Poul Anderson - Tau Zero

“—unparalleled opportunity to get some worthwhile readings. Only think what a baseline we’ll have: ten parsecs! Plus the ability to examine gamma-ray spectra with less uncertainty, high precision, when they’re red-shifted down to less energetic photons. And more and more. Still, I’m not satisfied.

“I don’t believe it’s really necessary for me to peer at an electronic image of the sky — narrow, blurred, and degraded by noise, not to mention the damned optical changes. We should mount mirrors outside the hull. The images they catch could be led along light conductors to eyepieces, photomultipliers, cameras inboard.

“No, don’t say it. I’m well aware that previous attempts to do this failed. One could build a machine to go out through an airlock, shape the plastic backing for such an instrument, and aluminize it. But induction effects of the Bussard fields would promptly make the mirror into something appropriate for a fun house in Grцna Lund. Yes.

“Now my idea is to print sensor and feedback circuits into the plastic, controlling flexors that’ll automatically compensate these distortions as they occur. I would like your opinion as to the feasibility of designing, testing, and producing those flexors, Mr. Freiwald. Here, this is a rough drawing of what I have in mind—”

Nilsson was interrupted. “Hey, there you are, ol’ buddy!” He and the machinist looked up. Williams lurched toward them. The chemist held a bottle in his right hand, a half-full tumbler in the left. His face was redder than usual and he breathed heavily.

“ Was zum Teufel? ” Freiwald exclaimed.

“English, boy,” Williams said. “Talk English tonight. ‘Merican style.” He reached the table, set his burdens down, and rested on it so hard it almost tipped over. A powerful whisky smell hung around him. “You ’specially, Nilsson.” He pointed with an oscillant finger. “You talk American tonight, you Swede. Hear me?”

“Please go elsewhere,” the astronomer said.

Williams plumped himself onto a chair. He leaned forward on both elbows. “You don’t know what day this is,” he said. “Do you?”

“I doubt you do, in your present condition,” Nilsson snapped, remaining with Swedish. “The date is the fourth of July.”

“R-r-r-right! Y’ know what ‘at means? No?” Williams turned to Freiwald. “You know, Heinie?”

“An, uh, anniversary?” the machinist ventured.

“Right. Anniversary. How’d yuh guess?” Williams lifted his glass. “Drink wi’ me, you two. Been collectin’ f’ today. Drink!”

Freiwald gave him a sympathetic glance and clinked rims. “ Prosit. ” Nilsson started to say, “ Skal, ” but set his own liquor down again and glared.

“Fourth July,” Williams said. “Independence Day. My country. Wanted throw party. Nobody cared. One drink with me, two maybe, then gotta go their goddam dance.” He regarded Nilsson for a while. “Swede,” he declared slowly, “you’ll drink wi’ me ’r I’ll bust y’r teeth in.”

Freiwald laid a muscular hand on Williams’ arm. The chemist tried to rise. Freiwald held him where he was. “Be calm, please, Dr. Williams,” the machinist requested mildly. “If you want to celebrate your national day, why, we’ll be glad to toast it. Won’t we, sir?” he added to Nilsson.

The astronomer clipped: “I know what the matter is. I was told before we left, by a man who knew. Frustration. He couldn’t cope with modern management procedures.”

“Goddam welfare state bureaucracy,” Williams hiccuped.

“He started dreaming of his country’s sovereign, imperial era,” Nilsson went on. “He fantasized about a free enterprise system that I doubt ever existed. He dabbled in reactionary politics. When the Control Authority had to arrest several high American officials on charges of conspiracy to violate the Covenant—”

“I’d had a bellyful.” Williams’ tone rose toward a shout. “‘Nother star. New world. Chance t’ be free. Even if I do have to travel with a pack o’ Swedes.”

“You see?” Nilsson grinned at Freiwald. “He’s nothing but a victim of the romantic nationalism that our too orderly world has been consoling itself with, this past generation. Pity he couldn’t be satisfied with historical fiction and bad epic poetry.”

“Romantic!” Williams yelled. He struggled fruitlessly in Freiwald’s grip. “You pot-gutted spindle-shanked owl-eyed freak, wha’d’you think it did to you? How’d it feel, being built like that, when the other kids were playing Viking? Your marriage washed out worse’n mine! And I did cope, you son of a bitch, I was meet’n’ my payroll, something you never had to do, you — Lemme go an’ we’ll see who’s a man here!”

“Please,” Freiwald said. “ Bitte. Gentlemen.” He was standing, now, to keep Williams held in the chair. His gaze nailed Nilsson across the table. “And you, sir,” he continued sharply. “You had no right to bait him. You might have shown the courtesy to toast his national day.”

Nilsson seemed about to pull intellectual rank. He broke off when Jane Sadler appeared. She had been in the door for a couple of minutes, watching. Her expression made her formal gown pathetic.

“Johann’s telling you truth, Elof,” she said. “Better come along.”

“And dance?” Nilsson gobbled. “After this?”

“Especially after this.” She tossed her head. “I’ve grown pretty tired of you on your high horse, dear. Shall we try to start fresh, or drop everything as of now?”

Nilsson muttered but rose and offered her his arm. She was a little taller than he. Williams sat slumped, struggling not to weep.

“I’ll stay here awhile, Jane, and see if I can’t cheer him up,” Freiwald whispered to her.

She gave him a troubled smile. “You would, Johann.” They had been together a few times before she took up with Nilsson. “Thanks.” Their glances lingered, each on each. Nilsson shuffled his feet and coughed. “I’ll see you later,” she said, and left.

When Leonora Christine attained a substantial fraction of light speed, its optical effects became clear to the unaided sight. Her velocity and that of the rays from a star added “vectorially; the result was aberration. Except for whatever lay dead aft or ahead, the apparent position changed. Constellations grew lopsided, grew grotesque, and melted, as their members crawled across the dark. More and more, the stars thinned out behind the ship and crowded before her.

Doppler effect operated simultaneously. Because she was fleeing the light waves that overtook her from astern, to her their length was increased and their frequency lowered. In like manner, the waves into which her bow plunged were shortened and quickened. Thus, the suns aft looked ever redder, those forward bluer.

On the bridge stood a compensating viewscope: the single one aboard, elaborate as it was. A computer figured out continuously how the sky would appear if you were motionless at this point in space, and projected a simulacrum of it. The device was not for amusement or comfort; it was a valuable navigational aid.

Clearly, though, the computer needed data on where the ship really was and how fast she was traveling with respect to objects in heaven. This was no simple thing to find out. Velocity — exact speed, exact direction — varied with variations in the interstellar medium and with the necessarily imperfect feedback to the Bussard controls, as well as with time under acceleration. The shifts from her calulated path were comparatively petty; but over astronomical distances, any imprecisions could add up to a fatal sum. They must be eliminated as they occurred.

Hence that neat, stocky, dark-bearded man, Navigation Officer Auguste Boudreau, was among the few who had a full-time job en route that was concerned with operating the ship. It did not quite require him to revolve in a logical circle — find your position and velocity so you can correct for optical phenomena so you can check your position and velocity. Distant galaxies were his primary beacons; statistical analysis of observations made on closer individual stars gave him further data; he used the mathematics of successive approximations.