“But here you are, fifteen years old, and you’ve already made a significant discovery. You’re going to make a fine astronomer, my boy.”
“I don’t know if I want to be an astronomer,” Tommy said.
His father looked shocked. “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “I was lucky tonight, I guess. But is it really worth all the work? Night after night, day after day? I mean, you’ve spent your whole life being an astronomer, and it hasn’t made you rich or famous, has it?”
“No, it hasn’t,” his father admitted.
“And it keeps you away from Mom and us kids a lot of the time. Far away.”
“That’s true enough.”
“So what good is it? What does astronomy do for us?”
Dad gave him a funny look. Getting up from the computer, he said, “Let’s take a walk outside.”
“Outside?” That surprised Tom.
He followed his father down the bare concrete corridor and they struggled into their outdoor suits.
“Science is like a great building, Tom,” Dad said as he opened the inner hatch. “Like a cathedral that’s still being built, one brick at a time. You added a new brick tonight.”
“One little brick,” Tom mumbled.
“That’s the way it’s built, son. One little brick adds to all the others.”
Dad swung the outer hatch open. “But there’s always so much more to learn. The cathedral isn’t finished yet. Perhaps it never will be.”
They stepped outside onto the barren dusty ground. Through the visor of his helmet Tom saw the spidery frameworks of the Lunar Farside Observatory’s giant telescopes rising all around them. And beyond stretched the universe of stars, thousands, millions of stars glowing in the eternal night of deep space, looking down on the battered face of the Moon where they stood.
Tom felt a lump in his throat. “Maybe I’ll stick with astronomy, after all,” he said to his father. And he thought it might be fun to add a few more bricks to the cathedral.
STARS, WON’T YOU HIDE ME?
Anybody can write about the end of the world. The first time I heard the old folk song, “Sinner Man,” I got a vision of a story about the end of the universe.
What more is there to say?
O sinner-man, where are you going to run to?
O sinner-man, where are you going to run to?
O sinner-man, where are you going to run to
All on that day?
The ship was hurt, and Holman could feel its pain. He lay fetal-like in the contoured couch, his silvery uniform spider-webbed by dozens of contact and probe wires connecting him to the ship so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where his own nervous system ended and the electronic networks of the ship began.
Holman felt the throb of the ship’s mighty engines as his own pulse, and the gaping wounds in the generator section, where the enemy beams had struck, were searing his flesh. Breathing was difficult, labored, even though the ship was working hard to repair itself.
They were fleeing, he and the ship; hurtling through the star lanes to a refuge. But where?
The main computer flashed its lights to get his attention. Holman rubbed his eyes wearily and said:
“Okay, what is it?”
YOU HAVE NOT SELECTED A COURSE, the computer said aloud, while printing the words on its viewscreen at the same time.
Holman stared at the screen. “Just away from here,” he said at last. “Anyplace, as long as it’s far away.”
The computer blinked thoughtfully for a moment. SPECIFIC COURSE INSTRUCTION IS REQUIRED.
“What difference does it make?” Holman snapped. “It’s over. Everything finished. Leave me alone.”
