by Larry Niven
“I have just heard complaints about the monotony,” Laurinda said.
“Monotony, or peacefulness?” he countered in his diffident fashion. “I chafed, too. Then gradually I realized what an opportunity this is to be alone and think. Or compose.”
“You don’t sound like a rockjack,” she said needlessly. It was what had originally attracted her to him.
He chuckled. “How are rockjacks supposed to sound? We have the rough, tough image, yes. Pilot the boat, find the ore, wrench it out, bring it home, and damn the meteoroids. Or the sun-flare or the fusion generator failure or anything else. But we are simply persons making a living. Quite a few of us look forward to a day when we can use different talents.”
“What else would you like to do?”
His smile was stiff. He stared before him. “Prepare yourself to laugh.”
“Oh, no.” Her tone made naught of the eight centimeters by which she topped him. “How could I laugh at a man who handles the forces that I only measure?”
He flushed and had no answer. They walked on, The ship hummed around them. Bulkheads were brightly painted, pictures were hung on them and often changed, here and there were pots whose flowers Carita Fenger maintained, but nonetheless this was a barren environment. The two had a date in his cabin, where he would provide tea while they screened d’Auvergne’s Fifth Chromophony. An appreciation of her work was one thing among others that they discovered they had in common.
“What is your hope?” Laurinda asked at last, low.
He gulped. “To be a poet.”
“Why, how . . . how remarkable.”
“Not that there’s a living in it,” he said hastily. “I’ll need a groundside position. But I will anyway when I get too old for this berth—and am still fairly young by most standards.” He drew breath. “In the centuries of spaceflight, how much true poetry has been written? Plenty of verse, but how much that makes your hair rise and you think yes, this is the real truth? It’s as if we’ve been too busy to find the words for what we’ve been busy with. I want to try. I am trying, but know quite well I won’t have a chance of succeeding with a single line till I’ve worked at it for another ten years or more.”
“You’re too modest, Juan. Genius flowers early oftener than not. I would like to see what you have done.”
“No, I, I don’t think it’s that good. Maybe my efforts never will be. Not even equal to—well, actually minor stuff, but it does have the spirit—”
“Such as what?”
“Oh, ancient pieces, mostly, pre-space.
“ ‘To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
“Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’ “ Yoshii cackled a laugh. “I’m really getting bookish, am I not? An easy trap to fall into. Spacemen have a lot of free time in between crises.”
“You’ve put yours to good use,” she said earnestly. “Is that poem you quoted from in the ship’s database? I’d like to read it.”
“I don’t know, but I can recite it verbatim.”
‘That would be much better. Romantic—” Laurinda broke off. She turned her glance away.
He sensed her confusion and blurted in his own, “Please don’t misunderstand me. I know—your customs, your mores—I mean to respect them. Completely.”
She achieved a smile, though she could not yet look back his way. “Why, I’m not afraid of you.” Unspoken: You’re not unbearably frustrated. It’s obvious that Carita is your mistress as well as Kam’s. “You are a gentleman.” And what we have coming to life between us is still small and frail, but already very sweet.
8
Rover re-entered normal space ten astronomical units from the destination star. That was unnecessarily distant for a mass less than a fourth of Sol’s, but the Saxtorphs were more cautious than Markham admitted. Besides, the scientists wanted to begin with a long sweep as baseline for their preliminary observations, and it was their party now.
As soon as precise velocity figures were available, Dorcas computed the vectors. The star was hurtling at well over a thousand kilometers per second with respect to galactic center. That meant the ship needed considerable delta v to get down to interplanetary speeds and into the equatorial plane where any attendant bodies were likeliest to be. That boost phase must also serve those initial requirements of the astronomers. Course and thrust could be adjusted as data came in and plans for the future were developed.
The star’s motion meant, too, that it was escaping the galaxy, bound for the gulfs beyond. Presumably an encounter with one or more larger bodies had cast it from the region where it formed. A question the expedition hoped to get answered, however incompletely, was where that might have happened—and when.
