Пол Андерсон - Explorations

— and who might even know how to lift the curse

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off Uriel. "What have we to lose?" King said.

To that same room came Daphne, at the close of our mission.

When I heard her knock, I soared from the chair where I had been grinding at return-trip calculations, hit my knee on the desk, and in the pain swore at myself for a lubberly old gowk. Aloud, I called, "Enter." She came through in her pride and gentleness, and I forgot about hurting.

"The captain summoned me," she uttered formally. Her eyes were the green of Earth's living seas.

"Aye. Please shut the door. Sit down." I gestured her to the chair. As she brushed past, touching me, I scented her warmth afresh, after these many days in spacesuits or a crowded mess or a bunk alone. When she was seated, her gaze must travel too far to meet mine. So I perched on a corner of my desk, swung the foot that was free of the deck, and speculated at the back of my mind whether this made me seem younger.

Did she, regardless, bear dread behind her face? I studied closely. She blinked, drew a long breath, then eased back and smiled. "Everything I've worked on checks out swab-O," she said. "And my fellows tell me they're satisfied."

I nodded, while fighting my throat.

"What can I do further?" she asked, neither wondering nor defying but quietly helping me along.

"You—" I tried again. "You are in a, an unco situation, lass. I couldna but see— Well, tomorrow mornwatch we go to Uriel for… we canna call't a celebration — a speech or twa — and—"

She said (how kindly!), "You wonder if Val and I have any special last request, don't you, Alec?"

"I've seen your glove seek him."

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She laid her hand across mine where it clenched the desk edge. Is not a woman's hand twice beautiful on the knobbly hairy paw of a man? "If we could go off by ourselves, to Matt King's cabin or wherever, a while, we'd be grateful."

"You know you can that," I snapped after air. "Why I called you here… I'm not quite sure. I thought, 'twill be a hard farewell. And he, Val, he does trust you'll build a life of your own afterward. I want you to, to know you have a friend here who cares for you very much, Daphne. How can I be of service?"

"Oh, Alec, Alec." Suddenly she kissed me, and fled crying.

At last I slept.

We would have been mad to leave Gabriel long unattended, on automatics. Nor could anybody stand much ceremony. But Tightness required that, together, we see directly through our visors our comrades for whom we had toiled and clasp them good-bye in our armored arms, and wish them godspeed till death or a miracle delivered them.

Crossing over, I flew as near as might be to Daphne. She was half a shadow, half a shimmer, amidst the stars and silence around. I heard naught save a radio hiss in my earphones, a thrum of thrust, my heart knocking. At breakfast, some of us had been boisterous and some bleak; she had been unreadable; now none talked. Did we feel guilt, that soon we would know blueness, clouds, rain, leaves in the wind? Myself, did I do wrong to hope?

The sternest realism I could muster warned she would remarry, if she did, for convenience and companionship. Well, I dared not want more.

My boots thudded on Uriel's hull.

We cycled through the lock. At the inner valve

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waited Matthew King, Jesse Smith, Blaise Policard, Nikolai Kuzmin, loannes Venizelos, Sugiyama Kito, Valdemar Asklund. No longer grimy in coveralls, no longer starved, and no longer looking forward to human advent, they stood in dress uniforms as if on parade; and I saw that these brave, decent men were unsure how they might comfort us.

"Welcome," King said. Walking down the corridor, he took me around the waist. After half a second I was ashamed that I was shocked. He did have womanless years before him, but I was his old friend, and muffled away from the very air he breathed, and due to depart in an hour. Next I noticed that, while Daphne and Asklund were side by side, they had not embraced as they did when first she boarded. Their faces were as shut as her helmet.

What had she told him, in the privacies we gave them?

Though we fourteen had fractional room to move around in the mess, we quickly took places at its table. By prearrangement, Uriel's crew had set out glasses and the last bottle of champagne. They would drink for both and we, homeward bound after this was done, would pray for both.

King stood up, klinged thumbnail on goblet, and said: "Mrs. Asklund and gentlemen, we cannot reckon or repay what we owe you. I speak less of your help which will let us live on — that was rendered in the tradition of the Corps — than of your spirit, your generosity—"

I, rising to respond, said: "Brothers, forgive a, a wee bit of dramatics. From your wives, children, parents, your kin and closest well-wishers on Earth, we brought what they gave us to bring you. But we held back one small thing for each till now, whatever they felt would be extra special—"

We tried together to stay calm, and even I hardly

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saw the Asklunds excuse themselves and leave.

11—we will never forget," I was saying: "mankind will never forget," when they made re-entry, bare hand in hand. She wore her undergarb, and carried high her head and the unbound ruddy hair.

I am a starship captain, therefore disciplined into command of myself. I roared the chaos around the table back to order. Matt King came to my help. Daphne and Valdemar waited calmly.

Jezebel, harlot of outlaws, wandering Jewess— what pain did the curses give her, give them, when Uriel returned for the first and last time to report wonders? What freedom have they found to keep them away ever since, if death does not? And what interior victory, readiness of both to give ungrudging love, must he and she have won before at last, in sight of us all, she kissed her man full upon the mouth?

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THE WAYS OF LOVE

Ten of their years before, we had seen that being come through the transporter into our ship and die. This day we stood waiting upon his world, and as we waited, we remembered.

The Fleetwing was bound for Prime of that constellation for which she was named. She would not — will not — arrive there for many lifetimes, though already she had fared, at more than half the speed of light, while Arvel swung six hundred and twelve orbits around Sarnir. So deep is the universe. She was, indeed, the farthest out of all our ships, and Rero-and-I reckoned it an honor when we were assigned a term of service within her.

Not that we expected anything spectacular. Rather, it should be the opposite. Until the star-craft reach their goals, they are doing little but patiently traveling. A change of crew is almost like a casual rite. You and your mate go to the matter-casting station on Irjelan. The pair whom you are to relieve come back and inform you of conditions aboard. That seldom takes long and, as a rule, is done at ease, above a brazier of smokeleaf in the elders' lounge. (Yet you see Arvel shining green among the stars, over this scarred face of her outer moon, and feel what your duty will mean.) Soon you two give the others a farewell twining of tendrils and make your way to the appropriate

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sender unit. The flash of energy which scans and disintegrates your bodies, atom by atom, you do not feel; it goes too swiftly, as fast as the modulated tachyonic beam which then leaps across the light-years. At the end, the patterns which are you are rebuilt in new atoms, and there you are for the next ninety-six days.

You do maintenance, perhaps minor repair; you record scientific observations and perhaps program new ones; you might start the engine for a course correction, though rarely when the target sun is still remote; none of it takes much effort. Your true job is to stand by against improbable emergencies. Sometimes a vessel in transit gets used as a relay station by a couple or a party bound for too distant a world to make it in a single jump. Then they stop for a short visit. This would happen in Fleetwing, she being on our uttermost frontier and bound onward into strangeness.