Starfarers (44 page)

Chill struck.
But perhaps every voyage endangers existence. Too many, and the senseless random accident will happen, the cosmos and its glories lose the energy that has upheld them and fall into an oblivion that annuls the very past. Can it be the act of a Providence that nowhere does starfaring go on for very long?

And then:
But how can I be afraid at this moment, this triumph? When Simon and I proclaim the tidings, it will be as if
Envoy
herself rejoices.

The receiver screen blanked. The analyzer screen continued hunting.

“(I think the probe has come too close to the black hole, as we knew it would,)” the Tahirian observed—calmly?

Sundaram rose. Muscle by muscle, he flexed resilience back into his body. Hope blossomed. “We will send more,” he said in English. “And once the station is ready, in orbit, we will truly begin to learn.”

Dayan shared
Ruszek’s cabin, but kept hers very much for herself. Nobody else was present when Kilbirnie came.

Here there were a few constancies, a family portrait, a picture of her parents’ home, a framed cloth hand-embroidered with the Star of David and “A good journey to you, Hanny, beloved” in Hebrew. Otherwise screens evoked
images from the ship’s database, changed weekly or oftener. On this day watch an old man in a Hiroshige drawing looked across at a dynamic color abstraction, while an electron diffraction pattern, curving white on black like a surreal galaxy, glowed on the rear bulkhead of the room. She had made tea, and its aroma tinged the air, but as talk went on, both women had become unable to sit. Kilbirnie paced back and forth, Dayan stood warily by her desk.

“You can do it, Hanny,” the visitor said. “You can make him do it.”

The physicist frowned. “I don’t like the idea,” she answered, as she had already done.

Kilbirnie halted to face her. Hands spread out in appeal. “But for my sake, would you? A birthday present for me. My fortieth. You know what that means to a woman, Hanny.” Tears trembled in the blue eyes. The voice stumbled. “Let me take that flight and—and I can laugh at time.”

“Well—But is it fair to Lajos? He’s like a boy again, looking forward.”

“Och, he’ll have his chances later. You can make this up to him. He loves you. I think he never loved anybody the way he loves you.”

Dayan stared down at her feet.

“I’d not presume on our friendship,” Kilbirnie said unevenly. “But it has been close, and—if you could, if you would—”

After a while that lengthened, Dayan looked up. “Well, since it’s you, Jean—”

She got no opening to qualify or set conditions or say anything further at all. Immediately she was in Kilbirnie’s arms. “Thank you, thank you!” the pilot half laughed, half sobbed.

They flopped back into their chairs, wrung out. Dayan drained her cup of now cold tea, refilled from the pot, and mused, “A gift for you, on your day. Yes, he is chivalrous, in his fashion. I don’t like … using him.” Well-nigh under her breath: “More than I do.” Louder, raising her head: “However, I’ll try.”

“You’ll succeed,” Kilbirnie said with a flitting grin.

She grew serious. “But don’t you or he tell how it’s for that birthday of mine. We’ve never celebrated such aboard.” They were too reminding, more than holidays. “It would be bad to start playing favorites. He can explain how he’s thought the matter over, studied our two records, and decided I’m a wee bit better for this particular mission. Which is true, and will show how large-minded he is.”

Just in case, she had surreptitiously adjusted the personnel database. Launch date was nowhere near her birthday and she was two years shy of her fortieth. Nansen knew it.

“The skipper can’t override that!” she exulted.

Nansen’s door
chimed. He lifted his gaze from the reader on his lap. The text was
Elogio de la sombra
. Those austere verses gave comfort, saying that neither his wishes nor his griefs were unique, alone in space-time. “Enter,” he said.

The door slid aside for Cleland and shut again behind him. He walked not quite steadily. His face was haggard, hair unkempt, eyes red, and he didn’t seem to have been out of his clothes for the past daycycle.

Nansen smiled as best he was able. “Sit down,” he invited: “What can I do for you?”

The planetologist came over to stand above him. “You can—can stop your … heartless … lunacy,” he rasped.

Nansen rose. Cleland’s breath stank. “What do you mean?” the captain asked, most softly.

“You know niggering well what.”

Nansen went expressionless. He had heard bawdiness from Cleland once in a while, but never before obscenity. The rage went on: “Sending Jean to the black hole!”

“And you know it wasn’t my idea and is not my desire,” Nansen said. “When Ruszek deferred—”

“If he’s lost his nerve, Colin can pilot!” Cleland yelled. “En’s going anyway!”

“Nonsense. You know, too, no Tahirian can handle a human craft with any real skill. And Ruszek isn’t afraid. This is his professional judgment, for the good of the mission.
Couldn’t you hear, couldn’t you see how reluctant he was?” Nansen let his mask dissolve a little. “Do you suppose I’m glad? I had no choice.”

