Leonora Christine was in the tenth year of her journey when grief came upon her.
An outside watcher, quiescent with respect to the stars, might have seen the thing before she did; for at her speed she must need to run half blind. Even without better instrumental capabilities, he would have known of the disaster a few weeks ahead. But he would have had no way to cry his warning, and it could not have helped her.
And there was no watcher anyhow: only night, bestrewn with multitudinous cold points that were suns, the frosty cataract of the Milky Way and the rare phantom glimmer of a nebula or a sister galaxy. Nine light-years from Sol, the ship was inimitably alone.
An automatic alarm roused Captain Telander. As he struggled upward from sleep, First Mate Lindgren's voice followed: "Kors i Herrens namn!" The horror in it jerked him fully awake. He didn't stop to use the intercom; he left his cabin and ran toward the command bridge. Nor would he have stopped to dress. They didn't trouble much with uniforms, and some of the people aboard were ceasing to trouble with clothes.
But as it happened, he was clad. Lulled by the sameness of nine and a half years—even in ship's time, more than one year—he had been reading a microtaped novel and had dozed off in his chair. And then jaws of the universe snapped shut.
The corridor throbbed faintly around him, an endless pulse of driving energies. Ventilators gusted fresh air in his face, and it was subtly scented with clover. Murals hid metal and plastic with scenes of forest around a sunlit lake. The deck covering was green and springy as grass. But always the ship whispered and shivered, always one remembered the deeps outside.
Lars Telander flung himself up the companionway and into the bridge compartment. Ingrid Lindgren stood near the viewscope. It was not what counted; however massive and sophisticated, it was almost a toy. What truth could tell was in the instruments which glittered across the entire forward bulkhead. But her eyes would not leave it.
The captain brushed past her. The warning which had caused him to be summoned was still blazoned on a screen linked to the primary computer. He read. The breath sucked in between his teeth. As he stood, a slot opened with a click and extruded a printout. He snatched it. His gaze whipped across letters and figures. Quantification—decimal-point detail, after more data had come in and more calculation had been done—the basic Mene, Mene stood unchanged on the screen.
He stabbed the general alarm button. Sirens wailed; echoes went ringing down the corridors. On the intercom he ordered all hands not on duty to report to commons with the passengers. After a moment, harshly, he added that channels would be open so that those people standing watch could also get the news.
"But what are we going to do?" Lindgren cried.
"Very little, I fear." The captain went to the viewscope. "Is anything visible in this?"
"Barely. I think. Fourth quadrant." She clenched her fists and turned from him.
He took for granted that she meant the eyepiece for dead ahead and peered into that. At high magnification, space leaped at him. The scene was somewhat blurred and distorted. Optical circuits did not compensate perfectly for the aberration and Doppler effect experienced when one crowded the speed of light. But he saw starpoints, diamond, amethyst, ruby, topaz, emerald, a Fafnir's hoard. Near the center burned the one called Beta Virginis, whither they were bound, thirty-three years after they said farewell to Earth. It should have looked very like the sun of home, but something of spectral shift remained to tinge it ice blue. And, yes, on the verge of human vision . . . that wisp? That smoky cloudlet, perhaps to wipe out this ship and these fifty human lives?
Noise broke in on his concentration, shouts, footfalls, the sounds of fear. He straightened. "I had better go aft," he said without tone. Lindgren moved to join him. "No, keep the bridge."
"Why?" Her temper stretched thin and broke. "Regulations?"
"Yes," he nodded. "You have not yet been relieved." A smile of sorts touched his lean face. "Unless you believe in God, regulations are now the only comfort we have."
There was no space to spare in space. Every cubic centimeter inside the hull must work. But human beings intelligent and sensitive enough to adventure out here would have gone crazy without some room and privacy. Thus each of the twenty-five cabins could be divided into two cubicles if the pair who occupied it chose. And commons was more than a place for meals and meetings. The largest section was ball court and gymnasium. Offside rooms held tiny bowers, gardens, hobby shops, a swimming pool. Along one bulkhead stood three dream booths.
In this moment, however, none of these things had any more meaning than did drapes or murals or the bright casual clothes of the gathered people. They had not taken time to set out chairs. Everyone stood. Every eye locked onto Telander as he mounted the dais. Nobody stirred save to breathe, but sweat glistened on faces and could be smelled. The murmur of the ship seemed somehow to have grown louder.
The captain hesitated for a moment. They were from so many nations, those men and women—Europe, Asia, America, Africa, Luna. Of course they all knew Swedish; like every other extrasolar expedition, this one went in a Control Authority ship. But some did not know it well. For scientists, particularly, English and Russian remained the chief international tongues. Since Telander happened to be more at ease in the former, he sighed and fell back on it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have just gotten grave news. Let me say immediately that our prospects of survival are not in the least hopeless, as far as can be judged from present data and computations. But we are in trouble. The risk was not unforeseen, but by its nature is one that cannot be provided against, at any rate in the present rather early stage of Bussard drive technology—"
"Get to the point, God damn it!" Telander couldn't see who shouted out of the pack, but knew that voice: Williams, the short, cocky North American chemist.
"Quiet, you," said Constable Reymont. Unlike most of them, who stood with male and female hands clutched together, he was alone, a little apart from the rest: a stocky, dark, hard-featured man with a scar seaming his brow. He wore a drab gray coverall and had pinned on his badge of authority.
"You can't—" Someone must have nudged Williams, for he spluttered into silence.
Telander's gaunt body shifted nervously from foot to foot. "Instruments have . . . have detected an obstacle. A small nebula. Extremely small, a mere clot of dust and gas, probably less than a thousand million kilometers across. It is traveling at an abnormal velocity. Perhaps it is the remnant of a larger thing cast out by a supernova, a remnant still held together by hydromagnetic forces. Or perhaps it is a proto-star. I do not know. The fact is, we are going to strike it. In about twenty-four hours, ship's time. What will happen then, I do not know either. With luck, we can ride out the impact and not suffer serious damage. Otherwise . . . well, we knew this journey would have its hazards."
He heard indrawn breaths, like his own on the bridge, and saw eyes go white-rimmed, mouths mutter, fingers trace signs in the air. Quickly, he went on: "We cannot do much to prepare. A little, ah, battening down, yes; but in general, the ship is as taut as possible already. When the moment approaches, most of you will be ordered into shock harness, and everyone will wear space armor. But—the meeting is now open for discussion." Williams's hand rocketed past the shoulder of tall M'Botu.
"Yes?"
One could imagine the red-faced indignation. "Sir! An unmanned probe did make the trip to Beta Virginis first, did it not? It did radio back an assurance that this route was free of danger. Did it not? Well, then, who is responsible for our blundering into this muck?"
Voices lifted toward a babble. "Quiet!" Charles Reymont called. He didn't speak loud, but he pushed the sound from his lungs in such a way that it struck home. Several resentful glances were cast at him, but the talkers came to order.
"I thought I had explained," Telander said. "The cloud is small, nonluminous, undetectable at any great distance. It has a high velocity. Thus, even if the robot carrier had taken our identical path, the nebulina would have been well offside at the time—more than fifty years ago, remember. Furthermore, we can be quite certain the robot did not go exactly as we are going. Quite apart from the relative motions of the stars, the distance between Sol and Beta Virginis is thirty-two light-years. That is greater than our poor minds can picture. The slightest variation in the curves taken from star to star means a difference of many astronomical units in the middle."
"This thing couldn't have been foreseen," Reymont added. "The odds were against our running into it. But somebody has to draw the long odds now and then."
Telander stiffened. "I did not recognize you, Constable," he said.
Reymont flushed. "Captain, I was trying to expedite matters, so some clotbrains won't keep you there explaining the obvious till we smash."
"No insults to shipmates, Constable. And kindly wait to be recognized before you speak."
"I beg the captain's pardon." Reymont folded his arms and blanked his features.
Telander said with care: "Please do not be afraid to ask questions, however elementary they may seem. You are all supposed to be educated in the theory, at least, of interstellar cosmonautics. But I, whose profession this is, know how strange the paradoxes are, how hard to keep straight in one's mind. Best if everyone understands, as well as may be, exactly what we face . . . Professor Glassgold?"
The molecular biologist lowered her hand and said timidly, almost too low to hear: "Can't we—I mean—nebular objects like that, they are hard vacuums by ordinary standards. Aren't they? And we, we are not only traveling just under the speed of light . . . we are gaining more speed every second. And so more mass. Our mass right now, as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, must be, well, several hundred thousand tons. Which is enormous for a spaceship, even this big a spaceship, isn't it? So why can we not smash right on through? Why should we notice a bit of dust and gas?"
"A good point," Telander said, "and if we are lucky, that is more or less what will happen. Not entirely, though. Remember, we are going unbelievably fast, so fast that we can actually use the hydrogen of space for fuel and exhaust. So if we run into a concentration of matter perhaps a hundred times as dense, at this speed, ja, we must hope that our forcefields can handle it, and the material components endure the stresses. Engineering extrapolations suggest we will not suffer grave damage. But those are mere extrapolations. There has been no chance as yet to test them. We are, after all, in a pioneering era . . . Dr. Iwamoto?"
"S-s-sst! I presume we have no possibility of avoidances? One day ship's time is maybe one month cosmic time, so? We have not time to go around this nebu—nebulina?"
"No, I fear not. We perceive ourselves as accelerating at a steady five gravities. At least, our instruments do, if not our bodies." Telander paused. His mouth twisted. "Excuse me. I maunder. But I want to make certain that everyone is quite clear about the facts. In terms of the outside universe, our acceleration is not constant, but steadily decreasing. Therefore we cannot change course fast. Even a full vector normal to our velocity would not get us far enough aside before the encounter. Ah, Engineer Fedoroff?"
"Might it help if we decelerated? We must keep one or another mode operative at all times, to be sure, but I should think that deceleration now would soften the collision."
"The computer has not made any recommendations yet. Probably the information is insufficient. In any event, the difference would be slight, a few hundred kilometers per second, out of almost three hundred thousand. No, regardless of what we do, we have no choice except to—ah—"
"Bull through," Reymont murmured. Telander heard and cast him a look of annoyance. Reymont didn't seem to mind.
As discussion progressed, though he grew increasingly tense, his eyes flickered from one speaker to the next and the lines between lips and nostrils deepened in his face. When at last Telander said, "Dismissed," the constable pushed almost brutally through the uncertain milling of the rest and plucked the captain's sleeve.
