Tau Zero

Reymont entered directly from the poolside. Swimming was hardly different under this acceleration. The thrust of muscles, the cool silken flowing of water, would be the same at the galaxy’s rim, and beyond. Ingrid Lindgren had said once that such truths made her doubt she would ever become really homesick. Man’s house was the whole cosmos.

Tonight she frolicked, ducking, dodging, slipping from his grasp again and again. Their laughter echoed between the walls. When at last he cornered her, she embraced his neck in turn, laid her lips to his ear and whispered: “Well, you did catch me.”

“M-m-m-hm.” Reymont kissed the hollow between shoulder and throat. Through the wetness he smelled live girlflesh. “Grab our clothes and we’ll go.”

He carried her six kilos easily on one arm. When they were alone in the stairwell, he caressed her with his free hand. She kicked her heels and giggled. “Sensualist!”

“We’ll soon be back under a whole gee,” he reminded her, and started bounding down to officer level at a speed that would have broken necks on Earth.

— Later she raised herself on an elbow and met his eyes with hers. She had set the lights dim. Shadows moved behind her, around her, making her doubly gold- and amber-hued. With a finger she traced his profile.

“You’re a wonderful lover, Carl,” she murmured. “I’ve never had a better.”

“I’m fond of you too,” he said.

A hint of pain touched brow and voice. “But that’s the only time you really give of yourself. And do you, altogether, even then?”

“What is there to give?” His tone roughened. “I’ve told you about things that happened to me in the past.”

“Anecdotes. Episodes. No co

He sat up, scowling. “I don’t know what you mean. People learn about each other, living together. You know I admire classical artists like Rembrandt and Bonestell, and don’t care for abstractions or chromodynamics. I’m not very musical. I have a barrack-room sense of humor. My politics are conservative. I prefer tournedos to filet mignon but wish the culture tanks could supply us with either more often. I play a wicked game of poker, or would if there were any point in it aboard this ship. I enjoy working with my hands and am good at it, so I’ll be helping build the laboratory facilities once that project gets organized. I’m currently trying to read War and Peace but keep falling asleep.” He smote the mattress. “What more do you need?”

“Everything,” she answered sadly. She gestured around the room. Her closet happened to stand open, revealing me i

“I’ve traveled light through life.”

“On a hard road, I think. Maybe someday you’ll dare trust me.” She drew close to him. “Never mind now, Carl. I don’t want to harass you. I want you in me again. You see, this has stopped being a matter of friendship and convenience. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

When the appropriate speed was reached, lining out of Earth’s domain toward that sign of the zodiac where the Virgin ruled, Leonora Christine went free. Thrusters cold, she became another comet. Gravitation alone worked upon her, bending her path, diminishing her haste.

It had been allowed for. But the effect must be kept minimal. The uncertainties of interstellar navigation were too large as was, without adding an extra factor. So the crew — the professional spacemen, as distinguished from the scientific and technical perso

Boris Fedoroff led a gang outside. Their job was tricky. You needed skill to labor in weightlessness and not exhaust yourself trying to control tools and body. The best of men could still let both bondsoles lose their grip on the ship frame. You would float off, cursing, nauseated by spin forces, until you brought up at the end of your lifeline and hauled yourself back. Lighting was poor: unshielded glare in the sun, ink blackness in shadow except for what puddles of undiffused radiance were cast by helmet lamps. Hearing was no better. Words had trouble getting through the sounds of harsh breath and muttering blood, when these were confined in a spacesuit, and through the cosmic seething in radio earplugs. For lack of air purification comparable to the ship’s, gaseous wastes were imperfectly removed. They accumulated over hours until you toiled in a haze of sweat smell, water vapor, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, acetone … and your undergarments clung sodden to your skin … and you looked wearily through your faceplate at the stars, with a band of headache behind your eyes.

Nevertheless, the Bussard module, the hilt and pommel of the dagger, was detached. Maneuvering it away from the vessel was tough, dangerous labor. Without friction or weight, it kept every gram of its considerable inertial mass. It was as hard to stop as to set in motion.

Finally it trailed aft on a cable. Fedoroff checked the positioning himself. “Done,” he grunted. “I hope.” His men clipped their lifelines to the cable. He did likewise, spoke to Telander in the bridge, and cast off. The cable was reeled back inboard, taking the engineers along.

They had need for haste. While the module would follow the hull on more or less the same orbit, differential influences were acting. They would soon cause an undesirable shift in relative alignments. But everyone must be inside before the next stage of the process. The forces about to be established would not be kind to living organisms.

Leonora Christine extended her scoopfield webs. They glistened in the sunlight, silver across starry black. From afar she might have suggested a spider, one of those adventurous little arachnids that went flying off with kites made of dewy silk. She was not, after all, anything big or important in the universe.

Yet what she did was awesome enough on the human scale. Her interior power plant sent energy coursing into the scoopfield generators. From their controlling webwork sprang a field of magnetohydrodynamic forces — invisible but reaching across thousands of kilometers; a dynamic interplay, not a static configuration, but maintained and adjusted with nigh absolute precision; enormously strong but even more enormously complex.

The forces siezed the trailing Bussard unit, brought it into micrometrically exact position with respect to the hull, locked it in place. Monitors verified that everything was in order. Captain Telander made a final check with the Patrol on Luna, received his go-ahead, and issued a command. From then on, the robots took over.

Low acceleration on ion thrust had built up a modest outward speed, measurable in tens of kilometers per second. It sufficed to start the star-drive engine. The power available increased by orders of magnitude. At a full one gravity, Leonora Christine began to move!