"Yes," Chi-yuen said. "It does."
"You too. I've noticed." He gave her a ferocious look. "You were busy at first, your theoretical work, your programming the studies you meant to carry out in the Beta Virginis System. And when the trouble hit us, you rallied as well as anyone."
A ghostly smile crossed her lips. "You inspired me," she said.
"Since then, however . . . more and more, you sit doing nothing. I think you and I had the beginnings of, uh, real friendship; but you don't often make any meaningful contact with me of late, nor with anyone else. No more work. No more big daydreams. Not even much crying into your pillow after lights out . . . oh, yes, I'd lie awake and hear you. Why, Ai-ling? What's happening to you? To most of our people?"
"I suppose we have not quite your raw will to survive at any cost," she said, almost under her breath.
"I'd consider some prices for life too high myself. But here—We have what we need to exist. A certain amount of comfort as well. An adventure like nothing we'd dreamed of. What's wrong?"
"Do you know what the year is on Earth?" she countered.
"No. I was the one who suggested to Captain Telander he order that particular clock removed. You may as well know that now. Too morbid an attitude was developing around it."
"Most of us can make our own estimates anyway. At present, I believe it is about 10,000 Anno Domini at home. Give or take some centuries. And, oh, yes, I recognize that for a nonsense statement. I understand about the concept of simultaneity breaking down under relativistic conditions. But still that date does have a meaning. We are absolute exiles. Already. Irrevocably. What has happened on Earth? What is happening throughout the galaxy? What have men done? What are they becoming? We will never share in it. We cannot."
She had spoken in a level, almost indifferent voice. He tried to break her apathy with sharpness: "What of that? If we'd gone to Beta Three and stayed, we'd have had a thread of radio contact, words a generation old before we heard them. Nothing else. And our own deaths would have closed us off from the universe. The common fate of man. Why should we whine because ours takes an unexpected shape?"
She regarded him for a space before she said, "You don't really want an answer for yourself. You want to provoke one from me."
Startled, he said, "Well . . . yes."
"You understand people a great deal better than you let on. Your business, I suppose. You tell me what our trouble is."
"Loss of purpose," he said at once. "The crewfolk aren't in such bad condition yet. They have their jobs to keep them occupied. But most of those aboard are scientists. They'd signed their lives over to the Beta Virginis expedition. You, for example, intended to study planetology there. So you had that to look forward to; and meanwhile you had your preparations to play with. Now you have no idea what will happen. You know just that it'll be something altogether different from what you expected. That it may be death—because we are taking some frightful risks—and you can do nothing to help, only sit passive and be carried. Naturally your morale cracks."
"What do you suggest I do, Charles?"
"Well, why not continue your theoretical work? Try to generalize it. Eventually we'll be looking for a planet to settle on. Your specialty will be very much needed."
"You know what the odds are against our ever finding a home. We are going to keep on this devil's chase until we die."
"Damnation, we can improve the odds!"
"How?"
"That's one of the things you ought to be working on."
She smiled again, a little more alive. "Do you know, Charles," she said, "you make me want to. If for no other reason than to make you stop flogging at me. Is that why you are so hard on people?"
He considered her. She had borne up thus far better than most. Maybe she would gain fresh courage from, well, sharing with him. And every glint of will and hope was to be nurtured. "Can you keep a trade secret?" he asked.
Her glance actually sparkled. "You should know me that well by now." One bare foot rubbed across his thigh.
He patted it and grinned. "An old principle," he said. "Works in military and para-military organizations. I've been applying it here. The human animal wants a father-mother image but, at the same time, resents being disciplined. You can get stability like this: The ultimate authority-source is kept remote, godlike, practically unapproachable. Your immediate superior is a mean son of a bitch who makes you toe the mark and whom you therefore hate. But his superior is as kind and sympathetic as rank allows. Do you follow me?"
She laid a finger to her chin. "No, not really."
"Well, in the present case—oh, you'll never know how carefully I maneuvered, those first few months after we hit the nebulina, to help things work out this way—Captain Telander has been isolated, along with those officers most concerned with the actual operation of the ship. He doesn't realize that. He agreed to my argument that he shouldn't be distracted by ordinary business, because his whole attention must go to getting us safely through the galaxy's clouds and clusters. But this has removed him from the informal, intimate basis on which we operated before. He dines separately, with Boudreau and Fedoroff. He takes his recreation and exercise alone in the cabin we've enlarged for him. When he needs a woman, he requests her most politely to visit him, and never asks the same one twice. And so on and so on.
"I can't claim credit for the whole development. Much of it is natural, almost inevitable evolution. The logic of our problem brought it about, given some nursing by me. The end result, however, is that our good gray friend Lars Telander has been transformed into the Old Man."
Chi-yuen half smiled, half sighed. "Poor Old Man! Why?"
