Chapter 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, Epilog

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Deep within the heart of Cheyenne Mountain, outside the city of Colorado Springs, General Kenneth Laskey watched the lines that represented American and Russian missiles veer off into space. Surrounded by other Air Force brass, he stared in wonder at the enormous screen in NORAD’s principal battle management center.

"It’s a miracle!" he thought to himself.

In addition to the ICBMs, all of the killer satellites in America’s strategic shield --- the satellites under his command --- were displayed as they moved slowly in orbit.

"Do we have numbers on the enemy ICBMs killed on the ground and during boost phase?" he asked a major general.

"We can get them," the subordinate officer replied, punching keys on the console before them.

A message materialized in the lower right quadrant of the big screen. General Laskey studied the numbers somberly. Zero percent on the ground was understandable. They had not activated the system until the enemy missiles were out of their silos. But the system was supposed to have destroyed more than 90 percent of all enemy ICBMs during boost phase! It had killed considerably less!

Kenneth Laskey wasn’t really surprised. The strategic shield was the most complex array of space hardware ever deployed by man. Yet the integrated command, control and operation of the entire system had never been fully tested! How could it have been? The only way to truly test it was to destroy the world!

They had of course ‘simulated’ various integrated scenarios with wonderfully complicated programs running on supercomputers. That had been where the optimistic figures had come from. But in many cases the results predicted by the modeling and simulation software had themselves never been compared with physical reality. Things such as the theoretical effects of hundreds of nuclear fireballs on communications had been ‘modeled’. And the ‘encouraging’ results had been used to justify continuing on with the program.

Laskey had kept his own counsel when the bright idea of ‘testing’ the untestable by simulating forbiddingly complex problems had cropped up on the strategic shield program. He had been a one star general at the time. He had toyed briefly with the idea of joining the host of experts who raised their voices against the folly of the entire concept. But that was not the way to get ahead. He’d held his silence, in part because the real issue didn’t appear to be whether the whole, incredibly expensive program made sense on technical grounds. The issue didn’t appear to be whether it would actually work. The objective had been to convince the American people (and their adversaries) that a nuclear exchange was survivable…that there was no real need to dismantle America’s nuclear arsenals. And it had been decided that the way to sell that idea was to put the whole business on big computers. The vast majority of the non-technically oriented public believed that if the computers said something then it must be so!

Later, when the hardware was in orbit and he had advanced in rank, Laskey assumed the role of spokesman and reported on the rosy outcomes predicted by the massive simulations. After a few years he himself had even begun to believe the predictions! Only now were they exposed for what they truly were: mostly electronic hand waving. He stared at the realities depicted on the big screen and understood why the word ‘disillusionment’ carried painful connotations.

"Let’s face it," he told himself, "the fact is that we decided the simulations were ‘working’ when they started giving us the numbers we were looking for."

Laskey thought of the enormous investment that had been made in the strategic shield.

"What might America have done with that much money?" he wondered. "Built a small city under a bubble on Mars? Launched the first manned ship to another star? And what if this miracle --- this UFO from another world --- had not intervened? At least one Russian gigaton warhead would in all likelihood have been detonating over Cheyenne Mountain within minutes. Everyone in the mountain, and all of their families in Colorado Springs, would be dead!"

"Shall I take it…shall I take the figures off the screen, sir?" the major general asked quietly.

"No, leave them up there," Laskey sighed. "Let’s see if they get any better."

Roberto Gomez watched the Earth rotate before him. The last of the enemy ICBMs had been deflected into the Sun, and the craft was apparently repositioning away from the North Pole.

"Where to now?" he asked aloud.

"The spacecraft is being moved back to Watson University," Thinker’s voice sounded.

By the time Thinker had replied, the motion of the Earth had stopped. They had arrived. As usual, Gomez had felt no sensation of motion.

"Are you coming aboard?" he asked.

"Yes," Thinker replied.

Gomez wondered when he would have to disembark. He didn’t want to ask…didn’t want the dream to end.

"If you would like you may spend the night on the ship with me," Thinker suggested, seeming to read his mind. "I plan to swing out through the Solar System tonight, to acclimate myself to the ship’s controls, so to speak."

"Yes! Yes, I would like that!" Gomez exclaimed.

"I will be boarding shortly after nightfall," Thinker said.

"Can we continue to talk?" Gomez asked. "Can I ask you some questions?"

"Yes," Thinker answered.

"Okay," Gomez began, gathering his thoughts. "For openers I guess I’m curious about the ship’s propulsion system. Does it require much energy?"

"Practically none," Thinker answered. "It is based upon the distortion of the ambient field. If the ship and the sources of the ambient field are viewed as a closed system, then the total momentum and energy of the entire system are conserved."

"Sort of like the slingshot effect used to accelerate space probes to the outer planets," Gomez speculated aloud.

"Very much like that," Thinker agreed. "But in the slingshot case the existing fields of the planets are exploited as they are. In the case of the spacecraft the fields are actually bent and focused at will."

"How is that done?" Gomez pressed.

"I don’t know," Thinker replied.

"You don’t?" Gomez exclaimed.

"That is correct," Thinker affirmed. "I haven’t been able to derive a mechanism for doing that, based on man’s existing theories about gravity."

"Still, there are cases…light can be polarized by a permanent magnet with no expenditure of energy…"

"Yes. It is an interesting problem."

"Do you think you’ll solve the puzzle?" Gomez inquired.

"Yes, I do," Thinker replied. "But I must perform experiments. It is quite possible that there are subtle effects not discerned and recorded in the literature by men. And, it is possible that human gravitational theory is incomplete. As your own work has shown, man’s theoretical explanation for the behavior of matter is still evolving."

"That’s very interesting," Gomez said. "Where do you plan to do these experiments?"

"Aboard the ship," Thinker replied. "There are presently eight RXT7 robots onboard. They’ll be used to perform experiments and to support David Osterlund and Susan Beckwith."

"Miss Beckwith is Osterlund’s fiancee?"

"Yes."

"Are there…laboratory facilities on the ship?"

"Yes. They are quite extensive. It appears that the ship was a research vessel."

"I’d certainly like to have a peek at some of that," Gomez suggested.