"I think we had better hold a private talk, sir." His Swedish, like his English, was fluent, but marred by a choppy accent. He had been born and raised in the turbulent sublevels of Polyugorsk and somehow made his way to Mars (Telander was sure the means had been devious), where he fought with the Zebras during the troubles. Later he went homeward as far as Luna, joined the Rescue Corps and soon rose to colonel's rank. Telander knew Reymont had done much to organize the police branch of his service along more efficient lines than before, but nonetheless doubted the Authority's wisdom in offering him a berth on this expedition.
The captain said with a chill, "Now is hardly the time to deny anyone access to information, Constable."
"Oh, call our working by ourselves politeness, not to antagonize people," Reymont answered impatiently.
Telander shrugged. "Come with me to the bridge, then. I have no time for special conferences."
Williams and a couple of others seemed to feel differently, but Reymont drove them off with a glare and a bark. Telander must perforce smile a bit as he left the commons. "You do have your uses," he confessed.
"As a parliamentary hatchet man? I think . . . I am afraid . . . there will be more call on me than that," Reymont said.
"Well, conceivably at Beta Virginis. Dubious, though. The robot sent back no indication of intelligent life on the one seemingly Earthlike planet. At most, we might encounter a few savages armed with spears—who would probably not be hostile to us. The dangers are subtler."
Reymont flushed as before. "I'm sorry," Telander added in haste. "I was thinking aloud. No intention of talking to you like a three-year-old. Of course you know all this. I am not entirely convinced by your claim that a degree of military-type discipline may be essential to surviving hazards like possible diseases. But we shall see. Certainly a specialist in rescue and disaster control is going to be welcome."
"You maunder again, Captain," Reymont said. "You're pretty badly shaken by what we're driving into. I believe our chances are not quite as good as you pretended. Right?"
Telander looked around. The corridor was empty, but still he lowered his voice. "I simply don't know. No Bussard ship has been tested under conditions like those ahead of us. Obviously! We will either get through in reasonable shape or we will die, a quick clean death. I saw no reason to make worse what hours remain for our people, by dwelling on that last."
Reymont scowled. "You overlook a third possibility. We may survive, but in bad shape."
"How the devil could we?"
"Hard to say. Perhaps we'll take such a buffeting that people are killed. Key personnel, whom we can ill afford to lose—not that fifty is any great number against a world. In such case, however . . ." Reymont brooded a while. Footsteps thudded beneath the mumble of energies. "They reacted well, on the whole," he said. "They were picked for courage and coolness. In a few instances, though, the picking was not very successful. Suppose we do find ourselves, let's say, disabled. What then? How long will morale last, or sanity itself? I want to be prepared to maintain discipline."
"In that connection," Telander said, cold once more, "please remember that you act under my orders and subject to the articles of the expedition."
"Damnation!" Reymont exploded. "What do you take me for? Some would-be Mao? I'm requesting your authority to deputize a few trustworthy men and make them quietly ready for emergencies. I'll issue them weapons, but stunner type. If nothing goes wrong—or if something does but everybody behaves himself—what have we lost?"
"Trust in each other," Telander said.
They had come to the bridge. Reymont entered with his companion, arguing further. Telander made a chopping gesture to shut him up and strode toward the computer. "Anything new?" he asked.
"Yes. The instruments have begun to draw a density map," Lindgren said. She had started on seeing Reymont and now spoke mechanically, not looking at him. Under the short fair hair her face went red and then white. "It is recommended—" She pointed to the screen and the latest printout.
Telander studied them. "Hm. To pass through a less dense region, we should generate a lateral vector by using the Number Three and Four decelerators in conjunction with the entire accelerator system . . . A procedure with dangers of its own. This calls for discussion." He flipped the intercom controls and spoke briefly to the chief engineer and the navigation officer. "In the plotting room. On the double!"
He turned to go. "Captain—" Reymont attempted.
"Not now," Telander said, already on his way.
"But—"
"The answer is no." Telander vanished out the door.
Reymont stood a moment, head lowered and shoulders hunched as if to charge. But he had nowhere to go. Ingrid Lindgren regarded him for a time that shivered—a minute or more, ship's chronology, which was half an hour in the lives of the stars and planets—before she said, quite softly: "What did you want of him?"
"Oh." Reymont turned about. "His order to recruit a small police reserve. He gave me something stupid about my not trusting my fellows."
Their eyes locked. "And not letting them alone in what may be their final hours," she said.
"I know. There's little for them to do, they think, except wait. So they'll spend the time . . . talking; reading favorite poems; eating favorite foods, with maybe a wine ration for this occasion; playing music, opera and ballet and theater tapes, or in some cases, something livelier, maybe bawdier; making love. Especially making love." Reymont spat out his words.
"Is that so bad?" she asked. "If we must go out, shouldn't we do so in a civilized, decent, life-loving way?"
"By being a trifle less civilized, et cetera, we might increase our chance of not going out," Reymont snapped.
She bridled. "Are you that afraid to die?"
Reymont shrugged. "No. But I like to live."
"I wonder. You know why I left you. Not your crudeness by itself. You can't help your background. But your unwillingness to do anything about overcoming it. Your caveman jealousy, for instance."
"I do have a poor man's primitive morality," he said. "Frankly, having seen what education and culture make people into, I'm less and less interested in acquiring them."
The spirit gave way in her. Her eyes blurred, she reached out to touch him and said, "Oh, Carl, are we going to fight the same old fight over again, now on perhaps our last day alive?" He stood rigid. She went on, fast: "I admired you. I wanted you to be my life's partner, the father of my children—on Beta Three if we find we really can settle there; on Earth if we have to return. But we're so alone, here between the stars! We have to take what comfort we can, and give it, or we may not survive."
"Unless we can control our own emotions," he said.
"Do you think there was any emotion . . . anything but friendship, and pity, and—and a wish to make sure he did not fall seriously in love with me—with Harry? Why, he's hardly more than a boy! And the articles say, in so many words, we can't have formal marriages en route, because we're already too constricted and deprived in every other way—"
"So you and I terminated a relationship which had become unsatisfactory," Reymont said.
"You've found plenty of others since!" she flared.
"For a week or two. So have you. No matter. As you have said, we're both free individuals. Why should I carry a grudge, just because it turned out to be impossible to keep a social relationship with you? I certainly don't want to spoil your fun after you go off watch."
Knuckles stood white on her fists. "What will you be doing?"
"Since I wasn't given authority to deputize," Reymont said, "I'll have to ask for volunteers."
"You can't!"
"I wasn't actually forbidden. I'll only ask a few men, in private, who are likely to agree. Are you going to tell the captain?"
She turned from him. "No," she said. "Please go away."
His boots clacked off down the companion.
The ship drove on.
She was not small. This hull must house fifty human beings, with every life-support apparatus required in the ultimate hostility which is outer space. It must carry closed-ecology food, air, and waste-disposal systems, tools, machinery, supplies, spare parts, instruments, references, a pair of auxiliary craft capable of ferrying to and from a planetary surface. For the expedition was not merely going for a look: not at such cost in resources, labor, skill, dreams and years.
At a minimum, these people would spend half a decade in the Beta Virginis System, learning what little they could. But if the third planet which the robot probe was now in orbit, from which it beamed its signals to an Earth that received them a generation later . . . if that planet really was habitable, the expedition never would come home, not even the professional spacemen. They would live out their lives, and belike their children and grandchildren would too, exploring its manifold mysteries and flashing their discoveries to the hungry minds on Earth. For any planet is a world infinitely complex, infinitely varied. And this world seemed to be so homelike that the strangenesses it must hold would be yet the more vivid.
The folk of Leonora Christine were quite frank in their hope that they could indeed establish a true scientific base. They often speculated that their descendants might have no desire whatsoever to go back: that Beta Three might evolve from base to colony to New Earth to jumping-off place for the next starward leap. For there was no other way by which man could travel far in the galaxy.
Consider: A single light-year is an inconceivable abyss. Denumerable, but inconceivable. At an ordinary speed—say, a good pace for a car in megalopolitan traffic, two kilometers per minute—one would need almost nine million years to cross it. And in Sol's neighborhood, the stars averaged some nine light-years apart. Beta Virginis was thirty-two distant.
Nevertheless, such spaces could be conquered. A ship accelerating continuously at one gravity would have traveled half a light-year in less than one year of time. And she would be moving very near the ultimate velocity, 300,000 kilometers per second. Thereafter she could, so to speak, coast along at one light-year per year: until, within half a light-year of journey's end, she began her deceleration.
But that is an incomplete picture. It takes no account of relativity. Precisely because there is an absolute limiting speed (at which light travels in vacuo; likewise neutrinos) there is an interdependence of space, time, mass, and energy. The tau factor enters the equations.
An outside observer, "at rest," measures the mass of the spaceship. The result he gets is the mass that the ship would have, measured when she was not moving with respect to him, divided by tau. Thus, the faster the ship moves, the more massive she is, as regards the universe at large. She gets this extra mass from the sheer kinetic energy of motion; e = mc2.
Furthermore, if the "stationary" observer could compare the ship's clocks with his own, he would notice a difference. The interlude between two events (such as the birth and the death of man) measured aboard the ship where they take place, is equal to the interlude which the outsider measures—also divided by tau. One might say that time moves proportionately slower on a starship.
Lengths, however, shrink; the outsider sees the ship shortened in the direction of motion by the factor tau.
But measurements made on shipboard are every bit as valid as those made outside. To a crewman, looking forth at the universe, the stars are compressed and have gained in mass; the distances between them have shriveled; they shine, they evolve at a strangely reduced rate. He has not changed, not with respect to himself. How could he?
Yet the picture is more complicated even than this. One must bear in mind that the ship has, in fact, been accelerated and will be decelerated in relation to the general background of the cosmos. This takes the whole problem out of special and into general relativity. The ship-star situation is not really symmetrical. When velocities match once again and reunion takes place, the star will have passed through a longer time than the ship did.
So to reach other suns in a reasonable portion of your life expectancy—Accelerate continuously, right up to the interstellar midpoint, when you make turnover and start slowing down again. You are limited by the speed of light, which you can never quite reach. But you are not limited in how close you can approach that speed. And thus you have no limit on your tau factor.
