Poul Anderson: Tau Zero

And the Milky Way belted heaven with ice and silver; and the Magellanic Clouds were not vague shimmers but roiling and glowing; and the Andromeda galaxy gleamed sharp across more than a million light-years; and you felt your soul drowning in those depths and hastily pulled your vision back to the snug cabin that held you.

Ingrid Lindgren entered the bridge, caught a handhold, and poised in mid-air. “Reporting for duty, Mr. Captain,” she announced formally.

Lars Telander turned about to greet her. In free fall, his gaunt and gawky figure became lovely to watch, like a fish in water or a hawk on the wing. Otherwise he could have been any gray-haired man of fifty-odd. Neither of them had bothered to put insignia of rank on the coveralls that were standard shipboard working attire.

“Good day,” he said. “I trust you had a pleasant leave.”

“I certainly did.” The color mounted in her cheeks. “And you?”

“Oh … it was all right. Mostly I played tourist, from end to end of Earth. I was surprised at how much I had not seen before.”

Lindgren regarded him with some compassion. He floated alone by his command seat, one of three clustered around a control and communications console at the middle of the circular room. The meters, readout screens, indicators, and other gear that crowded the bulkheads, already blinking and quivering and tracing out scrawls, only emphasized his isolation. Until she came, he had not been listening to anything except the murmur of ventilators or the infrequent click of a relay.

“You have nobody whatsoever left?” she asked.

“Nobody close.” Telander’s long features crinkled in a smile. “Don’t forget, as far as the Solar System is concerned, I have almost counted a century. When last I visited my home village in Dalarna, my brother’s grandson was the proud father of two adolescents. It was not to be expected that they would consider me a near relative.”

(He was born three years before the first manned expedition departed for Alpha Centauri. He entered kindergarten two years before the first maser messages from it reached Farside Station on Luna. That set the life of an introverted, idealistic child on trajectory. At age twenty-five, an Academy graduate with a notable performance in the interplanetary ships, he was allowed on the first crew for Epsilon Eridani. They returned twenty-nine years later; but because of the time dilation, they had experienced just eleven, including the six spent at the goal planets. The discoveries they had made covered them with glory. The Tau Ceti ship was outfitting when they came back. Telander could be the first officer if he was willing to leave in less than a year. He was. Thirteen years of his own went by before he returned, commander in place of a captain who had died on a world of peculiar savageries. On Earth, the interval had been thirty-one years. Leonora Christine was being assembled in orbit. Who better than him for her master? He hesitated. She was to start in barely three years. If he accepted, most of those thousand days would be spent planning and preparing… But not to accept was probably not thinkable; and too, he walked as a stranger on an Earth grown strange to him.)

“Let’s get busy,” he said. “I assume Boris Fedoroff and his engineers rode up with you?”

She nodded. “You’ll hear him on the intercom after he’s organized, he told me.”

“Hm. He might have observed the courtesy of notifying me of his arrival.”

“He’s in a foul mood. Sulked the whole way from ground. I don’t know why. Does it matter?”

“We are going to be together in this hull for quite a while, Ingrid,” Telander remarked. “Our behavior will indeed matter.”

“Oh, Boris will get over his fit. I suppose he has a hangover, or some girl said no to him last night, or something. He struck me during training as s rather soft-hearted person.”

“The psychoprofile indicates it. Still, there are things — potentialities — in each of us that no testing shows. You have to be yonder—” Telander gestured at the hood of the optical periscope, as if it were the remoteness that it watched — “before those develop, for good or bad. And they do. They always do.” He cleared his throat. “Well. The scientific personnel are on schedule also?”

“Yes. They’ll arrive in two ferries, first at 1340 hours, second at 1500.” Telander noted agreement with the program clamped to the desk part of the console. Lindgren added: “I don’t believe we need that much interval between them.”

“Safety margin,” Telander replied absently. “Besides, training or no, we’ll need time to get that many groundlubbers to their berths, when they can’t handle themselves properly in weightlessness.”

“Carl can handle them,” Lindgren said. “If need be, he can carry them individually, faster than you’d credit till you saw him.”

“Reymont? Our constable?” Telander studied her fluttering lashes. “I know he’s skilled in free fall, and he’ll come on the first ferry, but is he that good?”

“We visited L’Etoile de Plaisir.”

“Where?”

“A resort satellite.”

“Hm, yes, that one. And you played null-gee games?” Lindgren nodded, not looking at the captain. He smiled again. “Among other things, no doubt.”

“He’ll be staying with me.”

“Um-m-m…” Telander robbed his chin. “To be honest, I’d rather have him in the cabin already agreed on, in case of trouble among the, um, passengers. That’s what he’s for, en route.”

“I could join him,” Lindgren offered.

Telander shook his head. “No. Officers must live in officer country. The theoretical reason, having them next to bridge level, isn’t the real one. You’ll find out how important symbols are, Ingrid, in the next five years.” He shrugged. “Well, the other cabins are only one deck abaft ours. I daresay he can get to them soon enough if need be. Assuming your arranged roommate doesn’t mind a swap, have your wish, then.”

“Thank you,” she said low.

“I can’t help being a little surprised,” Telander confessed. “He doesn’t appear to me as the sort you’d choose. Do you think the relationship will last?”

“I hope it will. He say she wants it to.” She broke from her confusion with a teasing attack: “What about you? Have you made any commitments yet?”

“No. In time, doubtless, in time. I’ll be too busy at first. At my age these matters aren’t that urgent.” Telander laughed, then grew earnest. “A propos time, we’ve none to waste. Please carry out your inspections and—”

The ferry made rendezvous and docked. Bond anchors extended to hold its stubby hull against the larger curve of Leonora Christine . Her robots — sensor-computer-effector units — directing the terminal maneuvers caused airlocks to join in an exact kiss. More than that would be demanded of them later. Both chambers being exhausted, their outer valves swung back, enabling a plastic tube to make an airtight seal. The locks were repressurized and checked for a possible leak. When none was found, the inner valves opened.

Reymont unharnessed himself. Floating free of his seat, he glanced down the length of the passenger section. The American chemist, Norbert Williams, was unbuckling too. “Hold it,” Reymont commanded in English. While everyone knew Swedish, some did not know it well. For scientists, English and Russian remained the chief international tongues. “Keep your places. I told you at the port, I’ll escort you singly to your cabins.”

“You needn’t bother with me,” Williams answered. “I can get around weightless okay.” He was short, round-faced, sandy-haired, given to colorful garments and to speaking rather loudly.

“You all had some drill in it,” Reymont said. “But that’s not the same thing as getting the right reflexes built in through experience.”