Starborne

He unfolds the text he has prepared, the report that is to be transmitted to Earth today. “Not that there’s anything new to tell them,” he says to her, “but I suppose we have to file the daily communiqué all the same.”

“It would be cruel if we didn’t. We mean so very much to them.”

The moment she begins to speak, all of the year-captain’s carefully constructed calmness evaporates, and instantly he finds himself becoming edgy, oddly belligerent, distinctly off balance. He is bewildered by that. Something in the softness and earnestness of her sweet gentle voice has mysteriously a

“I have my doubts about that,” he says, with a roughness that surprises him. “I don’t think we matter at all.”

This is perverse, and he knows it. What he has just said runs counter to all of his own beliefs.

She looks a little surprised too. “Oh, yes, yes, we do, we mean a great deal to them. Yvo

He will not concede the point. “As a diversion, nothing more. As the latest curiosity. Intrepid explorers venturing into the uncharted wilds of interstellar nospace. A nine-day wonder.” His voice sounds harsh and unfamiliar to him, his rhythms of speech coarse, erratic, words coining in awkward rushes. As for his words themselves, so bleak and sardonic, they astonish him. He has never spoken this way about Earth and its attitude toward the starship before. Such thoughts have never so much as crossed his mind before. Still, he finds himself pushing recklessly onward down the same strange track. “That’s the only thing we represent to them, isn’t it? Novelty, vicarious adventure, a bit of passing amusement?”

“Do you really mean that? It seems so terribly cynical.”

He shrugs. Somehow this ugly idea has taken possession of him, repugnant though his argument is, even to him. He sees the effect that he is having on her — puzzlement turning to dismay — but he feels that he has gone in too deep now to turn back. “Another six months and they’ll be completely bored with us and our communiqués. Perhaps sooner than that. They’ll stop paying attention. A year’s time and they’ll have forgotten us.”

She seems taken aback. Her nostrils flicker in apparent alarm. Normally her face is a serene mask. Not now. “What a peculiar mood you’re in today, year-captain!”

“Am I? Well, then, I suppose I am.”

“I don’t see you as in any way a cynical man. Everything about you is the opposite of cynical. And yet here, today — saying such— such—” She falters.

“Such disagreeable things?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps I’m just being realistic. I try to be. A realist, yes. Is a realist the same as a cynic?”

“Why do you feel you need to put labels on yourself?”

“That’s an important part of being a realist.”

“You don’t know what real is. You don’t know what you are, year-captain.”

Her counterattack, if that is what it is, amazes him as much as his own outburst. This is a new Noelle, agitated, vehement. In just a few seconds the conversation has veered entirely out of control: much too charged, much too intimate. She has never spoken to him like this before. The same is true of him. He is saying things he doesn’t believe; she is saying things that go far beyond the bounds of her normal quiet aloofness. It is as if there is a malign electricity in the air, a prickly field that distorts their normal selves, making them both u

The year-captain feels a touch of panic. If he disturbs the delicate balance of Noelle’s consciousness, will she still be able to make contact with far-off Yvo

Yet he is unable to prevent himself from parrying once more: “Do you know what I am, then?”

“A man in search of himself is what you are. That’s why you volunteered to come all the way out here.”

He shakes his head briskly, futile though he knows such nonverbal language to be with her. “Oh, no, no, no. Too slick, Noelle. Too easy.”

“They say you were a famous actor, once. Isn’t that so? And after that, a biologist who made a great discovery on some moon of Jupiter, or maybe it was Saturn. Then a monk on a desert island somewhere. And now the captain of the first starship. There’s no continuity in any of that that I can find. Who are you, year-captain? Do you really know?”

“Of course I do.” But he does not care to amplify that response. Her words make no sense to him. He sees the logic of his jagged zigzagging career with perfect clarity; it is obvious to him how one thing has led inevitably to the next. He could explain all that to her, but something hardens in him. He is not willing to present an apologia for his life just now. That leaves him with nothing of any substance to say; and the best he can do is merely to throw her taunt back at her. “What about you?” he asks, still almost angrily. “Would you be able to answer such a question?”

“I think I could.”

“Then tell me. The same things you were asking me. Show me how it’s done, all right? What made you volunteer to come all the way out here, Noelle? What are you searching for? Come on. Tell me! Tell me!”

She lets the lids slide down over her unseeing eyes and offers no reply. She holds herself stiffly, hands tightly knitted, lips compressed, breath coming in ragged bursts. She moves her head from side to side three or four times, doing it very slowly, the way a wounded animal might try to shake off pain.

The year-captain says nothing: he has run out of sophomoric nonsense at last, and he is afraid that what he has already said has done terrible damage. He knows why Noelle is here, and she knows that he knows. How could he not? She is essential to the mission; her participation in it was less of a choice than the inevitable assumption of an unrefusable mantle, involving a terrible sacrifice of the one precious thing in her life. It was contemptible of him even to ask.

His throat is dry, his heart is pounding; his entire performance of these past few minutes amazes him. It is as though he has been possessed, yes. Transformed. He makes an effort to get back in touch with the self that he regards as his own, and, after a moment, seems to succeed in reaching some vestige of contact with the man he believes himself to be.

Can anything be salvaged now? he wonders.

As calmly as he can, he says into her tense silence, “This has all been very far out of line. I hope that you’ll forgive me for the things I’ve said.”

She remains silent. He sees a barely perceptible nod.

“I’m sorry that I upset you, Noelle. It was the last thing I intended when I came in here.”

“I know.”

“Shall I go?”

“There’s a report to transmit, isn’t there?”

“Do you think you’d be able to transmit it just now?”

“I’m not sure. I’m willing to try, though. Wait a little, all right?”

“Whatever you want.”

She appears to be collecting herself. Her eyes are still closed, but he can see them moving about less rapidly beneath the lids. Unreadable furrows appear and vanish on her broad forehead. The year-captain thinks of the meditation exercises he learned to practice in his island days, under the bright Arctic sky of Lofoten. She must be doing something like that now herself, he thinks. He sits quietly, watching her, waiting.

Finally she looks at him, at any rate looks toward him, and says, after a moment, in a calm tone more like the one she normally uses, “How do you think they see us at home? As ordinary human beings doing an unusual job, or as superhuman creatures engaged in an epic voyage?”