Gift From The Stars (9 page)

Jessie pushed. The gate slid back smoothly as if it had been oiled recently. “Looks like you were right,” she said, as Frances rolled the car through the opened gateway and Jessie got back inside.

“Either that or someone else is holed up here,” Frances said. She stopped the car on the other side of the gate. “You’d better shut it.”

“Not me,” Jessie said, shivering. “I hate wild animals. And anyway, we may need to leave in a hurry.”

They headed across what once had been a bustling complex specializing in hurling men toward the moon. Now it was a vast, silent sea of concrete in which their car moved like a tiny bottle tossed into the ocean.

Only it wasn’t empty. Weeds, some of them as tall as bushes, had grown up in cracks. Little brown wild pigs scattered in front of them as the car approached, and here and there a wild boar snorted at them, trotting from behind a building to assert its territorial rights. Armadillos lifted their heads from their inspection of the ground and sidled away when the car got close; alligators didn’t seem to care, although they heard a distant roar. Vines and small trees reached from the Indian River to reclaim the land from civilization’s efforts to pave it into submission. Woodpeckers pounded trees for insects. Rattlesnakes sunned themselves on ledges and in empty patches of concrete. Eagles soared overhead, and occasionally, winging through the darkening sky, a snowy egret. Insects splattered against the windshield and threatened to invade the interior through closed windows.

“When they say ‘abandoned,’” Jessie said, “they meant returned to nature and the native populations. It certainly doesn’t look as if anybody has been here.”

“Don’t forget the gate,” Frances said, but she looked lost as well. Where on these roads, among these enigmatic structures, would a band of kidnappers hide?

She felt the abandonment of this place, the loss of purpose that the
buildings and the stretches of concrete had once symbolized, the bustle of people and vehicles that had expressed the human will to conquer space, the roar of massive engines that had shouted their defiance at the Earth that kept its offspring tied to its apron strings.

Over on the Cape side, a couple of hundred yards from the beach and the blue Atlantic Ocean beyond, were the remains of a launch pad. Half-a-dozen twenty-foot concrete and metal arms supported a doughnut ring of concrete and exposed metal. The metal parts wore a patina of age and despair. An “abandoned in place” sign was stenciled on one of the slabs. Another slab had a plaque attached to it. Frances didn’t get close enough to read what it said. The entire place filled her with melancholy, like a Space Age Stonehenge raised to forgotten gods, and the plaque, she had the feeling, was inscribed with the names of ancient heroes.

Frances pulled to a stop, with their backs to the ocean, facing the vast Space Center complex with its roads and runways and buildings. “I don’t know where to look,” she said. “We could spend a week here and still not exhaust the possibilities.”

“What about that place?” Jessie said, motioning toward a huge square structure that towered in the middle of the Center, dominating the entire complex. “It’s big enough to hide a small city.”

“That must be where they assembled the big rockets,” Frances said. “Well, why not?”

She headed back toward the massive building. It loomed even bigger as they approached, until the top reaches seemed to disappear into the blue sky. Most of it was white with darker panels. As they got closer, they could see some low outbuildings. On one side a gigantic American flag, perhaps two hundred feet tall, had been painted. Then came a dark panel inset with a lighter rectangle and, on the other side, a huge NASA symbol, once dark blue, now faded. Temporary structures surrounding the building had deteriorated and some had fallen apart, but the main building still seemed solid and as resistant to time as a latter-day Great Pyramid.

Another chain-link fence surrounded the building, and turnstiles guarded the entrance. One of them had broken, however, and lay on its side beside the fence, its metal pipes reaching helplessly toward the sky, the entrance it had once sealed gaping beside it.

“The Vehicle Assembly Building,” Frances said, as if that were the answer to a crossword puzzle. “The VAB. That’s what they used to call it. Shall we go in?” She got out of the car without waiting for an answer.

The doorway to the VAB had been covered by plywood, but the wood, like the turnstile, had fallen away, leaving a dark, forbidding rectangle. Frances stepped through gingerly, Jessie following closely behind.

Inside the building, rain was falling. Frances waited just inside the doorway until her vision returned. Light filtered from louvers high above, shining through the mist of descending rain and the clouds that had formed in the remote upper reaches of the vast spaces enclosed there. When the shower eased, Frances could see the inside of the building, though the far walls and the distant ceiling faded into gray nothing.

She felt again as if she were in a cathedral built for an outworn worship. She shook herself and began noticing details: a wide avenue traversed the middle and on each side platforms, catwalks, what seemed like elevators, and cranes, a lot of them, and two huge cranes high above that crossed a gulf.

“Adrian!” she called out in desperation, knowing that they could never exhaust the hiding places in this incredible structure. The name echoed back to her from near and far, rolling around the cavernous interior and returning to her moment by moment.

“Please don’t do that again,” Jessie whispered. “It sounds so mournful. Like a lament for the dead.”

Frances moved down the wide thoroughfare that ran through the middle of the building. Tools and leaves and other debris were scattered across what once must have been scrubbed as clean as her kitchen floor. In the distance loomed a tall structure. As Frances got closer, she realized that it was a rocket on a platform, solid boosters attached to an external tank. She craned her neck to look up at the top. All it needed, she realized, was a space shuttle and transportation to a launching pad and it could be launched.

“What is it?” Jessie asked.

