Shards: Echo

Shards: Echo

An acceleration couch is not the best place to rest. Denis had begun to realize this half an hour ago, and now, an hour in, the ache in his swollen limbs had become unbearable. Mission Control was silent. Launch delays happened, but this was almost unheard of. An hour had passed, which meant the window allotted for Denis's starship to jump had long since closed. He was late, and being late meant penalties. For the hundredth time Denis tried to reach Control. Nothing. It was outrageous: the hemispheres primed, energy burning, expensive equipment wearing out… Someone was definitely going to pay for this! What on earth had happened down there? Breaking regulations, he switched on the radio scanner. Among the static and the broadcasts of thousands of stations sounded something worse than any delay or penalty.

War. West and East. The Northern Alliance and the Islamists. Denis's palms began to sweat. A voice in his headset brought him back to his senses: an angry voice in a language he didn't know, ordering, demanding and, it seemed, threatening. On the radar, three objects were closing in a wedge. There was no time even to panic. Denis slammed the launch button with all his strength. Everything swam.

The ship emerged ten light-years from Earth. Denis checked the instruments: the position matched the flight plan, and there was no one around. Suddenly the radio began picking up signals, one after another. Melodies of the recent past began to play. The music filled the pilot's head, and with it came bleak thoughts. His mission had lost all meaning, and so had any return to Earth. Surely someone had survived down there, but the outcome of the war was unknown, and he would rather die than be a prisoner of the Islamists. Countless television programs had told him about the ways of those savages. Denis wanted to scream, to cry, to smash everything around him. A news bulletin came on, mostly about the terrorist threat. Denis switched the radio off. There had been a time, surely, when none of this existed, when people worried about other questions and other problems.

A thought that had seemed completely insane now drew him in more and more. He set to work on the autopilot: a series of jumps would carry him seventy light-years from Earth; the fuel would allow no more. Ignoring the computer's warnings that return would be impossible, Denis worked for two hours like a man possessed. Then, as if afraid he might change his mind, he climbed quickly into the cocoon of the acceleration couch and struck the launch key. When he came to, the same silence and emptiness surrounded him. Denis went to the galley for food, settled comfortably on the soft floor in a corner, and turned on the radio.

The voices of those long dead sang to him that they would live forever. They spoke of how they would rule the Universe, of how their power had no limits. Melodies played that, the voices said, would never be forgotten. News was reported that nothing could be more important than, and scientific discoveries that would bring the Cosmos to its knees. Together with the voices, Denis traveled to distant countries. Foreign cities drifted before his eyes like ghosts. And through all of it rang a hymn to Man, eternal and invincible.

From the Universe's point of view, the human race existed for an instant. It had time only to let out a short cry of amazement on meeting its mysteries, and that cry scattered as an echo across space. Denis had the rest of his life and all the silence of creation to listen to that echo. The Universe listened with him. Listened, and marveled.