Coming Home

Thirty-two

By midafternoon, the media had the story. The victims, the networks were reporting, had died when their food supply ran out. Shock was deep and widespread. Nothing like this, everyone was saying, had ever been reported before.

The HV ran on and on. Physicists tried to explain how something like that was possible while political commentators predicted that there would be no further talk about manipulating star drives. Walter Brim, a guest on Straight Talk, asked the viewers to imagine how terrible it would be if something like that happened on the Capella.

I got through the afternoon as best I could, needed some medication to get to sleep that night. Alex called in the morning to make sure I was okay, and suggested we meet at the Hillside.

When I arrived, he was already there, seated at a corner table. He raised a hand and smiled. “You still okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“Apparently, Nick arranged things to conserve power. That’s why so much was shut down. But I guess they couldn’t do anything about the food supply. Believe it or not, they had enough food on board to get them through it if they could have prevented it from spoiling.”

“I guess,” I said. “I’m not sure though I would have wanted to live inside that thing for four years.”

We ordered whatever off the menu. I don’t recall what it was, just that I drank a lot of coffee. And we were back to talking about living for the day because you never know about tomorrow. Nick and JoAnn had seemed so alive when they were on the Grainger bridge.

The Hillside was crowded. “Never noticed before,” I said, “but having almost a full house lends a sense of security to the place.”

He reached across the table and pressed my wrist. “The world has changed, love.” He was about to continue when his link sounded. He activated it, listened, and nodded. “Good, John, let me know when, okay?” And then: “Yes. She’s with me now.”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“There’s going to be a memorial for JoAnn and Nick at the headquarters building. Middle of the week. They’ll tell us when they lock in the night.”

That evening, President Davis spoke. He stood behind a lectern, the blue and white colors of the Confederacy draped across the wall behind him. “Friends and citizens,” he said, “you already know of the losses we incurred during an effort to find a better way to manage the rescue of those trapped on the Capella. JoAnn Suttner and Nicholas Kraus, members of the Sanusar Recovery Force working under the auspices of the Department of Transportation, lost their lives in the attempt. I am sorry to report also that, as a result of the experiment, we know now that the technique under development cannot be relied on. We will not risk the lives of the people on the Capella. Therefore, we will be falling back on the lifeboats that we have been preparing for the last few months.

“It is a method we would have preferred not to use because it is more time-consuming than we wish. But it is our safest way to proceed. Consequently, we now face the reality that we cannot take everyone off prior to experiencing another jump. In fact, we will be able to provide an immediate escape for only about two hundred of those on board.

“Having said that, I want to remind everyone that our first consideration remains the safe return of our friends and family members, not on rushing to get them off quickly. Our primary concern is their safety. I regret this reality. But we are confronted with a force of nature. We have no reasonable choice except to wait. It is a price we must be willing to pay to bring this unhappy state of affairs to a successful conclusion.”

Three nights later, we went downtown to the Riverside Hotel for the memorial service, which had been originally scheduled for the Department of Transportation Building. But the planners had been surprised by the public response to the event. “I don’t think we realized,” Senator Caipha Delmar told us, “that people would turn out the way they have.” Obviously, the sacrifice JoAnn and Nick made had an impact.

Several thousand persons jammed into the hotel. About half got into the Starlight Room, where the ceremony was to be held. The rest filled the lobby, the restaurant, the bar, and a second showroom where the event was put on-screen. John came out onto a raised platform precisely on time, thanked the audience for their support, and introduced himself as Nick’s brother and as the director of the operation that had taken the two lives. “At first,” he said, “I’d planned to describe this simply as an effort gone wrong. But it served to show us that the potential downside of trying to stop the process is too high, and in that sense, because of JoAnn and Nick, twenty-six hundred people will not be put at risk. I’m proud to be Nick’s brother and to have been JoAnn’s colleague.”

That drew somber applause. “Whatever it takes,” he continued, “we will not waste the sacrifice these two heroes have made. We will get those people off the Capella. The lifeboats are ready to go. We’ll take advantage of its return to get the lifeboats to it, to get them on board, and when it comes back in five years we’ll get the passengers and crew off, all of them, and we’ll throw the biggest party Rimway has ever seen.”

The place exploded.

He waited until things calmed down and invited Shara onstage to say something.

She took her place behind the lectern. “I’ll never forget JoAnn,” she said. “She was young and brilliant, and had so much to give, and in the end, she gave it all. And Nick. He’d been a peerless friend. And he was a professional interstellar captain whose first concern was his passengers and crew. If he were here tonight, he’d consider that the ultimate compliment.”

Prize-winning physicist Akala Gruder said that she had known JoAnn and could not believe she was gone. “In a sense, she never will be.” She had never met Nick, she said. And added, “My loss.”

A few others expressed similar sentiments. Then we got a surprise. John introduced President Davis. He came in through a side door and, like everyone else that night, he spoke without notes. “We are gathered here this evening,” he said, “to pay tribute to our friends JoAnn Suttner and Nick Kraus. I don’t know that I can add anything that hasn’t already been said. Other than that it gives me great hope for the future to know that these two friends were by no means unique. Where, I wonder, do we get such men and women?

“One more thing. The parents of both are present with us tonight. They were invited to speak this evening, but they declined. We can all understand that. The emotional pressure is high. And I think their natural inclination is to let others do the talking. But that said, I would now like to invite them to come up to receive the Presidential Medal of Honor, which is hereby granted to JoAnn Suttner, and to Nicholas Kraus, for extraordinary heroism in the cause of providing assistance to those in desperate need.”

JoAnn’s husband, Jerry, was halfway across the Confederacy and had not been able to attend. But both sets of parents, Laura and Joseph Dayson, and Sandra and Jack Kraus, made their way onto the platform. The President handed them the awards, they exchanged a few comments, everybody wiped their eyes, and it was over.

In the morning, I was just settling behind my desk when Jacob announced that I had a call from Nick’s mother. “I saw you at the memorial last night, Chase,” she said. “I tried to get to you, but we lost you in the crowd.” That brought an uneasy moment.

“Hello, Ms. Kraus. It’s nice to hear from you. Please accept my condolences on Nick’s loss.” I paused, not sure where the call was going. “What can I do for you?”

“Call me Sandy, please. I know Shara, and she told me how things went.” My heart picked up a beat. “I wanted to say that I’m glad you and she were there. And that I hope you’re not too upset.”

“I’m okay,” I said. Suddenly I was back in the passenger cabin with Nick while he asked whether he could take me to Cranston’s. “I wish I could have helped.”

“You were there. It’s all you could do. Jack and I just wanted to say thanks. And to make sure you’re okay.” Jack, of course, was Nick’s father.

“Yes. Thank you. I’m all right. How about you?”

“We’ll get through it, Chase.” Her voice caught. She said good-bye, and she was gone.