"Is he receiving?"
"Yes, sir."
"Colonel Harkins," Colin said. "Colonel Harkins, can you hear me?"
The loudspeakers buzzed.
"Colonel Harkins, please reply."
The speakers snapped once. The sound of Harkins' whistle came over,
loud at first, then drifting away. He was whistling the same tune as
before.
"... _had a true wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh_ ..."
"Do you want her back again?" Banning asked, recognizing the melody.
"Colonel Harkins, please reply," Colin said. Switching the mike off,
he turned to Banning. "Better get her," he said. "We may have to go
through the whole thing again."
* * * * *
It took twelve minutes by the control clock before they heard the door
of the room open, and the light tapping of Martha Harkins' feet.
Banning and Colin turned away from the window to greet her.
Suddenly their shadows were thrown violently ahead of them, leaping
across the floor and up the opposite wall like frightened animals
trying to escape.
They swung back to the window, their words of greeting still unspoken.
For perhaps a half second they could make out the upper part of
_Phoenix I_, standing above the ugly glare like the nose of a whale
thrusting up through a sea of boiling flame. Then it disappeared, and
the fire-ball climbed suddenly into the night sky, rolling and twisting
in on itself. A gantry tipped and fell out of the flame with ponderous
slowness, twisted and melted before it crashed to the pad. Then the
unbearable glare died, and the searchlights played on an opaque black
column of smoke, redly lit from within, standing where _Phoenix I_ had
stood.
The roar that shook the building seemed to come much too late.
* * * * *
Colin slumped disconsolately in the control room, staring blankly out
at the clusters of beetle-like trucks clustered around the landing
pad, with their feathery antennae caressing the stack of still-burning
wreckage. Washed down by the foam trucks, the fire would soon be out.
But there would be little advantage to it, except to clear the pad.
"How's Mrs. Harkins?" he asked without turning as he heard footsteps
behind him.
"Under sedation," General Banning said. He came to stand beside
the psychiatrist, looked with him at the firecrew's activity, so
disorganized and insect-like at a distance.
"They'll have it out pretty soon," he said unnecessarily.
"Mm."
Both men were silent. After a while, Colin tamped in fresh tobacco and
lit his pipe, sending up cottony puffs of smoke.
"What do we do now?" he said absently.
General Banning sighed.
"See that hangar?" he asked, gesturing to a tall building perhaps a
quarter mile away down the edge of the field.
Colin nodded.
"_Phoenix II_," the General said, and his voice was flat and
expressionless.
"Send another man into it, knowing no more than we know?"
"We have to know," Banning said. "Men have died before without as good
reason."
"I'm going home. Call me if you need me."
Colin stood, and the general made a silent gesture of helplessness.
They wouldn't need him. Not until _Phoenix II_ came home. Then they
would need him.
Colin spoke, quietly, as if thinking of something else.
"I didn't hear you," Banning said.
"Quoting Emerson. The essay on Nature I mentioned."
"What did he say?"
"'But if a man would be alone,'" Colin quoted, "'let him look at the
stars.' Good night, General."
"Good night."
Colin walked outside into the cold desert air. The night was clear and
crisp, and the Milky Way hurled itself like a mass of vapor across the
sky.
... _if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars_ ...
He looked up, and was alone in the night.