Practical problems arise. Where is the mass-energy to do this coming from? It would be useful to run tau up to 100. You could cross a light-century in a single year of your own experience. (Though of course you could never regain the century which had passed in the outside universe, during which your friends grew old and died.) But this would also, inevitably, involve a hundredfold increase of mass. Each ton of ship that left the Solar System must become a hundred tons. The thought of carrying enough fuel along from the start is ludicrous.
But who says we must do so? Fuel and reaction mass are there in space! It is pervaded with hydrogen. True, the concentration is not great by ordinary standards—about one atom per cubic centimeter in the galactic vicinity of Sol. But this makes thirty billion atoms per second, striking every square centimeter of the ship's cross-section, when she approaches light speed. The energies are unthinkable. Megaroentgens per hour of hard radiation would be released by impact; and more than a thousand r within an hour are fatal. No material shielding would help. Even supposing it impossibly thick to start with, it would soon be eroded away.
However, in the days of Leonora Christine non-material means were available: magnetohydrodynamic fields, whose pulses reached forth across millions of kilometers to seize atoms by their dipoles and control their streaming. These fields did not serve passively, as mere armor. They fed the gas into a ramjet system—if that phrase may be used for the starlike violence of an ongoing thermonuclear reaction, and for the hurricane of plasma cast aft to push the ship nearer and nearer ultimate c.
The forces involved were not just enormous; of necessity, they were precise. They were, indeed, so precise that they could be used within the hull as well as outside. They could operate on the asymmetries of atoms and molecules to produce an acceleration uniform with that of the basic field-generator complex itself. Rather, that uniformity was minus one terrestrial gravity. In effect, weight remained constant aboard, no matter how high the rate at which the ship gained speed.
This cushioning was only possible at relativistic velocities. While tau was small, atoms were insufficiently massive, skittish. But as they approached c, they grew heavier—not to themselves, of course, but to everything else—and so the interplay of fields between ship and universe could establish a stable configuration.
Thus the flight pattern was: A year at one gee, to get near light speed. Switchover to cushioned, high-acceleration mode. The bulk of the journey would be covered in a few months of crew time. At the end, another year must pass while the ship braked to interplanetary velocities and closed in on her goal.
And so, because velocity was never constant, the "twin paradox" did not arise. Tau was no static multiplying factor; it was dynamic; its work on mass, space and time could be observed as a fundamental thing, creating a forever different relationship between men and the universe through which they traveled.
The ship was not small. Yet she was the barest glint of metal, in that vast immaterial web of forces which surrounded and permeated her. She herself no longer generated them. She had initiated the process, when she reached minimum ram-jet speed; but now it was too huge, too swift, it could only be created and sustained by itself. The primary reactor, the venturi tubes, the entire system which thrust her, was not contained in the hull. Most of it was not material at all, but a resultant of cosmic-scale forces. The ship's control devices, under computer direction, were not remotely analogous to autopilots. They were more like catalysts, which judiciously used could affect the course of those appalling reactions, could build them up, in time slow them down and snuff them out—but not fast.
A month of cosmic time, a day of interior time, was too little to swerve around the suddenly perceived nebular pit. Only a few things could be done. Then nothing remained except to wait and see if she survived.
She struck.
It was too swiftly changing a pattern of assault too great. The delicate dance of energies which balanced out acceleration pressures could not be continued. The computer directed a circuit to break, shutting off that particular system, before positive feedback wrecked it.
Spacesuited, strapped into safety cocoons, alone with whatever memory could be kept of a farewell handclasp or kiss, the folk of Leonora Christine felt weight shift and change. A troll sat on each chest and choked each throat, darkness went raggedly before eyes. Sweat started forth, hearts slugged, pulses brawled. That noise was answered by the ship, a metal groan, a rip and a crash. She was not meant to endure stresses like these. Her safety factors were small; mass was too precious for anything else. And she rammed hydrogen atoms swollen to the heaviness of silicon or phosphorous, dust particles bloated into meteoroids. Velocity had flattened the cloud longitudinally; it was thin—she tore through in seconds. But by that same token, the nebulina was no longer a cloud to her. It was a well-nigh solid wall.
Her outside force-screens absorbed the battering, flung matter aside in turbulent streams, protected the hull from everything except slowdown drag. But reaction was inevitable, on the fields themselves and thus on the devices which, borne outside, produced and controlled them. Frameworks crumpled. Electronic elements fused. Cryogenic liquids boiled from shattered containers.
So one of the thermonuclear fires went out.
The stars saw the event differently. They saw a tenuous murky mist struck by an object incredibly swift and dense. Hydromagnetic forces snatched at atoms, whirled them about, ionized them, battered them together. The object was encompassed in a meteor blaze. During the hour or so of its passage, it drilled a tunnel through the nebulina. That tunnel was wider than the drill, because a shock wave spread outward—and outward and outward and outward, destroying what stability there had been, casting substance forth in gouts and tatters.
A sun and planets had been in embryo here. Now they would never form.
The invader passed. It had not lost much speed. Accelerating once more, it dwindled away toward remoter stars.
Reymont struggled back to consciousness. He could not have been darkened long. Could he? Noise had ceased. Was he deafened? Had the air puffed through some hole into space? Were the screens down, had gamma-colored death already sleeted through him?
No. When he listened, he made out the familiar low beat of energies. Perhaps it even penetrated him a bit louder than formerly. Perhaps the deck's subliminal shiver had quickened a trifle. The hull structure must be loosened by what it had undergone. Yet a fluoropanel shone steadily in his vision. The shadow of his cocoon frame was cast on a bulkhead and had the soft edges which betokened ample air. Weight had returned to a single gee. "To hell with melodrama," he heard himself say. His voice sounded far-off, a stranger's. "We got work."
He fumbled with his harness. Muscles throbbed and ached. A trickle of blood ran over his mouth, tasting salty. Or was it sweat? Nichevo. He was functional. He crawled free, opened his helmet, sniffed—slight smell of scorch and ozone, nothing serious—and gusted one deep sigh before shedding his spacesuit.
His cabin half was a mess. The brackets holding his meager personal belongings on their shelves had given way and let everything smash across the deck. He found his stunner beneath his regular bunk and strapped it on before sliding aside the panel which cut off the other section.
Chi-yuen Ai-ling's slight form lay inert. Reymont unlatched her faceplate and listened carefully. Her breathing was normal, no wheeze or gurgle to suggest injured lungs. Probably she had just fainted. He left her. Others might need help worse. No strong sentiment was between him and her anyway. After breaking up with Ingrid Lindgren and playing the field a bit, he'd moved in with Chi-yuen on a basis of mutual convenience. She didn't want to appear standoffish, but her consuming interest was in developing some ideas about planetology which the probe data from their goal had suggested to her. A steady relationship with one man kept the rest from making well-intentioned advances. Similarly, he wanted to retire from close human contacts without being obvious about it. Nobody had to know that the panel across this cabin was usually drawn shut.
Ivan Fedoroff was already out in the corridor. "How goes it?" Reymont hailed.
"I am on my way to see," the engineer flung back and ran.
"But—" Reymont cut off his words and pushed into Johann Freiwald's section. The machinist sat slumped on his bunk. "Raus mit dir," Reymont said. "And don't forget your gun."
"I have a headache like carpenters in my skull," Freiwald protested.
"You offered to help me. I thought you were a man."
Freiwald cast Reymont a resentful glance, but got into motion. They were busy for the next hour. Leonora Christine's crew was busier yet, inspecting, measuring, conferring low-voiced and apart. But that, at least, gave them little time to feel pain or let terror grow. The scientist majority had no such anodyne. From the fact that they were alive and the ship apparently working as before, they might have drawn cheer . . . only why didn't Captain Telander announce anything? Reymont bullied them into commons, started some making coffee and others attending to the most badly bruised. At last he went alone to the command bridge.
The door was closed. He knocked. Fedoroff's voice boomed, "No admittance. Please wait for the captain to address you."
"This is the constable," Reymont said.
"Well? Haven't you anything better to do than meddle?" Lindgren called.
"I've assembled your passengers," Reymont said. "They're getting over being stunned. They're beginning to realize something isn't quite right. Not knowing what, in their present condition, will crack them open. Maybe we won't be able to glue the pieces back together."
"Go tell them an announcement will be made very soon," Telander said without steadiness.
"You tell them. The intercom's working, isn't it? Tell them you're making exact evaluations of damage, so you can lay out a program for repair as soon as possible. But first let me in to help find words for announcing the disaster."
The door flew wide. Fedoroff grabbed Reymont's arm and tried to pull him through. Reymont yanked free, an expert movement. His other hand smacked stingingly edge-on across the engineer's wrist. "Don't do that," he said. "Not ever." He stepped into the bridge and closed the door himself.
Fedoroff growled and doubled his fists. Lindgren hurried to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "No, Ivan," she begged. "Please." The Russian subsided, stiffly. They glowered at him in the thrumming stillness: captain, mate, engineer, second engineer, navigation officer, biosystems chief. He looked past them. The console had suffered, some panels twisted, some meters torn loose. "Is that the trouble?" he asked, pointing.
"No," said Boudreau, the navigator. "Instruments can be replaced."
Reymont sought the viewscope. The compensator circuits were also dead. He put his head into the hood of the electronic periscope.
A hemispheric simulacrum sprang from the darkness at him: uncompensated, the view he would actually have seen from outside on the hull. At light speed, aberration distorted the sky. The stars were crowded forward, streaming thinly amidships; and because of Doppler effect they shone steel blue, violet, X-ray. Aft the patterns approached what had once been familiar—but not very closely, and those stars were reddened, like dying embers, as if time were snuffing them out. Reymont shuddered a little and drew his head back into the comforting smallness of the bridge.
"Well?" he said.
"The decelerator system—" Telander swallowed. "We cannot stop."
Reymont's face went altogether expressionless. "Go on," he said.
Fedoroff spoke. His words came flat with fury. "You will recall, I hope, we had activated the decelerators, two of them anyhow, but they belong to an integrated system. Which has to be a separate system from the accelerators, since to slow down we do not push gas through a ram jet but reverse its vector."
Reymont did not stir at the insult. Lindgren caught her breath. After a moment Fedoroff sagged.
"Well," he said tiredly, "the accelerators were operating too. I imagine, on that account, their field strength protected them. But the decelerators—out. Wrecked."
"How?"
