Poul Anderson - Tau Zero

“Not a bad idea,” Reymont said. “But I don’t think that’s the sole thing we should do. We should keep flying also. Let me tell you what I told the original discussion group. Nobody disputed it.

“The fact is, nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen. My guess is that everything will not get squeezed into a single zero-point Something. That’s the kind of oversimplification which helps our math along but never does tell a whole story. I think the central core of mass is bound to have an enormous hydrogen envelope, even before the explosion. The outer parts of that envelope may not be too hot or radiant or dense for us. Space will be small enough, though, that we can circle around and around the monobloc as a kind of satellite. When it blows up and space starts to expand again, we’ll spiral out ourselves. I know this is a sloppy way of phrasing, but it hints at what we can perhaps do… Norbert?”

“I never thought of myself as a religious man,” Williams said. It was odd and disturbing to see him humbled. “But this is too much. We’re — well, what are we? Animals. My God — very literally, my God — we can’t go on … having regular bowel movements … while creation happens!”

Beside him, Emma Glassgold looked startled, then determined. Her hand shot aloft. Reymont recognized her.

“Speaking as a believer myself,” she announced, “I must say that that is sheer nonsense. I’m sorry, Norbert, dear, but it is. God made us the way He wanted us to be. There’s nothing shameful about any part of His handiwork. I would like to watch Him fashion new stars, and praise Him, as long as He sees fit that I should.”

“Good for you!” Ingrid Lindgren called.

“I might add,” Reymont said, “I being a man with no poetry in his soul, and I suspect no soul to keep the poetry in … I might suggest you people look into yourselves and ask what psychological twists make you unwilling to live through the moment when time begins over. Isn’t there, down inside, some identification with — your parents, maybe? You shouldn’t see your parents in bed, therefore you shouldn’t see a new cosmos begotten. Now that doesn’t make sense.” He drew breath. “We can’t deny what’s about to happen is awesome. But so is everything else. Always. I never thought stars were more mysterious, or had more magic, than flowers.”

Others wanted to talk. Eventually everyone did. Their sentences threshed wearily around and around the point. It was not to no purpose. They had to unburden themselves. But by the time they could finally adjourn the meeting, after a unanimous vote to proceed, Reymont and Lindgren were near a collapse of their own.

They did seize a moment’s low-speaking privacy, as the people broke into groups and the ship roared with the hollow noise of her passage. She took both his hands and said: “How I want to be your woman again.”

He stammered in gladness, “Tomorrow? We, we’d have to move personal gear … and explain to our partners… Tomorrow, my Ingrid?”

“No,” she answered. “You didn’t let me finish. All of me wants to, but I can’t.”

Stricken, he asked, “Why?”

“We mustn’t risk it. The emotional balance is too fragile. Anything might let hell loose in any one of us. Elof and Ai-Ling would take it hard that we left — when death is this near.”

“She and he could—” Reymont chopped off in mid-word. “No. He could. She would. But no.”

“You wouldn’t be the man I lie awake nights wishing for, if you could ask that of her. She never let you talk about those hours she gave us, did she?”

“No. How did you guess?”

“I didn’t guess. I know her. And I won’t have her do it again for us, Carl. Once was right. It won us back what we’d built together. Oftener, by stealth, is not any way to treat that thing.” Lindgren’s speech stiffened into practicalities. “Besides, Elof. He needs me. He blames himself, his advice, for letting us run the ship too long — as if any mortal man could have known! If he should learn that I — The desperation, maybe the suicide of a single individual could bring the whole crew down in hysteria.”

She straightened, faced him squarely, smiled, and said, her tone soft again: “Afterward, yes. When we are safe. I’ll never let you go then.”

“We may never be safe,” he protested. “Chances are we won’t. I want you back before I die.”

“And I you. But we can’t. We mustn’t. They depend on you. Absolutely. You’re the only man who can lead us through what lies ahead. You’ve given me courage till I can help you a little. Nevertheless … Carl, it was never easy to be a king.”

She wheeled and walked from him.

He stood for a space, alone. Somebody approached the stage with a question. He waved the somebody aside. “Tomorrow,” he said. Springing to the deck, he made his way to Chi-Yuen, who awaited him at the door.

She told him in an almost matter-of-fact voice: “If we die with the last stars, Charles, I will still have had more from my life than I ever hoped, knowing you. What can I do for you?”

He regarded her. The ship’s wild singing closed them off from the rest of humanity. “Come back to our cabin with me,” he said.

“Nothing else?”

“No, except to be what you are.” He ran fingers through his gray-shot hair. Awkward and puzzled, he said: “I can’t make fine phrases, Ai-Ling, and I’m not experienced in fine emotions. Tell me, is it possible to love two different people at once?”

She embraced him. “Of course it is, silly.” Her answer was muffled by his flesh and less steady than before. But when she took his arm and they started for their quarters, she was smiling.

“Do you know,” she added at length, “I wonder if the biggest surprise in these next months isn’t how stubbornly ordinary life will keep on being.”

Margarita’s daughter was born in the night. No suns remained visible. The ship rolled through gales and thunder. While the birth took place, the father was bossing a work gang, and straining his own muscles, to further strengthen the hull. The baby’s first cry responded to the noise of inward-falling worlds.

Things quieted down for a time afterward. The scientists had observed and computed until they understood something about those strange forces galloping through the light-years. Reprogrammed, the robots got the ship to sailing with the winds and vortices more often than across them.

Not everyone was in the mood to celebrate with a party, but those were whom Johann Freiwald and Jane Sadler invited. By dimming lights, she reduced the corner of the gym which they used to a room small and warm. This brought into vivid relief the Halloween ornaments she had hung up.

“Is that wise?” Reymont asked when he arrived with Chi-Yuen.

“We’re not far off from the date by the calendar,” Sadler replied. “Why not combine the occasions? Me, I think the jack o’ lanterns add a touch of color we sure can use.”

“They might be too reminding. Not of Earth, maybe — I suppose we’re getting over that — but of, uh—”

“Yeh, it crossed my mind. A shipful of witches, devils, vampires, goblins, bogles, and spooks, screaming their way down the sky toward the Black Sabbath. Well, aren’t we?” Sadler grinned and snuggled close to Freiwald. He laughed and hugged her. “I feel exactly like doing that kind of nose thumbing.”

The rest agreed. They drank more than they were used to and got rowdy. At last they enthroned Boris Fedoroff on the stage, with a garland and a lei and two girls to wait on his every wish. Several other folk stood in a ring, arms linked, bawling out a song that had been ancient when the vessel left home.