“It’s the first mission to track down the origin of a TV signal. When you do something that’s never been done before, it’s automatically historic.” He gazed across the porch at a pair of azalea bushes. “l know this is no big deal for you. I mean, you were on the first flight to the galactic core. That’s about as historic as it gets. But this mission’s not over yet.” He sat back in his chair. “We have a Photoshopped picture at home of me standing between Celeste Larsen and Elliott Paul in front of Paul’s home outside London.” Larsen, of course, was the ultimate physicist of the era, the Einstein of the twenty-third century. And Paul had led the remarkably successful effort to introduce liberal education and a healthy tolerance for conflicting opinions into the darkest areas of the Middle East. He’d put his life at risk constantly, but in the end, his work had inspired a revolution. “The picture’s in our living room on a book shelf. People come in and they tend to say, ‘Hey, I know Ken, but who are those other two guys?’ ”

“Ken,” she said, “I’m glad you’re with us.”

“Derek knew what my attitude is toward all this. We’ve known each other a long time. He was upset because of the defunding of the Academy, which of course resulted in what had started out as space exploration getting handed over to the corporates, who’ve simply turned it all into a profiteering operation. Find a few rich people who want to go visit a nearby star. And then do it again. And keep doing it. Meantime, they were happy to buy into the notion that we were virtually alone. That there are so few advanced worlds in the universe at any one time that the chances of locating any of them are virtually nil. And these are the same people who are now claiming we need to be careful because of all those dangerous aliens out there.”

“Maybe in a billion years,” she said, “conditions will be different.”

“A universe filled with species talking to one another? Collaborating? Vacationing on one another’s worlds?” His face wrinkled. “Actually, now that I think of it, I’m not sure that taking the mystery out of things wouldn’t leave us all bored.”

“You have a point, Ken.”

“I have a question for you.”

“Okay.”

“We left the copilot behind. What do we do if something happens to you? If you were to get seriously ill or something?”

“It wouldn’t be a problem. Barry could get you home.”

“The AI?”

“Sure.”

“Then why on earth do we need a pilot?”

“I’m here mostly to react to unexpected contingencies. To problems. Especially on a flight like this, where we have no idea what might happen.”

“All right. I guess that makes sense.”