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small indignities she suffered there. She missed not having Eli there to hear them out.
    She thought about when she’d come home the day before, the day he missed the interview, and found a very polite young lady from the military waiting at the front door. She’d had some things to tell her, and a check for a large sum of money.
    “Where are you?” Marion asked. At first she was afraid that Eli had done something wrong, maybe got mixed up with bad people in one of those game things of his. She’d heard on the news that terrorists used those chat-rooms and on-line games to meet and talk about hurting people. The polite young lady has assured her it was nothing like that, as she gathered up a bag of Eli’s stuff.
    When he replied, there was a strange crackling echo around his voice, like you got when someone was making a transatlantic phone call. “ It’s top secret. ”
    She heard the sadness in his voice. “Eli…”
    “ I’m serious, Mom. I can’t tell you anything more than that. But don’t worry, I’m fine. ”
    Marion sat on the kitchen stool, and for a moment she felt a terrible, incredible sense of distance from the voice on the other end of the line. “I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you at least tell me you were leaving? You just upped and went, no explanation….”
    “ That was part of the deal, ” he said, and she knew he was keeping something back from her. “ I’m sorry, but did you get the letter from — ”
    “The Air Force, yes, I got it.” She nodded across the empty room. The letter was there on the kitchen table where she had put it after the polite young lady had left. It talked about ‘valuable contributions’ and ‘important work’ and ‘national security’. It talked about other things, too, without saying them. Paid doctor bills and cleared debts.
    She sighed. Of all the options her son could have been looking at as a career, serving his country was not something Marion Wallace would ever have put on the list. She heard an odd rumble in the background. “Are you on a plane now? You sound like you’re in an airplane.”
    For a moment, he betrayed a little excitement in his words. “ No, no. Trust me, it’s nothing like that. It’s intelligence work. What you can know is in the letter, but I want you to know that they’re going to look after you. ”
    “You didn’t have to do this. I pushed you too hard to get a job.”
    “ No, no, Mom… This is good. Really, it’s the kind of thing I always dreamed of. I know it’s going to take some getting used to, for both of us… But I just couldn’t say no. ”
    Marion felt a stab of sadness and pushed it away before it dared to become the start of a sob. “Okay. Okay, Eli. I know you’ll do great. Just do your best.”
    “ I’ll call you again soon, ” he said. “ Love you, Mom. ”
     
    “ Love you too. ” His mother’s voice crackled and faded, and for a moment he couldn’t be sure if she had been crying. The channel cut and Eli put down the headset connected to the intercom in his cabin, and sat heavily on his bunk.
    He sat there alone, watching the waves of hyperspace flash past the window in the steel wall, feeling every bit of the light-years of distance.
     
    She rapped on the hatch with her knuckles, and from within came a distracted voice. “Come in.”
    Entering the cramped visiting officer’s quarters, she saw Rush bent over a laptop and a scattering of papers, his attention buried deep in his work. Before she could speak, he gestured at a covered tray from the ship’s kitchen on a nearby shelf. “I’m done with that,” he said.
    Her lips thinned. “I’ll be sure to have one of my crew square that away for you, doctor.”
    Rush looked up in surprise. “Colonel Carter.” He recovered quickly and gave her a flat smile. “I’m sorry.” Immediately, he was closing the lid of the laptop. “What can I do for you?”
    Carter kept a neutral expression on her face. “I didn’t have the