"That will be no problem," Thinker replied. "I will have one of the RXT7s take you on a tour before you leave the ship."

"How far away are you going? Can you say?" Gomez continued.

"Yes. Our destination is something more than two thousand light years away."

Gomez gasped. So far!

"And your…flight time?" he asked.

"About nine months of ship time."

Roberto Gomez grew silent. With time dilation, moving relative to the Earth at speeds close to the speed of light, David Osterlund and his companion would age less than a year during their trip. Yet, by the time they arrived at their destination more than two thousand years would have elapsed on Earth.

"Will man still be on the scene?" Gomez wondered to himself. "And if he is, what will he have evolved into?"

"We may have cracked the field perturbation problem by then," he said aloud, grinning.

"Possibly," Thinker replied. "I have already covered a good deal more ground, in the thought domain, than a billion physicists working the problem would in two thousand years. But I have done no experiments. And there is always luck…inspiration…"

Gomez blinked. In a rush he was reminded of whom…or what he was conversing with. It was easy to delude oneself when talking with Thinker…to slip into the comfortable illusion that one was talking with a peer.

"If mankind survives, what with genetic engineering and all, human beings may be quite altered, hopefully improved in two thousand years. Osterlund and his companion may be…outmoded by then. They will be what others of their kind were two thousand years in the past, once you have reached your destination."

"Yes, that is true," Thinker answered. "But their progeny will be much advanced, as you say."

"How so?" Gomez inquired.

"Their offspring will be genetically engineered."

"Hm-m-m, I see," Gomez replied, wondering now whether Osterlund’s children would in fact be advanced far beyond what man would become in two millennia. What might Thinker not accomplish if he took a crack at genetic engineering? Were David Osterlund and his young lady destined to found a race of super men?

"And you…what becomes of you?" Gomez asked circumspectly. "Do you ever…die?"

"Not if I can help it," Thinker answered.

Roberto Gomez’s face grew pensive. There was so much to think about! What wouldn’t he give to be the one chosen to accompany Thinker!

The return of the spacecraft to a point above the Watson campus was reported around the world. Billions were now aware of the events that had transpired above the North Pole. The American government and military were virtually under siege by the world press. Why had America initiated the exchange? What was the origin of the UFO? Was the danger past?

No one in the government was talking. The fact was that the danger was not yet past. Enormously destructive weapons still roamed the seas and the atmosphere, poised in the launch tubes of strategic submarines and in the bays of stealth bombers. Smaller ICBMs, mounted on mobile launchers, prowled nuclear reservations in both America and Russia. Kneecap with the President and key members of his cabinet aboard was still aloft, as was its Russian counterpart.

There was no guarantee that the crisis was over. Even Thinker could not predict with absolute certainty what the next twenty-four hours would bring. There were too many variables…too many potential twists and turns. Thinker accordingly had a contingency plan. If men unleashed the remainder of the world’s nuclear arsenals against one another during his trial run around the Solar System, and if David and Susan were lost in the ensuing holocaust, then Thinker would embark on his long journey with Roberto Gomez.

By dusk the campus of Watson University was largely deserted. Out on the golf course, however, crowds were gathering. Large generator trucks had been brought in and thick black power cables laced the ground. The major networks were again active at the site, and all of them were devoting exclusive coverage to the UFO. As darkness fell, the spacecraft could still be seen…a bright dot hovering out in space where there was still bright sunlight.

In the deserted engineering building the RXT7 clicked into action. It rolled out of the small lab and down to a vault in another part of the building. There was no need to experiment with the vault door’s combination. Thinker had obtained the combination from Wilfred Schulz’s brain. The RXT7 spun the dial and swung the heavy door of the vault open. Once inside, it opened a filing cabinet marked ‘TOP SECRET, PROJECT THINKER’. Two drawers in the file were filled with design documentation on Thinker, particularly the Executive Control Function.

The robot methodically removed all of the design information and destroyed it in shredders and degaussers. Then the RXT7 moved to a supply room and located a battery driven power supply. It carried the power pack back to the small lab where the auxiliary array pulsed. It placed the power supply on top of the array, shunted it into the main feeds in Thinker’s power box, and unplugged the box from wall power. It then fetched a forklift and transported Thinker out to a loading dock at the building’s rear.

High above, Roberto Gomez looked out upon the curved and cloud decorated surface of planet Earth. It was strange. It didn’t seem as if he was looking down at the Earth. The local gravitational field on the ship’s bridge pulled his body toward the floor in a comfortable and familiar way. The Earth, as a result, seemed to hover in space before him.

In a large chamber in another part of the ship an RXT7 moved toward a disc-shaped shuttle. Although small compared to the ship, the shuttle was nonetheless impressive. It was about thirty-five feet in diameter. As the robot approached, the craft levitated up revealing a round opening in its bottom. The robot moved under the opening and was itself levitated up into the craft. The hatch hissed shut and the robot settled gently to the floor. The RXT7 moved unerringly to the controls. The ship made a turn away from the mother ship and sped downward toward the Earth’s surface.

Back on the bridge Roberto Gomez gathered that Thinker was coming aboard. The shuttle descended rapidly through the dusk, directly toward the engineering building. It was detected by people out on the golf course only seconds before disappearing below the tree line. The TV crews frantically swung their cameras around, hoping that it might reappear. The newscasters excitedly reported on what they and others had briefly glimpsed.

"Is it near us?" Agnes Mellon asked anxiously, pressing against Charles in the warmth of their living room.

Charles Mellon leaned toward the TV set and studied the silhouettes on the horizon.

"If I had to guess, I’d say it came down in the engineering campus," he answered.

Above the engineering building’s loading dock the hatch in the bottom of the shuttle opened and the auxiliary array and attending RXT7 were levitated neatly up into the craft. The craft rose back up into the sky.

"There it is! There it is!" newscasters shouted in unison. "It appears to be returning to the large ship in space, from which it no doubt originated! We have no idea at this time why it came down to Earth!"

The phone next to the Mellon’s’ sofa rang. Charles Mellon picked it up, guessing who it would be.

"What do you think?" Wilfred Schulz’s voice asked.

Charles contemplated the scene on the TV.

"I think we just lost Thinker," he replied. "Where the heck do you suppose he was hiding?"

