The crystalline blackness of transit sleep formed solid around him.
o0o
Radu dreamed, as always; he dreamed again of Laenea. He could feel and smell and taste her. His hand slid gently from her breast across the ridged new scar. She whispered something that he could not quite hear, that he could not quite understand, and she laughed in the wonderful soft low way she had. Her hair swung down and caressed his shoulder and he twined the locks in his fingers.
She whispered again. “I love you.” His whispered back, “I love you.” She said a few more words. He thought she said, “I need you.” She leaned down and kissed him, on the lips, at his throat, on the palm of his hand. Then, suddenly, she bit him hard on the wrist, slashing tendons and arteries.
“I’m sorry,” she called to him. “I didn’t want to —”
She was very far away. Tears streaming down her face, she vanished. Radu struggled up, clutching at his wrist to stop the blood.
He woke expecting the dream to vanish, too, but blood ran down his hand and between his fingers. The world spun, as it had before. He scrabbled for the lock on his box and flung the lid open. The lights flickered and dimmed; the gravity pulsed in waves.
Dangling from his wrist by a crumpled piece of tape, the bloody needle dripped fluid from its point.
Radu jerked it loose and flung it away and clamped his left hand across the long gash where the needle had torn out. His head throbbed: He had come out of unconsciousness far too quickly.
Unable to use his hands to push himself out of the box, he braced his elbow on the chamber’s edge, rolled over, and landed on his knees on the floor.
Vasili Nikolaievich slammed open the door.
“What in the bloody flaming hell is happening?”
Radu managed to rise to one knee. He lurched to his feet. Vasili caught him and supported him. Radu’s dark shirt stayed the same color, where blood stained it, but the spots were shiny. Blood oozed between his fingers. He was surprised at the warmth.
He had ripped out the needle from base to tip, cutting a long gash. A good suicide cut. It would leave a scar, unless he went to some trouble to have it removed. Anyone who saw it would assume he had tried seriously to take his own life. The thought angered and embarrassed him.
“I taped the needle in!” Vasili said.
Radu took an unsteady step forward. “I tore it out myself, I think. I must have. I couldn’t stay asleep. I can’t —”
“You have to,” Vasili said.
o0o
By the time Vasili finished cleaning the gash on Radu’s wrist, Radu feared the pilot was near fainting. He worked with his teeth clenched, in silence, a little clumsily, as if his eyes were focused just to one side of the gash. Radu put pressure on it while Vasili fetched bandages. Tissue repair would have to wait, for Vasili could not even try it. The bleeding stopped, but the stinging pain continued.
Holding the bandage, Vasili stopped an arm’s length from Radu.
“Give it to me.” Radu took the package. But when he tried to tear it open, he dropped it on the floor. He gazed at it stupidly. His strength continued to drain away.
The pilot closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, scooped up the bandage, and tore off its covering with a violent jerk.
Once he had covered the wound he was able to work more easily. He bound it too tightly, but Radu did not have the heart to ask him to do it over. He was obviously being affected by Radu’s presence. The longer he stayed near, the more uncomfortable Radu felt, too. His pulse began to speed up again, and each beat of his heart made the deep cut throb.
Vasili finished the bandage and stepped back, looking as relieved as Radu that he was done.
“Thank you,” Radu said.
Vasili went quickly to the sink and washed away the blood.
Radu stood shakily, flexing his fingers. The needle had missed all the tendons, but the troubling dream forced him to keep reassuring himself that he could still use his hand. The dream confused him. His dreams in transit had always been pleasant, except these two times when he had awakened.
He tried to push Atnaterta’s vision from his memory. He failed.
“Vasili Nikolaievich, can you contact earth?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I don’t mean now, of course. I meant from transit. I —” No, he could not tell Vasili what he had dreamed. “A friend of mine, Laenea Trevelyan —”
Vasili sighed. “You have to leave her alone,” he said. “If she weren’t so damned stubborn you two would never have got together, it would have been better if you hadn’t. But if you don’t stay away from her, you’ll destroy her. Can’t you understand that?”
“I understand perfectly!” Radu said angrily. He hated to be reminded of what common knowledge, and common talk, he and Laenea were. “Our friendship is none of your business, but all I wanted anyway was to find out… to find out…” He tried to explain what he did want to find out. “… if her first transit flight went well,” he said lamely.
“I can’t call earth, or anyplace else, from transit,” Vasili said. “In any case, you’ll be asleep. You’ll just have to wait till we get home.”
They went back to work, maintaining an irritable silence. Neither Radu nor Vasili could discover why Radu had awakened this time. Perhaps blood had clotted in the needle; if so, the clot had dislodged when Radu ripped the IV out. Perhaps the open tip had pressed against the inside of the vein. The computer made the same suggestion it had before: anesthetic rejection. Discomforting to have that happen twice in a row.
Radu opened the drug locker and took down a vial of capsules, the third transit drug.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked the pilot.
“I haven’t had a chance to plot our location,” Vasili said, his voice strained. He avoided Radu’s gaze, but added quickly, “I’m sure I’ll have a course by the time you’re asleep.”