"I told you," Reymont said. "Psychological necessity. The average person aboard has to feel that his life is in competent hands. Of course, no one believes consciously that the captain is infallible. But there's an unconscious need for such an aura. Therefore, we have now established things so that the captain's human-level judgment never is put to the test."
"Lindgren is the surrogate there?" Chi-yuen looked closely at Reymont.
He nodded. "I'm the traditional top sergeant. Hard, harsh, demanding, overbearing, inconsiderate, brutal. Not so bad as to provoke a petition for my removal. But enough to irritate, to be unpopular. That's good for the others, you know. It's healthier to be mad at me than to brood on personal woes . . . as you, my dear, have been doing.
"Now Lindgren smooths things out. As first mate, she sustains my power. But she also overrides it from time to time. She exercises her rank to bend regulations in favor of need. As a result, she adds benignity to the attributes of Ultimate Authority."
Reymont shrugged. "Thus far, the system's worked," he finished. "It's beginning to break down. We'll have to add a new factor."
Chi-yuen gazed at him so long that he shifted uncomfortably on the bunk. At last she asked, "Did you plan this with Ingrid?"
"Eh?" he said, surprised. "Oh, no. Certainly not. Her role demands that she not be a Machiavelli type who plays the part deliberately."
"You know her so well . . . from old acquaintance?"
"Yes." He reddened. "What of that? These days we have to keep aloof from each other. For obvious reasons."
"I think you find ways to continue rebuffing her, Charles."
"M-m-m . . . damnation, leave me alone. What I want to do is help you get back some real will to live."
"So that I, in turn, can help you keep going?"
"Well, uh, yes. I'm no superman. It's been too long since anyone held my hand."
"Are you saying that because you mean it, or because it serves your purpose?" Chi-yuen tossed back her dark locks. "Never mind. Don't answer. We will help each other, what little we can. Afterward, if we survive—we will settle that when we have survived."
His dark, scarred features softened. "You have for a fact begun to think in survival terms again," he said. "Good. Thanks."
She chuckled. Her arms went about his neck. "Come here, you."
VIII
The speed of light can be approached, but no body possessing rest mass can quite attain it. Smaller and smaller grew the increments of velocity by which Leonora Christine neared that impossible ultimate. Thus it might have seemed that the universe which her crew observed could not be distorted further. Aberration could, at most, displace a star 45°; Doppler effect might infinitely redden the light from astern, but could only double the frequency of light ahead.
But there was no limit on inverse tau, and that was the measure of change in perceived space and experienced time. Accordingly, there was no limit to the violet shift either; and the cosmos fore and aft could shrink toward a zero thickness wherein all the galaxies were crowded.
Thus, as she made her great swing partly around the Milky Way and turned for a plunge straight through its heart, Leonora Christine's periscope revealed a weird demesne. The nearer stars streamed past, faster and faster, until at last the human eye could see them marching across the field of view; because by that time, many years passed outside while a minute or two ticked away inside the ship. That field was no longer black. It was a shimmering purple, which deepened and brightened as the months went by; because the interaction of forcefields and interstellar medium—eventually, interstellar magnetism—was releasing quanta. The farther stars were coalescing into two globes, fiery blue ahead, ember crimson aft. But gradually those globes shrank toward points, and dimmed; because well-nigh the whole of their radiation had been shifted out of the visible spectrum, toward gamma rays and long radio waves.
The viewscope had been repaired, but was increasingly less able to compensate, to show the sky as a stationary observer would have seen it. The circuits simply could not distinguish individual stars any longer, at more than a few parsecs' remove. The electronicians took the instrument apart and rebuilt it to step up lowered and step down heightened frequencies, lest men fly altogether sightless.
That project, and certain other remodelings, provided a useful outlet for those able to help. Such people began to emerge from their shells. Nonetheless, Reymont found a need to hale the astronomer Elof Nilsson to the interview room.
Ingrid Lindgren sat behind her desk, once more uniformed. She had lost weight, and dark circles lay beneath her eyes. The cabin thrummed louder than normal, and occasionally a shiver went through ribs and deck. Here, in the immense clouds which surrounded the clear space at the galaxy's core, Leonora Christine moved according to an eerie sort of aerodynamics. Her inverse tau was now so enormous that density did not trouble her, rather she swallowed matter still more greedily than before. But she flew as if through a wind blowing between the sun clusters.
"So you accuse Dr. Nilsson of spreading disaffection, Constable?" Lindgren's tone was weary. "The articles provide for free speech."
"We are scientists," the astronomer said waspishly. "We have not only the right but the obligation to state what is true." He was a short, rather ugly man who had not gotten along ideally with his fellows even before the crisis came. Since then he had let a scraggly beard grow and seldom bathed. His clothes were begrimed.
Reymont shifted on the bench. Both men were seated at Lindgren's urging. "You don't have the right to spread horror stories," he said. "Didn't you notice what you were doing to Jane Sadler, for instance, when you talked the way you did at mess?"
