The Committee Chairman asked with annoyance, “How much longer do we have to wait? And, if you don’t mind, what are we waiting for?”
Sankov said, “Some of our boys have been out in space, out past the asteroids.”
The Committee Chairman removed a pair of spectacles and cleaned them with a snowy-white handkerchief. “And they’re returning?”
“They are.”
The Chairman shrugged, lifted his eyebrows in the direction of the reporters.
In the smaller room adjoining, a knot of women and children clustered about another window. Sankov stepped back a bit to cast a glance toward them. He would much rather have been with them, been part of their excitement and tension. He, like them, had waited over a year now. He, like them, had thought, over and over again, that the men must be dead.
“You see that?” said Sankov, pointing.
“Hey!” cried a reporter. “It’s a ship!”
A confused shouting came from the adjoining room.
It wasn’t a ship so much as a bright dot obscured by a drifting white cloud. The cloud grew larger and began to have form. It was a double streak against the sky, the lower ends billowing out and upward again. As it dropped still closer, the bright dot at the upper end took on a crudely cylindrical form.