Poul Anderson - Tau Zero

“Perhaps.”

“That’s one section of our hell. That we’ve become a menace to— to—”

“Don’t say it.” Reymont spoke earnestly. “Don’t think it. Because it isn’t true. We’re interacting with dust and gas, nothing else. We do transit many galaxies. They lie comparatively close together in terms of their own size. Within a cluster, the members are about ten diameters apart, often less. Single stars within a galaxy — that’s another situation altogether. Their diameters are such a microscopic fraction of a light-year. In a nuclear region, the most crowded part … well, the separation of two stars is still like the separation of two men, one at either end of a continent. A big continent. Like Asia.”

Friewald looked away. “There is no more Asia,” he said. “No more anything.”

“There’s us,” Reymont answered. “We’re alive, we’re real, we have hope. What else do you want? Some grandiose philosophical significance? Forget it. That’s a luxury. Our descendants will invent it, along with tedious epics about our heroism. We have the sweat, tears, blood” — his grinflashed — “in short, the unglamorous bodily excretions. And what’s bad about that? Your trouble is, you think a combination of acrophobia, sensory deprivation, and nervous strain is a metaphysical crisis. Myself, I don’t despise our lobsterish instinct to survive. I’m glad we have one.”

Freiwald floated motionless.

Reymont crossed to him and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m not belittling your difficulties,” he said. “It is hard to keep going. Our worst enemy is despair; and it wrestles every one of us to the deck, every now and then.”

“Not you,” Freiwald said.

“Oh yes,” Reymont told him. “Me too. I get my feet back, though. So will you. If you’ll only stop feeling worthless because of a disability that is a perfectly normal temporary result of psychic exhaustion — as Jane understands better than you, young fellow — why, the disability will soon go away of itself. Afterward you’ll see the rest of your problems in perspective and start coping once more.”

“Well—” Freiwald, who had tensed while Reymont spoke, relaxed the barest bit. “Maybe.”

“I know. Ask the doctor if you don’t believe me. If you want, I’ll have him issue you some psychodrugs to hasten your recovery. My reason is that I do need you, Johann.”

The muscles beneath Reymont’s palm softened further. He smiled. “However,” he continued, “I’ve got with me the only psychodrug I expect is called for.”

“What?” Freiwald looked “up.”

Reymont reached under his tunic and extracted a squeeze bottle with twin drinking tubes. “Here,” he said. “Rank has its privileges. Scotch. The genuine article, not that witch’s brew the Scandinavians think is an imitation. I prescribe a hefty dose for you, and for myself too. I’d enjoy a leisurely talk. Haven’t had any for longer than I can remember.”

They had been at it an hour, and life was coming back in Freiwald’s manner, when the intercom said with Ingrid Lindgren’s voice: “Is the constable there?”

“Uh, yes,” Freiwald replied.

“Sadler told me,” the first officer explained. “Could you come to the bridge, Carl?”

“Urgent?” Reymont asked.

“N-n-not really, I guess. The latest observations seem to indicate … further evolutionary changes in space. We may have to modify our cruising plan. I thought you might like to discuss it.”

“All right.” Reymont shrugged at Freiwald. “Sorry.”

“Me also.” The other man considered the flask, shook his head sadly, and offered it back.

“No, you may as well finish it,” Reymont said. “Not alone. Bad, drinking alone. I’ll tell Jane.”

“Well now.” Freiwald genuinely laughed. “That’s kind of you.”

Emerging, closing the door behind him, Reymont glanced the length of the corridor. No one else was in sight. He sagged, then, eyes covered, body shaking. After a minute he filled his lungs and started for the bridge.

Norbert Williams happened to come the other way along the stairs. “Hi,” the chemist greeted.

“You’re looking cheerier than most,” Reymont remarked.

“Yeah, I guess I am. Emma and I, we got talking, and we may have hit on a new gimmick to check at a distance whether a planet has our type of life. A plankton-type population, you see, ought to impart certain thermal radiation characteristics to ocean surfaces; and given Doppler effect, making those frequencies something we can properly analyze—”

“Good. Do work on it. And if you should co-opt others, I’ll be glad.”

“Sure, we thought of that.”

“And would you pass the word that wherever she is, Jane Sadler’s dismissed from work for the day? Her boy friend has something to take up with her.”

Williams’ guffaw followed Reymont through the stairwell.

But the command deck was empty and still; and in the bridge, Lindgren stood watch alone. Her hands strained around the grips at the base of the viewscope. When she turned about at his entry, he saw that her face was quite without color.

He closed the door. “What’s wrong?” he said hushedly.

“You didn’t let on?”

“No, of course not, when the business had to be fierce. What is it?”

She tried to speak and could not.

“Are more people due at this meeting?” Reymont asked.

She shook her head. He went to her, anchored himself with a leg wrapped around a rail and the other foot braced to the deck, and received her in his arms. She held him as tightly as she had done on their single stolen night.

“No,” she said against his breast. “Elof and … Auguste Boudreau … they told me. Otherwise, just Malcolm and Mohandas know. They asked me to tell … the Old Man. They don’t dare. Don’t know how. I don’t either. How to tell anyone.” Her nails bit through his tunic. “Carl, what shall we do?”

He ruffled her hair awhile, staring across her head, feeling her heartbeat quick and irregular. Again the ship boomed and leaped; and soon again. The notes that rang through her were noticeably higher pitched than before. The draft from a ventilator blew cold. The metal around seemed to shrink inward.

“Go on,” he said at last. “Tell me, дlskling. ”

“The universe — the whole universe — it’s dying.”

He made a noise in his throat. Otherwise he waited.

At length she was able to pull far enough back from him that they could look into each other’s eyes. She related in a slurred, hurried voice:

“We’ve come farther man we knew. In space and time. More than a hundred billion years. The astronomers began suspecting it when — I don’t know. I only know what they’ve told me. Everybody’s heard how the galaxies we see are getting dimmer. Old stars fading, new ones not being born. We didn’t think it would affect us. All we were after was one little sun not too different from Sol. There ought to be many left. The galaxies have long lives. But now—

“The men weren’t sure. The observations are hard to make. But they started to wonder … if we might not have underestimated the distance we’ve gone. They checked Doppler shifts extra carefully. Especially of late, when we seem to pass through more and more galaxies and the gas between them seems to be growing denser.

“They found that what they observed could not be explained in full by any tau we can possibly have. Another factor had to be involved. The galaxies are crowding together. The gas is being compressed. Space isn’t expanding any longer. It’s reached its limit and is collapsing inward again. Elof says the collapse will go on. And on. To the end.”

“We?” he asked.

“Who can tell? Except the figures show we can’t stop. We could, I mean. But by the time we did, nothing would be left … except blackness, burned-out suns, absolute zero, death, death. Nothing.”