Poul Anderson - Tau Zero

Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling had ended sleep earlier. His suddenness caught her kneeling in Asian fashion at the foot of the bed, regarding him with a seriousness altogether unlike her playful mood of the night before.

“Is anything wrong?” he demanded.

She had only shown startlement in a widening of eyes. After a moment, her smile came to slow life. “I knew a tame hawk once,” she remarked. “That is, it wasn’t tame in dog fashion, but it hunted with its man and deigned to sit on his wrist. You come awake the same way.”

“Mph,” he said. “I meant that worried look of yours.”

“Not worried, Charles. Thoughtful.”

He admired the sight of her. Unclad, she could never be called boyish. The curves of breast and flank were subtler than ordinary, but they were integral with the rest of her — not stuccoed on, as with too many women — and when she moved, they flowed. So did the light along her skin, which had the hue of the hills around San Francisco Bay in their summer, and the light in her hair, which had the smell of every summer day that ever was on Earth.

They were in his crew-level cabin half, screened off from his partner Foxe-Jameson. It made too drab a setting for her. Her own quarters were filled with beauty.

“What about?” he inquired.

“You. Us.”

“It was a gorgeous night.” He reached out to stroke her beneath the chin. She made purring noises. “More?”

Her gravity returned. “That’s what I was wondering.” He cocked his brows. “An understanding between us. We’ve had our flings. At least, you have had, in the past few months.” His face darkened. She went doggedly on: “To myself, it wasn’t that important; an occasional thing. I don’t want to continue with it, really. If nothing else, those hints and attempts, the whole courtship rite, over and over … they intefere with my work. I’m developing some ideas about planetary cores. They need concentration. A lasting liaison would help.”

“I don’t want to make any contracts,” he said grimly.

She caught his shoulders. “I realize that. I’m not asking for one. Nor offering it. I have simply come to like you better each time we have talked, or danced, or spent a night. You are a quiet man, mostly; strong; courteous, to me at any rate. I could live happily with you — nothing exclusive on either side, only an alliance, for the whole ship to see — as long as we both want to.”

“Done!” he exclaimed, and kissed her.

“That quickly?” she asked, astonished.

“I’d given it some thought too. I’m also tired of chasing. You should be easy to live with.” He ran a hand down her side and thigh. “Very easy.”

“How much of your heart is in that?” At once she laughed. “No, I apologize, such questions are excluded… Shall we move into my cabin? I know Maria Toomajian won’t mind trading places with you. She keeps her part closed off anyway.”

“Fine,” he said. “Sweetheart, we still have almost an hour before breakfast call—”

Leonora Christine was nearing the third year of her journey, or the tenth year as the stars counted time, when grief came upon her.

An outside watcher, quiescent with respect to the stars, might have seen the thing before she did; for at her speed she must needs run half-blind. Even without better sensors than hers, he would have known of the disaster a few weeks ahead. But he would have had no way to cry his warning.

And there was no watcher anyhow: only night, bestrewn with multitudinous remote suns, the frosty cataract of the Milky Way and the rare phantom glimmer of a nebula or a sister galaxy. Nine light-years from Sol, the ship was illimitably alone.

An automatic alarm roused Captain Telander. As he struggled upward from sleep, Lindgren’s voice followed on the intercom: “ Kors i Herrens namn! ” The horror in it jerked him fully awake. Not stopping to acknowledge, he ran from his cabin. Nor would he have stopped to dress, had he been abed.

As it happened, he was clad. Lulled by the sameness of time, he had been reading a novel projected from the library and had dozed off in his chair. Then the jaws of the universe snapped shut.

He didn’t notice the gaiety that now covered passageway bulkheads, or the springiness underfoot or the scent of roses and thundershowers. Loud in his awareness beat the engine vibrations. The stairs made a metal clatter beneath his haste, which the well flung back.

He emerged on the next level up and entered the bridge. Lindgren stood near the viewscope. It was not what counted; at this moment, it was almost a toy. What truth the ship could tell was in the instruments which glittered across the entire forward panel. But her eyes would not leave it.

The captain brushed past her. The warning which had caused him to be summoned was still blazoned on a screen linked to the astronomical computer. He read. The breath hissed between his teeth. His gaze went across the surrounding meters and displays. A slot clicked and extruded a printout. He snatched it. The letters and figures represented a quantification: decimal-point detail, after more data had come in and more calculation had been done. The basic Mene, Mene stood unchanged on the panel.

He stabbed the general alert button. Sirens wailed; echoes went ringing down the corridors. On the intercom he ordered all hands not on duty to report to commons with the passengers. After a moment, harshly, he added that channels would be open so that those people standing watch could also take part in the meeting.

“What are we going to do?” Lindgren cried into a sudden stillness.

“Very little, I fear.” Telander went to the viewscope. “Is anything visible in this?”

“Barely. I think. Fourth quadrant.” She shut her eyes and turned from him.

He took for granted that she meant the projection for dead ahead, and peered into that. At high magnification, space leaped at him. The scene was somewhat blurred and distorted. Optical circuits were not able to compensate perfectly for speeds like this. But he saw starpoints, diamond, amethyst, ruby, topaz, emerald, a Fafnir’s hoard. Near the center burned Beta Virginis. It should have looked very like the sun of home, but something of spectral shift got by to tinge it ice blue. And, yes, on the edge of perception … that wisp? That smoky cloudlet, to wipe out this ship and these fifty human lives?

Noise broke in on his concentration, shouts, footfalls, the sounds of fear. He straightened. “I had better go aft,” he said, flat-voiced. “I should consult Boris Fedoroff before addressing the others.” Lindgren moved to join him. “No, keep the bridge.”

“Why?” Her temper stretched thin. “Regulations?”

He nodded. “Yes. You have not been relieved.” A smile of sorts touched his lean face. “Unless you believe in God, regulations are now me only comfort we have.”

In this moment, the drapes and murals of the gymnasium-auditorium had no more significance than the basketball goals or the bright casual clothes of the people. They had not taken time to unfold chairs. Everyone stood. Every gaze locked onto Telander while he mounted the stage. Nobody stirred save to breathe. Sweat glistened on countenances and could be smelled. The ship muttered around them.

Telander rested his fingers on the lectern. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into their silence, “I have bad news.” Quickly: “Let me say at once that our prospects of survival are far from hopeless, judging by present information. We are in trouble, though. The risk was not unforeseen, but by its nature is one that cannot be provided against, at any rate not in our early stage of Bussard drive technology—”

“Get to the point. God damn it!” Norbert Williams shouted.