Footprints: Chapter Eleven - Planetfall
...Karen summed it up for all of them, by patting Jonathan’s hand and saying, “That’s okay, Jonathan, we loved you as you were, we love you as you are, and we will love whatever you become.”...
The crew of Hermes welcome their friend Jonathan, brought back from Biblical times in which he has played a central role, as they head out on another adventure to an alien planet.
To read earlier chapters of Brian William Neal's thrilling novel please click on Footprints in the menu on this page.
The Hermes II
En route to Rigel system
When they came on board the Hermes II after the shuttle ride up from Earth, Jonathan expressed an overpowering need to shower and brush his teeth, and “get really clean for the first time in 30 years.” Arnold took Jonathan to his quarters, to use the shower there, gave him a toothbrush and toothpaste, and soap, and towels, and men’s toiletries, and a jumpsuit, footwear, and underwear they’d brought along for him, and left Jonathan smiling in anticipation. An hour later, when he returned to the bridge, Jonathan had shaved and cut his hair, and he looked only about five years older than when he was delivered into biblical times.
The others were eager to relate what had happened on Earth 500 hundred years earlier, when the denizens had interacted with the fabulous metal in the alien craft. “It’s the air on tau’s world,” Jonathan said. “The gas you mentioned was in the atmosphere of that world. That’s why tau’s people lived so long. I wasn’t there long enough for it to affect me quite to that degree, but I’ll certainly have a lot longer than I would otherwise.”
Although Jonathan had protested that he needed to catch up on the advances that had been made in astrogation over the past 500 years, after barely an hour he pronounced that he was probably ready to give it a try. Now he sat now at the navigation station, hastily vacated by Joe McCulloch, and he needn’t have worried. They watched while Jonathan worked at the computer, plotting their course and calculating the first lightspeed jump. Joe in particular looked on in unashamed awe.
Joe couldn’t stop staring. Sitting at his customary station on the bridge of the Hermes II, he was in the unaccustomed role of silent observer, while taking center stage was a figure of legend.
“He’s amazing,” he whispered to Cal. “It took me three years to be able to do that work; he’s got it in a half hour.”
Cal smiled. “Didn’t I mention he was a super-genius?”
Joe nodded. “Sure, but…hell, I guess I didn’t know what that meant until just now.” He watched Jonathan for a few moments. “He’s so brilliant, it’s scary.”
At that moment, Jonathan looked up at Cal. “All right, Cal, I believe I have the figures we need.”
Cal nodded. “Fine, Professor. Feed them through to me and we’ll be off.”
* * * *
“Coming out of lightspeed now, Cal.” Jonathan’s quiet tones of aristocratic English broke the silence on the bridge as the grayness cleared and the stars re-appeared in the viewscreens. On the long journey back across the galaxy, Jonathan had caught up on events back on Earth, and had gotten to know Cal and Karen again. He had also had long conversations with Arnold and Julia, had developed a friendship with Dennis as a fellow Englishman, and expressed a fascination with the tales of Navajo mythology as told by Joe, in his other persona of Chief Sky Eagle.
By the time they reached the alien planet, everyone in the crew agreed that Jonathan Edge was a wonderful asset to any crew, and they were very lucky to have him. Karen and Cal, of course, were overjoyed to have their old comrade back, and spent as much time in his company as possible. Jonathan tried to be the person he had been, from his point of view, 30 years before, but he was finding it difficult to let go of the Baptist’s guise.
Try as he might to be the person he knew his friends wanted him to be, he was dismayed by the feeling that the old Jonathan Edge, or at least part of him, was gone forever. But the new one wasn’t all that bad, he thought; just a combination of who I have been, and those I have known. He tried to explain it to the others.
“We are all, to some extent, a product of the people with whom we interact as we travel through life,” he said, over dinner. “Their personalities, their experiences, both those we share with them and separately, rub off on us to some degree. Often, we don’t notice the changes taking place in us until after we are no longer with those people; sometimes, not even then. If that means I’m not the person you remember, then I can only put it down to the fact that I’m older and have had a few experiences apart from you.”
The others knew that they would have to be content with that, and Karen summed it up for all of them, by patting Jonathan’s hand and saying, “That’s okay, Jonathan, we loved you as you were, we love you as you are, and we will love whatever you become.”
