Tau Zero

The ship 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. Its computer choreographers directed a circuit to break, shutting off that particular system, before positive feedback wrecked it.

Those aboard felt weight shift and change. A troll sat on each chest and choked each throat. Darkness went ragged before eyes. Sweat burst forth, hearts slugged, pulses brawled. That noise was answered by the ship, a metal groan, a rip and a crash. She was not meant for stresses like these. Her safety factors were small; mass was too precious. And she rammed hydrogen atoms swollen to the heaviness of nitrogen or oxygen, dust particles bloated into meteoroids. Velocity had flattened the cloud longitudinally, it was thin, she tore through in minutes. 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 me hull from everything except slowdown drag. Reaction was inevitable, on the fields themselves and hence on the devices which, borne outside, produced and controlled them. Frameworks crumpled. Electronic components 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 mass struck by an object incredibly swift and dense. Hydromagnetic forces snatched at atoms, whirled them about, ionized them, cast them together. Radiation flashed. The object was encompassed in a meteor blaze. During the hour of its passage, it bored a tu

If a sun and planets had been in embryo here, they would now never form.

The invader passed. It had not lost much speed. Accelerating once more, it dwindled away toward remoter stars.

Chapter 9

Reymont struggled back to wakefulness. He could not have been darkened long. Could he? Sound had ceased. Was he deafened? Had the air puffed out of 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 power. The fluoropanel shone steadily in his vision. The shadow of his cocoon fell on a bulkhead and had the blurred edges which betokened ample atmosphere. Weight had returned to a single gee. Most of the ship’s automata, at least, must be functioning. “To hell with melodrama,” he heard himself say. His voice came as if from far off, a stranger’s. “We’ve got work.”

He fumbled with his harness. Muscles throbbed and ached. A trickle of blood ran over his mouth, tasting salty. Or was that sweat? Nichevo. He was operational. He crawled free, opened his helmet, sniffed — slight smell of scorch and ozone, nothing serious — and gusted one deep sigh.

The cabin was a mare’s nest. Dresser drawers had burst open and scattered their contents. He didn’t notice particularly. Chi-Yuen hadn’t answered his queries. He waded through strewn garments to the slight form. Slipping off his gauntlets, he unlatched her faceplate. Her breathing sounded normal, no wheeze or gurgle to suggest internal injuries. When he peeled back an eyelid, the pupil was broad. Probably she had just fainted. He shucked his armor, located his stun pistol, and strapped it on. Others might need help worse. He went out.

Boris Fedoroff clattered down the stairs. “How goes it?” Reymont hailed.

“I am on my way to see,” the engineer tossed back, and disappeared.

Reymont gri

“I have a headache like carpenters in my skull,” Freiwald protested.

“You offered to be in our squad. I thought you were a man.”

Freiwald gave Reymont a resentful glance but was stung into motion.

The constable’s recruits were busy for the next hour. The regular spacemen were busier yet, inspecting, measuring, conferring in hushed tones. That gave them little chance to feel pain or let terror grow. The scientists and technicians had no such anodyne. From the fact that they were alive and the ship apparently working as before, they might have drawn happiness … only why didn’t Telander make an a

He stopped to look in on Chi-Yuen, as he had done at intervals. She was finally aware, had unharnessed but collapsed on her mattress before getting all armor off. A tiny light kindled in her when she saw him. “Charles,” she susurrated.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I hurt, and I don’t seem to have any strength, but—”

He stripped away the rest of her spacesuit. She winced at his roughness. “Without this load, you should be able to get up to the gym,” he said. “Dr. Latvala can check you. No one else was too badly hammered, so it’s unlikely you were.” He kissed her, a brief meaningless brush of lips. “Sorry to be this unchivalrous. I’m in a hurry.”

He went on. The bridge door was closed. He knocked. Fedoroff boomed from within, “No admittance. Wait for the captain to address you.”

“This is the constable,” Reymont answered.

“Well, go carry out your duties.”

“I’ve assembled the passengers. They’re getting over being stu

“Tell them a report will be issued shortly,” Telander called without steadiness.

“Shouldn’t you tell them, sir? The intercom’s working, isn’t it? Tell them you’re making exact assessments of damage in order to lay out a program for prompt repair. But I suggest, Mr. Captain, you first let me in to help you find words for explaining the disaster.”

The door flew wide. Fedoroff grabbed Reymont’s arm and tried to pull him through. Reymont yanked free, a judo release. His hand lifted, ready to chop. “Don’t ever do that,” he said. He stepped into the bridge and closed the door himself.

Fedoroff growled and doubled his fists. Lindgren hurried to him. “No, Boris,” she begged. “Please.” The Russian subsided, stiffly. They glared at Reymont in the thrumming stillness: captain, first officer, chief engineer, navigation officer, biosystems director. He glanced past them. The panels had suffered, various meter needles twisted, screens broken, wiring torn loose.

“Is that the trouble?” he asked, pointing.

“No,” said Boudreau, the navigator. “We have replacements.”

Reymont sought the viewscope. The compensator circuits were equally dead. He moved on to the electronic periscope and put his face inside its hood.

A hemispheric simulacrum sprang from the darkness at him, the distorted scene he would have witnessed outside on the hull. The stars were crowded forward, streaming thinly amidships; they shone steel blue, violet, X ray. Aft the patterns approached what had once been familiar — but not very closely, and those suns were reddened, like embers, as if time were snuffing them out. Reymont shuddered a little and drew his head back into the cozy smallness of the bridge.

“Well?” he said.

“The decelerator system—” Telander braced himself, “We can’t stop.”

Reymont went expressionless. “Go on.”

Fedoroff spoke. His words fell contemptuous. “You will recall, I trust, we had activated the decelerator part of the Bussard module to produce and operate two units. Their system is distinct from the accelerators, since to slow down we do not push gas through a ramjet but reverse its momentum.”