Robert Heinlein - Time For The Stars

What I am trying in say is that the Elsie Times was the high point of each day and fleet news was the most important part of it.

I had not been on watch the night before; nevertheless, I was late for breakfast. When I hurried in, everybody was busy with his copy of the Times as usual—but nobody was eating. I sat down between Van and Prudence and said, "What's the matter? What's aching everybody?"

Pru silently handed me a copy of the Times.

The first page was bordered in black. There were oversize headlines: VASCO DA GAMA LOST

I couldn't believe it. The Vasco was headed out for Alpha Centauri but she wouldn't get there for another four years, Earth time; she wasn't even close to the speed of light. There was nothing to have may trouble with, out where she was. It must be a mistake.

I turned to see-story-on-page-two. There was a boxed dispatch from the Commodore in the Santa Maria: "(Official) At 0334 today Greenwich time TS Vasco da Gama (LRF 172) fell out of contact. Two special circuits were operating at the time, one Earthside and one to the Magellan. In both cases transmission ceased without warning in midst of message and at the same apparent instant by adjusted times. The ship contained eleven special communicators; it has not proved possible to raise any of them. It must therefore be assumed that the ship is lost, with no survivors."

The LRF dispatch merely admitted that the ship was out of contact. There was a statement by our Captain and a longer news story which included comments from other ships; I read them but the whole story was in the headlines ...the Vasco was gone wherever it is that ships go when they don't come back.

I suddenly realized something and looked up. Cas Warner's chair was empty. Uncle All caught my eye and said quietly, "He knows, Tom. The Captain woke him and told him soon after it happened. The only good thing about it is that he wasn't linked with his brother when it happened."

I wasn't sure that Uncle Alf had the right slant. If Pat got it, I'd want to be with him when it happened, wouldn't I? Well, I thought I would. In any case I was sure that Unc would want to be holding Sugar Pie's hand if something happened and she had to make the big jump before he did. And Cas and his brother Caleb were close; I knew that.

Later that day the Captain held memorial services and Uncle Alfred preached a short sermon and we all sang the "Prayer for Travelers." After that we pretended that there never had been a ship named the Vasco da Gama, but it was all pretense.

Cas moved from our table and Mama O'Toole put him to work as an assistant to her. Cas and his brother had been hotel men before LRF tapped them and Cas could be a lot of help to her; keeping a ship with two hundred people in it in ecological balance is no small job. Goodness, just raising food for two hundred people would be a big job even if it did not have to be managed so as to maintain atmospheric balance; just managing the yeast cultures and the hydroponics took all the time of nine people.

After a few weeks Cas was supervising entering and housekeeping and Mama O'Toole could give all of her time to the scientific and technical end—except that she continued to keep an eye on the cooking.

But the Vasco da Gama should not have made me brood; I didn't know anybody in that ship. If Cas could pull out of it and lead a normal, useful life, I certainly should not have had the mulligrubs. No, I think it was my birthday as much as anything.

The mess room had two big electric clocks in it, controlled from the relativists' computation room, and two bank-style calendars over them. When we started out they were all right together, showing Greenwich time and date. Then, as we continued to accelerate and our speed got closer to that of light, the "slippage" between Elsie and the Earth began to show and they got farther and farther out of phase. At first we talked about it, but presently we didn't notice the Greenwich set... for what good does it do you to know that it is now three in the morning next Wednesday at Greenwich when it is lunch time in the ship? It was like time zones and the date line back on Earth: not ordinarily important. I didn't even notice when Pat groused about the odd times of day he had to be on duty because I stood watches any time of day myself.

Consequently I was caught flat-footed when Pat woke me with a whistle in the middle of the night and shouted, "Happy birthday!"

("Huh? Whose?")

"Yours, dopey. Ours. What's the matter with you? Can't you count?"

("But—")

"Hold it. They are just bringing the cake in and they are going to sing "Happy Birthday." I'll echo it for you."

While they were doing so I got up and slipped on a pair of pants and went down to the mess room. It was the middle of "night" for us and there was just a standing light here. But I could see the clocks and calendars—sure enough, the Greenwich date was our birthday and figuring back zone time from Greenwich to home made it about dinner time at home.

But it wasn't my birthday. I was on the other schedule and it didn't seem right.

"Blew 'em all out, kid," Pat announced happily, "That ought to hold us for another year. Mum wants to know if they baked a cake for you there?"

("Tell her 'yes.' ") They hadn't, of course. But I didn't feel like explaining. Mother got jittery easily enough without trying to explain Einstein time to her. As for Pat, he ought to know better.

The folks had given Pat a new watch and he told me that there was a box of chocolates addressed to me—should he open it and pass it around? I told him to go ahead, not knowing whether to be grateful that I was remembered or to be annoyed at a "present" I couldn't possibly see or touch. After a while I told Pat that I had to get my sleep and please say good night and thank you to everybody for me. But I didn't get to sleep; I lay awake until the passageway lights came on,

The following week they did have a birthday cake for me at our table and everybody sang to me and I got a lot of pleasantly intended but useless presents—you can't give a person much aboard ship when you are eating at the same mess and drawing from the same storerooms. I stood up and thanked them when somebody hollered "Speech!" and I stayed and danced with the girls afterwards. Nevertheless it still did not seem like my birthday because it had already been my birthday, days earlier.

It was maybe the next day that my Uncle Steve came around and dug me out of my room. "Where you been keeping yourself, youngster?"

"Huh? Nowhere."

"That's what I thought." He settled in my chair and I lay back down on my bunk. "Every time I look for you, you aren't in sight. You aren't on watch or working all the time. Where are you?"

I didn't say anything. I had been right where I was a lot of the time, just staring at the ceiling. Uncle Steve went on, "When a man takes to crouching in a corner aboard ship, it is usually best, I've found, to let him be. Either he will pull out of it by himself, or he'll go out the airlock one day without bothering with a pressure suit. Either way, he doesn't want to be monkeyed with. But you're my sister's boy and I've got a responsibility toward you. What's wrong? You never show up for fun and games in the evenings and you go around with a long face; what's eating you?"

"There's nothing wrong with me!" I said angrily.

Uncle Steve disposed of that with a monosyllable. "Open up, kid. You haven't been right since the Vasco was lost. Is that the trouble? Is your nerve slipping? If it is, Doc Devereaux has synthetic courage in pills. Nobody need know you take 'em and no need to be ashamed—everybody finds a crack in his nerve now and again. I'd hate to tell you what a repulsive form it took the first time I went into action."