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And if she broke down in Endeavor’s belt and killed her crew, well, that was the chance the Murray-Gaineses took, like all the rest who gambled on a future at Endeavor, on the hope of piling up credits in the station’s bank faster than they needed to consume them, credits and stock which would increase in worth as the station grew, which was how marginal operators like the Murray Gaineses hoped to get a lease on a safer ship and link into some forming Endeavor combine.
There was Endeavor Station: that was the first step. Rightwiselet go the clamps; the Murray-Gaineses sweated through the unpowered docking and the checkout, enjoyed one modest round of drinks at the cheapest of Endeavor Station’s four cheap bars, and opened their station account in Endeavor’s cubbyhole of a docking office, red-eyed and exhausted and anxious to pay off Rightwiseand get Lindyclear and away before they accumulated any additional dock charge.
So they applied for their papers and local number, paid their freight and registered their ship forthwith with hardly more formality than a clerical stamp, because Lindywas so ridiculously small there was no question of illicit weaponry or criminal record. She became STARSTATION ENDEAVOR INSYSTEM SHIP 243 Lindy, attached to SSEIS 1, the oreship/smelter Ajax. She had a home.
And the Murrays and Paul Gaines, free and clear of debt, went off arm in arm to Lindy’s obscure berth just under the maindawn limit which would have logged them a second day’s dock charge. They boarded and settled into that cramped interior, ran their checks of the charging that the station had done in their absence, and put her out under her own power without further ado, headed for Endeavor’s belt.
For a little while they had an aftward single G, in the acceleration which boosted them to their passage velocity; but after that small push they went inertial and null, in which condition they would live and work three to six months at a stretch.
They had bought three bottles of Downer wine for their stores. Those were for their first tour’s completion. They expected success. They were high on the anticipation of it. Rafe Murray, his sister Jillan, merchanter brats; Paul Gaines, of Fargone’s deep-miners, unlikely friendship, war-flotsam that they were. But there was no doubt in them, no division, when playmates had grown up and married: and Rafe was well content. “It’s tight quarters,” Jillan had said to her brother when they talked about Endeavor and their partnership. “It’s a long time out there, Rafe; it’s going to be real long; and real lonely.”
Paul Gaines had said much the same, in the way Paul could, because he and Rafe were close as brothers. “So, well,” Rafe had answered, “I’ll turn my back.”
They called Rafe, half-joking, half-not, their Old Man, at twenty-two. That meant captain, on a larger ship. And they werehis. Jillan pla
He had had his partnerings with the women of Rightwiseand bade all that good-bye—”Go sleepover,” Paul had advised him on Endeavor dock. “Do you good.”
“Money,” he had said, meaning they could not spare the cost of a room, or the time. “Had my time on Rightwise. That’s enough. I’m tired.”
Paul had just looked at him, with pity in his eyes.
“What do you want?” he had answered then. “Had it last night. Three Rightwisers. Wore me out.” And Jillan walked up just then, so there was no more argument.
“We’ll have a ship,” Rafe had sworn to Jillan once, when they were nine and eight., and their mother and their uncle died, last of old freighter Lindy’s crew, both at once, in Fargone’s belt. Getting to deep space again had been theirdream; it was all the legacy they left, except a pair of silver crew-pins and a Name without a ship.
So Rafe held Jillan by him— Don’t leave me, don’t go stationer on me. You take your men; give me kids—give me that, and I’ll give you—all I’ve got, all I’ll ever have.
Don’t you leave me, Jillan had said back, equally dogged. You be the Old Man, that’s what you’ll be. Don’t you leave me and go forget your name. Don’t you do that, ever.And she worked with him and sweated and lived poor to bank every credit that came their way.
Most, she got him Paul Gaines, lured a miner-orphan to work with them, to risk his neck, to throw his money into it, Paul’s station-share, every credit they three could gain by work from scrubbing deck to serving hire-on crew to miners when they could get a berth.
Having children waited. Waited for the ship.
And Endeavor and a dilapidated pusher-ship were the purchase of all they had.
Rafe took first watch. He caught a reflection on the leftmost screen of Jillan and Paul in their sleeping web behind his chair, fallen asleep despite their attempt to keep him company, singing and joking. They had been quite a handful of minutes and there they drifted, collapsed together, like times the three of them had hidden to sleep, three kids on Fargone, making a ship out of a shipping canister, all tucked up in the dark and secret inside, dreaming they were exploring and that stars and infinity surrounded their little shell.
3/23/55
Mass.
<> came fully alert, feeling that certain tug at <>’s substance which meant something large disturbing the continuum.
Trishanamarandu-keptacould have overjumped the hazard, of course, adjusting course in mid-jump with the facility of vast power and a sentience which treated the mindcrippling between of jumps like some strange ocean which <> swam with native skill. But curiosity was the rule of < >’s existence. < > skipped down,if such a term had relevance, an insouciant hairbreadth from disaster.
It was a bit of debris, a lump of congealed material which to the questing eye of Trishanamarandu-keptaappeared as a blackness, a disruption, a point of great mass.
It was a failed star, an overambitious planet, a wanderer in the wide dark which had given up almost all its heat to the void and meant nothing any longer but a pockmark in spacetime.
It was a bit of the history of this region, telling <> something of the formational past. It was nothing remarkable in itself. The remarkable time for it had long since passed, the violent death of some far greater star hereabouts. Thatwould have been a sight.
<> journeyed, pursuing that thread of thought with some pleasure, charted the point of mass in <>’s indelible memory in the process.
The inevitable babble of curiosity had begun among the passengers. < >’s wakings were of interest to them. < > answered them curtly and leaped out into the deep again, heading simply to the next star, as < > did, having both eternity andjump capacity at < >’s disposal.
There was no hurry. There was nowhere in particular to go; and everywhere, of course. <> was now awake, lazily considering galactic motion and the likely center of that ancient supernova.
Such star-deaths begat descendants.
II
10/2/55