“It’s an interesting thought,” Lori said, “but how do you plan to get there? Both of the orbital shuttles on the planet are at Centrus. You’ll have to highjack at least one of those before you highjack the time shuttle.”
“It will take some planning,” I admitted. “We have to manufacture a situation where the alternative to letting us take the Time Warp is unacceptable. Suppose we had kidnapped those four Taurans and threatened to kill them?”
She laughed. “They’d probably say, `Go ahead,’ and send for four more.”
“I’m not convinced of that. I suspect they may be no more actually interchangeable than Man is. We only have their word for it–as you say, if they’re all the same, why go to the expense of sending four?”
“You could just ask them for the ship first,” said Ami Larson. “I mean, they are reasonable. If they said no, then–”
People were murmuring, and a couple of them laughed out loud. Ami was third-generation Paxton, not a vet. She was here because she was married to Teresa.
“You grew up with them, Ami.” Diana kept a controlled neutral expression. “Some of us old folks aren’t so trusting.”
“So we go out for ten years, or forty thousand, and come back,” said Lar Po. “Suppose Man’s experiment has been successful. We’ll be useless Cro-Magnons.”
“Worse than that,” I said cheerfully. “They’ll probably have directed their evolution into some totally new direction. We might be like house pets. Or jellyfish.
“But part of my point is that you and I and most of us here have done this before. Every time we came back from a campaign, we’d have to start over–even if only a few dozen years had passed on Earth, most of our friends and relatives had died or aged into totally different people. Customs and laws were alien. We were largely unemployable, except as soldiers.”
“And you want to do it again, voluntarily?” Charlie said. “Leave behind the life you’ve built for yourself?”
“Fisherman–teacher. I could tear myself away.”
“William and I are in a better situation than most,” Marygay said. “Our children are grown, and we’re still young enough to strike out in a new direction.”
Ami shook her head. She was our age, biologically, and she and Teresa had teenage daughters. “You aren’t curious about how your kids will turn out? You don’t want to see your grandchildren?”
“We’re hoping they’ll come along,” she said. “If they don’t?”
“Then they don’t,” I said. “A lot of children leave home and start off on their own.”
Ami pressed on. “But not many parents do. Look at the choice you’re giving them. Throw away their own world to join their parents.”
“As time travelers. As pioneers.”
Charlie butted in. “Forget about that aspect for a minute. Do you actually think you can recruit a hundred, a hundred fifty people without anybody going to Man and pointing the finger at you?”
“That’s why we want to keep it among vets.”
“I just don’t want to see my oldest friend in jail.”
“We’re in jail, Charlie.” I made a gesture that didn’t knock anything over. “We can’t see the bars because they’re over the horizon.”
——————————————————————————–
Chapter four
The meeting broke up at midnight, after I called for a show of hands. Sixteen were with us, eighteen against, and six undecided. More support than I’d thought. We walked home through snow that had a pleasant crunch to it, enjoying the night air, not saying much.
We came in the back door, and there at the dining room table, sipping tea, was Man. Over by the fire, warming its back, a Tauran. My arm came up halfway, in an aiming reflex.
“It’s late,” I said to the Man, my eyes on the Tauran’s fisheye clusters. One hand fluttered its seven fingers, fourteen-jointed.
“I have to talk to you now.”
“Where are the children?”
“I asked them to go upstairs.”
“Bill! Sara!” I called. “Whatever you say to us, they can hear.” I turned to the Tauran. “–An evening of good fortune,” I approximated in its language. Marygay repeated it, better.
“Thank you,” it said in English, “but not for you, I fear.” It was wearing a black cloak, a nice Halloween effect with its wrinkled orange skin. The cloak made it look less alien, hiding the wasp waist and huge pelvis.