All Radu could do was take the drug. He stepped into the body box, sat down, opened the vial, and poured pills into his hand. His dose was five. He counted carefully, as if it were a difficult task.
He swallowed the capsules dry and lay down. As his shoulders sank into the padding, he felt the drug begin to work.
o0o
Again, he woke from the nightmare; again, everything went wrong. He came to awareness retching and screaming, clawing at the top of his sleep chamber without even the wit to reach for the latch. Laenea cried out in his mind, and he knew that she was dying.
As so many he had dreamed about had died.
Radu saw Vasili’s pale face through the thick glass above him.
“Stay asleep! Don’t wake up!” The pilot’s terrified voice penetrated the heavy lid. “Damn you, stay asleep!”
The latch popped open, but Radu could not lift the lid and Vasili’s weight too. He fought to escape and he knew he could not succeed. He was going to faint, but the unconsciousness would not be deep enough to shield him from transit. This time, he would die.
With his last bit of strength he lurched against the chamber lid and flung it open. Struck by its edge, Vasili reeled back and fell, thudding hard against a bulkhead.
On his hands and knees beside his box, Radu coughed and panted. Bile stung sour and hot in his throat and tears of rage and frustration and relief streamed down his face. He was shaking violently.
When he finally got control of himself, he forced himself to stand. Vasili stood pressed against the wall, his hands spread on the smooth metal surface. Saying nothing, Radu went to wash his face and rinse the foul taste from his mouth.
When he glanced up, dripping, into the mirror, he was surprised that he looked very much the same as always. His hair was more rumpled than usual. Random damp locks, darkened by the water, clung to his forehead. His shirt was filthy, and it stank. He took it off and flung it toward the cleaner. It fell into the bin, but nothing happened. Most of the ship was still in transit mode, so even the semi-intelligent machines were down. The air
felt chilly on his bare chest and arms. He stripped and put on clean clothes from his locker. The familiar tasks eased his agitation; even the nausea slowly went away.
What’s happening to me? he thought.
In the control room, Vasili gazed into the course computer’s display. He looked up, his expression troubled.
“The ship can’t go through that again.”
“No more can I,” Radu said.
They stared at each other, neither knowing what to say.
“Well. Maybe once more,” Vasili said.
“Once more! With what? That was the last transit drug!”
“I know it’s impossible to take two at once — but could you raise the dose of one of them?”
“My dose is already calculated at the threshold of toxicity. If I took more — if I woke up at all, I’d wake up as a vegetable.”
Vasili glanced toward the computer display. It disintegrated and reformed into a sphere representing the ship’s immediate surroundings. A star burned brightly just off center, and around it crept its inner family of planets, their sizes exaggerated, their colors enhanced.
Vasili pointed to a tiny sapphire point, the second world from the sun.
“That one —” The star dissolved through the edge of the display, the planet’s image grew, and the world’s parameters formed above it. “That one is habitable,” the pilot said.
“No doubt you’ll get a discovery bonus,” Radu said.
Vasili ignored the anger and sarcasm in Radu’s tone. “That wasn’t what I was thinking of,” he said mildly, “though for all of that you may be right.” After a long silence, he continued. “With some luck,” he said, “with as much luck as I have ever had at one time in my life, I’ll be able to get this ship home. We went in and out of transit so fast… I’ve looked for this star. The constellations aren’t mapped. We’re lost. When the ship dives I may be able to figure out where we are then. There are… landmarks? Anomalies and patterns. I can’t describe them to someone who hasn’t seen them. It’s hard enough to talk about them to someone who has seen them. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’m afraid to try to take you back in there. I’m afraid to try to take you home.”
Radu stared into the translucent image of the planet. “You could… leave me in the truck. I could wait. They’re always looking at new drugs, surely they have some in test that would work.” He looked at Vasili. “They’d send someone back for me — wouldn’t they?”
“I’ve never heard of this happening before — but I’m sure they would,” Vasili said quickly. “If they can, they will…”
“But —?”
“I could take us home fairly easily if I had this system’s coordinates. I don’t. The first time we surfaced out of transit the system was charted. Just barely, but I found it. The second time I had to extrapolate — and I had my fingers crossed I’d done it right. I don’t even know if I did or not, we fell out too fast for me to get my bearings. Now… I don’t know where we are. There’s so much interstellar dust, I can’t find any of the standard markers. I can’t match up any of the star patterns or pulsars or anything else. This isn’t an exploration ship, it isn’t prepared for involved analysis. Even with an x ship, it’s safest to go in small steps. We’ve taken a couple of very large ones.” He sounded more and more tense. “Exploration isn’t as easy as going down a path and then turning around and coming back. You can’t do that because when you turn around it doesn’t look the same. Do you see?”
“No.”
Vasili lifted his hands, then dropped them, his shoulders slumping. “It’s transit,” he said. “I can’t explain it. I shouldn’t even try.”
“No trail looks the same coming back, but you can still follow it. It’s harder work, but you can still swim up a river after you float down.”
“Not if there are rapids — that’s exactly it!” His expression brightened, then went grim again. “No, it isn’t. It isn’t anything like that. It’s…” He spread his hands helplessly.