"We can only determine that the thermonuclear core is extinguished. In the nature of the case, the decelerators must have been subject to greater stress than the accelerators. I suppose that those forces, reacting through the hydromagnetic fields, broke apart the material assembly which they contain. That assembly, you know, generates and maintains the magnetic bottle which itself contains the ongoing atomic reactions." Fedoroff looked at the deck. "No doubt we could repair the system if we could get at it," he muttered. "But no one can go near the reaction which powers the accelerator and live long enough to do any work. Nor could any remote-control robot we might build. Too much radiation for its circuits. And, of course, we cannot shut off the accelerator. That would mean shutting off the whole set of forcefields which it maintains. Hydrogen bombardment would kill everyone aboard within a minute."
"We have no directional control whatsoever?" Reymont asked, still without tone.
"Yes, yes, we do that. The accelerator pattern can be varied," Boudreau said. "It has four Venturis, and we can damp down some—get a sidewise as well as forward vector—but don't you see, on any path we take, we must continue accelerating or we die."
"Accelerating forever," Telander said.
"At least, though," Lindgren whispered, "we can stay in the galaxy. Swing around and around its heart." Her gaze went to the viewscope, and they knew what she thought of: behind that curtain of blue stars, blackness, intergalactic void, an ultimate aloneness. "At least . . . we can grow old . . . with suns around us. Even if we can't ever touch a planet again."
Telander's features writhed. He cried, "How do I tell our people?"
"We have no hope," Reymont said. It was hardly a question.
"None," Fedoroff said.
"Oh, we can live out our lives," said Pereira. "The biosystems have triple protection. They are intact. We could actually increase their productivity. Do not fear hunger or thirst or suffocation. But I would not advise that we have children."
Lindgren said out of nightmare, staring at a bulkhead as if she could see through: "When the last of us dies—We must put in an automatic cutoff. The ship must not keep on running after our deaths. Let the radiation do what it will, let cosmic friction break her to bits and let the bits drift off into those millions of light-years . . . yonder."
"Why?" asked Reymont like a machine.
"Isn't it obvious? If we throw ourselves into a circular path . . . consuming hydrogen in our accelerator, always traveling faster, running tau up and up as the thousands of years pass . . . we get more massive. We could end by consuming the galaxy."
Telander laughed, a harsh little noise in his throat. "No. Not that," he said. "I have seen calculations. They were made in the early stages of discussing Bussard ships. Someone worried about getting out of control. But it isn't serious. A spacecraft, any human work, is too insignificant. Tau would have to become something like, well, shall we say ten to the twentieth power, before the ship's mass was equal to that of a very small star. And the odds are always astronomical against her colliding with anything more important than a nebula. Besides, the universe won't last so long. No, we are going to die. But the cosmos is safe from us."
"How long can we live?" Lindgren breathed. She cut Pereira off. "I don't mean in ship's time. If you say we can manage to die of old age, I believe you. But I think a year or two we will stop eating, or cut our throats, or agree to turn the accelerator off, or something."
"Not if I can help it," Reymont snapped.
She gave him a dreary look. "Do you mean you would continue—not just cut off from man, from living Earth, but from the whole universe?"
He regarded her steadily in return. One hand rested on his gun butt. "Don't you have that much guts?" he asked.
"But fifty years inside this flying hell!" she nearly screamed. "How many will that be outside?"
"Easy," Fedoroff said and took her by the shoulders. She clung to him and snatched after air.
Boudreau said, carefully dry: "The time relationship appears to be somewhat academic to us, n'est-ce pas? And it depends in any case on what course we take. If we let ourselves continue straight out into space, naturally we will enter a much thinner interstellar medium. The rate of increase of tau will be proportionately smaller than here, and get smaller as we move beyond this entire group of galaxies. On the other hand, if we stay within our own galaxy, if we try for a cyclical path taking us through the denser hydrogen concentrations, we could soon get a very large tau. We might see billions of years go by. That could be quite fascinating." His smile was forced. "And we have each other. A goodly company. I am with the constable. There are better ways to live, but also worse."
Lindgren hid her face against Fedoroff's breast. He held her with one arm, patted her awkwardly with the other hand. After a while (an hour or so in the history of the stars) she looked up again.
"I'm sorry," she gulped. "You're right. We do have each other." Her glance went from one to the next, ending at Reymont.
"But, but how shall I tell them?" Telander groaned.
"I suggest you do not," Reymont said. "Let the mate break the news."
"What?" Lindgren asked.
"You are a simpatico person," he said. "I remember."
She moved from Fedoroff's loosened grasp, a step toward Reymont. Abruptly the constable tautened. He stood for a second as if blind, before he whirled from her and confronted the navigator.
"Quick!" he exclaimed. "Do you know—"
"If you think I should—" Lindgren had begun to say.
"Not now," he interrupted, "Boudreau, come here! We have some figuring to do."
The silence went on and on.
Ingrid Lindgren stared from the dais where she stood with Lars Telander, down at her people. They looked back at her. And not a one in that chamber could find words.
Hers had been well chosen. The truth was less savage in her voice than in any man's. But when she came to her planned midpoint—"We have lost Earth, lost Beta Three, lost the mankind we belonged to. We have left to us courage, love and, yes, hope"—she could not continue. She stood with lip caught between teeth, fingers twisted together, and the slow tears ran from her eyes.
Telander bestirred himself. "Ah . . . if you will be so good," he tried, "Kindly listen. A means does not exist . . ." The ship jeered at him in her tone of distant lightnings.
Glassgold broke. She did not weep loudly, but her very struggle to stop made the sound more dreadful. M'Botu, beside her, attempted consolation. He, though, had clamped such stoicism on himself that he might as well have been a robot. Iwamoto withdrew a little from them both, from them all, one could see how he pulled his soul into some nirvana with a lock on its door. Williams shook his fists at the overhead and raved. Another voice, female, started to keen. A woman considered the man with whom she had been keeping company, said, "You, for my whole life?" and stalked from him. He tried to follow her and bumped into a crewman who snarled and offered to fight if he didn't apologize. A seething went through the entire human mass.
"Listen to me," Telander called. "Please listen."
Reymont shook loose the arm which Chi-yuen Ai-ling clutched, in the first row, and jumped onto the dais. "You'll never bring them around that way," he warned sotto voce. "You've always worked with disciplined professionals. Let me handle these civilians." He turned on them. "Quiet, there!" Echoes bounced around his roar. "Shut your hatches. Act like adults for once. We haven't the personnel to change your diapers for you."
Williams yelped with resentment. M'Botu growled, rather more meaningfully. Reymont drew his stunner. "Hold your places!" He dropped his vocal volume, but everyone heard him as if he stood beside. "The first one to move gets knocked out. Afterward we'll court-martial him. I'm the constable of this expedition, and I intend to maintain order and effective cooperation." He grinned into their faces. "If you feel I exceed my authority, you're welcome to file a complaint with the appropriate bureau in Stockholm. But for now, you'll listen!"
He tongue-lashed them until their adrenals seemed to be active again. It didn't take long.
"Very well," he finished and turned mild. "We'll say no more about this. I realize you've had a shock which none of you were prepared psychologically to meet. But we've nevertheless got a problem. And it has a solution, too, of sorts, if we can work together. I repeat: if."
Lindgren had swallowed her weeping. "I think I was supposed to—" she said. He shook his head at her and went on:
"We can't repair the decelerators because we can't turn off the accelerators. The reason is, as the mate has explained, we must keep its forcefields for shielding against interstellar gas. So it looks as if we're bottled in this hull. Which was never intended to house us for more than a few years, ship's time. Well, I don't like the prospect either. But I did get an idea. A possibility of escape, if we have the nerve and determination. Navigator Boudreau checked the figures for me. We have a chance of success."
"Get to the point, will you?" yelled Williams.
"I'm glad to see some spirit," Reymont said. "It'll have to be kept under control, though or we are finished. But, to make this as short as possible—afterward Captain Telander and the specialist officers can explain details—the idea is this."
His flat delivery might have been used to describe a new method of bookkeeping. "If we can leave the galaxy, get out where gas is virtually nonexistent in space, we can safely turn off the fields. Then we can go outside of the hull and repair the decelerators. Now astronomical data are not as precise as one might like, but we do know that even in nearby intergalactic space, the medium is too dense. Much thinner than here, of course, but still so thick, in terms of atoms struck per second, as to kill us without protection.
"However, galaxies generally occur in clusters. Our galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds, M31 in Andromeda, and thirteen others, large and small, make one such group. The space it occupies is about six million light-years across. Beyond them is an enormously greater distance to the next galactic family. And in that stretch, we hope, the gas is thin enough for us not to need shielding."
Reymont lifted both hands. He had holstered his gun. "Wait, wait!" he managed to laugh. "Don't bother. I already know what you're trying to say. Ten or twenty million light-years, however far we must go, is impossible. We haven't the tau for it. A ratio of fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand, does us no good whatsoever. Agreed. But remember, we have no limit on our tau. Especially if we widen our scoop fields and, also, pass through parts of this galaxy where gas is denser than here. Both of these we can do. The exact parameters we've been using were determined by our course to Beta Virginis; but the ship is not restricted to them. We could go as high as ten gee, maybe higher.
"So. A rough estimate indicates that if we swing partway around this galaxy and then plunge straight inward through its middle and out the other side—we'd have to make that partial circuit anyway; we can't turn on ore at our speed!—we can pick up the necessary tau. Remember, it'll increase constantly. Our transmit time to Beta would have been much less than we figured on if we hadn't meant to stop there: if, instead of making turnover at midpassage, we had simply kept cramming on the speed. Navigator Boudreau estimates—estimates, mind you; we'll have to gather data as we go; but a good, informed guess—he thinks we can finish with this galaxy and head out beyond it in a little over one year."
"How long cosmic time?" challenged from the gathering.
"Does that matter?" Reymont retorted. "You know the dimensions. The galactic disk is about 100,000 light-years in diameter. At present we're some 30,000 light-years from the center. A quarter million years altogether? Who can tell? It'll depend on what course we take, which in turn will depend on what long-range observation can show us." He stabbed a finger at them. "I know. You wonder, what if we hit a cloud such as got us into this miserable situation. Well, I have two answers for that. First, we have to take some chances. But second, as our tau gets greater and greater, we'll be able to use regions which are denser and denser. We'll have too much mass to be affected as we were this time. Do you see? The more we have, the more we can get. We may well leave the galaxy with a tau on the order of a hundred million. If so, by ship's time we'll be outside of this entire galactic cluster in days!"
"And how do we get back?" Glassgold called—but alert and interested.