Except for Dorcas, who worked with Tregennis to process the data that Laurinda mostly gathered, the crew had little to do but housekeeping. Occasionally someone was asked to lend a hand with some task of the research.
Going off watch, Carita Fenger stopped by the saloon. A large viewscreen there kept the image of the sun at the cross-haired center. Else nobody could have identified it. It was waxing as the ship drove inward but thus far remained a dim dull-red point, outshone by stars light-years away. The undertone of power through the ship was like a whisper of that which surged within, around, among them, nuclear fires, rage of radiation, millennial turmoil of matter, births and funeral pyres and ashes and rebirths, the universe forever in travail. Like most spacefarers, Carita could lose herself, hour upon hour, in the contemplation of it.
She halted. Markham sat alone, looking. His face was haggard.
“Well, hi,” she said tentatively.
Markham gave her a glance. “How do you do, Pilot Fenger.” The words came flat.
She plumped herself down in the chair beside him. “Quite a sight, eh?”
He nodded, his gaze back on the screen.
“A trite thing to say,” she persisted. “But I suspect Juan’s wrong. He hopes to find words grand enough. I suspect it can’t be done.”
“I was not aware Pilot Yoshii had such interests,” said Markham without unbending.
“Nah, you wouldn’t be. You’ve been about as outgoing as a black hole. What’s between you and Dorcas? You seem to be off speaking terms with her.”
“If you please, I am not in the mood for gossip.” Markham started to rise, to leave.
Carita took hold of his arm. It was a gentle grip, but he could easier have broken free of a salvage grapple. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’ve been halfway on the alert for a chance to talk with you. Who does any more, except ‘Pass the salt’ at mess, that sort of thing? How lonesome you must be.”
He refrained from ineffectual resistance, continued to stare before him, and clipped, “Thank you for your concern, but I manage. Kindly let go.”
“Look,” she said, “we’re supposed to be shipmates. It’s a hell of an exciting adventure—Christ, we’re the first, the very first, in all this weird wonder—but it’s cold out, too, and doesn’t care an atom’s worth about human beings. I keep thinking how awful it must be, cut off from any friendship the way you are. Not that you’ve exactly encouraged us, but we could try harder.”
Now he did regard her. “Are you inviting me to your bed?” he asked in the same tone as before.
Slightly taken aback, she recovered, smiled, and replied, “No, I wasn’t, but if it’ll make you feel better we can have a go at it.”
“Or make you feel better? I am not too isolated to have noticed that lately Pilot Yoshii has ceased visiting your cabin. Is Quartermaster Ryan insufficient?”
Carita’s face went sulfur black. She dragged her fingers from him. “My mistake,” she said. “The rest were right about you. Okay, you can take off.”
“With pleasure.” He stalked out.
She mumbled an oath, drew forth a cigar, lit and blew fumes that ran the ventilators and air renewers up to capacity. Calm returned after a while. She laughed ruefully. Ryan had told her more than once that she was too soft-hearte
d; and he was a man prone to fits of improvident generosity.
She was about to go when Saxtorph’s voice boomed from the intercom: “Attention, please. Got an announcement here that I’m sure will interest everybody.
“We’ll hold a conference in a few days, when more information is in. Then you can ask whatever questions you want. Meanwhile, I repeat my order, do not pester the science team. They’re working around the clock and don’t need distractions.
“However, Arthur Tregennis has given me a quick rundown on what’s been learned so far, to pass on to you. Here it is, in my layman’s language. Don’t blame him for any garbling.
“They have a full analysis of the sun’s composition, along with other characteristics. That wasn’t too easy. For one thing, it’s so cool that its peak emission frequency is in the radio band. Because the absorption and re-emission of the interstellar medium in between isn’t properly known, we had to come here to get decent readings.