“What you are telling me,” Radu said, “is that since you don’t know where we are, even if you succeed in returning to earth you may not be able to find your way back here.”
“I’ll take back all the normal space data. It should be possible to figure out where this place is.”
“But you can’t be sure of that.”
Vasili hesitated. “I’m afraid not,” he said reluctantly.
“I can stay behind in the truck and take the chance of dying of starvation or asphyxiation, or I can try to go home, and die in transit.”
“There’s a habitable planet —”
Radu glowered. “How stupid do you think I am? I’m a colonist! I’m not such a fool to expect to survive on a new world alone! Even if I could — why would I want to?”
“Are you such a fool to think you can survive transit?”
“I’d rather die quickly than slowly.” He spoke in anger, and only then realized he meant it.
“It isn’t that quick, as I understand it.”
“If I stay, what are the chances that someone will ever come back for me?”
Vasili looked at the deck. “Getting home — I can’t say. Maybe ten to one. Maybe a hundred. But the chances of finding my way back here, if the position can’t be charted… that’s nearly random.”
“Random!”
“I’m sorry. Transit —”
“Transit! Never mind. There is no chance at all. Nothing.”
“I’m sorry!” Vasili cried. “I don’t know what to tell you.” He turned away, and whispered, “Maybe this is what happens to all the ships that are lost. Maybe transit spits them out and never lets them back in.” He spoke like a hurt, abandoned child, and Radu saw that never getting home again was not what the pilot feared. His terror was the thought of never seeing transit again.
Radu reached out, but stopped before his hand brushed Vasili’s shoulder. “You are the best pilot I’ve ever heard of. Even Atna never saw one better, and he was in the crew since before there were any pilots. You can take this ship home.”
“What about you? Getting back here doesn’t depend on me,” Vasili said miserably. “Only on whether the system can be charted. What about you?”
When Radu joined the crew, he knew ships were sometimes lost. He knew people sometimes died in transit despite the drugs, and he knew that the drugs themselves could kill. Like everyone else, he had prepared himself for the, possibility that he might die. His only choice now was the time and place, and where he would be buried.
“I’ve written my letter,” he said. “There’s nothing I want to add to it.” He wanted to go home. He wanted his ashes to be taken back to Twilight.
Vasili nodded, without turning around.
“Then we will try… when you are ready.”
Radu gazed through the port at the crowded stars around them, at nothing. He wanted someone to be with him if he was going to die. He wanted someone to hold his hand, to embrace him, to comfort him. He leaned against the cool clear glass.
“Do you want me to stay here?” Vasili said.
Embarrassed by Vasili’s pity, and his own, Radu felt the blood rising to his face.
“I think it would be better if you didn’t,” he said. He wanted someone, but not a pilot — not this pilot.
“All right,” Vasili said. He had waited a decent interval to agree, but relief crept into his voice. Radu did not blame him for being glad to stay away. Radu did not want to see how an ordinary person died in transit either.
The pilot took his hand out of his pocket and awkwardly laid a vial on the table.
“They give us that,” he said reluctantly. “In case the ship gets lost and there’s no chance of getting home or anywhere. If it gets too bad for you —” He stopped.
Radu nodded. A quick and easy suicide sounded tempting just now. Perhaps the temptation would overcome him.
“Will I know? How long —”
Vasili laughed sharply.
In fury, his fists clenc
hed, Radu took a quick step toward him. Vasili held up his hands in defense. But Radu had already stopped.
“I’m sorry,” Vasili said. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s only that there’s no answer to your question. You can’t answer questions like that about transit.”
Radu found Vasili’s statement hard to believe; he thought it was just another way pilots had of keeping their secrets. But he would not beg for an answer.
“I won’t start until you tell me,” Vasili said.
“Just go on!” Radu yelled. “Hurry up! It’s bad enough without having to wait for it.” He clenched his hands around the rim of the port. After a moment, he heard the door close as the pilot went into the control room.
In the port, the bright unfamiliar constellations blurred and swam like the fish in the sea the last time Radu had pressed up against a thick glass wall. That time he knew he must part with Laenea. This time he did not know what would happen.
The ship vibrated against his fingers. He flattened his hands against the wall, feeling the power of the engines. Fascinated in spite of himself, he waited for whatever change would come. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of his face. He ducked his head to wipe it off on his sleeve. Unless he died instantly, he would at least have a few minutes to see what the mystery was about transit. Though he had wondered, he had never asked. It did not take much intuition or observation to discover that the pilots would not tell.
The vibration of the engines rose to a peak. Radu’s heart pounded. He cupped his hands around his face, shielding the port from the room’s glare. Nothing outside changed: The stars, of course, did not move. But slowly Radu did detect an alteration in the state of the universe outside. The great jeweled white mass of stars around him shifted, brightened, and intensified to brilliance so abruptly that Radu stepped back startled. He blinked, and the universe faded to gray.
Radu touched the glass with the tips of his fingers. It remained smooth and cool. But nothing lay beyond it, nothing at all. Radu strained his eyes for any hint of movement, any unusual scene, the embodiment of fantasies or nightmares, the perception of hidden truths. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his other senses, waiting for some revelation, or even for a warning of his own impending death.
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