“Either a rocket that was abandoned when the rest of the place was shut down,” Frances said, “or something that a bunch of amateurs are trying to cobble together from left-over parts. Either way, anybody would be out of their mind to trust their lives to it.”

Her words echoed less stridently from the partitions around them. For a moment they obscured the noises someone was making on a nearby catwalk. Then they heard footsteps. Coming closer. Jessie squeezed Frances’s upper arm. Frances did not turn around.

“That’s right,” someone said. “It’s an exercise in faith, like lighting a votary candle.”

“Adrian?” Frances said.

“You’ve found me,” a voice said softly.

Frances turned. Adrian looked much the same as she had seen him last—was it four years ago? Maybe a little older around the eyes, a little grayer around the edges. But his blue eyes were still as steadfast and concerned. “Adrian!” she said. “You’ve put us to a great deal of bother. Why didn’t you let us know?”

Adrian spread his hands in a universal gesture of helplessness. The gesture also happened to indicate the space around them. Occupying that space, a few paces away, were four men and a woman, dressed in white, uniform-like coveralls. Frances had been so focused on Adrian’s footsteps that the approach of the others had gone unnoticed. They looked grim and determined, a bit like Adrian himself when he was thinking about spaceships.

“They talked me out of it,” Adrian said.

“I suppose they were the ones who came and took you away,” Frances said. Adrian nodded. “Against your will?”

Adrian hesitated. “Against my better judgment.”

“Which means,” Frances said, “that they had been in touch with you earlier, and that you had disagreed about the next procedure.”

“They were—persuasive,” Adrian said. “Not that I was opposed to their goals. Only their methods.”

“They’re space-nuts, too?” Her epithet concealed a deeper pain. What was there in a few humans that yearned for liberation? Was it the eternal wanderlust or something deeper?

“Including someone I want you to meet,” Adrian said. He turned toward the steep stairs down which he had come.

Standing at their foot was a man in slacks and jacket who looked familiar. “Cavendish?” Frances said.

The man nodded.

“Last time I saw you was in Menninger’s Clinic in Topeka,” Frances said.

“I was cured,” Cavendish said simply. “With the help of some biogenetic materials.”

“But not cured, apparently, of your interest in alien spaceship designs,” Frances said.

Cavendish fidgeted. “Not of that,” he said.

“Careful, Frances,” Adrian said. “He still gets agitated.”

Cavendish held up a hand. “That’s okay.” But his head began to twitch.

“Did you figure it out?” Frances asked.

“Frances!” Adrian cautioned.

“Why they sent the designs?” Frances continued.

Cavendish held out his hands to show that they were steady. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Why did they send the designs? Why didn’t they just come here? What do they want from us?”

“And the fact that there are no answers doesn’t bother you anymore?” Frances asked.

“Of course it bothers me. But I can think clearly now, and I understand that there are answers. We won’t find them, however, until we build the ship and go where the answers are. That’s the only way we can find peace.” His breath came out at the end, in an explosive rush, as if he had been holding it in all the time he spoke.

“That’s the way it is,” Frances said. She motioned toward the partially assembled rocket. “But you don’t intend to go anywhere in that, I hope.”

“That’s just for practice,” Cavendish said. “When we finally get the resources to build the ship, we’ll need experience, won’t we? So we sneak a little power, at night, when nobody’s paying attention.”

“And how is all this going to get you anywhere?” Frances asked. This time she was speaking to Adrian.

“I don’t know,” Adrian said.

“Did you know that they removed all proof of your existence?” Frances said. “ At least the electronic part.”

Adrian looked accusingly at Cavendish. “You didn’t!”

Cavendish shrugged. His head had stopped twitching. “We were practicing again. One strategy we have considered is to make ourselves sufficiently irritating that the Energy Board will protect itself.”

“With the pearl of space?” Adrian asked.

“What about the power stoppages?” Frances said. “The sabotage? The upsurge in violent crime?”

Cavendish looked surprised. “Not us! But that would add to the irritant factor.”

“I’ve noticed a few outages,” Adrian said, “but I thought—”

“It was normal,” Frances concluded. “Right. But Makepeace doesn’t.”

“Makepeace?”

“He’s working for the Energy Board now. He wanted me to find you. He says there’s a lot of unusual activity going on that nobody notices because of the good times.”

“Shouldn’t you introduce me to your companion?” Adrian said. “What’s she doing here?”

Jessie stepped from behind Frances looking a bit sheepish. “I’m Jessie.”

Adrian raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Jessica Buhler.”

“Who is Jessica Buhler?” Adrian asked.

Frances turned accusingly toward Jessie, but before she could say anything they heard the roar of jets outside.

The distant entrance to the Vehicle Assembly Building was filled with tiny black figures. Frances looked around. The coveralled space-nuts had disappeared and so had Cavendish.

“Why did you do it?” Frances asked Jessie.

“Why blame me?” Jessie said defiantly. “Maybe that man—Makepeace—put a tracer on you!”

“You’re the plant,” Frances said. “Why?”

Jessie looked contrite. “All right, I might as well admit it. When I started, it was just another job, and by the time I got involved it was too late.”

“Involved?” Frances said. “If I’d known—” Jessie said. “If I’d known you—and Adrian and what was at stake—”

“You set the fire?” Frances said accusingly.

“Not me,” Jessie protested. “Maybe somebody else.” She took a ragged breath. “What I found out is that I’d like to build a spaceship. I wish I could be one of you,” she said softly. “I know it’s too late, but that’s what I’d like.”