"We don't," Reymont admitted. "We keep on till we find another galactic cluster. There we reverse process, decelerate. We'll be helped somewhat by the fact of recession. The other groups are already moving away from ours, you know. We won't have quite so much relative velocity to kill. But eventually we'll be inside a single galaxy. Our tau will be down to something reasonable. We can start looking for a planet where we can live.
"Yes, yes, yes!" he barked into their babble, impatient again. "Millions of years in the future. Millions of light-years from here. The human race most likely extinct . . . in this part of the universe. But can't we start over, in another space and time? Or would you rather sit in this metal shell, feeling sorry for yourselves, till you grow senile and die childless? Unless you can't stand the gaff, and blow out the brains you flatter yourselves you have. I'm for going on, as long as strength lasts. Will anyone who feels differently be so good as to get out of the way?"
He stalked from the dais. "Ah . . . Navigation Officer Boudreau," Telander said into the rising noise. "Will you come here? Ladies and gentlemen, this meeting is now open for questions—"
Chi-yuen Ai-ling caught Reymont's hand. He glanced down at her. "You were marvelous," she exclaimed.
His mouth tightened. He looked from her, from Lindgren, across the group, to the enclosing bulkheads. "Thanks," he replied curtly. "Wasn't anything."
"Oh, but it was. You gave us back hope." She lowered her gaze and colored. "I am honored to share a cabin with you."
He didn't seem to hear. "Anybody could have presented a shiny new idea," he said. "They'll grasp at anything, right now. I only expedited matters. When they accept the program, that's when the real trouble begins."
Forcefields shifted about. They were not mere static tubes and screens. What formed them was the incessant interplay of electromagnetic pulses, whose generation, propagation and heterodyning must be under control at every nanosecond, from the quantum level to the cosmic. As exterior conditions—matter density, radiation, impinging field strengths, gravitational space-curvature—changed, instant by instant, their reaction on the ship's immaterial web was registered; data were fed into the computers; handling a thousand simultaneous Fourier series as the smallest of their tasks, these machines sent back their answers; the generating and controlling devices, swimming aft of the hull in a vortex of their own output, made their supple adjustments. Into this homeostasis, this tightrope walk across the chance of improper response—which would mean distortion and collapse of the fields, nova-like destruction of the ship—entered a human command. It became part of the data. A starboard intake was widened, a port intake throttled back; but carefully, carefully. Leonora Christine swung around onto her new course.
The stars saw the ponderous movement of a steadily larger mass, taking months and years before the deviation from its original track was significant. Not that the object they saw was slow. It was a planet-sized shell of incandescence, where atoms were seized by its outermost force-fringes and excited into thermal, fluorescent, synchrotron radiation. And it came barely behind the wave front which announced its march. But the galaxy was vast. The ship's luminosity was soon lost across light-years.
The ship's passage crawled through abysses which seemingly had no end.
In her own time, though, the story was another. She moved through a universe ever more strange—more rapidly aging, more massive, more compressed. Thus the rate at which she could gulp down hydrogen, burn some of it to energy and hurl the rest off in a billion-kilometer jetflame . . . that rate kept increasing for her. Each minute, as counted by her clocks, added more to her tau than the last minute had added to it.
Inboard, nothing changed. Air and metal still carried the deep beat of acceleration, whose net internal thrust still stood at an even one gravity. The interior powerplant continued to give light, electricity, thermostatic control.
And the biosystems reclaimed oxygen and water, processed waste, produced food, maintained human life. Entropy increased. People grew older at the ancient rate of sixty seconds per minute, sixty minutes per hour.
But those hours were always less related to the hours and years which passed outside. Loneliness closed on the ship like fingers.
Reymont paused for a moment at the entrance to commons. The main room lay big and quiet. At first it had been in constant use, an almost hysterical crowding together. But lately, aside from meals, the tendency was for scientists and crewfolk to form little cliques, or retreat into solitariness. Not many ball games went on in the gym any more; the hobby shops were often deserted. No serious quarrels had developed. It was just a matter of confessing by one's actions that one was weary to death of the same faces and the same conversations, and therefore meant to spend most of the time apart—reading, watching taped shows, writing, thinking, sleeping as much as possible. Offsetting this tendency in some was a change in the sexual habits of others. Reymont wasn't sure whether that betokened a breakdown or a groping toward a new pattern better suited to present conditions. Maybe both. At any rate, most relationships had become transient, though some groups stayed more or less together as wholes and went in for a good deal of experimentation.
He didn't care one way or another about that. He wished they'd all pull themselves together, get more exercise and do less brooding. But he couldn't persuade many. His inflexible enforcement of certain basic rules had pretty well isolated him socially.
Apropos which—yes. He strode across the deck. A light above each of the three dream booths said it was occupied. He fished a master key from his pocket and opened the lids, one by one. Two he closed again. But at the third he swore. The stretched-out body, the face under the somnohelmet, belonged to Emma Glassgold.
For a moment he stood looking down at the little woman. Peace dwelt in her smile. But skin was loose and unhealthily colored. The EEG screens behind the helmet said she was in a soothed condition. So she could be roused fast without danger. Reymont snapped down the override switch on the timer. The oscilloscopic trace of the hypnotic pulses that had been fed into her brain flattened and darkened.
She stirred. "Shalom, Moshe," he heard her whisper. There was nobody aboard named Moshe.
He slid the helmet off, uncovering her eyes. She squeezed them tighter shut, knuckled them, and tried to turn around in the box.
"Come on," Reymont said. "Wake up." He gave her a shake.
She blinked at him. The breath snapped into her. She sat straight. He could almost see the dream fade away behind those eyes. "Come on," he repeated, offering his hand to assist. "Climb out of that damned coffin."
"Ach, no, no," she slurred. "You . . . I was with my Moshe."
"I'm sorry, but—"
She crumpled into sobbing. Reymont slapped the booth, a cracking across every other noise. "All right," he said, "I'll make that a direct order. Out! And report to Dr. Winblaa."
"What the devil's going on here?"
Reymont turned. Norbert Williams must have heard him and come in from the pool, because the chemist was nude and wet. He was also furious. "So now you're bullying women," he said in a thickened tone. "Not even big women. Get away from here."
Reymont stood where he was. "We have regulations about the use of dream booths," he said. "If someone hasn't the self-discipline to observe them, I have to compel."
"Yah! Snooping around, watching us, shoving your nose up everybody's privacy—God, I'm not going to put up with it any longer!"
"Don't," Glassgold pleaded. "Don't fight." She seemed to shrink into herself. "I will go."
"Like hell you will," the North American answered. "Stay. Insist on your rights." His features burned crimson. "I've had a bellyful of this little tin Jesus, and now's the time to do something about him."
Reymont said, spacing his words: "The regulations limiting use of the booths weren't written for fun, Williams. Too much sleep, too much artificial stimulation of dreams, is bad. It becomes addictive. The end result can be insanity."
"Listen." The chemist made an obvious effort to curb his own wrath. "People aren't identical. You may think we can be chopped and trimmed to fit your pattern—you and your dragooning us into calisthenics, your arranging work details that any child could see aren't for anything except to keep us busy a few hours per day, your smashing the still that Pedro Rodrigues built—your whole petty dictatorship, ever since the voyage began, worse and worse since we veered off on this Flying Dutchman chase—" He swallowed. "Listen," he said. "Those regulations. Like here. They're written to make sure nobody gets too much dream time. Of course. But how do you know that some of us are getting enough? We've all got to spend some time in the booths. You also, Constable Iron Man. You also. The ship's too sterile an environment. It's a sensory-deprivation place. We've got to have substitutes."
"Certainly—" Reymont interrupted.
"Now how can you tell how much substitute anyone else may need? You don't have the sensitivity God gave a cockroach. Do you know one mucking thing about Emma's background? I do. I know she's a fine, courageous woman . . . perfectly well able to judge her own necessities, and guide herself . . . she doesn't need you to run her life for her." Williams pointed. "There's the door. Use it."
"Norbert, don't," Glassgold shivered. She climbed from the box and tried to come between the men. Reymont eased her to one side and answered Williams:
"If exceptions are to be made, the ship's doctor is the one to determine them. Not you. She has to see Dr. Winblaa anyway, after this. She can ask him for a medical authorization."
"I know how far she'll get with him. That bastard won't even issue tranquilizers."
"We've a long trip ahead of us. Unforeseeable stresses to undergo. If we start getting dependent on pacifiers—"
"Did you ever think, without some such help, we'll go crazy and die? We'll decide for ourselves, thank you. Now go away, I said!"
Glassgold sought once more to intervene. Reymont had to seize her by the arms to move her.
"Get your hands off her, you swine!" Williams charged in with both fists flailing.
Reymont released Glassgold and drifted back, to where more room for maneuvering was available. Williams yelped and followed. Reymont guarded himself against the inexpert blows until, after a minute, he sprang close. A karate flurry, two chops, a gush from emptied lungs, and Williams went to the deck. He huddled retching. Blood dripped from his nose.
Glassgold shrieked and ran to him. She knelt, pulled him close, glared up at Reymont. "Aren't you brave?" she spat.
The constable spread his palms. "Was I supposed to let him hit me?"
"You c-c-could have left."
"No. My duty is to maintain order on board. Until Captain Telander relieves me from that, I'll continue to do so."
"Very well," Glassgold said between her teeth. "We are going to the captain at once. I am lodging a formal complaint against you."
Reymont shook his head. "It was explained and agreed on," he answered, "that the skipper mustn't be bothered with our ordinary troubles and bickerings. Not under these new circumstances, when we're bound into the absolute unknown. He has to think of the ship."
Williams groaned his way back toward full consciousness.
"But we will go to First Mate Lindgren," Reymont said. "I have to file charges against both of you."
Glassgold compressed her lips. "As you wish," she said.
"Not Lin'gren," Williams mouthed. "Lin'gren an' him, they was—"
"No longer," Glassgold said. "She couldn't stand any more of him, even before the disaster. She will be fair." She rose, helped Williams up, supported him the whole way to officer country.
Several people saw them pass and started to ask what had happened. Reymont glowered them into silence. The looks they returned him were sullen. At the first intercom callbox, he dialed Lindgren's cabin and requested her to come to the interview room.
It was minuscule but soundproof, a place for confidential hearings and necessary humiliations. Lindgren seated herself behind the desk. She had donned a uniform for the occasion. The fluoropanels spilled light onto her frost-blonde hair; the voice in which she asked Reymont to commence was equally cold.
