Buck had been too exhausted to lie awake long the night before; he'd barely slept the night between the charge and the trial, after all. But his dreams tormented him. Worst of all was one of Jim Anderson recording on video for posterity what he thought Buck's actions had been, saying that he regretted having mourned for him.

The third time Buck snapped awake out of a dream of his former best friend, he couldn't take it anymore. He wasn't sure what he had in mind, but he knew that he needed to do something. Even if Jim was beyond hearing the explanation, Buck had to find symbolic closure on this somehow, or it was going to drive him crazy.

He got up and dressed, then walked through the nearly deserted hallways to the Admiral's quarters. Even when outside of the effect of Earth's night and day, the Searcher did its best to maintain cicardian rhythm, and other than the ones working the "night" shift and keeping an eye on the ship, almost everyone was asleep. The Admiral clearly was; it took a few door chimes for him to respond.

"Buck!" The Admiral was surprised to find him standing at the doorway of the cabin. "I thought you'd be sound asleep."

"I was." Buck didn't bother correcting the sound part. "Admiral, could I have a day or two off? I need to . . . do a few things."

Asimov looked at him with unmistakeable sympathy. "Yes, of course, Buck. I understand after the last couple of days."

"Thank you." Buck turned away but paused to add a word of reassurance. "I'll be back. I'm taking my starfighter, but I will be back."

After taking the stargate to near Earth, he flew along the Atlantic coast. It was unpopulated, devastated, the scars of the holocaust still visible 500 years later. The major cities along the east coast, of course, had been leveled early in the fight. They were too good of targets to miss. New York. The big shipyard at Norfolk. Washington DC. There was nothing but seared, scarred land. Buck flew around the area of DC. The monuments were gone. The capital was gone. The people he had known and worked with here, all gone. He shivered.

Finally, feeling like he was lost in a cemetery, he snapped to himself and realized that he needed to get somewhere else. He needed some people around, even if strangers. To stay here and study the wreckage of DC wasn't doing much for him. If Jim Anderson's ghost was here, it had far too much company to hold a conversation with.

Johnson Space Center in Houston. He would go there. Maybe there, he would find whatever it was he was looking for. He flew across the country, admiring the starfighter's speed. This took a little time, but even the Concorde would have been left in the dust by this craft. He contacted the main space port; best to park the starfighter in a secured hanger. While he could set down on the outskirts of New Houston, it might not be a good idea with people around.

Once he landed and secured his ship, he headed outside and stood looking around. Everything was utterly alien. There was a directional assistant computer standing just outside the space port, and he called up a map of the city, doing his best to overlay mentally a map of the old Houston. Once he thought he had his direction, he took a couple of local transits to the edge of the rebuilt area, then got off and walked on.

Johnson Space Center. He couldn't count the times he had been here. It had never looked like this. New Houston, much like New Chicago, had a reconstructed, environmentally controlled bubble over the main city, and outside of that was on the rough side to put it mildly, though Texas fittingly still wasn't as dangerous as Chicago. His destination lay outside the bubble, though not far outside. He stood looking at the wreckage, at the wasteland. He wasn't sure what he had expected to find here, but this wasn't it.

Still, it was better than DC. There were even some people around, gawkers and street people both. He wanted to stop them, shake them, ask if they realized where they were standing and what had happened here. All the history. All the lives. It was over.

"Houston," he said softly to himself, "we have a problem."