“No. It’s good.”

“Who would you have gone with?”

“The Iapetus angel. The sculptor.”

“I guess that’s not a big surprise.”

She looked up at the time. “It’s getting a bit late.”

“On my way.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed for the door.

She watched him go. He wanted to follow her career path. But it probably wasn’t going to happen. Not that the interstellars could be shut down permanently. Eventually, she thought, we’ll have to leave the planet and move out. But it will probably take too long to come to our senses. By then, Charlie might have to settle for a career as an architect. Or a journalist. She smiled, recalling her mom’s efforts to talk her into a more rational course than the one she’d been bent on pursuing. Become a lawyer, she’d advised. Or maybe get into real estate. That was where the money was.

•  •  •

She wandered into her office. The wind was moving tree branches back and forth. She read for a half hour, and then turned on the news. Melinda Allen, a friend and associate, was scheduled as a guest on Cosmic Broadcasting’s The Morning Show. Melinda was the director of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

“—your take on all this?” the moderator asked.

“It’s much too early to make a call,” Melinda said. She seemed amused at the excitement the sighting had caused. But that was typical. She was the ultimate cynic. “There’s still a possibility that the whole thing is just a glitch in the telescope.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

“I can’t think of a good explanation that sounds likely, Marvin. Look, we’ve seen things before that we thought were evidence of an advanced civilization, but they don’t usually amount to much. One thing we’re learning about the universe: Intelligence is rare. And when it does show up, it turns out not to be good at survival.”

Cosmic went to commercial. When the show came back, Melinda had been replaced by the campaign director for one of the presidential candidates.

•  •  •

Her daughter, Maureen, called. “I thought with that waterfall in the news you’d be back on TV this morning. I haven’t missed anything, have I?”

“No. How are the classes going?” She was in her first year as a high school history teacher.

“It’s a challenge.”

“Why?”

“We’re doing the Civil War, and it’s taken us back to talking again about the Founding Fathers. Nobody can understand all the talk about freedom from people who owned slaves.”

“It was a different culture. I think most of them would have gotten rid of the slavery issue if they thought they could do it and still hold the union together. I suspect you’ve been a bit critical of them.”

“It’s hard not to be.”