Starborne

Paco and Heinz and Elizabeth have been an inseparable triad for the past month and a half. The lines of attraction run among them in every direction, though not with uniform force: Elizabeth for both of the men in equal strong measure, Heinz being pleasantly fond of Elizabeth but fiercely passionate about Paco, Paco drawn strongly to Elizabeth by some sort of attraction of physical opposites but — somewhat to his own surprise — captivated by Heinz’s easy self-confidence and omnivorous sexuality. So far the relationship has demonstrated remarkable three-sided stability, but, of course, no one expects it to last indefinitely. The voyage has really only just begun. Couples and triples will form and break apart and reform in new configurations, on and on and on, just as is the fashion on Earth but probably with greater rapidity, considering the limitation of choice in a population that at the moment numbers just fifty in a completely enclosed and utterly inescapable environment. Up until now none of the relationships that have formed aboard the Wotan has lasted more than about seven weeks. This one is approaching the ship record.

In the aftermath of the wrestling match they sit facing one another along the edge of the tank, unable to stop laughing: one will start and set off the other two, and around and around it goes. Elizabeth’s pallid meager body is rosy now from the underwater frolic; her flesh glows, her small breasts heave. Paco studies her with a proprietary air, and Heinz amiably contemplates them both as if pla

The air in the small, brightly lit room is warm and steamy. A voluptuous abundant torrent of warm water splashes down from the fountainhead set in the tiled wall. No one worries about water shortages aboard the Wotan: every drop, urine and sweat and the vapor of everybody’s breath included, is rigorously recaptured and purified and aerated and chilled and recycled, and not a molecule of it ever goes to waste. The baths are Roman in sensuousness if not in scale: the room is compact but elegantly appointed, and there is a hot tank, a tepid one, and a frigid one, something for all tastes. Up to nine or ten people can use the baths at the same time, though in practice a certain amount of exclusiveness is afforded those who are in any sort of bonded relationship. Three small rooms adjacent to the tank chamber have beds in them. Much of the ship’s erotic activity goes on in those rooms.

Elizabeth says in a serious tone, when the three of them are calm again, “I don’t deny that I’m attracted to him. And not just for his body, though he’s certainly a handsome man. But his mind — that mysterious, complicated, opaque mind of his—”

“The mind of a mystic,” Paco says with unconcealed contempt. “The mind of a monk, yes.”

“He’s been a monk,” Elizabeth retorts, “but he’s been a lot of other things too. You can’t pin him down in any one category. And I don’t think he’s as ascetic as you seem to believe. The Lofoten monastery isn’t famous for vows of chastity.”

“Oh, he’s no ascetic,” Heinz says. “I can testify to that.”

Elizabeth and Paco whirl to gape at him. “You?” they say at the same time.

Heinz chuckles lazily. “Oh, no, not what you’re thinking. He’s not really my type. Too inward, too elusive. But I can see the passion in him. You don’t have to go to bed with him to know that. It’s there. Plenty of it. It streams from him like sunlight.”

“There,” Elizabeth says to Paco. “Ice outside, maybe, but fire within.”

“And,” Heinz continues, “I’m quite certain that he’s been sleeping with somebody on board.”

“Who?” Elizabeth asks, very quickly.

Another lazy chuckle. “Your guess is as good as mine, and mine is no good at all. I haven’t been spying on him. I’m only saying that he moves around this ship like a cat, and knows every hidden corner of it better even than the man who designed it, and I’m certain that a man of his force, of his virility, is getting a little action somewhere, in some part of the ship that we don’t even suspect can be used for some stuff, and with some partner who’s keeping very quiet about what’s going on. That’s all.”

“I hope you’re right,” says Elizabeth, forcing a broad lascivious grin not at all in keeping with the austere scholarly angularity of her face. “And when he’s done with her, whoever she is, I’d gladly volunteer to be his next secret playmate.”

“He doesn’t want you,” Paco says.

Elizabeth meets this casual dismissal of her fantasies with a disdainful wave other hand. “Oh, I don’t think you can be so sure of that.”

“Oh, but I am, I am,” Paco replies. “It’s only too obvious. You keep sending him signals — everyone can see that, you stare at him like a lovesick child — and what does he send you in response? Nothing. Nothing. I don’t mean to cast any personal aspersions, Liz. You know there are plenty of men who find you attractive. He doesn’t happen to be one of them.” Elizabeth is staring wide-eyed at him, and pain is visible in her rigid unblinking gaze. But Paco will not stop. “There’s no — what is the term? — no chemistry between you and our year-captain. Or else he’s a master at masking his emotions, but if he’s that good at playing a part he should have had a more successful career as an actor than he did. No, he just isn’t interested in you, my love. You must not be his type, whatever that is. Just as he isn’t Heinz’s. There’s no accounting for these things, you know.”

Sadly Heinz says, “I think Paco’s right. But not for the same reasons, exactly.”

“Oh?”

“You may or may not be the captain’s type. Who can say? I’ve already said I think he’s got someone for casual sex, and if we knew who he or she is, we’d have more of an idea about his type. But you’re up against another problem that goes beyond his choice of casual bedmates. He sleeps with someone, yes, very likely, but even so his emotions are focused somewhere else, and that’s too complicated a something for you to deal with. The year-captain is in love, don’t you realize that? I’m not talking about sex now, but love. And it’s a love that’s impossible to consummate.”

“Yes, it’s obvious. He’s in love with himself,” says Paco.

“You’re such a filthy boor,” Elizabeth says. She glances toward Heinz. “What are you talking about? Who do you imagine he’s in love with?”

“The one untouchable person aboard this ship. The one who floats through our lives like some kind of being from another sphere of existence. I can see it written all over his face, whenever he’s within twenty meters of her. The blind girl, that’s who he wants. Noelle. And he’s afraid to do anything about it, and it’s agony for him. For God’s sake, can’t you tell?”

Captain?” Noelle says. “It’s me, Noelle.”

The year-captain looks up, startled. He is not expecting her. It is late afternoon, the last day of the voyage’s fifth month. He is working alone in the control cabin, poring over a thick batch of documents that Zed Hesper has brought him: a new set of formal analyses of three or four of his best prospects for a planetary landing, set forth in much greater detail than Hesper has been able to supply previously.

For the first time, the year-captain has begun to pay serious attention to such things. Half his term of office is over, and he is thinking beyond his captaincy, to the time when he will have reverted to his primary specialty of xenobiology. He can’t practice that aboard the Wotan. He needs an actual alien planet as his scene of operations. He has walked alien worlds before, not only Earth’s neighbor planets but also the bleak strange moons of the gas-giant worlds beyond the orbit of Mars: Titan, Iapetus, Callisto, Ganymede, Io. The exultation of finding splotches of life on those cold forbidding worldlets, extraterrestrial microorganisms rugged beyond belief — supreme moments of his life, those were, the astounding discovery in the sulfurous landscape of Io, and then again on Titan, when he knelt and pointed into methane-ammonia snowdrifts at the tiny astonishing spots of burnt orange against the glaring white! And so he will certainly want to be a member of the first landing team, where his intuitive skills will be valuable on a world full of strange and perhaps challenging life-forms of unpredictably strange biochemical characteristics; but as year-captain he would be obliged to remain aboard the vessel while others take the risks outside. That is the rule of the ship.