"I merely brought out into the open what everybody has known from the start," Nilsson rasped. "They hadn't the courage to discuss it in detail. I do."
"They hadn't the meanness to discuss it," Reymont answered. "You do."
"No personalities," Lindgren said. "Tell me what the matter was." She had lately been taking her meals alone in the cabin she shared with the naturalist Olga Sobieski. In fact, she was not seen much off duty.
"You know," Nilsson said. "We've raised the subject before."
She couldn't quite suppress dislike in the look she gave him. "What subject? We've talked about many."
"Talked, yes, like reasonable people," Reymont said. "Not lectured a tableful of shipmates, most of them feeling low already."
"Please, Constable. Proceed, Dr. Nilsson."
The astronomer puffed himself up. "An elementary thing," he said. "I cannot understand why the rest of you have been such idiots as not to give it serious consideration before. You blandly assume we will come to rest in some other galaxy and find a habitable planet. But will you tell me how? Think of the requirements. Mass, temperature, irradiation, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere . . . the best estimate is that one per cent of the stars have planets which are any approximation to Earth."
"Oh," Lindgren said. "Yes, everybody knows—"
Nilsson was not to be deprived of his platform. Perhaps he didn't bother to hear her. He ticked points off on his fingers. "If one per cent of the stars are suitable, do you realize how many we will have to examine in order to have an even chance of finding what we need? It is conceivable that we will be lucky and come upon our New Earth at the very first star we try. But the odds against this are a hundred to one. Thus we will have to try many. Now the examination of each involves almost a year of deceleration. To depart from it and search elsewhere requires another year of acceleration. Those are years of ship's time, remember, because nearly the whole period is spent at velocities which are small compared to light's and which, thus involve a negligible tau factor. Hence we must allow two of our years per star, as a minimum. The fifty-fifty chance of which I spoke—and mind you, that is only a fifty-fifty chance—the odds are as good that we will not find New Earth in the first seventy-five stars as they are that we will—this chance requires a hundred or a hundred and fifty years of search. We will not live so long. Therefore our whole endeavor, the risks we take in this fantastic dive straight through the galaxy and out into intergalactic space, it is all futile. Quod erat demonstrandum."
"Among your many detestable characteristics, Nilsson," Reymont drawled, "is your habit of droning the obvious through your nose."
"Madam!" the astronomer gasped. "I protest! I shall file charges of personal abuse!"
"Cut back," Lindgren said. "Both of you. I must admit your conduct offers provocation, Dr. Nilsson. On the other hand, Constable, you should remember that Dr. Nilsson is one of the most distinguished men in his profession that Earth has . . . Earth had. He deserves respect."
"Not the way he behaves," Reymont said. "Or smells."
"Be polite, Constable, or I'll charge you myself," Lindgren said. She drew breath. "You don't seem to make allowance for humanness. We are adrift in space and time; the Earth we knew is a hundred thousand years in its grave; we are rushing nearly blind through a crowded part of space; we may at any minute strike something that will destroy us; at best, we must look forward to months, probably years in a cramped and barren environment. Don't you expect people to react to that?"
"Yes, madam, I do," Reymont said. "I don't, however, expect them to behave so as to make matters worse."
"There is some truth in that," Lindgren admitted.
Nilsson squirmed and looked sulky. "I was just trying to spare them disappointment at the end of this flight," he muttered.
"Are you quite certain you weren't indulging your ego—? Never mind. Your standpoint is legitimate." Lindgren signed.
"No, it isn't," Reymont said. "He gets his one per cent by counting every star. Obviously we aren't going to bother with red dwarfs—the vast majority—or blue giants or anything outside a fairly narrow spectral range. Which reduces the field of search by a whopping factor."
"Make the factor ten," Nilsson said. "I don't really believe that, but let's grant we have a ten per cent probability of finding New Earth at any one of the Sol-type stars we try. That nevertheless requires us to hunt among five or more to get our even chance. A dozen years? The youngest among us will be past his youth. Some will be getting old. The loss of so many reproductive years means a corresponding loss of heredity; and our gene pool is small, indeed minimal, to start with. You must agree on the impossibility of having children w
hile we are in space. If nothing else, we are too crowded. Yet if we wait one or two decades to start having them, we can't beget enough. Few will be grown to self-sufficiency by the time their parents start getting helpless with advancing years. And in any case, the human stock will certainly die out in a few generations. I know something about genetic drift, you see."
He looked smug. "I didn't wish to hurt your feelings," he said. "My desire was to be of service, by showing your concept of a bold pioneer community, planting humankind afresh in a new galaxy . . . showing that chatter for the romantic fantasy which it is."
"Have you an alternative?" Lindgren asked.
Nilsson's mouth twisted, an uncontrollable tic. "Nothing but realism," he said. "Acceptance of the fact that we will never leave this ship. Adjustment of our behavior to that fact."
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