Пол Андерсон - Explorations

"Will you report to the command bridge?" I said into the intercom. No reason to state who.

She arrived just as Asklund's hollowed-out countenance appeared. Through a minute or more, they were dumb. I might not leave my post until relieved by Roberts, my first officer; but I glowered at the optic screens. In one of them, its radiance stopped down for the sake of my vision, the sun looked shrunken and cold; in another, Earth shone deep blue, loveliest of the stars and somehow more distant-seeming than any else; in the rest gleamed inhuman hordes and the immensities between.

Finally I heard Asklund sigh, "Daphne, why?"

"To be with you," she wept.

"When we can't even touch? I… we're going away as soon as — Oh, my dearest, I worked for weeks on a message to record for you, and now— no words—" I heard him weep too.

Presently she said, "I'll be busy, you realize. I'm responsible for the core parts of your food-cycling equipment. But you can assit me, and — and Captain Sinclair did promise we'd have chances, a compartment where we're by ourselves, or a private line—" To talk.

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We used no gang tube. A handful of air molecules, diffusing from Uriel to Gabriel, would bring the same doom on us. Instead, we kept the ships as far apart as synchronicity allowed, and jetted across in spacesuits which we wore during an entire shift. This handicapped us infernally. Sheer bulk got in its own way. Gloved fingers, being clumsy, must often operate specially designed manipulators. Speech was via sonic amplifiers, likewise a nuisance. But there was no help for it; and, to be sure, as we instructed them in the requirements, our outcast comrades became quite skillful teammates. Returning to our vessel to eat and sleep, we paused outside the entry lock and practiced elaborate rotations and contortions while an infrared beam boiled off whatever atoms might cling to our suits, and well-nigh baked us. Those were the more obvious — physical discomforts.

And they were not what made us long to finish and be gone. No, it was what Uriel's men said, generally with Spartan mildness, and their eyes upon us, and the way they handled the letters, pictures, tapes, mementos we brought them.

I remember a talk out of many which King and I had. We were off duty, seated in our cabins, using an exclusive frequency. This is standard on spacecraft, whose captains may have to reach a grim decision. We let Daphne and her husband into these cubicles at a regular hour out of the twenty-four.

King poured whiskey from a bottle, my smuggled gift, raised the tumbler, and toasted. "Here's to our noble selves." I responded in kind. He didn't show it, really — indeed, having begun to flesh out since we brought abundant food, he looked better than erstwhile — but he had let himself become a trifle drunk.

"Or skoal, my navigator would say," he added.

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I let the drink glow down my throat. The leastmost cheer felt large. What had I around me? Three meters by two of room, gray-painted metal, bunk, locker, chair, desk, reference works, Bible, a file of favorite books and a microreader for them, a small musical library and player, a harmonica that I occasionally tootled on, pipes and tobacco, photographs of Meg who was dead and our sons who were grown — that, and starri-ness outside.

But I could go walk on planets of yon suns, including a planet named Earth.

"Your pronunciation is wrong, Matt," I tried to laugh.

"How do you know?" he bridled. A ventilator muttered around his words.

"Well, ah, Daphne Asklund told me I had it wrong, and taught me a closer approximation." I took a second swallow, much sooner than I had intended.

He peered at me. "Why did she make you bring her?"

"What? Why did I? I've explained. She told you herself. She saw how to join her husband this brief while — unless when you return to the Solar System — and since she could in fact carry her share of the load, I had no heart to refuse her."

The image of his head shook from side to side in the cramped screen. "Don't evade my question, Alec. It wasn't about your motive — that's pathetically obvious — but hers. Nobody who wasn't… terrifyingly.. strong and clearheaded could have swung what she did. I know how these things work as well as you do; I can make the same estimate of the barriers she had to break down, the powerful men she had to outface and outsmart. Such a person doesn't do such a thing for an orgy of senti-mentalism that can only agonize her man. Then why?"

"Who knows what drives a soul?" I counter-

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attacked. "Do you understand yours? I don't mine. How is Asklund taking it?"

"How does he strike you? I've been meaning to get your outside opinion, Alec, to check my impression. We'll spend the rest of our mutual life together; I'd better have an accurate judgment of him."

I needn't stop to ponder, having done that in uncounted wakeful nightwatch hours. "He was knocked off his orbit at first, I'd say. But he appears to have recovered fast. I don't see him much, you ken, and almost always in public, at work. He's calm, competent — rather withdrawn, I think. They both are."

"He wears a stout mask." The lines deepened around King's mouth. "I gauge him as being under the tightest, breaking-point control."

"Is that uncanny?"

"No, I suppose not. My other men — she's causing them trouble too, not as intense but nevertheless trouble."

"Psychological disturbance was foreseen and allowed for. Still, what is she to them? A bulgy suit like everybody's from Gabriel. A face in the visor, a voice out of a speaker, aye, those are female. But men throughout history, in military units or monasteries, have seen more of women, and not been tantalized beyond endurance."

"Soldiers expected to get home; monks expected to keep vows they'd made. We're neither. Already Blai — an astronaut has admitted to me being in love with her. I myself—" King tossed off a mouthful and quirked a smile. "Oh, we'll get over our emotions, our itch, that is. But frankly, I'm thankful this will soon end. Please don't let her join in the next rendezvous."

Wordlessness hummed between us.

"Have you decided where you will go first?" I blurted. We'd brought a bundle of recommendations from different scientists, but the Uriel crew

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had taken no opportunity thus far to study these. King had mentioned how, in the months of their hunt for a savior star, they discussed every imaginable possibility and contingency. What else was there for them?

And what else had they to do in the years that remained, but range the galaxy, and, from time to time, bring us tales of their discoveries? A radio capsule, shot free of the counterinertial field, could summon our people to a meeting. Though we dared not accept any physical record, we could make copies.

But we could merely request and recommend, never command. They were untouchable.

"A shakedown cruise," he answered. "To the Orion Nebula. You know what a lot of unsolved puzzles it holds, and.. we'd like to see new suns being formed. Then, when we're reasonably sure of our ship and ourselves — the long jump. Clear to galactic center."

I was not altogether surprised. Nevertheless— "Already?" For that would be a voyage of years; and opinion continues divided as to whether, beyond the vast dust clouds which hide it from our probings, the heart of the Milky Way is a hell of radiation or—

"The Elders," he capped my thought.

Surely we are not the solitary species who fare between the stars. God is too generous for that. Far out in this fringe of a spiral arm, barely starting to fumble around off our home shores, we must be like cavemen on a raft, compared to races ahead of us which, maybe, are not burdened by original sin, not plagued by the Devil or a myriad lunacies. Half our astronomers think the middle regions are clear, the suns close together but old and benign, the likeliest hearths of beings whose recorded history runs for multiple millions of years—