“Darling, what is it?”
“Mum, that means he could already be … he could be dea—“
“Whoa! Ssssh!” Cindy pulled Janine towards her.
“But he could. I mean … we just don’t know, do we?”
© A Sunderland 2011
Cindy saw faces turning towards them displaying a mixture of curiosity and irritation. Wrapping her arms around Janine’s shoulders, she leaned across her to whisper urgently to Stirling.
“David, we must talk.”
Stirling, obviously concerned by Janine’s distress, nodded. “Yes of course my dear. Afraid I’m away tomorrow, but any time the day after … just come and find me.”
Cindy then eased Janine up from her chair. “Darling, come on. Let’s go. We can talk outside.”
She guided her still trembling daughter out of the auditorium, mouthing apologies as she went.
[Day 246]
“David, please … tell me she was only having a nightmare?” Cindy had described in detail her daughter’s dream and her conviction that somehow it was real.
“Well of course, what else could it be? Although … it makes you wonder …”
“Wonder what?” Cindy frowned, but Stirling was silent, looking into the distance, his fingertips gently touching as if praying. “David…what?”
Placing his hands back on his desk, Stirling looked at Cindy and took a deep breath.
“Well, it’s just …the dates … OK, bear with me. We’ve got this experiment going on; it’s a way to send and receive messages almost instantly, you know, to get around the interminable three week delay. It’s called Vector IV transmissions. It’s actually rather clever; you see—“
“David, for God’s sake skip the lecture. What does it mean for Janine?”
“Sorry. Well, Dr Singh has been checking the relay stations which cascade the communications … you know, I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this…”
Cindy shot him a fierce look and he continued.
“OK. It appears the stations did indeed relay a V4 transmission—”
“So they’ve done it? We can talk directly to them. I can speak to Don?”
Stirling didn’t answer but took another slow breath and lowered his head.
Slamming her hands on his desk, Cindy pushed her chair back and stood up, leaning over him. “David!” she urged him through gritted teeth.
“We know it was a message sent from one of the ships … but … it never reached mission control down here.”
“So, they could be in trouble and we can’t do anything. Is that what you mean?”
“We’re still getting the standard transmissions so it’s probably teething troubles with V4. But we expected—”
“A simple yes or no.”
“Everything looks fine. I don’t see any cause for concern.”
“I can go home and reassure her?”
“I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
Cindy waved goodbye as she left. As soon as the door closed Stirling called mission control. “Major Tyler, exactly how long does it take a signal to reach us from the Proxima system?
“Just over three –“
“I asked exactly.”
“Twenty two days, five hours and, well, err, about fifteen minutes.
“So if their signal failed at one forty AM we wouldn’t find out about it until nearly seven…” He flipped open his printed diary.
“Is there a problem sir?”