He gave a short, flat account of what had happened. "I charge Professor Glassgold with violation of a rule on personal hygiene," he finished, "and Mr. Williams with assault."
"Mutiny?" Lindgren inquired. Williams looked dismayed.
"No, madam. Assault will suffice," Reymont said. To the chemist: "Consider yourself lucky. We can't psychologically afford a full-dress trial, which a charge of mutiny would bring. Not unless you keep on with this kind of behavior."
"That will do, Constable," Lindgren snapped. "Professor Glassgold, please give me your version of what happened."
Anger still upbore the biologist. "I plead guilty to the violation as alleged," she said without a waver, "but I am also pleading guilty and asking for a full review of my case—of everybody's case—as provided by the articles. Not Dr. Winblad's judgment alone; a board of ship's officers and my colleagues. As for the fight, Norbert was intolerably provoked, and he was made the victim of sheer viciousness."
"Your statement, Mr. Williams?"
"I don't know how I stand under your damn reg—" The North American checked himself. "Pardon, ma'am," he said, a little thickly still through his puffed lips. "I never did memorize space law. I thought common sense and good will would see us through. Reymont may be technically in the right, but I've had about as much of his brazen-headed interference as I can tolerate."
"Then, Professor Glassgold, Mr. Williams, are you willing to abide by my judgment? You are entitled to a regular trial if you so desire."
Williams managed a lopsided grin. "Matters are bad enough already, ma'am. I suppose this has to go in the log, but maybe it doesn't have to go in everyone's ears."
"Oh, yes," Glassgold whispered. She caught Williams' hand.
Reymont opened his mouth. "You are under my authority, Constable," Lindgren intercepted him. "You may, of course, appeal to Captain Telander."
"No, madam," Reymont clipped.
"Very well." Lindgren leaned back. A smile thawed her features. "I suggest that accusations on every side of the case be dropped . . . or, more accurately, never be filed. Let's sit down—go ahead, use that bench—let's talk this problem out as among human beings who are all in, shall I say, the same boat."
"Him too?" Williams jerked a thumb toward Reymont.
"We must have law and discipline, you know," Lindgren said mildly. "Without them, we die. Perhaps Constable Reymont gets over-zealous. Or perhaps not. He is, though, the only police and military specialist we have. If you dissent from him—well, that's what I am here for. Do sit down. I'll ring for coffee. We might make a raid on our cigarette ration, too."
"If the mate pleases," Reymont said, "I'll excuse myself."
"No, we have things to say to you also," Glassgold declared.
Reymont kept his eyes on Lindgren's. It was as if sparks flew between. "As you explained, madam," he said, "my business is to uphold the rules of the ship. No more, no less. This has become something else: a personal counselling session. I suggest the lady and gentleman will talk more freely without me."
"I believe you are right, Constable," the mate nodded. "Dismissed."
He sketched a salute and left. On his way down the corridor, Freiwald greeted him with an approximation of cordiality. But then, Freiwald was one of his half-dozen deputies.
He entered his cabin. The partition was drawn aside. Chi-yuen Ai-ling sat on his bunk rather than her own. She wore something light and frilly, which made her look like a little girl, a sad one. "Hello," she said tonelessly. "You have thunder in your face. What happened?"
Reymont joined her and related it.
"Well," she sighed, "can you blame them so much?"
"No. I suppose not. Though—I don't know. They're supposed to be the best Earth could offer. Intelligence, education, stable personality, good health, dedication. And they know they'd likely never come home again. At a minimum, they'd come back to an Earth older than the one they left by the better part of a century." Reymont ran a hand through his wirebrush hair. "So things have changed," he said. "We're off to an unknown destiny, maybe to death, certainly to complete isolation. But is this so different from what we were planning on from the start? Should it make people go to pieces?"
"Yes," Chi-yuen said. "It does."
"You too. I've noticed." He gave her a ferocious look. "You were busy at first, your theoretical work, your programming the studies you meant to carry out in the Beta Virginia System. And when the trouble hit us, you rallied as well as anyone."
A ghostly smile crossed her lips. "You inspired me," she said.
"Since then, however . . . more and more, you sit doing nothing. I think you and I had the beginnings of, uh, real friendship; but you don't often make any meaningful contact with me of late, nor with anyone else. No more work. No more big daydreams. Not even much crying into your pillow after lights out . . . oh, yes, I'd lie awake and hear you. Why, Ai-ling? What's happening to you? To most of our people?"
"I suppose we have not quite your raw will to survive at any cost," she said, almost under her breath.
"I'd consider some prices for life too high myself. But here—We have what we need to exist. A certain amount of comfort as well. An adventure like nothing we'd dreamed of. What's wrong?"
"Do you know what the year is on Earth?" she countered.
"No. I was the one who suggested to Captain Telander he order that particular clock removed. You may as well know that now. Too morbid an attitude was developing around it."
"Most of us can make our own estimates anyway. At present, I believe it is about 10,000 Anno Domini at home. Give or take some centuries. And, oh, yes, I recognize that for a nonsense statement. I understand about the concept of simultaneity breaking down under relativistic conditions. But still that date does have a meaning. We are absolute exiles. Already. Irrevocably. What has happened on Earth? What is happening throughout the galaxy? What have men done? What are they becoming? We will never share in it. We cannot."
She had spoken in a level, almost indifferent voice. He tried to break her apathy with sharpness: "What of that? If we'd gone to Beta Three and stayed, we'd have had a thread of radio contact, words a generation old before we heard them. Nothing else. And our own deaths would have closed us off from the universe. The common fate of man. Why should we whine because ours takes an unexpected shape?"
She regarded him for a space before she said, "You don't really want an answer for yourself. You want to provoke one from me."
Startled, he said, "Well . . . yes."
"You understand people a great deal better than you let on. Your business, I suppose. You tell me what our trouble is."
"Loss of purpose," he said at once. "The crewfolk aren't in such bad condition yet. They have their jobs to keep them occupied. But most of those aboard are scientists. They'd signed their lives over to the Beta Virginis expedition. You, for example, intended to study planetology there. So you had that to look forward to; and meanwhile you had your preparations to play with. Now you have no idea what will happen. You know just that it'll be something altogether different from what you expected. That it may be death—because we are taking some frightful risks—and you can do nothing to help, only sit passive and be carried. Naturally your morale cracks."
"What do you suggest I do, Charles?"
"Well, why not continue your theoretical work? Try to generalize it. Eventually we'll be looking for a planet to settle on. Your specialty will be very much needed."
"You know what the odds are against our ever finding a home. We are going to keep on this devil's chase until we die."
"Damnation, we can improve the odds!"
"How?"
"That's one of the things you ought to be working on."
She smiled again, a little more alive. "Do you know, Charles," she said, "you make me want to. If for no other reason than to make you stop flogging at me. Is that why you are so hard on people?"
He considered her. She had borne up thus far better than most. Maybe she would gain fresh courage from, well, sharing with him. And every glint of will and hope was to be nurtured. "Can you keep a trade secret?" he asked.
Her glance actually sparkled. "You should know me that well by now." One bare foot rubbed across his thigh.
He patted it and grinned. "An old principle," he said. "Works in military and para-military organizations. I've been applying it here. The human animal wants a father-mother image but, at the same time, resents being disciplined. You can get stability like this: The ultimate authority-source is kept remote, godlike, practically unapproachable. Your immediate superior is a mean son of a bitch who makes you toe the mark and whom you therefore hate. But his superior is as kind and sympathetic as rank allows. Do you follow me?"
She laid a finger to her chin. "No, not really."
"Well, in the present case—oh, you'll never know how carefully I maneuvered, those first few months after we hit the nebulina, to help things work out this way—Captain Telander has been isolated, along with those officers most concerned with the actual operation of the ship. He doesn't realize that. He agreed to my argument that he shouldn't be distracted by ordinary business, because his whole attention must go to getting us safely through the galaxy's clouds and clusters. But this has removed him from the informal, intimate basis on which we operated before. He dines separately, with Boudreau and Fedoroff. He takes his recreation and exercise alone in the cabin we've enlarged for him. When he needs a woman, he requests her most politely to visit him, and never asks the same one twice. And so on and so on.
"I can't claim credit for the whole development. Much of it is natural, almost inevitable evolution. The logic of our problem brought it about, given some nursing by me. The end result, however, is that our good gray friend Lars Telander has been transformed into the Old Man."
Chi-yuen half smiled, half sighed. "Poor Old Man! Why?"
"I told you," Reymont said. "Psychological necessity. The average person aboard has to feel that his life is in competent hands. Of course, no one believes consciously that the captain is infallible. But there's an unconscious need for such an aura. Therefore, we have now established things so that the captain's human-level judgment never is put to the test."
"Lindgren is the surrogate there?" Chi-yuen looked closely at Reymont.
He nodded. "I'm the traditional top sergeant. Hard, harsh, demanding, overbearing, inconsiderate, brutal. Not so bad as to provoke a petition for my removal. But enough to irritate, to be unpopular. That's good for the others, you know. It's healthier to be mad at me than to brood on personal woes . . . as you, my dear, have been doing.
"Now Lindgren smooths things out. As first mate, she sustains my power. But she also overrides it from time to time. She exercises her rank to bend regulations in favor of need. As a result, she adds benignity to the attributes of Ultimate Authority."
Reymont shrugged. "Thus far, the system's worked," he finished. "It's beginning to break down. We'll have to add a new factor."
Chi-yuen gazed at him so long that he shifted uncomfortably on the bunk. At last she asked, "Did you plan this with Ingrid?"
"Eh?" he said, surprised. "Oh, no. Certainly not. Her role demands that she not be a Machiavelli type who plays the part deliberately."
"You know her so well . . . from old acquaintance?"
"Yes." He reddened. "What of that? These days we have to keep aloof from each other. For obvious reasons."
"I think you find ways to continue rebuffing her, Charles."
"M-m-m . . . damnation, leave me alone. What I want to do is help you get back some real will to live."
"So that I, in turn, can help you keep going?"
"Well, uh, yes. I'm no superman. It's been too long since anyone held my hand."
"Are you saying that because you mean it, or because it serves your purpose?" Chi-yuen tossed back her dark locks. "Never mind. Don't answer. We will help each other, what little we can. Afterward, if we survive—we will settle that when we have survived."
His dark, scarred features softened. "You have for a fact begun to think in survival terms again," he said. "Good. Thanks."