"Maybe he wasn’t," Schulz surmised. "Maybe he was right there in the lab all the time, but I couldn’t see him."

Mellon nodded and sucked on his pipe. What Schulz said made sense.

"Awesome!" he murmured.

Eleanor and Stan Beckwith’s dinner plans with David and Susan had collapsed before they arrived at Watson University. Following the developing events on their car radio, by the time they arrived at Watson they wanted only to find their daughter safely. Having done that they would decide what their next move should be.

The exchange between the nuclear superpowers was over by the time they arrived at the University Inn. Once in their room, Stan switched on the TV and he and Eleanor sat on the ends of the twin beds, still in their coats.

"Incredible!" Stan Beckwith exclaimed at length. "And now the thing is right up there!" Stan pointed up through the room’s ceiling with an index finger.

"I wish Susan would call," Eleanor complained. "I wish we were all together!"

Stan nodded and they continued watching the broadcast in silence. Occasionally he switched channels but this produced nothing new. It was clear that the media didn’t really know what was going on yet. At length he spoke again.

"I could use a drink. How about you?"

"Oh, Stan!" Eleanor cried, looking around the room. "I haven’t even unpacked yet!"

"You can do it now," he suggested. "I’ll call and have room service bring a bottle up."

"All right," Eleanor agreed, rising and unsnapping the suitcase that they shared. If she hurried she’d have things hanging in the closet before room service arrived.

Stan picked up the phone and ordered a bottle of Scotch and a bucket of ice. The phone beeped while he talked…someone was calling their room. It must be Susan.

"Hello…Hello?" his daughter’s voice said uncertainly.

"Susie!" he cried.

"Daddy! I was afraid there was a problem with the phone…"

"No, I was just ordering something from room service, Honey. Are you all right? Are you with David?"

"Yes, we’re fine," Susan reassured him. "You’re probably thinking we’ve picked a fine time to get married."

"Oh, gosh no. Who could have foretold that all of this was going to happen twenty-four hours ago?"

"Daddy, please don’t get excited, but…you haven’t heard the half of it! Should we come over now?"

"Absolutely!" Stan exclaimed. "Mom and I just ordered drinks and I’m getting some bright ideas. What say we have your wedding dinner here in our room?"

"That sounds divine," Susan answered. "We’ll be there in twenty minutes or so."

"Okay, Honey. We’re so glad that you’re OK. And David too. Love you!"

Stan Beckwith hung the phone up. Eleanor’s face was relaxed again and she was humming. Stan raised the volume on the set and shrugged out of his coat. Room service knocked as he was hanging it in the closet.

*

When David and Susan arrived, Eleanor and Susan hugged and squealed and hugged again in proper female fashion. Stan shook David’s hand and offered him a drink. After things had settled down, Stan turned the volume on the TV down and asked Susan to enlighten them. Susan said that it would be best if David started. David uneasily crossed his legs and related the same chronology of events that he had told to Susan the night before. He left nothing out except the telepathy part. Susan took over at the point where the two of them had been invited to Thinker’s lab. Noting David’s omission of the telepathy phenomenon, she implied that Thinker had talked to them via David’s communicator. David produced the device for all to gape at.

Susan related how Thinker had shown them pictures of the spacecraft, and finally how Thinker had invited them to accompany him to a new world. And…she told them that she and David had decided to go.

"Well! That’s quite a story," Stan Beckwith exclaimed when Susan had finished.

"Not a story, Daddy. Truth." Susan admonished.

"Oh yes, yes, Baby, I know," her father added hastily. "I didn’t mean ‘story’ in that sense. I believe you, all right. But surely you’re not serious about this trip to another world fantas…business!"

"Yes," Susan said quietly, fixing her large eyes on her father. "I am."

Eleanor Beckwith laid a hand on her husband’s forearm.

"Set the communicator on top of the TV and switch it to channel 3," Thinker sounded in the minds of David and Susan. Susan looked at David in surprise. Had her parents heard? Apparently not.

"Are you going to communicate through the set?" David asked silently. Amazingly, Susan heard David’s words in her own mind.

"I heard you!" she thought, and her own words sounded in David’s mind. He looked at her with a trace of a smile, and nodded slightly. This was something new! Thinker answered his question.

"Yes," the voice sounded in both of their minds.

David again looked at Susan’s parents.

"I’m going to try something," he said, rising. "I’m going to see if we can get Thinker to communicate to all of us through the TV."

David walked over to the set and placed the communicator on top of it. He switched to channel 3, which was at first all snow and hissing noise. Suddenly the hissing stopped and Thinker came into focus on the screen.

"Good afternoon, Mr. And Mrs. Beckwith, a voice said from the set. "This is all no doubt a little strange to you, and perhaps even farfetched, but I assure you that it is all true."

Stan Beckwith stared at the screen in disbelief.

"Well I’ll be!" he muttered.

"That’s him…it?" he asked David, nodding at the screen.

"Yes," David answered.

David and Susan had not been watching the news coverage and were unaware that Thinker was onboard the spacecraft.

"Where are you, Thinker?" David asked aloud.

"He’s on board the UFO!" Stan Beckwith exclaimed.

"Yes, that is correct," Thinker affirmed from the TV. "Would you like to see some parts of the actual ship? I can relay images from the RXT7 pattern recognition systems. There are eight robots onboard with me.

"Yes. Can you show Mr. and Mrs. Beckwith some of the human habitat?" David answered.

"Certainly," Thinker said.

The scenes that David and Susan had seen as schematics the night before were now repeated in color. Susan narrated, telling her mother excitedly that this was the food preparation system, this the entertainment lounge, this the library, and so on.

When Thinker showed the ship’s bridge, David started in his chair. Someone was onboard!

"Who is that?" Susan cried, as the stranger turned smiling toward the robot. David recognized the face immediately.

"It’s Roberto Gomez," he said quietly. "He’s a Nobel Laureate in physics."

"Dr. Gomez was taken aboard in Washington," Thinker explained. "He was an eyewitness to the deflection of nuclear warheads above the North Pole."

"So that’s who it was!" Stan Beckwith murmured.

"Yes, Mr. Beckwith. And aside from Dr. Gomez himself, the four of you are the only people on Earth who know that person’s identity at this time," Thinker said.

