I backed off and returned to my cabin, deeply distressed. I barely slept the hours remaining till dawn, instead tossing and turning in my bunk, while Quell lay undisturbed, dreaming who knows what alien dreams.
At the first bell, I rose and made my way to the communications deck. There I found crewman Small, bent over his console.
“Do you know that a rocket feeds itself in space?” he asked.
“Feeds? What do you mean?”
“It wallows,” he explained, “like a great fish in currents of solar vibration, cosmic rays, interstellar X-ray radiations. Ever hungry, we—this ship—search for banquets of shout and shriek and echo. I sit here, day in and day out, tuned to the great onrushings of space all around us. Most of the time, all I hear is variations of anonymous sound—hum and static and vibration. And once in a while, by accident … listen!”
He touched a contact and from the console speaker came voices—distinct human voices. He turned his face to mine, a strange light shining there.
As we stood, we heard broadcasts that had been made to crowds on Earth, to the listening ears of people two hundred years ago. Churchill spoke and Hitler shouted and Roosevelt answered and mobs roared; there were football and baseball games from long-ago afternoons. They rose and fell, moved in and out, like ocean waves of sound.
Small said, “No sound, once made, is ever truly lost. In electric clouds, all are safely trapped, and with a touch, if we find them, we can recapture those echoes of sad, forgotten wars, long summers, and sweet autumns.”
“Mr. Small,” I said. “We must trap these broadcasts so we can hear them again and again. Is there more? What have you found?”
“We have come upon a fountain of Earth’s younger days. Voices from centuries past. Strange radio people, ghosts of laughter, political charades. Listen.”
Small fiddled with the console dial again. We heard the moment the Hindenburg went up in flames. Lindbergh landed in Paris in 1927. Someone named Dempsey fought someone named Tunney in 1925. Crowds screamed in horror, mobs cheered. And then, it began to fade away.
“We’re beyond them now,” said Small.
“Go back!” I cried. “That is our history.”
Another voice sounded from the console: “This afternoon at Number Ten Downing Street, Prime Minister Churchill …”
The captain strode onto the deck.
“Sir,” said Small. “We have found a fountain of Earth’s younger days. Voices from centuries past. Strange radio people, ghosts of laughter, political charades. Listen!”
The captain said, most sadly, “Yes, yes.” And then, suddenly, “Small, Jones, leave that now. They speak but to themselves. We cannot play, nor laugh, nor weep with them. They are dead. And we have an appointment with the real.”
Small reached again for the console dial, as a final voice announced: “Line drive! Mantle safe at first!”
Then, silence.
I touched my cheek to wipe away a tear. Why do I weep? I wondered. Those voices were not my people, my times, my ghosts. And yet once they lived. Their dust stirred in my ears, and I could not stop my eyes.
Suddenly, over the ship’s intercom, a voice boomed: “Blue alert. All scanning stations. Visual sighting. Star sector CV7. Visual sighting. Blue alert!”
Quell and I stood before his viewing screen, stunned at what we saw there.
“Great God,” I said. “What’s that?”
“A moon,” said Quell.
“Yes,” I said. “But what a moon. It looks so old. Much older than our own, covered with towns, cities, ancient gardens. How long do you think that moon has been spinning in space alone?”
Quell consulted his instrument panel, and zoomed in the picture.
“Ten thousand times a million years,” said Quell. “Oh lovely, lovely … the spires, the jeweled windows, the lonely and deserted courtyards filled with dust.”
And then we heard Redleigh’s voice: “Stand by! Diminish speed.”
And then the captain’s voice cut in: “Mr. Redleigh!”
“Sir, this moon! It’s very old and fine. Our mission is to explore, to find, to report.”
“Yes, Redleigh, I can hear it in your voice. It is a lovely lost and wandering world, an ancient beauty, passing strange, but pass it we must. Resume course.”
And over the intercom came the order: “Resume full speed. Blue alert canceled.”
The image of the lost moon, which had been projected on all the screens throughout the ship, began to pass away.
“Lost again,” said Quell.
And once again, the ship was surrounded by black space.