"Johnson," I said to the creased face in the screen, "they made a mistake. They underestimated curvature. You can't reach Alpha Centauri. You can't correct enough. Free space is all you'll hit. Ever. You may as well come—back."
Johnson sighed, a whisper of breath across the miles.
"I'll keep going. No one has ever been so far out before. I can report valuable things."
I stood there. The textbooks report it takes muscular effort to frown, more so than to smile. But my face seemed to flow into the lines of pain so hard it ached without any effort of my will. And I knew it would hurt to smile.
"They passed the final test," Madison said at my side. "Tell them it was a test."
I would do it for him. I didn't need to do it for myself.
I motioned the technician to open both channels.
"The ship you are in," I said, with no need to tell them of each other, "is not the real Evening Star. It will not take you to the stars. This has been only a test to credit your fitness to pilot the real interstellar craft of the Star Project. You must return to the Lunar Satellite. This is a direct order."
The two screens remained blank. Only the windless silence of space echoed over Johnson's channel, but the tapes later proved that I actually did hear a whispered laugh from Meyverik.
I faced Madison.