"Is he…going with us?" David asked anxiously.

"No," Thinker replied. "Dr. Gomez will leave the ship tomorrow morning before you and Susan board it."

"So we’ll be the only two human beings who accompany you?" Susan asked.

"Yes, Susan," Thinker affirmed.

"There are scenes in the ship computer’s data banks of the planet we will travel to. Would you like to see some of them?" Thinker asked.

David looked at Susan’s parents. Stan Beckwith took his wife’s hand in his and, with a sober expression, nodded at David.

"Yes, that would be very interesting!" David said.

A sequence of pictures followed showing great, grassy savannas, forests, and tranquil beaches on the shores of shimmering blue seas. Above, a sun shone in the sky.

"But that’s Earth!" Stan Beckwith exclaimed.

"No, Mr. Beckwith. It is very much like Earth," Thinker replied. "But the planet that you are looking at actually orbits a distant star. As you can see, some of the fauna are similar to forms found on planet Earth."

The picture on the screen zoomed in on some dark spots, sprinkled out on the grassy plain. The four people in the hotel room stared mutely at the screen. A herd of beasts, apparently quite large, grazed contentedly. They resembled bison, but had small heads with long, curved horns.

"Intelligent?" David queried, eyeing the TV set in fascination.

"Not very," Thinker replied. "We will be the only truly intelligent beings on the planet when we arrive."

David and Susan spent the rest of the evening with Susan’s parents. They changed their plans once again and had dinner in the University Inn’s dining room. By the time they returned to the hotel room, the networks were covering the return if Kneecap. No official word was yet given about the United States’ preemptive strike against the Russians, except for one cryptic remark from the President: ‘I didn’t order it!’

There were rumors that a robot had been found at Missile Command headquarters in Omaha, next to the computer that assembled and transmitted the war order messages to the MX reservations. But nothing was confirmed yet. The unidentified source of the rumor had reportedly said that no one had any idea how the robot had gotten into the secure communications center at Missile Command. Unknown to that party the two colonels who had seen the brigadier general leading a robot into the headquarters building had an appointment with Missile Command’s commander at 10 a.m.

Eleanor Beckwith tried to talk Susan into spending the night with her and her husband. They could have a cot brought into their hotel room, she explained. But Susan laughingly declined. After Susan and David had said their goodnights, Stan and Eleanor got into their bedclothes and continued to watch TV from bed. The fantastic story that they had heard from David and Susan, coupled with everything else, drew them together. At dinner Stan Beckwith had excused himself for a moment and had slipped out to the lounge area at the Inn’s entrance. There was a TV set there, being watched only by the desk clerk. Stan had walked gingerly over to the set and switched it to channel 3.

"Excuse me just a moment, would you?" he said. "I just want to try something."

Channel 3 produced only snow and a hissing noise.

"Three is a dead channel in these parts," the desk clerk declared.

"Yes…yes, it is in our hometown too," Stan had replied, switching the set back to the previous channel. "Sorry to have disturbed you."

Now in bed, Eleanor spoke to her husband.

"Is it true, Stan? Are we saying goodbye to our girl tomorrow…perhaps forever?"

Stan was silent for several moments. Never a deep thinker in the past, the revelations of the last few hours had opened floodgates within his mind. He had been having thoughts that startled and excited him. They were thoughts that, had he heard them suggested by someone else only yesterday, he would have dismissed as one more irreverent stupidity of the sacrilegious age they lived in.

At length he answered his wife.

"Yes, Sweetheart, I think it is true," he said quietly. "Something marvelous is happening…something that men will be talking about a thousand years from now!"

"But why our Susan? Why was she chosen?" Eleanor persisted

"Who knows?" Stand answered. "I guess because he likes her…loves her."

"Who?" Eleanor demanded.

"David," Stan said.

"Oh," Eleanor replied, apparently relieved.

Their conversation was interrupted by the excited voice of the newscaster. The spacecraft had just departed again, straight up. They were getting tracking information now. It was approaching the outer reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. There! It had accelerated to tremendous speeds! It was going…going…it was lost from radar tracking.

Eleanor looked at Stan with wide eyes.

"Maybe they won’t be going after all!" she hoped aloud.

Stan smiled weakly, but didn’t offer much encouragement. The ship had left before and had returned.

"We’ll wait and see," he answered gently.

*

David’s phone rang not long after he and Susan returned to his room.

"Davie!" a familiar, rough voice greeted. "Your mother and I got here about an hour ago! We’re out in a motel on University Road."

"Joe!" Great!" David cried back, smiling broadly. Joe Dantas was the man who had raised David since he was twelve. David’s father had died suddenly when he was nine and one evening, two years later, his mother had brought a homely, swarthy man with bush eyebrows and kind eyes home for dinner. He and David had hit it off immediately. Joe Dantas had lost his own father when still a boy, and had emigrated from Greece with his mother. Although he possessed little formal education in mathematics, Joe had a talent for logic that seems to be shared by so many of his native countrymen. David’s mother had brought him home frequently in the months that followed, and he and David quickly developed a set of mathematical games that they played with pencil and paper at the kitchen table. Joe and David’s mother had married a year later.

"Did you want to get together tonight?" Joe asked.

"Gosh, I don’t know, Joe. You guys must be tired after your drive. How about breakfast in the morning?"

"Sounds good, Davie. You know any good joints?"

"A few," David grinned into the receiver.

"Hold it, Davie. Your mother’s pulling the phone away from me."

David’s mother came on the line and she and David chatted awhile. David promised that he and Susan would meet them in the motel’s dining room at 7 a.m. the next morning. David told his mother nothing about their plans to leave Earth the next day. It would all sort itself out at the ceremony out on the golf course.

Later, when he and Susan snuggled against each other in bed, Susan wondered what was to become of all of her stuff…and his too.

"It’ll all get taken care of" David mused, "just like it does when somebody gets killed in a car accident or something like that."

"Or a spaceship," Susan murmured.

"No, I don’t think so," he comforted. "Quite honestly, I feel safer about the ship and Thinker than I would about staying here."

"Yes, me too" she agreed, again surprising David.