She chuckled. Her arms went about his neck. "Come here, you."
The speed of light can be approached, but no body possessing rest mass can quite attain it. Smaller and smaller grew the increments of velocity by which Leonora Christine neared that impossible ultimate. Thus it might have seemed that the universe which her crew observed could not be distorted further. Aberration could, at most, displace a star 45"; Doppler effect might infinitely redden the light from astern, but could only double the frequency of light ahead.
But there was no limit on tau, and that was the measure of change in perceived space and experienced time. Accordingly, there was no limit to the violet shift either; and the cosmos fore and aft could shrink toward a zero thickness wherein all the galaxies were crowded.
Thus, as she made her great swing partly around the Milky Way and turned for a plunge straight through its heart, Leonora Christine's periscope revealed a weird demesne. The nearer stars streamed past, faster and faster, until at last the human eye could see them marching across the field of view; because by that time, many years passed outside while a minute or two ticked away inside the ship. That field was no longer black. It was a shimmering purple, which deepened and brightened as the months went by; because the interaction of forcefields and interstellar medium—eventually, interstellar magnetism—was releasing quanta. The farther stars were coalescing into two globes, fiery blue ahead, ember crimson aft. But gradually those globes shrank toward points, and dimmed; because well-nigh the whole of their radiation had been shifted out of the visible spectrum, toward gamma rays and long radio waves.
The viewscope had been repaired, but was increasingly less able to compensate, to show the sky as a stationary observer would have seen it. The circuits simply could not distinguish individual stars any longer, at more than a few parsecs' remove. The electronicians took the instrument apart and rebuilt it to step up lowered and step down heightened frequencies, lest men fly altogether sightless.
That project, and certain other remodelings, provided a useful outlet for those able to help. Such people began to emerge from their shells. Nonetheless, Reymont found a need to hail the astronomer Elof Nilsson to the interview room.
Ingrid Lindgren sat behind her desk, once more uniformed. She had lost weight, and dark circles lay beneath her eyes. The cabin thrummed louder than normal, and occasionally a shiver went through ribs and deck. Here, in the immense clouds which surrounded the clear space at the galaxy's core, Leonora Christine moved according to an eerie sort of aerodynamics. Her tau was now so enormous that density did not trouble her, rather she swallowed matter still more greedily than before. But she flew as if through a wind blowing between the sun clusters.
"Bo you accuse Dr. Nilsson of spreading disaffection, Constable?" Lindgren's tone was weary. "The articles provide for free speech."
"We are scientists," the astronomer said waspishly. "We have not only the right but the obligation to state what is true." He was a short, rather ugly man who had not gotten along ideally with his fellows even before the crisis came. Since then he had let a scraggly beard grow and seldom bathed. His clothes were begrimed.
Reymont shifted on the bench. Both men were seated at Lindgren's urging. "You don't have the right to spread horror stories," he said. "Didn't you notice what you were doing to Jane Sadler, for instance, when you talked the way you did at mess?"
"I merely brought out into the open what everybody has known from the start," Nilsson rasped. "They hadn't the courage to discuss it in detail. I do."
"They hadn't the meanness to discuss it," Reymont answered. "You do."
"No personalities," Lindgren said. "Tell me what the matter was." She had lately been taking her meals alone in the cabin she shared with the naturalist Olga Sobieski. In fact, she was not seen much off duty.
"You know," Nilsson said. "We've raised the subject before."
She couldn't quite suppress dislike in the look she gave him. "What subject? We've talked about many."
"Talked, yes, like reasonable people," Reymont said. "Not lectured a tableful of shipmates, most of them feeling low already."
"Please, Constable. Proceed, Dr. Nilsson."
The astronomer puffed himself up. "An elementary thing," he said. "I cannot understand why the rest of you have been such idiots as not to give it serious consideration before. You blandly assume we will come to rest in some other galaxy and find a habitable planet. But will you tell me how? Think of the requirements. Mass, temperature, irradiation, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere . . . the best estimate is that one per cent of the stars have planets which are any approximation to Earth."
"Oh," Lindgren said. "Yes, everybody knows—"
Nilsson was not to be deprived of his platform. Perhaps he didn't bother to hear her. He ticked points off on his fingers. "If one per cent of the stars are suitable, do you realize how many we will have to examine in order to have an even chance of finding what we need? It is conceivable that we will be lucky and come upon our New Earth at the very first star we try. But the odds against this are a hundred to one. Thus we will have to try many. Now the examination of each involves almost a year of deceleration. To depart from it and search elsewhere requires another year of acceleration. Those are years of ship's time, remember, because nearly the whole period is spent at velocities which are small compared to light's and which, thus involve a negligible tau factor. Hence we must allow two of our years per star, as a minimum. The fifty-fifty chance of Which I spoke—and mind you, that is only a fifty-fifty chance—the odds are as good that we will not find New Earth in the first seventy-five stars as they are that we will—this chance requires a hundred or a hundred and fifty years of search. We will not live so long. Therefore our whole endeavor, the risks we take in this fantastic dive straight through the galaxy and out into intergalactic space, it is all futile. Quod erat demonstrandum."
"Among your many detestable characteristics, Nilsson," Reymont drawled, "is your habit of droning the obvious through your nose."
"Madam!" the astronomer gasped. "I protest! I shall file charges of personal abuse!"
"Cut back," Lindgren said. "Both of you. I must admit your conduct offers provocation, Dr. Nilsson. On the other hand, Constable, you should remember that Dr. Nilsson is one of the most distinguished men in his profession that Earth has . . . Earth had. He deserves respect."
"Not the way he behaves," Reymont said. "Or smells."
"Be polite, Constable, or I'll charge you myself," Lindgren said. She drew breath. "You don't seem to make allowance for humanness. We are adrift in space and time; the Earth we knew is a hundred thousand years in its grave; we are rushing nearly blind through a crowded part of space; we may at any minute strike something that will destroy us; at best, we must look forward to months, probably years in a cramped and barren environment. Don't you expect people to react to that?"
"Yes, madam, I do," Reymont said. "I don't, however, expect them to behave so as to make matters worse."
"There is some truth in that," Lindgren admitted.
Nilsson squirmed and looked sulky. "I was just trying to spare them disappointment at the end of this flight," he muttered.
"Are you quite certain you weren't indulging your ego—? Never mind. Your standpoint is legitimate." Lindgren signed.
"No, it isn't," Reymont said. "He gets his one per cent by counting every star. Obviously we aren't going to bother with red dwarfs—the vast majority—or blue giants or anything outside a fairly narrow spectral range. Which reduces the field of search by a whopping factor."
"Make the factor ten," Nilsson said. "I don't really believe that, but let's grant we have a ten per cent probability of finding New Earth at any one of the Sol-type stars we try. That nevertheless requires us to hunt among five or more to get our even chance. A dozen years? The youngest among us will be past his youth. Some will be getting old. The loss of so many reproductive years means a corresponding loss of heredity; and our gene pool is small, indeed minimal, to start with. You must agree on the impossibility of having children while we are in space. If nothing else, we are too crowded. Yet if we wait one or two decades to start having them, we can't beget enough. Few will be grown to self-sufficiency by the time their parents start getting helpless with advancing years. And in any case, the human stock will certainly die out in a few generations. I know something about genetic drift, you see."
He looked smug. "I didn't wish to hurt your feelings," he said. "My desire was to be of service, by showing your concept of a bold pioneer community, planting humankind afresh in a new galaxy . . . showing that chatter for the romantic fantasy which it is."
"Have you an alternative?" Lindgren asked.
Nilsson's mouth twisted, an uncontrollable tic. "Nothing but realism," he said. "Acceptance of the fact that we will never leave this ship. Adjustment of our behavior to that fact."
"You understand, I suppose," Reymont said, "that for half the people aboard, the logical thing to do once they've decided you're right is to commit suicide."
"That may well be," Nilsson said.
"Do you hate life so much yourself?" Lindgren asked.
Nilsson jerked on the bench. He gobbled. Reymont made haste to say:
"I didn't haul you in here only to scold you. I want to know why you haven't any ideas for improving our chances."
"What ideas?"
"That's what I'm asking you. You're the observational astronomer. As I recall, you were in charge of programs back home which located something like fifty other planetary systems. You actually identified individual planets across all those light-years. Why can't you do the same for this ship?"
"Ridiculous!" Nilsson pounced. "I see that I must explain the matter in kindergarten terms. Will you bear with me, Mate Lindgren? Listen carefully, Constable. True, a very large spaceborne instrument can pick out an object the size of Jupiter at a distance of several parsecs. This is provided the object gets sufficient illumination, but not so much that it is lost in the glare of its sun. Also true, by mathematical analysis of perturbation data gathered over a period of years, some idea can be obtained about companion planets which are too small to photograph directly. Ambiguities in the equations can, to a degree, be resolved by close interferometric study of flare-type phenomena on the star; planets do exercise a certain small influence upon such cycles.
"But." His finger prodded Reymont's chest. "But you do not realize how uncertain those results are. Journalists were fond of trumpeting that yet another Earthlike world had been discovered. The fact always was, however, that this was one possible interpretation of our data. Only one among several possible size and orbit distributions. And subject to a gross probable error. All this, mind you, with the largest, finest instruments which could be orbited. Instruments such as we certainly do not have with us here.
"No, even at home, the sole way to get detailed information about extrasolar planets was to send a probe or a manned expedition there. In our case, the sole way is to decelerate for a close look. And thereafter, I am certain, to go on. Because you must be aware that a planet which otherwise seems ideal could be lifeless, or could have a native biochemistry useless or deadly to us.
"I implore you, Constable, to learn a little science, a little logic, perhaps just a touch of realism. Eh?" Nilsson ended with a crow of triumph.
"Doctor—" Lindgren began.
Reymont smiled crookedly. "Don't worry, madam," he said. "No fight will start. His words don't diminish me." He regarded the other man with care. "Believe it or not, I knew very well what you've told us. I also know you are, or were, an able fellow. That you made some innovations, some new gadgets and systems of your own, which were responsible for a lot of discoveries. Well, why not put your brain to work on the problem we have here?"
"Will you be so good as to condescend to suggest a procedure?" Nilsson fleered.
