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Devon reached out and touched something in the blank air in front of him, and half the wall to my right vanished, showing me the blackness of space and the Klondike floating there. I could see the extensive damage from the two impacts. For such a proud ship, it looked very, very sad and small and helpless.
“Coming in from the right,” Devon said, his voice clearly upset by what was happening and what had happened to the rest of the crew.
I stood there, transfixed, watching what I was sure was my own death as the shadow seemed to appear out of nowhere suddenly, then smashed into the Klondike, ripping it apart and sending pieces swirling off in many different directions.
“You are now officially dead,” Devon said, his voice soft. “I just wish I had gotten here in time to save the others from real death as well. But we thought the repair plan would work.”
I stared at him, my mind still not grasping this, but I had one question that just pissed me off if anything about this dream was real.
“How come, if we have this, we let people like me go out into space on ships like that? How come we let them die?”
“Because we have to,” Devon said. “The Grays only lent us this one ship. We have to fight our own way out into space, prove that we can survive out here, that we belong out here, and that takes growth and sacrifice. We have to pay the price.”
“Five good men just paid a very heavy price,” I said, disgusted.
“Yes, they did,” Devon said. “And all six of you will have your names on the memorial in ten days, in a very large and impressive service. But what you learned out here won’t go to waste. As you discovered, there are vast riches out here, more than enough to keep the space program going for another hundred years, until we finally figure out how to reach the stars and find even greater riches.”
I glanced down, suddenly realizing my feet weren’t sticking to the floor.
“Artificial gravity?”
Devon nodded. “We don’t know how it works, but we know it exists and is possible, so there are a thousand scientists around the planet working on it in different ways.”
“You came from Earth?” I asked.
Again he nodded. “I was beamed aboard the ship where we keep it parked in a hidden orbit, and I flew it here to get you.”
“That’s one fast trip. It took us two months.”
“Some sort of dimensional jump engine,” Devon said. “Way beyond us so far.”
“Why you?” I asked.
“Mission Control figured I would be the best one to do the rescue since you were going to have trouble believing all this was real.”
“No kidding,” I said. “I’m still not.”
“I don’t blame you,” Devon said.
I walked over to the wall that seemed to be open to space and touched it. I could feel a warm, almost soft metal, even though it looked like I could stick my hand all the way out into the vacuum.
“We don’t know what that material is either, or even how it works.”
“But I bet we’re working on it,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, we are, but we haven’t even figured out how to analyze it yet, let alone reproduce it.”
“And you say this is the only ship they lent us?”
Devon nodded. “I wish we had more. That way we could shadow all the different missions going on in space, save more lives.”
I remembered my five crewmates who had just died ugly deaths. “Yeah, too bad.” The disgust and anger was clear in my voice.
Then I remembered Tammie. She was going to think I was dead.
“Can I take Tammie with me to wherever I’m going next?”
Devon shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Only very specific people can know this exists. No families allowed. Besides, you need her to keep up your legacy of what you did.”
I nodded. Tammie had always been the perfect astronaut’s wife. She would make sure my memory stayed alive and that my death wouldn’t be in vain.
“Can I at least say goodbye?”
Devon looked like I had just trapped him bluffing in a poker game. I knew that look. There was something he didn’t want to tell me.
“There is a way, isn’t there?”
He nodded slowly. “We’ve worked out a way that you can say goodbye.”
Devon ’s hands flew through the air in front of him, seemingly touching and brushing different things that I couldn’t see.
Suddenly, outside the ship, the stars seemed to blur for a moment. Then at the next instant, we were in orbit around Earth. There had been no feeling at all of movement.
I had to be dead. What had just happened wasn’t possible. That was all there was to it. I had just traveled the same distance it had taken me two months before to travel, and all in a fraction of a second without feeling a thing. Dead people traveled like that, not live ones.
“We’re above the Phoenix area,” Devon said. “The Grays have this nifty device they showed us how to use that transports you to a place where you can hear and see and talk to people, but not actually be there. You’ll stay here on the ship the entire time.”
“Like a projected hologram?”
He nodded.
“And Tammie will be able to see me?”
“As a sort of ghostlike figure. If you tell her you’re dead and just came to say goodbye, she’ll believe you, especially when you vanish. But it’s going to scare the hell out of her.”
“I don’t think that learning that I’m dead is going to do her much good either,” I said. “I assume others have done this before?”
Devon nodded. “This isn’t easy on either you or her, but at least you have a chance to say goodbye, if that’s what you really want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be what I want? She’s the woman I love.”
From his large, thronelike chair in the middle of the massive space, Devon looked down at me with an expression I had seen many times before. He was worried.
“You’re not going to want to do this,” Devon said. “I think you should just let it go and we’ll beam into Area 51 and get you settled into your new life.”
“Why?”
“Just let her deal with her grief on her own, in her own way. It’s better that way. For both of you.”
I stood there, staring at my friend, thinking about what seeing me as a ghost would do to Tammie. Devon was right. It would scare her, and the news of my death was going to hurt her more than enough.
If I loved her, I didn’t need to hurt her any more.
But I did want to just see her one more time.
“I guess you’re right. Can the hologram he made so that she wouldn’t see me, or hear me? I’d still like to say goodbye in my own way.”
Now Devon looked really pained. “It can be, yes, but as your friend, I’m suggesting you not do that.”
“Why?”
Devon sighed. “Sometimes it’s better to just let memories alone, leave Tammie in your mind as you know her.”
“I’m still back in the Klondike, aren’t I? Having a horrid nightmare?”
“No,” Devon said. “You are very much alive, and we very much need your experienced help in our program. If the Klondike had come back on its own, we were going to try to recruit you into the program. We were lucky that circumstances at least saved you.”
“I don’t feel so lucky.”
“Let’s go to Area 51,” Devon said. “You have great memories of Tammie; just leave them that way and start the next part of your life.”
I laughed. “You know I’m not going to, unless you tell me what is so bad that I’m going to see when I visit her.”
Devon looked like the day he had swallowed his first oyster. I remembered laughing at him for an hour that night.
I wasn’t laughing now at all.
Devon sighed again, then said, “Maybe you should just go take a look. You won’t be seen or heard, and you won’t be able to touch anything. After that, we can talk more when we’re off this ship.”
It was as if the area around me on the ship suddenly changed into my home. Devon had put me in the living room, and everything was as tidy as Tammie always kept it. Outside the open window, the sun was just starting to paint the tops of the rock bluffs pink. We had a fantastically beautiful home. It was too bad I was going to miss retiring here.