wants to see you.”
Nodding, “Yes, I know.”
“We can meet for lunch.”
“In the cafeteria.”
“High noon?”
Brad realized he didn’t know what time it was. He remembered that he was scheduled to land at the hangar at ten after ten.
“Noon,” he echoed, feeling awkward, almost disoriented.
“If Littlejohn’s going to keep you longer, call me.”
“Right.”
Raising her eyes to meet his, Felicia added, “I’ve taken the afternoon off.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “Great! That’s wonderful.”
“See you in the cafeteria.”
“High noon,” Brad said.