“I guess you’re right.”
Keene moved out from the truck, keeping his hands high to show he wasn’t carrying a weapon. “I’ll go,” he muttered to the other two. “This was supposed to be my party, anyway.”
He began moving forward, picking his way through the rubble and glass fallen from the building. As he approached, he caught a movement from the place Mitch had indicated: a sandbagged opening into one of the ground-floor rooms where there had formerly been a door and adjacent window. Closer, and he saw that it was a figure in a woollen cap and combat jacket, covering him with an automatic rifle. “That’s far enough,” the figure called in his own voice when Keene was about five yards away. Keene halted. The figure straightened up from behind the sandbags to see him more clearly. Keene caught a glimpse of another farther back, also holding a leveled gun. “Okay, who are you, and what do you want here?” the one in front asked. Keene drew a breath to launch into the simplified explanation that he had been composing in his head. . . . And then, instead, his posture relaxed, and his face creased into a grin. “What’s so funny?” the figure demanded.
Keene waited a second or two. “Have I really aged that much? Although, I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me. Or is it the fancy dress like yours?”
“Look, I’m not in a mood for games.”
Keene gave it a moment longer. Then, “Oh, stop it, Joe, you stupid shit. It’s Lan Keene, for Christ’s sake. I’m sorry we took our time getting here, but the traffic was a bitch. . . .” He broke off and could do no more than shake his head as the flippancy drained from him. It was Joe Elms, who had piloted the NIFTV the day they took on the Air Force spaceplane. He had the same reddened, blistered face as everyone else, with the beginnings of a beard, and looked more like a guerrilla fighter than a spaceship pilot. But it was Joe.
Even now, Elms came out warily, the other behind him still covering. He moved closer and peered disbelievingly. “It is you. . . . You look like you’ve been in a volcano. Jesus, have we all changed that much?” Elms turned to the other and waved for him to lower the gun. “It’s okay, Sid. It’s them. They made it!” Elms looked back at Keene, his expression dazed. The message seemed only now to be sinking in. “We . . .” He gave up and shook his head.
Keene looked past him at the younger man stepping out over the parapet of sandbags. “Sid? I know you. . . . Sid Vance, right? You came with us to the Osiris.” It was the Sid who had won the place on the shuttle, the kid from Navigation Systems Group, just out of college, who had been with Amspace a month.
“I never gave up on you,” he told Keene. “I kept telling them. You just never seemed the type.”
It hadn’t fully sunk in yet with Keene either. Only now was he beginning to realize how much, inside, he had been steeling himself for the worst. There was only one more question. He interrogated Joe with a look for a second as if hoping to divine the answer before he dared ask it. “And Vicki?” he managed finally.
Joe nodded. “She’s here. Robin’s hurt his arm, but he should be okay. Too bad we didn’t have a doctor. We had some trouble here a couple of days ago, and he took a bullet. I did what I could . . .”
Keene didn’t hear the rest, partly because the relief that swept over him, and the strange, sudden weakness that came with it, almost causing him to collapse. The other reason was that he could see into the room behind the sandbagged opening; another person had appeared framed in the doorway at the far end. Keene was unable to make out the face or expression in the shadows; but without really trying, in some unconscious reading from years of learning her postures and her body language, he knew it was her.