"Do you realize that tonight is the last night we’ll spend on planet Earth…that tomorrow ‘night’ we’ll sleep in some high tech habitat beyond our wildest dreams?"

Susan drew more closely against him but didn’t answer.

"Doesn’t it all seem a little unreal to you?" David asked. "Will it ever actually become real?"

"Yes," Susan answered simply. "It’s all been real for me since I realized that what you were telling me was true. The moment Thinker communicated with me telepathically, I knew it was all real."

"Peanut, Peanut," David murmured in the darkness.

"Exactly," Susan agreed. "From that moment I was ready to accept…and go along with anything."

"Did you know that I briefly considered calling the whole thing off last night?" David asked.

"No. But I’m not surprised. I think that’s only natural."

"What would you have done if I had?" David continued.

Susan squeezed his arm.

"I’d have gone along with you," she replied. "But I’m glad you decided that we should go."

David smiled.

"That’s what I figured," he said.

He turned his head toward the window. The silhouette of a majestic oak tree lay etched against the back glow of campus lights.

"The last night of sleep on planet Earth," he sighed.

"Or of love," Susan whispered, raising her face and kissing him gently on the throat.

"David."

The quiet voice in David’s mind woke him with a start. Susan lay facing away from him, her rump pressed against him. David tried to read his watch in the darkness.

"It’s 5:30," Thinker’s voice spoke softly in David’s mind. "You forgot to set your alarm clock and I thought I should wake you."

"Yes. Yes, thanks," David thought, remembering their breakfast date. "You’re back!"

"Yes," Thinker replied. "I took the spacecraft for a shakedown cruise around the solar system. Everything appears to be in working order."

"Is Dr. Gomez still aboard?" David asked silently.

"Yes. He has seen many novel things."

"Did you…set down on any other planets?"

"Yes. On Venus and Uranus. And we descended to the surface of Jupiter and skimmed the rings of Saturn."

David reflected on Gomez’s experience in silence. He felt a mild sense of pique at not having been the first man…

"But what he has seen is only a hint of what awaits you and Susan," Thinker added gently.

"Yes! Well, we’d better get going," David thought. "I guess you know that we’re getting married at 10a.m. on the golf course."

"Yes," Thinker replied.

"Do you have any definite plans…schedules?" David continued

"Roberto Gomez will leave the craft at 10:30," Thinker answered. "And you and Susan will board at 11:00."

David nodded his head imperceptibly in the darkness. Suddenly he was again awash with reservations and doubts.

"I hope that we’re doing the right thing," he thought.

"I believe that you are," Thinker replied. "My confidence in the ship is very high."

"After two thousand years…" David marveled.

"Yes. It’s a remarkably advanced piece of technology," Thinker answered. "I’ve studied the specs, but the RXT7s haven’t been everywhere in the ship yet, so I haven’t viewed everything first hand."

The back of David’s neck tingled.

"What if they’re still aboard?" David wondered, meaning the original occupants.

"I doubt that they are," Thinker answered. "There are sensors on the ship. I detected no signs of life aside from Roberto Gomez."

David remembered something that had occurred to him the previous evening.

"The nuclear exchange…" he thought. "Did you…did we precipitate that?"

"Yes," Thinker replied.

David’s eyes widened. Had he unwittingly been a party to bringing the Earth to the brink of destruction? It occurred to him that, as Thinker’s creator, it was now his duty to get the system away from mankind! And, he realized vexedly, Thinker knew that he had just had that thought!

"Don’t be angry with me, David," the gentle voice sounded. "I cannot be less than I am. None of us can halt the unraveling thread of history. We must work with what comes our way. Look on the bright side. One day, if you choose, you will be able to do all of things I do…perhaps even more."

"Yes," David sighed inwardly. "That may be true. It’s just that…in only a few days everything has turned around. My invention has come to essentially own me…body and soul."

"I am you, David. I am what you will become. The part of you that feels beleaguered and put upon now is only a small corner of the total you. One day you will see that."

David’s mind grappled with the implications of Thinker’s words. He knew that Thinker was right. Like a toddler, mankind was only now taking the first steps along the path of reasoning. How lucky he, David Osterlund, personally was! He and Susan would eventually leap forward into unimagined new dimensions of thought eons before other human beings would, if indeed they ever would! It was the dream of Solomon in all its glory!

Susan stirred beside him, snapping him out of his reverie.

"Well! We’d better get going!" he thought again, switching the communicator TALK button off and switching the bedside lamp on.

David and Susan showered and drove out to the large motel where David’s parents were lodged. They arrived before seven and took a seat in the still largely deserted dining room. At a few minutes past seven David’s mother and his stepfather came in and caught sight of them.

Susan had never met David’s folks, and there was the usual inspection, masked by gay chatter and breathless laughter between the two women. Joe took quick stock of Susan and shook his head approvingly at David.

"You know how to pick ‘em, Davie," he grinned, shaking David’s hand and clapping him on the shoulder.

David had told Susan of his plans not to tell his parents about Thinker and the spacecraft until they were out on the golf course. He was convinced that that was the best way, but couldn’t help feeling slightly hypocritical throughout breakfast. It was difficult to believe that this was essentially it…these were the last hours he would spend with the woman who had borne him.

David studied his mother candidly. He had always sensed there was more to her than she let on…that there was an intelligence which, by conscious choice, had been cloaked in laid back femininity. Joe was clever in his way. Yet there was no doubt in David’s mind that his mother was more intelligent. He wondered if the same was true of himself and Susan. Would Thinker, who had no earthly peer in the logic domain, have extended the invitation if Susan had not been part of the package?

David looked at his fruitcup and smiled, toying with the chunks of citrus. His mother’s face was marvelously relaxed. It had not always been so. After the death of his father things had been pretty grim. David understood now that it was not because she had been forced to go back to work. She had continued working even after remarrying. It was clear that she liked working. It had simply been that for her, as he guessed for many women, life without a man was no life at all.

What a difference this homely, big-hearted Greek had made. David glanced up at the man who had been his surrogate father for more than half of his life. Joe, as if tuned into his thoughts, was already looking at him. Joe’s scalp jerked forward as his eyes smiled. David smiled back and looked down again, spooning some of the fresh fruit into his mouth. He had never really thanked Joe for all he had done for him…and for his mother.