“They bear out what the prof and Laurinda thought. This sun isn’t just metal-poor, it’s metal-impoverished. No trace of any element heavier than iron, and little of that. Yes, you’ve all heard as how it must be very old, and has only stayed on the main sequence this long because it’s such a feeble dwarf. But now they have a better idea of just how long ‘this’ has been.
“Estimated age, fifteen billion years. Our star is damn near as old as the universe.
“It probably got slung out of its parent galaxy early on. In that many years you can cover a lot of kilometers. We’re lucky that we—meaning the human species—are alive while it’s in our neighborhood.
“And . . . in the teeth of expectations, it’s got planets, Already the instruments are finding signs of oddities in them, no two alike, nothing we could have foreseen. Well, we’ll be taking a close look. Stand by. Over.”
Carita sprang to her feet and cheered.
9
Once when they were young bucks, chance-met, beachcombing together in the Islands, Kam Ryan and Bob Saxtorph acquired a beat-up rowboat, cat-rigged it after a fashion, stowed some food and plenty of beer aboard, and set forth on a shakedown cruise across Kaulakahi Channel. Short runs off Waimea had gone reasonably well, but they wanted to be sure of the seaworthiness before making it a lure for girls. They figured they could reach Niihau in 12 or 15 hours, land if possible, rest up in any case, and come back. They didn’t have the price of an outboard, but in a pinch they could row.
To avoid coping with well-intentioned busybodies, they started after dark. By that time sufficient beer had gone down that they forgot about tuning in a weather report before leaving their tent—at the verge of kona season.
It was a beautiful night, half a moon aloft and so many stars they could imagine they were in space. Wind lulled, seas whooshed, rigging creaked, the boat rocked forward and presently a couple of dolphins appeared, playing alongside for hours, a marvel that made even Kam sit silent in wonder. Then toward dawn, the goal a vague darkness ahead, clouds boiled out of the west, wind sharpened and shrilled, suddenly rain slanted like a flight of spears and through murk the mariners heard waves rumble against rocks.
It wasn’t much of a storm, really, but ample to deal with Wahine. Seams opened, letting in water to join that which dashed over the gunwales. Sail first reefed, soon struck, stays nonetheless gave way and the mast went. It would have capsized the hull had Bob not managed to heave it free. Thereafter he had the oars, keeping bow on to the waves, while Kam bailed. A couple of years older, and no weakling, the Hawaiian couldn’t have rowed that long at a stretch. Eventually he did his share and a bit at the rudder, when somehow he worked the craft through a gap between two reefs which roared murder at them. They hit coral a while later, but close enough to shore that they could swim, never sure who saved the life of who in the surf. Collapsing behind a bush, they slept the weather out.
Afterward they limped off till they found a road and hitched a ride. They’d been blown back to Kauai.
Side by side, they stood on the carpet before a Coast Guard officer and endured what they must.
Next day in their tent, Kam said, unwontedly solemn—the vast solemnity of youth—”Bob, listen. You’ve been my hoa since we met, you became my hoaloha, but what we’ve been through, what you did, makes you a hoapili.”
“Aw, wasn’t more’n I had to, and you did just as much,” mumbled the other, embarrassed. “If you mean what I suppose you do, okay, I’ll call you kammerat, and let’s get on with whatever we’re going to do.”
“How about this? I’ve got folks on the Big Island. A tiny little settlement tucked away where nobody ever comes. Beautiful country, mountains and woods. People still live in the old kanaka style. How’d you like that?”
“Um-m, how old a style?”
Kam was relieved at being enabled to laugh. “You won’t eat long pig! Everybody knows English, though they use Hawaiian for choice, and never fear, you can watch the Chimp Show. But it’s a great, relaxed, cheerful life—you’ve got to experience the girls to believe—the families don’t talk about it much when they go outside, or invite haolena in, because tourists would ruin it—but you’ll be welcome, I guarantee you. How about it?”
The month that followed lived up to his promises, and then some.
