On the ten
year anniversary of Zhen He’slaunch, Jim Macomber retired. He smiled at the
party they threw for him, but mostly he was relieved. The cajoling with
Congress, the endless meetings, and, most importantly, the nail-biting stress
over satellites light years away, were someone else’s problems.
“So, Jim,”
Walker asked, “how are you going to spend your retirement?”
“Golf,” he
grinned.
“Really?”
“No. Can’t
stand the sport. No, I’ve got my grandkids a lot of the time, now.” He patted
Alicia’s hand on his arm. “And I’m going to just enjoy. Catch up on my reading.
There’s a lot of good sci-fi out there.”
“Not as
good as the real thing, though,” Peterson said with his characteristic scowl.
“That’s the
fun, at least for me. I get to lose myself in it instead of worry about
logistics and funding. That’s someone else’s problem, now.”
Nina
Elsbeth sighed. “Speaking of which. . . .”
“Go get
‘em, tiger,” Jim smiled.
“You’re not
out of this yet, old man,” she grinned.
She set
aside her drink, then went to the front of the conference room.
“What did
she mean by that?”
“You’ll
see,” Walker smiled into his drink.
Peterson
had the exact same, smile. “Nothing less than you deserve, Jim.”
“What’s
this about?” he asked his wife.
“No idea,
dear.”
“Can I have
everyone’s attention, please?” Nina said.
After a few
moments, the din of the room subsided, all eyes on Nina.
“Thank you.
We are here to honor Jim Macomber, the pioneer who helped us realize the dream
of faster-than-light exploration. We have expanded our reach beyond our solar
system, though we don’t fully understand how everything works, yet. But we’ve
got one more way to honor Jim before he leaves for retirement.”
Nina
touched the screen on the wall, which flared to life and displayed a large
animation of a probe with sails. The animation showed its projected mission out
of the solar system to target Alpha Centauri.
“I’ve just
gotten budgetary approval for our latest probe, an exploration of Alpha
Centauri. This will be our largest probe ever built, with an expected mission
duration of twenty years to survey the entire star system.”
Applause
erupted and some cheers, but Nina held up her hands for more quiet.
“It gets
better. We’ve gotten approval for the name.” It flashed up on the screen now,
with Nina reading it out. “The James Macomber Deep Space probe!”
More
applause and cheers, and Jim felt a tightness in his chest. He smiled and
sniffed as tears rolled down his cheeks.