"So little time…suddenly," he thought with a sigh.

They finished breakfast and David tried to take the check, but Joe would have none of that.

"Save your money for the honeymoon!" Joe admonished. "Incidentally, you two haven’t said anything about that yet. Are you taking one?

David glanced at Susan.

"Yes, I think it’s safe to say we are," he answered.

"Terrific!" Joe cried. "Where’re you goin’? Have you decided on anyplace yet?"

"Wel-l-l," David replied. "I guess you could say we’re not absolutely definite yet. But it’ll be some distance away and exotic!"

"Hawaii!" Joe whispered loudly to David’s mother.

*

David and Susan, followed by David’s parents, drove to the Inn and collected Susan’s parents. The convivial and awkward introductions were performed in the Inn’s lobby and the entire party left for the campus. They arrived at the golf course well before 10 a.m. but were glad to have the time. The entire golf course was swamped with people. David had arranged for the university chaplain to meet them at the first tee at 9:45. As the six of them made their way to the appointed site, they passed network news trucks and gathered from the monitors and the cameras trained at the sky that the craft was again above the Watson campus.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Joe. He quickened his pace, drawing abreast of David.

"Davie," he asked candidly as they made their way through the crowd, "is there any connection between this UFO and you two getting married out here on the golf course?"

"Yes, there is, Joe," David answered, glancing sideways at his stepfather. "Susan and I will be…taking our honeymoon cruise…to a new life aboard that ship."

Joe studied David’s face incredulously. David glanced at him again, unsmiling. There was a hint of pain in his eyes. Joe realized that David meant it. He could think of nothing to say and nodded his head up and down slowly, dropping back and taking David’s mother by the hand.

"What was that all about?" she asked.

"I was just wondering why they’re getting married out here on the golf course," Joe answered.

"And why are they?" she pressed.

Joe pointed up toward the sky but said nothing.

"Oh," she concluded, assuming that only God knew the answer.

Susan was the first to spot the chaplain as they neared the first tee. He was introduced to the parents, and then took David and Susan aside.

"Do you still want to hold the ceremony out here?" he inquired, smiling at Susan. "You’re not concerned that the ship up there isn’t going to steal the show?"

"No! Yes!" she answered. "We want to do it out here!"

"All right," the chaplain continued. "We don’t have much time, but that’s all right. I always try to give each young couple a piece of practical advice. It seems simple. Yet I don’t know of any marriage that hasn’t benefited when the couple took it."

The chaplain paused and looked at them both benevolently.

"The advice is, simply, to pay as you go for the first ten years of your marriage. Overcome the temptation to borrow money for every little thing."

David and Susan laughed nervously.

"That’s good advice, Dr. Ameron, and I can promise you that we intend to take it," David said.

The chaplain looked at David and Susan with smiling but nonplused eyes. Clearly there was something he didn’t know! Ah, well…

The party moved back toward David and Susan’s parents. All of them moved out to the first tee.

"David!" a familiar voice cried out. "What’s up? We’ve been trying to get in touch with you!"

Charles Mellon and Wilfred Schulz approached the party through the crowd.

"Professor Mellon!" Professor Schulz!" I’m getting married! Would you care to be witnesses?"

Charles Mellon stared at David, mouth agape. He looked at Susan and nodded, a lopsided smile pulling at his face.

"Yes, of course," he answered. "We’d be honored."

"Excuse me. Did you say you were getting married? Out here? Right now?"

David looked around at the small character tugging at his sleeve.

"Steve Manucko, UPI," the little man identified himself.

"Yes, that’s right, we’re being married," David affirmed nervously, and turned back to the others.

The little man turned aside, pulling a cell phone from the pocket of his coat and speaking into it excitedly. By the time David, Susan and the other members of the wedding party were in position at the first tee, several mobile, shoulder-carried network cameras were broadcasting the ceremony around the world. Never in history would a marriage be witnessed by more people. David’s eleventh hour congregation of two had swelled to billions!

Dr. Ameron opened the book he carried and looked commandingly at those pressing in around the small party.

"Sh-h-h!" rippled through the crowd. A hush fell over the first tee. Dr. Ameron fixed his gaze at David and Susan and then looked down at the book.

"Dearly beloved," he began, eliciting an audible sob from Eleanor Beckwith.

After saying their vows, David and Susan embraced and David kissed his new bride ardently. A huge roar went up from the crowd. In addition to the hundreds pressing in around the first tee, thousands watched the large, four-sided monitors mounted on the roofs of the major network vans.

Professor Mellon stepped forward and shook David’s hand.

"Congratulations, David," he grinned, looking toward Susan.

"Susan, this is Professor Mellon, of whom I’ve often spoken," David laughed.

"Yes, indeed you have," Susan smiled, shaking Charles Mellon’s hand warmly.

David also introduced his old mentor, Wilfred Schulz, and was in the process of introducing the two men to their parents when a shriek sounded out in the crowd.

"It’s coming down again!" a woman screamed. All eyes looked up in time to see the spacecraft descending rapidly out of the bright, morning sky.

The networks all switched over to their big, telescopic cameras. The spacecraft stopped at an altitude of a thousand feet…high enough so that the ring of intensified field at ground level circled the crowds at a safe distance.

Roberto Gomez waited anxiously in the familiar, small chamber that he had entered the previous day in the nation’s capital. Beads of perspiration materialized on his forehead. He hoped that there would be no snafus.

"Relax, Dr. Gomez," Thinker’s voice sounded in his mind. "You’ll be fine. And remember to tell them what you’ve seen…what awaits them."

Gomez’s face contorted in astonishment. He realized immediately the significance of words that he heard only in his mind, and he correctly guessed how it was done. No wonder Thinker had correctly answered so many unspoken questions during their time together! Another one occurred to him now.

"Yes," Thinker replied in his thoughts. "It is our primary way of communicating with one another."

Tears welled up in Gomez’s eyes. How he wanted to go with them…to spend the rest of his life at the feet of this fabulous being that could literally read men’s minds!

Gomez felt the familiar lightness in his innards. His slippered feet lifted slightly off the floor of the small chamber and a hatch beneath him hissed open.

"Take me with you!" he cried one final time above the wind buffeting the hatch.