"I'm no scientist, nor much of a technician," Reymont said. "But a few things look obvious to me. Let's suppose we have entered our target galaxy. We've shed the ultra-high tau we needed to get there, but we still have one of . . . oh, whatever is convenient. A thousand, perhaps? Well, that gives you a mighty long baseline and cosmic-time period to make your observations. In the course of some weeks or months, ship's time, you can collect more data on a given star than you had on any of Sol's neighbors. I should think you could find ways to use relativity effects to give you information that wasn't available at home. And, naturally, you'll be observing a large number of Sol-type stars simultaneously. So you're bound to find some which you can prove—prove with such exact figures that there's no reasonable doubt—have planets with masses and orbits about like Earth's."
"But even then," Lindgren said hesitantly, "the question of atmosphere, biosphere, that remains. We still need to take a close-range look."
"Yes, yes," Reymont agreed. "But must we stop to take it? Suppose, instead, we lay out a course which brings us hard by the most promising suns, one after the next—while we continue to travel near light-speed. In cosmic time, we'll have hours or days to make studies of any planet that interests us. Spectroscopic, thermoscopic, photographic, magnetic, write your own list of clues. We can get a good idea of conditions on the surface. Biological conditions, too. We could look for things like thermodynamic disequilibrium, chlorophyl reflection spectra, polarization by microbe populations based on 1-amino acids . . . yes, I think we can get an excellent idea of whether that planet is suitable. At high tau, we can examine any number in a short stretch of our own time. Our instruments will have to be automated, in fact; we ourselves couldn't work fast enough. Then, when we do find the right world, we can brake, make turnaround and come back. That will take a couple of years, I admit. But they'll be endurable years. Because we'll know, with very high certainty, that we have a home waiting for us!"
Color mounted in Lindgren's cheeks. Her eyes looked less dull. He had not seen so much life in her for months. "By God," she breathed, "why didn't you speak of this before?"
"I was too busy to think beyond the next day," Reymont said. "Why didn't you, though, Dr. Nilsson?"
"Because the whole thing is absurd," the astronomer said. "You presuppose instrumentation we do not have—"
"Well, can't we build it? We do have tools, precision equipment, construction supplies. Maybe we can't put together an enormous telescope, a mirror a few molecules thick, around the hull, once we're safe in intergalactic space. I'm not sure we can't, but let's assume so. Is that the only way? How about electronic amplification, for instance?"
"You talk of instruments which don't exist. Especially those with which you want to analyze a planet's biochemistry as you zip past at light speed. No such thing—such sensitivity and range—no such thing has ever been constructed."
"Well?" Reymont said.
Nilsson and Lindgren stared at him. Silence thrummed.
"Well, why can't we develop what we need?" Reymont asked in a puzzled voice. "Here's a whole shipful of some of the most talented, highly trained, imaginative people our civilization produced. They include almost any scientific specialty you care to name; but they're used to interdisciplinary work as well. Suppose, for instance, Emma Glassgold and Norbert Williams got together to work out the specifications for a life-analyzing instrument. They'd consult others as needed. Eventually they'd employ physicists, electronicians and such for the actual building and debugging. Meanwhile, you, Dr. Nilsson, have been in charge of a team making gadgets for long-range planetography. In fact, you're the logical man to head up the instrumentation program."
His enthusiasm waxed. The hardness fell from him. He said, eager as a boy: "Why, this is precisely what we've needed! A fascinating, vital sort of job that demands everything everybody can give. And those whose specialties aren't called for, they'll be necessary too. They'll be assistants, manual workers—I suppose we'll have to remodel a lot of the ship's interior to accommodate the bigger instruments—Ingrid, it's a way not just to save our lives but our minds! Our souls!"
He sprang to his feet. She did too. Their hands reached out and clasped.
Suddenly they grew aware of Nilsson.
He sat less than dwarfish, hunched, shivering, altogether collapsed.
Lindgren went to him in alarm. "What's the matter?" she exclaimed.
He stared at the deck. "Impossible," he mumbled. "Impossible."
"No. Surely not," she said urgently. "I mean, you wouldn't have to discover any new laws of nature or anything like that, would you? It seems to be only a question of applying known principles."
"In unheard-of ways." Nilsson hid his face. "God better me, I haven't the brains any more."
Lindgren and Reymont exchanged a look above his bent back. She shaped words, unspoken. Once he had taught her the Rescue Corps emergency trick of lip-reading, and they had practiced it as a game they shared, a thing that made them more private and more one. Can we succeed without him?
I doubt it. He is in fact the best man to organize that kind of project. At least, lacking him, we have a much poorer chance.
Lindgren sat down beside Nilsson. She laid an arm across his shoulders. "What's the matter?" she asked most softly.
"I have no hope," he snuffled. "Nothing to live for."
"Oh, but you do."
"What? You know Rosana . . . deserted me . . . months ago. No other woman—Why should I care? What's left for me?"
Reymont's lips formed, Now he's begun pitying himself. Lindgren frowned and shook her head.
"No, you're wrong, Elof," she murmured. "We do care for you. Would we ask for your help now if we didn't honor you?"
"My mind." He sat straight and glared at her out of swimming eyes. "You want my mind, yes. My advice. My knowledge and skill. To save yourselves. But do you want me? Do you think of me as, as, as a human being? No! Dirty old Nilsson. One is barely polite to him. But when he starts to talk, one finds the earliest possible excuse to leave. One does not invite him to one's parties. Most certainly never to one's cabin. At most, if desperate, one asks him to be a fourth for bridge or to lead an instrument development effort. Well, what do you expect him to do? Thank you?"
"But that isn't true!"
"Oh, I'm not as childish as some," he said. "I'd help you if I could. But my mind is blank, I tell you. I haven't had an original thought since the disaster. Call it fear of death paralyzing me. Call it a sort of impotence. I don't care what you call it. Because you don't care either. No one has offered me friendship, comfort, anything. I have been left alone in the dark and the cold. Do you wonder that my mind has frozen?"
Lindgren looked away, so that none but Reymont could see what expressions chased across her features. When she faced Nilsson again, she was calm.
"I can't say how sorry I am," she told him. "You are a little to blame yourself, Elof. You acted so . . . so self-sufficient . . . we assumed you didn't want to be bothered. The way Olga Sobieski, for instance, doesn't want to. That's why she moved in with me. When you moved in with Hussein Sadek—"
"He keeps the panel closed between our halves," Nilsson shrilled. "He never opens it. But I often hear, off-watch, first one girl in there, then another."
"Well, but now we understand," Lindgren said. She smiled. "And to be quite honest, Elof, I've grown a little tired of my own current existence."
Nilsson made a strangled noise.
"I believe we have some personal business to discuss," Lindgren said. She was pale again, but continued to smile. "Do you mind, Constable?"
"No," said Reymont. "Of course not." He left the cabin.
Leonora Christine stormed through the galactic nucleus in 20,000 years. To those aboard, the time was measured in hours. They were hours of tension, while the hull shook and groaned from stress, and the outside view was of little more than a blinding blazing fog: because here the concentration of interstellar matter was great indeed. The chance of striking a sun was not negligible; lurking in a dust cloud, it could be upon the ship before any course alteration was possible. (No one knew what would happen to the star. It might go nova. But certainly the vessel herself would be destroyed, too swiftly for her crew to realize they were dead.) On the other hand, this was the region where tau mounted to values that could merely be estimated, not measured with precision, most surely not comprehended.
There was a respite while she crossed the region of clear space at the very center, like passing through the eye of a hurricane. Foxe-Jameson, the astrophysicist, came near weeping. "Too bloody awful! The answers to a million questions, right here, and I've not a single instrument adapted for the conditions!"
His shipmates grinned. "And where would you publish?" someone asked. Renascent hope was often expressing itself in a kind of gallows humor.
But there was no joking when Boudreau called a conference with Telander and Reymont. That was soon after the ship had emerged from the dust clouds on the far side of the nucleus—by then, her jets used dust as readily as gas—and headed out through a spiral arm. The viewscope showed a red fireball dwindling behind, a gathering darkness ahead. People off duty celebrated in commons with music, dance, a liquor ration. They had run the cosmic shoals and not been wrecked. Laughter, stamping, lilt of an accordion drifted faintly to the bridge.
"It's like this," the navigator said. "Nilsson's project is showing results already, you know; and we also have my standard observational gear, together with some stuff intended for research from a Beta Virginis base. I prepared to take my readings before we entered the galactic core. Now that we're out, I have taken them."
Captain Telander's gaunted visage grew tight, as if readying for a new blow. "What result?" he asked.
"What readings?" Reymont added. "I mean, what specifically were you studying?"
"Matter density in space ahead of us," Boudreau said. "Within this galaxy, between galaxies, between galactic clusters. Given our present tau, the frequency shift of the neutral-hydrogen radio spectrum, I can get results of unprecedented accuracy."
"Oh, yes. That. What have you found out?"
Boudreau braced himself. "The gas concentration drops off more slowly than we thought," he said. "With the tau we will probably have by the time we leave this galaxy . . . thirty million light-years out, as nearly as I can determine, we still will not dare turn off the forcefields."
Telander closed his eyes. Reymont nodded, jerkily. "We've discussed the possibility of that being the case," he said, word by word. The scar stood livid on his brow. "That even halfway between two clusters, we won't be able to make our repair. But you act as if you had some proposal."
"The one we talked about, you and I," Boudreau said to the captain.
Reymont waited.
Boudreau told him in a dispassionate voice: "The astronomers had learned before we left home, a cluster or family of galaxies like our local group is not the highest form in which matter is organized. Such groups of one or two dozen galaxies do, in turn, tend to occur in larger associations. Superfamilies, so to speak—"
Reymont made a rusty chuckle. "Call them clans," he suggested.
"Eh? Why . . . well. All right. A clan is composed of several families. Now the average distance between members of a family is, oh, perhaps a million light-years. The average distance between one family and the next is greater, as one would expect: on the order of fifty million light-years. Our plan was to leave this family and go to the nearest attainable one beyond. Both would have belonged to the same clan."
"Instead, we'll have to leave the entire clan," Reymont said.
"Yes, I am afraid so."
"How far is it to the next one?"
"I don't know. I didn't take journals along. They would be a little obsolete by now, eh?"
"Be careful," Telander warned.
Boudreau gulped. "I beg the captain's pardon. That was a rather dangerous joke." He went back to lecturing tone: "I don't believe anyone was sure. Probably less than five hundred million light-years, though. Otherwise the hierarchical structure of the galaxies would have been easier for astronomers to identify than it was. Surely, between such clans, space is so close to an absolute vacuum th