EPILOGUE: SIX YEARS LATER
The sign on the office door was spanking new:
T. YOST
DIRECTOR
ANGEL OBSERVATORY
Trudy felt weird sitting at the desk that she still thought of as Professor Uhlrich’s. As soon as Grant came into the office with their daughter she got up, came around the desk, and sat with her husband and three-year-old Gwen on the side of the long table facing the softly glowing wall screen.
Grant leaned across Gwen to give Trudy a peck on the lips. The little girl fidgeted in the chair between her parents.
“The ceremony will be starting in a few minutes,” Trudy said.
Grant glowered at her darkly. “I still think you’re the one who ought to get the prize. Or at least he should’ve told them he’d share it with you.”
“We’ve been over that a zillion times, Grant. Let the professor have his moment of glory.”
Before Grant could say anything more, Trudy called out, “Display Sirius C.”
The wall screen instantly showed an image of the planet: lush green landforms and deeply blue oceans, decked with streams of white clouds.
“New Earth!” Gwen pointed a chubby finger at the display.
Grant stared at the image, knowing that it was the result of more than a year’s worth of painstaking work, taking the interference patterns from Farside’s trio of telescopes and meticulously building up a visual image of the exoplanet.
“That’s right, dear,” Trudy said to her daughter. “That’s what Mommy is studying.”
Grant said, “I’ll take you to Selene, Gwennie, and show you the ship they’re building. It’s going to take people to New Earth.”
“Me too?”
Grant laughed. “Maybe. Not the first ship out, but maybe someday.”
Trudy told Gwen, “You can go if you want to, darling. You can go as far as your dreams take you.”
* * *
Nearly four hundred thousand kilometers from Farside, the Stockholm Symphony Hall was filled to capacity. Standing in his formal white-tie and tails with the eight other Nobel laureates as they waited offstage, Jason Uhlrich could hear the audience’s murmurings; he pictured a vast sea of people come from all over the world to witness the ceremony.
The personal aide that the Nobel Foundation had given him was at Uhlrich’s side, ready to guide him to the chair waiting for him on the stage. Uhlrich was determined to walk in unassisted.
I did it in the rehearsal this morning, he told himself. I have the layout of the stage pictured in my mind perfectly.
“Professor Jason Uhlrich, astrophysics,” called the master of ceremonies.
Uhlrich pulled his arm away from the aide’s hand and strode out onto the stage, carefully counting his steps. A wave of applause rose from the audience, and he felt tears in his sightless eyes. He smelled the profusion of flowers banked along the rear of the stage but the sensation produced no image in his visual cortex.
He sat and waited while the other laureates came in, one by one, and introductory speeches were made. When it came time to receive the actual award from the king of Sweden, Uhlrich rose to his feet and walked to the podium in measured steps. Behind him, he knew, a giant LCD screen had been lowered to show images of Sirius C. He heard the audience gasp as the images appeared on the screen.
The king congratulated him and handed him the surprisingly heavy portfolio containing the gold memorial medal and a paper-thin flexible display screen that also showed images of the planet produced by the Farside interferometer.
Jason Uhlrich stood before the hushed audience while behind him a picture of an achingly beautiful world of green continents and blue oceans, dotted with white clouds, held the audience, the functionaries of the Nobel Foundation, the king of Sweden, the other Nobel laureates, and the whole world in rapt awe.
New Earth. A world like our own. Unpopulated, no cities, no sign of intelligent life. The Cyclops radio telescope array had scanned the planet thoroughly; it was silent.
But it was a world strikingly similar to our own.
A new world. Beckoning.