"No, my friend, you are needed here on Earth," the quiet voice answered. "When you arrive back at Cal Tech, a letter of explanation will await you. It is a gift."

"Explanation of what?" Gomez cried in his thoughts.

"Of Planck’s Constant," the voice answered. And then Gomez was out of the ship and descending toward the golf course.

The news crews were beside themselves. All speculated that this must be the mystery man who had been taken up into the ship in Washington.

"Dr. Gomez," David murmured.

"Who? Who?" Charles Mellon whispered hoarsely.

"Roberto Gomez," David repeated. "I imagine he’s going to have some wild stories to tell you all."

"Us all?" Charles Mellon asked, casting a puzzled look at David.

"Yes," David answered, turning toward Mellon and Schulz. "Susan and I will be leaving on the ship…for a new life in a distant star system."

Charles Mellon stared at David wordlessly. He was absolutely certain by this point that David was speaking the truth.

"With Thinker?" Charles asked meekly.

"Yes," David smiled, "Thinker decided to find a less frantic home for himself…and for us."

Wilfred Schulz stepped forward and took David’s hand in his own. His face was flushed.

"I’ll miss you, David," he said.

"Me too, sir," David answered a little shakily.

Charles Mellon took David’s hand next.

"So much," he murmured, "in so few days. We’ll spend the rest of our lives thinking about it all."

David pursed his lips and nodded soberly, pumping Charles hand. A twinkle flickered in Charles’ eye.

"Will you be able to write, figuratively speaking?" he asked. The three men laughed together one last time.

"Probably," David smiled. "But I can’t guarantee you’ll all still be here to answer."

"By the way, where was he? Where was Thinker when we looked for him?" Schulz asked.

"He was right in the lab. But he screened you from seeing him," David explained.

"That’s what we thought," Charles said.

"Has he…affected you in any way?" Wilfred Schulz asked.

David looked up at the spacecraft. He reached into his pocket and verified that the communicator’s TALK switch was still on.

"Yes, he certainly has," David’s voice sounded in the minds of Wilfred Schulz and Charles Mellon.

Both men instantly guessed the significance of what had just happened. They stared bug-eyed at David.

"Well I’ll be," Charles muttered.

"Goodbye, Dr. Mellon, Dr. Schulz," David said aloud, shaking their hands one final time. "It’s been an honor. And to tell the truth, it’s been great fun!"

David turned away and embraced his mother. Mellon and Schulz backed away into the crowd.

"You heard it?" Mellon asked Schulz.

"Yes," Schulz replied. "Everything worked out just like Thinker wanted, didn’t it? How could it be otherwise?"

The crowd parted as Roberto Gomez descended to the ground. In detached fascination a small corner of his mind realized that there was no question about where he should go once he was on the ground. Smiling and nodding at the people who parted and opened a path for him, he made his way to the first tee. David caught sight of him as he emerged from the crowd.

"Dr. Gomez," David smiled. Gomez shook David’s hand and his face crinkled into a smile.

"You must be David Osterlund," he replied. "And this is your lovely fiancee, Miss Beckwith?" he asked, turning toward Susan.

"Wife," David corrected.

"Ah hah!" Gomez amended, spotting the clerical collar on the school chaplain. "What a nice day for a wedding! I understand that you two are going on quite a trip."

"You’ve had a bit of a ride yourself, so we’re told," David countered.

"Yes," Gomez said, his eyes glazing over as if he had slipped away from them for a moment. "Yes, quite a ride. But nothing compared with what’s in store for you and Miss…Mrs. Osterlund."

Roberto Gomez snapped out of his reverie as quickly as he’d lapsed into it. He studied David Osterlund for an instant. So this was the young slam dunker who’d actually conceived of Thinker!

"It’s time to go," Thinker’s voice sounded in the minds of David and Susan. David turned toward Susan. Her eyes were opened wide and the pupils were dilated. She turned to her parents.

"Goodbye, Mommy," she cried, throwing her arms around Eleanor Beckwith’s neck and suddenly weeping.

"Stan! Stan!" Eleanor cried to her husband. "We’re not letting you go!" Eleanor growled, grasping Susan’s face in her hands and looking into the tearful eyes.

"Oh, Mommy, I have to go," Susan sobbed, turning toward her father. Stan Beckwith’s own eyes brimmed with both sadness and great joy.

"Daddy understands, don’t you?" Susan said, wrapping her arms around her father’s neck.

"Yes, Baby, yes I do!" Stan Beckwith groaned, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"Take care of yourself, Honey," he whispered, kissing his daughter and squeezing her one last time.

"David, what is it?" David’s mother asked him, taking in the scene between Susan and her parents with bewildered eyes.

"Susan and I are going away, Mom, on the ship," David explained.

"But how can that be?" she cried in an alarmed voice.

David hugged her to himself and looked down into her pretty, blue eyes.

"It’s a long story, Mom. We haven’t much time. In the next few days call Dr. Charles Mellon here at Watson. Can you remember that? Dr. Charles Mellon?"

David glanced at Joe and Joe nodded.

"Got it, Davie," he said roughly.

"But where will you go?" his mother asked anxiously. "And when will you be back?"

"A long way, to a new world," David said. By the time we get there, there’ll be no coming back. But you’ll be in my thoughts always."

David hugged his mother again. She looked at her husband with puzzled eyes. Joe could only shrug back at her.

"Joe," David said, turning to his stepfather with outstretched hand. Joe took the hand and tried to smile, but his face contorted in pain. He gave David’s hand a mighty tug and wrapped his arms around him in a bear hug.

"Goodbye, Son," he whispered to David.

David was suddenly overcome with emotion.

"Goodbye, Dad," he whispered back. "Take care of Mom."

"I will, Davie. You can count on it."

*

David and Susan worked their way through the crowd. No one was sure what was happening. The TV mobile newsmen crowded around Roberto Gomez, firing questions at him.

"Later! Later!" he admonished them. "You’re missing the real story!"

"What? What’s the real story?" they shouted.

"Watch!" Gomez answered, nodding toward the spaceship.

