Tau Zero

“Could it not be later? We can’t stop until we are through. If spoilage set in, you would be tightening your belt for a while.”

“I don’t have time to waste either,” Fedoroff said, turning astringent. “I believe we’d rather be hungry than wrecked.”

“Carry on, then,” Pereira told his gang. He hopped from the tank and went to a shower stall where he washed quickly. Not bothering to dry or dress himself, on this warmest level in the ship, he led Fedoroff toward his office. “Confidentially,” he admitted, “I’m delighted at an excuse to knock off that chore.”

“You will be less delighted when you hear the reason. It means hard work.”

“Better yet. I was wondering how to keep my team from coming apart. This isn’t the sort of occupation that generates spontaneous esprit de corps. The boys will grumble, but they will be happier with something besides routine.”

They passed through a section of green plants. Leaves lined every passageway, filling the air with odor, rustling when brushed. Fruits hung among them like lanterns. You could understand why a degree of serenity remained in those who labored here.

“I’ve been alerted by Foxe-Jameson,” Fedoroff explained. “We’re near enough to the central galactic nebulae that he can use the new instruments that have been developed to get accurate values for the mass densities there.”

“He? I thought Nilsson was the observations man.”

“He was supposed to be.” Fedoroff’s mouth set in hard lines. “He’s going to pot. Hasn’t contributed a thing lately except quibbles and quarrels. The rest of his group, even a couple of men from the shop making their stuff, like Lenkei … they have to do what he should, as best they can.”

“That is bad,” Pereira said, lighthearted no more. “We were relying on Nilsson to design instruments for intergalactic navigation at ultra-low tau, were we not?”

Fedoroff nodded. “He’d better pull out of his funk. But that isn’t the problem today. We’re going to encounter the thickest stretch so far when we hit those clouds, because of relativity and because they are in fact thick. I feel reasonably confident we can pass through safely. Nevertheless, I want to reinforce parts of the hull to make sure.” He laughed like a wolf. “‘Make sure’ — on such a flight! At any rate, I’ll have a construction gang in here. You’ll have to move installations out of their way. I want to discuss the general requirements with you and start you thinking, so you can plan how to minimize the disturbance to your operations.”

“Indeed. Indeed. Here we are.” Pereira waned Fedoroff into a cubbyhole with a desk and a filing cabinet. “I will show you a schematic of our layout.”

They talked business for half an hour. (Centuries passed beyond the hull.) The trace of geniality he had shown at first, which was once the usual face he turned to the world, had vanished from Fedoroff. He was short-spoken to the point of rudeness.

When he had stowed the drawings and notes, Pereira said quietly: “You do not sleep well these nights, do you?”

“Busy,” the engineer grunted.

“Old friend, you thrive on work. That is not what drew those smudges beneath your eyes. It is Margarita, no?”

Fedoroff jerked in his chair. “What about her?” He and Jimenes had lived steadily together for several months.

“In our village, no one can help noticing she has a grief.”

Fedoroff stared out the entrance, into the gree

“M-m-m … you recall I was often with her before she settled down. Perhaps I have an insight you don’t. You are not insensitive, Boris, but you seldom resonate with the feminine mind. I wish you two well. Can I help?”

“The thing is, she refuses to take antisenescence. Neither Urho Latvala nor I can budge her. No doubt I tried too hard and made her think I was browbeating. She’ll scarcely speak to me.”

Fedoroff’s tone harshened. He continued to watch the leaves outside. “I was never in love … with her. Nor she with me. But we became fond. I want to do anything I can for her. What, though?”

“She is a young woman,” Pereira said. “If our circumstances have made her, how shall I put it, overwrought, she might react irrationally to any reminder of age and death.”

Fedoroff swung about. “She’s not ignorant! She’s perfectly aware the treatment has to be periodic through a whole adulthood — or menopause will hit her fifty years before it needs to. She says that’s what she wants!”

“Why?”

“She wants to be dead before the chemical and ecological systems break down. You predicted five decades for that, didn’t you?”

“Yes. A slow, nasty way to go out. If we haven’t found a planet by then—”

“She remains Christian. Prejudices about suicide.” Fedoroff winced. “I don’t like the prospect either. Who does? She won’t believe it isn’t inevitable.”

“I suspect,” Pereira said, “the idea of dying childless is to her the true horror. She used to make a game of deciding on names for the large family she wants.”

“Do you mean — Wait. Let me think. Damn him, Nilsson was right the other day, about the unlikelihood of our ever finding a home. I have to agree, life in that case seems pretty futile.”

“To her especially. Facing that emptiness, she retreats — unconsciously, no doubt — toward a permissible form of suicide.”

“What can we do, Luis?” Fedoroff asked in anguish.

“If the captain was persuaded to make the treatments mandatory — He could justify that. Supposing we do reach a planet in spite of everything, the community will need each woman’s childbearing span at a maximum.”

The engineer flared up. “Another regulation? Reymont dragging her off the doctor? No!”

“You should not hate Reymont,” Pereira reproached. “You two are alike. Neither is a quitter.”

“Someday I’ll kill him.”

“Now you display your romantic streak,” Pereira said, attempting to ease the atmosphere. “He is pragmatism personified.”

“What would he do about Margarita, then?” Fedoroff gibed.

“Oh … I don’t know. Something unsentimental. For instance, he might co-opt a research and development team to improve the biosystems and organocycles — make the ship indefinitely habitable — so she could be allowed two children, at least—”

His words trailed off. The men stared gape-mouthed at each other. It blazed between them:

Why not?

Maria Toomajian ran into the gym and found Joha

He bounced to the deck and pelted down the corridor. The noise reached him first, an excited babble. A dozen off-duty persons crowded in a circle. Freiwald shoved through. At the middle, second pilot Pedro Barrios and bull cook Michael O’do

“Stop that!” Freiwald bellowed.

They did, glaring. Folk had seen ere now the tricks that Reymont had drilled into his recruits. “What is this farce?” Freiwald demanded. He turned his contempt on the watchers. “Why didn’t any of you take action? Are you too stupid to understand what this kind of behavior can lead to?”

“Nobody accuses me of cheating at cards,” O’do

“You did,” Barrios retorted.

They lunged afresh. Freiwald’s hands shot out. He got a grip on the collar of either tunic and twisted, pressing into the Adam’s apples behind. The men flailed and kicked. He delivered a couple of fumikomi. They wheezed their pain and yielded.

“You could have used boxing gloves or kendo sticks in the ring,” Freiwald said. “Now you’re going before the first officer.”

“Er, pardon me.” A slim, dapper newcomer eased past the embarrassed witnesses and tapped Freiwald’s shoulder: cartographer Phra Takh. “I don’t believe that’s necessary.”