Recollections of it flew unbidden across the years as Ryan worked in the galley. Everybody else was in the gym, where chairs and projection equipment had been brought, for the briefing the astronomers would give. Rover boosted on automatic; her instruments showed nothing ahead that she couldn’t handle by herself for the next million kilometers. The quartermaster could have joined the group, but he wanted to make a victory feast ready. Before long, they’d be too busy to appreciate his art.
He did have a screen above the counter, monitoring the assembly.
Tregennis and Laurinda stood facing their audience. The Plateaunian said, with joy alive beneath the dry words:
“It is a matter of semantics whether we call this a first- or a second-generation system. Hydrogen and helium are overwhelmingly abundant, in proportions consistent with condensation shortly after the Big Bang—about which, not so incidentally, we may learn something more than hitherto. However, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silicon, and neon are present in significant quantities; magnesium and iron are not insignificant; other elements early in the periodic table are detectable. There has naturally been a concentration of heavier atoms in the planets, especially the inner ones, as gases selectively escaped. They are not mere balls of water ice.
“It seems clear, therefore, that this system formed out of a cloud which had been enriched by mass loss from older stars in their red giant phase. A few supernovae may have contributed, too, but any elements heavier than iron which they may have supplied are so scant that we will only find them by mass spectrography of samples from the solid bodies. They may well be nonexistent. Those older stars must have come into being as soon after the Beginning as was physically possible, in a proto-galaxy not too far then from the matter which was to become ours, but now surely quite distant from us.”
“As we dared hope,” said the Crashlander. Tears glimmered in her eyes like dew on rose petals.
“Oh, good for you!” called Yoshii.
“A relic—hell, finding God’s fingerprints,” Carita said, and clapped a hand to her mouth. Ryan grinned. Nobody else noticed.
“How many planets?” asked Saxtorph.
“Five,” Tregennis replied.
“Hm. Isn’t that kind of few, even for a dwarf? Are you sure?”
“Yes. We would have found anything of a size much less than what you would call a planet’s.”
“Especially since the Bode function is small, as you’d expect,” Dorcas added. Having worked with the astronomers, she scarcely needed this session. “The planets huddle close in. We haven’t found an Oort cloud either. No comets at all, we think.”
“Outer bodies may well have been lost in the collision that sent this star into exile,” Laurinda said. “And in fif
teen billion years, any comets that were left got . . . used up.”
“There probably was a sixth planet until some unknown date in the past,” Tregennis stated. “We have indications of asteroids extremely close to the sun. Gravitational radiation—no, it must chiefly have been friction with the interstellar medium that caused a parent body to spiral in until it passed the Roche limit and was disrupted.”
“Hey, wait,” Saxtorph said. “Dorcas talks of a Bode function. That implies the surviving planets are about where theory says they ought to be. How’d they avoid orbital decay?”
Tregennis smiled. “That’s a good question.”
Saxtorph laughed. “Shucks, you sound like I was back in the Academy.”
“Well, at this stage any answers are hypothetical, but consider. In the course of its long journey, quite probably through more galaxies than ours, the system must sometimes have crossed nebular regions where matter was comparatively dense. Gravitation would draw the gas and dust in, make it thickest close to the sun, until the sun swallowed it altogether. As a matter of fact, the planetary orbits have very small eccentricities—friction has a circularizing effect—and their distances from the primary conform only roughly to the theoretical distribution.” Tregennis paused. “A further anomaly we cannot explain, though it may be related. We have found—marginally; we think we have found—molecules of water and OH radicals among the asteroids, almost like a ring around the sun.” He spread his hands. “Well, I won’t live to see every riddle we may come upon solved.”
He had fought to get here, Ryan remembered.
“Let’s hear about those planets,” Carita said impatiently. Her job would include any landings. “Uh, have you got names for them? One, Two, Three might cause mixups when we’re in a hurry.”
“I’ve suggested using Latin ordinals,” Laurinda answered. She sounded almost apologetic.
“Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta,” Dorcas supplied. “Top-flight idea. I hope it becomes the standard for explorers.” Laurinda flushed.