Silent Running (10 page)

Lowell drove away, through the tunnel, and to the detonator area. Entering the room, he walked to the control panel and pulled out the last remaining squib case. His hand trembled as he pushed a button and a panel in the console slid back.

A red light began to wink.

Tight-lipped, Lowell placed each squib in the appropriate aperture and locked it into place.

This done, he armed each one.

Now, the remote button on the control panel also began to wink.

Lowell sat down in his chair and faced Huey, who stood quietly beside him.

“Huey,” Lowell’s eyes darkened with emotion, “I kept you with me . . . because there’s no place left for us to go, buddy . . . no place in space or on Earth.”

A bitter laugh escaped his tight lips, then there was silence—silence such as space could produce, total, infinite, everlasting.

Lowell stared at the button. A button that would lift Dome One and Dewey from
Valley Forge
and send them winging into orbit, until . . . Lowell smiled, until Earth’s voice would call out, “Come back! Replant us . . . make us healthy and beautiful once more!”

“If the time ever comes,” Lowell whispered. “If ever . . .”

He raised his hand. It crept toward the button, then paused.

All at once from Main Control came static, then Neal’s voice:

“BERKSHIRE TO VALLEY FORGE . . .”

Neal was pushing, wanting to connect, to dock soon . . .

“No!” Lowell said. His finger pushed the button.

Sparks flew as the node detonated. With a swift gliding motion Dome One severed from its base and rose skyward.

The verniers fired, streaming blue-white gas into space. The dome began to accelerate.

Lowell watched, fascinated. He brushed a hand across his eyes, as though to wipe away the vision of Dewey standing in Dome One. The ground beneath him would be trembling. In the forest, birds and animals around him would be chattering. Dewey would be whirring and clicking.

Lowell paused a moment, then led the way to the kitchen. It seemed as though he waited for something to happen. Something that he’d known would have to happen from the moment Neal’s voice had come back from infinite space and searched out
Valley Forge.

A sad smile crossed Lowell’s lips. He walked to the window and looked out. Amidst the stars he sorted out Dome One, rapidly receding now, hurtling toward the reaches of uncharted space, waiting for Earth to say “Come back!”

Huey waddled over to stand beside Lowell. Framed in the window, they were two very lonely figures.

Lowell still waited . . . It would come. It must come. He had set the bombs . . .

Lowell walked back to sit cross-legged on the floor. Huey followed.

Lowell waited . . . He put a hand on Huey’s shoulder. Huey bleeped.

“Huey,” Lowell said softly, “when I was a kid, I once put a note with my name and address into a bottle and threw it into the ocean . . . I never did find out if anyone ever found it . . .

Suddenly, Lowell broke off, almost with a sigh.

Then it came, the thing he’d been expecting.

A blinding flash . . . ! A loud deafening boom . . . !

The ship
Valley Forge
exploded in a terrible light, bleaching out the sky, changing it to orange, to yellow, to a stark, unbearable white.

Way, way off, Dome One was a small, bright beacon.

Inside Dome One, Dewey moved about, watering a plant here, tending a fern there. Around him birds sang, frogs croaked.

All at once, almost ironically, from
Berkshire
came lovely music, a soft compelling song of children in the sun, on the earth:

“Fields of children running wild

In the sun.

Like a forest is your child growing

wild

In the sun.”

Dewey went on working. He suddenly paused, then leaned to examine a rose that had bloomed to full, brilliant, dazzling maturity. The song went on:

“Doomed in his innocence

In the sun.

Gather your children to your side

In the sun.

Tell them all they love will die

Tell them why

In the sun.

Tell them it’s not too late

Cultivate

One by one.”

Again came a silence as it had to Lowell in that other time when he had stood in his garden listening . . .

The song concluded:

“Tell them to harvest and rejoice

In the sun.”