I've always been something of a loner. That's why I volunteered for the mission. Yet this empty world below scared me. We came in over Florida. By now I knew this had to b e Earth. The broad facilities of Canaveral were nothing more than a grassy field, but the outlines were there, and the monuments of the early launch facilities seemed to be in good repair. Only after we landed could I see that their preservation was less than perfect. I walked around, poking into the few remaining buildings. All were empty and silent. Gulls circled overhead, small animals moved in the underbrush at the edge of the meadow; birds sang. I found a terminal of unknown design in a building. Nearby was a small cap with the words "Mindlink XV3-2044." I put it on but nothing happened. The terminal was inactive and I could find no way to change that. It had no screen, no keyboard, only what I took to be a holographic projection platform and this cap. I'm not even sure it was a terminal.

Gyges

(gye?jeez) has been remarkably little help. All her expe rt systems, all her powerful AI functions, seemed helpless, so I asked her to go over ship's log. Our trajectory went according to program. We app roached 87.79% lightspeed within the first five years subjective travel. Then something interrupted the p rogram.

Gyges

is unable to analyze what. A broad swatch of datastorage seems to be wiped. A proton flux? Magnetic anomaly? The Scoop performed according to design. Speed increased to 93.45% C, then to 94, 95, 96, 97. Time dilation began to affect the circuits in ways

Gyges

could not determine. We never reached 61 Cygni. I listen to audible representations. Mostly it is the hiss of high speed data, the shrill chatter of bits flowing in the superconducting circuits. Why do I d o this? I do not know. There is nothing else to do. Once I thought I heard something. I asked for slower and slower replays. I tried filtering and modulating the sounds. It was almost like music, a chant or patterned polyphony. I moved the frequency up and down. I heard what I thought must be a name: Peter Devore. I must have been mistaken, yet the name was there, hidden in the chittering data, clearly enunciated. I listened to it over and over again. Then I went outside again. It was a warm spring day. A light breeze came in from the ocean. The air was clean and bracing with salt and ozone. It was so very like the day I had left this field for Alice Springs (how many years ago?) that I felt a strange sense o f disorientation. It was as if, for me, everyone and everything familiar had vanished overnight.

Gyges

sampled all available frequencies, all available channels. There was no one in the world, so I lifted the ship and moved slowly over the face of the earth, looking for...I do not know what I was looking for. Where Washington D.C. once sprawled b eside the Potomac (only yesterday!) was a scattered parkland with ancient monuments: the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol building. The Pentagon was just an outline, a pentagonal berm covered with grass. In the Library of Congress building I found a map called

Intercorp World Administrative Regions Archival Hardcopy