Destination: Void

"Only a fool imagines he's beyond the reach of his prejudices."

"Well, I prefer to be a Calvinist, I'm willing to be damned for the greater glory of God."

"You mustn't say such things," he snapped. He put a hand to his head, thinking: I mustn't let her goad me this way.

"You can't show me anything I mustn't say," she said. "You claim scientists can equate God with ideas of mathematical infinity. We manipulate mathematical infinity; why can't we manipulate God?"

"What silly pretensions;" he said. "Mathematical infinity. Zero over zero, eh? Or infinity minus infinity? Or infinity times zero?"

"God times zero," she said. "Why not?"

"You're the mathematician!" he said, his voice pouncing. "You know better'n anyone that these are indeterminate forms, mathematical nonsense."

"God minus infinity. Mathematical nonsense."

He glared at her. His throat felt dry and burning. She'd tricked him into this corner. It was blasphemy! And he was more vulnerable than she was... guiltier.

"You're supposed to be doing this to me, aren't you," he accused. "You're supposed to push me and test me, give me no peace. I know."

How little he knows... or even suspects, she thought. "Infinity doesn't follow the conditions of number or quantity. If there's a God, I don't see why He should follow those conditions, either. As for testing you: horseradish! All you need's an occasional kick in the philosophy."

"Stick to my preaching and let you play with the math, is that it?"

"There's no blasphemy in developing a new kind of calculus or any other new tool to deal with our universe," she said.

"Our universe?" Flattery asked.

"As much of it as we can take," she said. "That's the whole idea of a colony ship, isn't it?"

"Is it?" he asked.

She adjusted the course-constant repeater, said, "I'll stick to math. How about a calculus that goes beyond the limits of X over Y as they tend toward infinity? That should be possible."

"Creating a new kind of calculus and building this living, sentient creature aren't the same," he said.

"Without the calculus we may never achieve the creature."

She keeps trying to corner me, he thought. Why? "The issue's whether we're intruding on God's domain of creation."

"You Holy Joes are all alike. You want to glorify God but you'd limit the means."

Flattery stared at the curved gray metal of the bulkhead above him, seeing the tiny imperfections in the crackle pattern of its finish. He felt he was being maneuvered. She was stalking him the way a man might stalk game. Was it his soul she was after? He sensed he was in profound danger, that the idea of consciousness as something they could create might inflict itself on his soul as an incurable wound.

He put a hand to his mouth. I ca

"Raj," she whispered and there was terror in her voice.

He whirled toward her, seeing the streaks of light across the big board like red knife slashes.

"We're almost at red-line temperature in Sector C-8 of the hyb tanks," she said. "Everything I do seems to make the system oscillate."

Flattery's hands flashed out to the life-systems repeater switches, brought his own monitors alive. He sca

"Nothing I do seems to work!" she panted.

He glanced at her, saw she was fighting the board, not working with it.

"Call Tim!" he said.

She hit the command circuit switch with the heel of her left hand, shouted, "Tim to Com-central! Emergency!"

Again, Flattery sca

He had to force himself to keep his hands off the controls. If tank temperature went into the red without dehyb precautions, there'd be deaths among the helpless occupants. Despite Prue's desperate efforts, death was approaching three sectors of the C-8 tank-some four hundred human lives in there.

The hatch from the computer shop banged open. Timberlake leaped through with Bickel right behind.

"Hyb tanks," Prudence gasped. "Temperature."

Timberlake threw himself across Com-central into his action couch. His vacsuit rasped against the cocoon lips as he turned, grasped the traveler controls. "Give me the red switch," he snapped. "To hell with the count! I'm taking it."

And he took it, the big board swinging across much too fast.

"C-8," she said, sinking back and wiping perspiration from her forehead.

"I've got it," he said. He sca

Bickel slipped into his own couch, tripped his repeaters. "It's in the hull shielding," he said.

"First two layers," Timberlake said.

Prudence put a hand to her throat, tried not to look at Bickel. He mustn't suspect our attention's on him, she thought. Then: Wouldn't it be monstrous irony to lose our colonists and burden ourselves with guilt before the need for it?

"That's doing it," Bickel said.

She looked across the board above Timberlake, saw the warning telltales winking out, the dials swinging back into normal range.

"Faulty feedback for a patch of our shell reflectors focused on C-8," Timberlake said. "The system started to oscillate and that threw the overload switches, left us wide open."

"Another design failure," Bickel sneered.

And such a simple problem, Bickel thought. The hull curve acted like a lens to focus energy within the ship... unless reflector and shell shielding systems compensated.

Prudence traced the line of the remaining telltales. "C-8's on a line with that robot stores section you raided. Is that all it takes to throw the ship off balance?"

"Gives you a wonderful feeling of confidence in the Tin Egg's design, doesn't it," Bickel said.

They didn't warn me! she thought. They cheated. Calculated emergencies, they said, just enough to keep a fine edge on your reaction abilities. Reaction abilities!

"You overcompensated, Prue," Timberlake said. "Make minimal adjustments to avoid oscillation while you hunt for the source of your trouble. You had sensor telltales flaring right out through the ship to pinpoint where you needed shielding reinforcement."

I panicked, she thought. "I guess I let myself get too tired." Even as she spoke she sensed how lame the excuse sounded. '

I was too intent doing the job on Flattery, she thought. I had him headed for a nice corner where he'd have to fight his way out... and I missed the ship trouble until it was almost ready to wreck us.

It occurred to her then to wonder if one of the crew had her as a "special project" to keep her abilities toned up... on edge.

"Prue, you've got to remember that when the overload switches go, the computer automatics are out of the circuit," Bickel said. "This thing was designed to be brought back into line by a conscious intelligence - one of us or an OMC."

"Oh, shut up!" she flared. "I made a mistake. I know it. I won't do it again."

"No damage was done," Timberlake said.

"I don't need you to defend me!" she snapped. And she thought: No damage! Nothing was harmed except one of the crew - me! She pressed her hands together to still their trembling. We're sitting ducks for any real emergency. We can't turn back without the risk of a runaway dive into Sol or becoming another of her wandering comets. We can't go on unless we solve the unsolvable.

Take it easy, Prue," Flattery soothed. "We probably put you on the big board too soon after getting you out of hyb."

Thanks for the excuse! she thought.

Flattery glanced around the room, seeing the poised silence of Bickel and Timberlake-both of them scorched by Prue's anger. Bickel slid out of his couch, secured a set of test leads in the clip at his left shoulder. A multimeter could be seen protruding from his breast pocket. Timberlake was refining the hull temperature adjustments, putting the system back into the computer circuits.