Something told David and Susan to stop. A vague question of how it was all going to work flickered through David’s thoughts. People jostled and crowded them from all sides. But then, suddenly, as if on cue, the crowd began to move back and away from them, leaving them standing alone in a sea of humanity. No one knew why they were doing it. One young man cried out.

"They’re the ones that just got married!"

"That’s why we’re moving back, then," the others thought.

"Relax, this won’t hurt," the voice sounded in David’s and Susan’s minds. And then they were airborne, arm in arm. Susan gasped and reached down, pulling her dress tightly against her legs. David looked out over the sea of faces and then up at the shining sphere.

A great hush fell over the crowd. Even the newscasters were all but silent, wondering in whispers to their worldwide audiences what was happening now. Back at the first tee Eleanor Beckwith buried her face in her husband’s chest and he wrapped his arms around her consolingly. Higher and higher the couple rose into the air. And then they were through the yawning hatch looming above. The TV cameras zoomed in and the world watched the hatch snap shut. The spacecraft hovered for a few minutes and then suddenly rotated, exposing a bubble of slightly different hue to the ground. Roberto Gomez smiled knowingly and nodded. They’d be on the bridge now. He raised his hand unobtrusively and waved one last time.

"Goodbye, David Osterlund," he whispered. "And God speed!"

The great craft suddenly began to shrink in size.

"It’s leaving…leaving again!" the newscasters chattered hoarsely. "It’s picking up speed rapidly…"

Charles Mellon lowered his eyes from the sky and looked at his friend. Schulz returned his gaze.

"Can I buy you a coffee?" Mellon asked.

"I could use one," Schulz answered, and the two made their way through the crowd, out to Mellon’s car.

Mellon and Schulz didn’t say much once they were back in Mellon’s office. Halfway through their second cup of coffee, the intercom on Charles’ desk buzzed.

"There are two gentlemen from the FBI here to see you," Annie said.

Charles cast a surprised look at Schulz.

"What now?" he muttered. He leaned toward the intercom and told Annie to send them in.

Inspector Ames and Special Agent Krueger introduced themselves, producing identification for Charles and Schulz to examine. They explained that they were there to acquire all of the design data on the Thinker project. They’d been ordered to secure it under armed guard until it was transported to Washington.

"Any problem with that, Willie?" Charles asked.

Wilfred Schulz shook his head.

"There’s probably four or five boxes full of material," Schulz told the Inspector.

"That’s no problem, sir. We have a van waiting outside," Inspector Ames explained.

The four men drove over to the engineering campus in the van. Schulz led the way into the building and opened the vault. Once inside, they moved to the back of the room. Schulz gasped and moved to the rifled filing cabinet. The drawers were all pulled out and empty.

"Gone!" he said to Mellon.

Charles glanced around the room, noticing the full hoppers under the shredders.

"Thinker?" he said to Schulz, nodding to the shredders and degaussers.

Schulz moved to the shredders and buried his hand up to the elbow in the hopper full of confetti.

"It looks like it," he said.

"Everything!" Mellon muttered.

Schulz nodded his head somberly up and down.

"Apparently so," he replied.

*

Inspector Ames asked Mellon and Schulz to come into the city, to the FBI offices.

"Are we under arrest?" Charles asked.

"Not yet," the Inspector countered. "We need to hear your story."

Downtown Charles and Schulz were kept waiting for twenty minutes or so while Inspector Ames talked with the Bureau in Washington. He then escorted them into his office and a lengthy question and answer period ensued. Mellon and Schulz held nothing back. When they told about the telepathic incident the inspector blinked at them indignantly. But he allowed them to finish. The long and the short of it, in the opinions of Mellon and Schulz, was that the machine itself, using one of the RXT7s, had destroyed all of its own design data. Neither Schulz nor Mellon thought that David Osterlund had anything to do with it. Not that any of that mattered now.

"How did the robot get into the vault?" the Inspector demanded.

"Probably read the combination from my mind," Schulz shrugged.

Inspector Ames frowned. This was impossible! Yet he’d been instructed by Washington to treat these two with kid gloves.

"Can we build another one without the design data?" he asked the professors.

Charles Mellon crossed his leg and attempted to answer.

"We can certainly build the hardware again," he said. "But the executive programming…I don’t know. That was David Osterlund’s baby. And he was a unique young guy. I’ve never known anyone quite like him. How about you, Willie?"

"Never," Schulz agreed.

"I don’t know if we could," Charles continued. "There were thousands upon thousands of lines of program. No one but David really got into it. He made a tremendous effort, going flat out. It’s difficult to believe that anyone else could duplicate that without design information. I doubt if I could…I know I couldn’t! Maybe I’m getting old…tired. I don’t know."

It was after 8 p.m. when Schulz and Mellon were returned to the campus. They had been served sandwiches at the FBI offices, and had called their wives telling them they’d be late getting home. Back on the steps of the computer sciences building Mellon turned to Schulz.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"Might as well," Schulz answered, and the two men entered the chairman’s suite.

Annie had cleaned the coffee machine and shut things down for the day. Together Mellon and Schulz figured out how to brew a fresh pot. They took the cups into Charles’ office and drank them in silence. At length Charles set his empty cup down and strode toward the light switch.

"Mind if I turn the lights out?" he asked.

"No, go ahead," Schulz answered.

Charles turned the lights out and moved to one of the large windows looking out over the campus. Schulz rose quietly and moved to another.

It was a clear night and the sky was filled with stars. Charles jingled the change in his pocket.

"Ah, Willie, I’m singing the blues tonight," he sighed.

Schulz nodded silently, studying the heavens.

"David, David, where do you go?" Charles wondered aloud. "What strange and wonderful adventures await you and your lady fair?"

Wilfred Schulz’s eyes stung. He felt a lump in his throat and was surprised to feel a tear squeeze out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t bother to brush it away there in the darkness.

"When will we see his like again, Willie? Tell me when."

"I don’t know," Schulz replied huskily. "Perhaps never."

"Who knows," Mellon continued. "Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe we’re not ready for the likes of Thinker. Maybe we never will be. Maybe it’s best if we stumble along on our own, dumb and contentious though we know ourselves to be. Maybe we can’t tolerate playing second fiddle."

"Yes," Schulz answered, heaving a mighty sigh and squinting up at the countless stars.

"Yes, perhaps you’re right."