Tau Zero

Her humor died. “I don’t altogether like the way he’s jockeyed you.”

“He’s had experience in crisis situations. His arguments were sound. We can go over them in detail.”

“We will. They might be logical at that … whatever his motives.” Lindgren took a sip of coffee, set the cup down on her lap, and declared in a whetted voice:

“Regarding myself, all right. I’m tired of the whole childish business anyway. You’re correct, monogamy is becoming fashionable, and a girl’s choices are poxy limited. I’ve already considered stopping. Olga Sobieski feels the same. I’ll tell Kato to trade cabin halves with her. Some calm and coolness will be welcome, Lars, a chance to think about several things, now that we really have gone by that hundred-year mark.”

Leonora Christine was aimed well away from the Virgin, but not yet at the Archer. Only after she had swung almost halfway around the galaxy would the majestic spiral of her path strike toward its heart. At present the Sagittarian nebulae stood off her port bow. What lay beyond them was inferred, not known. Astromoners expected a volume of clear space, with scant dust or gas, housing a crowded population of ancient stars. But no telescope had seen past the clouds which surrounded that realm, and no one had yet gone to look.

“Unless an expedition went off since we left,” pilot Lenkei suggested. “It’s been centuries on Earth. I imagine they’re doing marvelous things.”

“Not dispatching probes to the core, surely,” cosmologist Chidambaran objected. “Thirty mille

“Failing a faster-than-light drive,” Lenkei said.

Chidambaran’s swarthy features and small-boned body came as near registering scorn as had ever been seen on him. “That fantasy! If you want to rewrite everything we have learned since Einstein — no, since Aristotle, considering the logical contradiction involved in a signal without a limiting velocity — proceed.”

“Not my line of work.” Lenkei’s greyhound slenderness seemed abruptly haggard. “I don’t want faster-than-light, anyhow. The idea that others might be speeding from star to star like birds — like me from town to town when I was home — while we’re caged here … that would be too cruel.”

“Our fate would not be changed by their fortune,” Chidambaran replied. “Indeed, irony would add another dimension to it, another challenge if you will.”

“I’ve more challenge than I want,” Lenkei said.

Their footfalls resounded on the winding stairs and up the well. They had come together from a low-level shop where Nilsson had been consulting Foxe-Jameson and Chidambaran about the design of a large crystal diffraction grating.

“It’s easier for you,” exploded from the pilot. “You’ve got a real use. We depend on your team. If you can’t produce new instruments for us — Me, till we reach a planet where they need space ferries and aircraft, what am I?”

“You are helping build those instruments, or will be when we have plans drawn up,” Chidambaran said.

“Yes, I apprenticed myself to Sadek. To pass this bloody empty time.” Lenkei collected his wits. “I’m sorry. An attitude we’ve get to steer clear of, I know. Mohandas, may I ask you something?”

“Certainly.”

“Why did you sign on? You’re important today. But if we hadn’t had the accident — couldn’t you have gone further toward understanding the universe back on Earth? You’re a theoretician, I’m told. Why not leave the fact gathering to men like Nilsson?”

“I would scarcely have lived to do much with reports from Beta Virginis. It seemed of possible value that a scientist of my sort expose himself to wholly new experiences and impressions. I might have gained insights that would never come otherwise. If I didn’t, the loss would not be large, and at a minimum I would have continued thinking approximately as well as at home.”

Lenkei tugged his chin. “Do you know,” he said, “I suspect you don’t need dream-box sessions.”

“It may be. I confess I find the process undignified.”

“Then for heaven’s sake, why?”

“Regulations. We must all receive the treatment. I did request exemption. Constable Reymont persuaded First Officer Lindgren that special privilege, albeit justified, would set a bad precedent.”

“Reymont! That bastard again!”

“He may be correct,” Chidambaran said. “It does me no harm, unless one counts the interruption of a train of thought, and that happens too seldom to be a major handicap.”

“Huh! You’re more patient than I’d be.”

“I suspect Reymont must force himself into the box,” Chidambaran remarked. “He, too, goes as infrequently as allowed. Have you observed, similarly, that he will take a drink but will never get tipsy? I believe he is under a compulsion, arising perhaps from a buried fear, to stay in control.”

“He is that. Do you know what he said to me last week? I’d only borrowed some sheet copper, it’d have gone right back by way of the furnace and the rolling mill, soon as I was through with it, so I hadn’t bothered to check it out. That bastard said—”

“Forget it,” Chidambaran advised. “He had a point. We are not on a planet. Whatever we lose is lost for good. Best not to take chances; and surely we have time for bureaucratic procedures.” The entrance to commons appeared. “Here we are.”

They headed toward the hypnotherapeutic room. “I trust your experience will be pleasant, Matyas,” Chidambaran said.

“Me too.” Lenkei winced. “I’ve had a few terrible nightmares in there.” Brightening: “And a wild lot of fun!”

Stars grew scattered. Leonora Christine was not crossing from one spiral arm of the galaxy to another — not yet; she was just in a lane of comparative emptiness. For lack of much intake mass, her acceleration diminished. That condition was very temporary, so shrunken was her tau: a few hundred cosmic years. But for some time inboard, the viewscreens to starboard opened mainly on black night.

A number of the crew found it preferable to the eldritch shapes and colors blazing to port.

Another Covenant Day arrived. The ceremonies and the subsequent party were less forlorn than might have been expected. Shock and grief had gotten eroded by ordinariness. At present, the dominant mood was of defiance.

Not everybody attended. Elof Nilsson, for one, stayed in the cabin he and Jane Sadler shared. He spent a lengthy while making sketches and estimates for his exterior telescope. When his brain wearied, he dialed the library index for fiction. The novel he selected, at random out of thousands, proved absorbing. He hadn’t finished it when she returned.

He raised eyes that were bloodshot with fatigue. Except for the sca

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “It’s five in the morning!”

“Have you finally noticed?” She gri

“I’m not due at work in three hours,” he said.

“Nor I. I told my boss I wanted a week’s leave. He agreed. He’d better. Who else has he got?”

“What attitude is that? Suppose others on whom the ship depends behaved thus.”

“Tetso Iwamoto … Iwamoto Tetsuo, really; Japanese put last name first, like Chinese … like Hungarians, did you know? — ’cept when they’re being polite to us ignorant Westerners—” Sadler captured her thought. “He’s a nice man to work for. He can manage a spell ’thout me. So why not?”

“Nevertheless—”

She lifted a finger. “I will not be scolded, Elof. You hear? I’ve borne with that o-ver-com-pensated inferiority complex of yours more’n I should’ve. And a lot else. Thinking maybe the rest of you’d grow up to match that IQ of yours. Enough’s enough. Gather ye roses while ye may.”