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ashamed of myself.
    "I'm sorry," I said. "We're on vacation. I shouldn't be chewing you out at a time like this."
    "I heard you almost drowned," Silk said abruptly as it were pertinent to our discussion.
    I got to my feet. Helen had betrayed my confidence. "I didn't 'almost' drown. I just faked it so that a handsome boy could come rescue me."
    33
    CHRISTOPHER PIKE
    Silk nodded her approval. "I'll have to try that someday. When I learn to swim."
    I found my father on the terrace off his room with his humming laptop on a table in front of him. He sat overlooking the sea. He turned to me as I approached. His door had been unlocked and I entered without knocking. The wind had risen since we arrived and was now churning the gray waves. The western sky was a gray and weary orange. I had missed the sunset by half an hour. What light remained silhouetted the island of Delos, changing it to a shadow realm out at sea. My father gestured to the chair beside him, and I sat down.
    "I ran into Silk in the lounge," I said.
    "How is she?" he asked.
    "Feeling no pain."
    He waved his hand. "She's on vacation. Let her enjoy."
    "All right." I paused. "You're on vacation, too. Why don't you enjoy? You don't have to write the first day you get here." He appeared troubled at my remark. I reached over and touched his leg. "It will flow again. You'll see."
    He watched the waves reflectively. "I wonder. When the stories are there, you don't know where they come from. When they stop, you don't know where they've gone. It's as if a story exists only in the moment—if you don't quickly write it down or show it to someone else, it vanishes." He sighed.
    "Sometimes, Josie, I feel as if I've moved out of that moment. Like I'm living in the past, a few seconds 34
    THE IMMORTAL
    behind the times, in the shadow of them. Or else in the future, a few months from now, when I think things will be better." He shrugged again. "Whatever, I'm stuck and I don't know what to do."
    "Tell me your story from the beginning," I said. "I know you've told me parts of it before, but tell me it all now."
    He was reluctant. "There's nothing more shameful than telling people that you're working on a screenplay, and then having it discovered that you've worked out little more than the opening credits."
    "I know that."
    He smiled affectionately. "I know you know that. That's why you're the one I can talk to. All right, you know the name— Last Contact. It's a science-fiction thriller. It takes place five hundred years in the future. Mankind has expanded out across this portion of the galaxy and is living on hundreds of planets circling dozens of stars. They are at war with an alien race. They have been at war for two hundred years. The aliens are humanoid—I know that much—but they don't look like us. The Earth has long been destroyed when we enter the story."
    "Excuse me, Dad," I interrupted. "Why are you so sure the Earth has already been destroyed?"
    He shrugged. "When the story first started coming to me, I knew the Earth was finished. It was just one of those things I knew in my gut. That fact makes the war with the aliens especially bitter. There is no possibility of compromise. The aliens must be destroyed, or else mankind will be. Unfortunately, humanity is losing
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    CHRISTOPHER PIKE
    the war. This is the setting when we meet our main character.
    "His name is David Herrick. He's an ace pilot for the System—the name I have given to the collection of human-inhabited planets. Much of the fighting in this war is carried out in small one-man spaceships. I am going on the theory that in the future our offensive weapons will be stronger than our defensive abilities.
    To give an example: I don't think we'll be able to 'raise shields' against the weapons that will be developed. I believe a small vehicle will be able to deliver almost as much damage to a planet as a larger one, and there will be little protection against attack. Therefore, I have thousands of one-man fighters