“You do! You can order him to go!”

“No. That would be interference for no other reason than my personal preference.”

“Then cancel the launch!”

“That would ruin our whole enterprise. We’ll never get clear communication without the proper equipment, closer in than we or any other robots we have can go. Not to mention research on the black hole itself.”

“Orbit the damn station by remote control.”

Nansen continued patiently repeating common knowledge. “Across thirty-three light-seconds, into that unpredictable inferno? We’d too likely lose it altogether. Then we’d have made the voyage here for nothing.”

“We should never’ve made it. Your cold craving—” Cleland gulped. “You don’t care about her. She’s been a—a convenience in your bed. Now she’s a convenience in your boat. The boat you’re too cowardly to fly.”

Nansen’s tone sharpened. “That will do, Cleland. You’re exhausted, overwrought, and drunk. You know perfectly well that none but she or Ruszek can cope with those conditions. And you know—you must know—” Agony broke through. “If I didn’t believe it was safe—reasonably safe, as far as we can tell—yes, I would terminate this and order a return … rather than—”

“If she comes to harm,” Cleland snarled, “I’ll kill you.”

Nansen grew rigid. “Enough hysterics,” he said. “Dismissed.”

“You son of a she-swine!” Cleland screamed.

His fist swung. Nansen blocked it with a forearm. At once the captain clapped hands on the other man’s tunic, wrists crossed, and pulled the fabric together. Cleland staggered in the choke hold. Nansen let go, hauled him around, yanked an arm of his around his back, and gripped at very nearly the angle to break it.

“Out,” he said. “I will keep silence about this if you conduct
yourself properly from now on. If not, I will have you restrained and sequestered. Go.”

He released his prisoner. Cleland reeled toward the door. He sobbed and coughed.

At the
hour of departure, all but Yu, Brent, and Emil were gathered at the wheel exit. Those three were in launch control. The humans stood mute, avoiding one another’s eyes, Nansen almost at attention, Cleland apart from the rest. The Tahirians talked together in their own group, signals and attitudes and subdued buzz or trill.

Kilbirnie arrived last. She skipped into the bare chamber, singing.

“Farewell and adieu to you, fine Spanish ladies,

Farewell and adieu, all you ladies of Spain!—”

She halted, looked them over, and laughed aloud. “Och, what long faces! Just bid me bon voyage, will ye no? For bonnie ’twill be. And nobbut two, three days.”

“We worry,” Ruszek croaked. “I worry. About you.”

She danced over to him. “Noo, laddie, syne ye’re wise and dear enough to gi’ me this, dinna ever feel guilty. Ye’re wonderful.”

She kissed him heartily. Cleland shut his eyes.

Kilbirnie went about shaking hands. Cleland’s lay limp in hers. When she let go, he stared dazedly at it.

For Nansen, at the end, she had a kiss that went on. He kept his arms at his sides. To him passion was a private thing.

“
Adiós, amante
,” she breathed. “We’ll do this right when
I get back.” She stepped from him and made for the exit, waving. “Good-bye, good-bye,” she called, reached the ladder, and went from their sight. Her voice came down to them: “Ahoy!”

Colin followed.

After a minute the humans made their way to their common room, to watch the launch on its big screen. Such was not in Tahirian nature. For a while the image was merely of stars. Then
Herald
appeared, floating away until clear of the wheels, jetting briefly to take station, at that distance a bright dart.

The station lumbered into view. It seemed grotesque by contrast, a twenty-meter spheroid warty with turrets and bays, bristly with masts and webs. It moved off under field drive, at low acceleration. The boat maneuvered to match.’ Slowly they shrank into the screen, down to a pair of sparks in heaven, down and away into darkness.

“Resume your duties,” Nansen said, and left the room.

When they
were properly vectored, the vessels cut their drives and dropped inward on Hohmann trajectory. It would take them half a day to reach a million-kilometer orbital radius. This part of the transit was easy, and robots could readily handle it.

It fell short of the goal. Calculating from theory, old Tahirian findings, and data sent by their probes, the expedition’s physicists had decided the station should circle within a quarter million kilometers. That was still too remote for relativistic and quantum mechanical effects of the black hole to be significant. But it did seem that the closer in a transmitter was, the more clearly the aliens could send; the signal-to-noise ratio increased, while the signal itself would become more than sporadic flashes. Furthermore, from there the station could dispatch sophisticated small spacecraft deeper in, perhaps even to skim the event horizon, with a fair chance of remaining able to control them, receive from them, and retrieve a few of them. Who knew what it might discover?

That last stage of the journey would be through ever worsening savageries. They had wrecked all probes thus far—if not on the first mission, then on the second or third. Heavily shielded, heavily loaded, the station was less agile than they were. It responded slowly to its drive, you could say awkwardly. Its computers and effectors were not programmed to cope with everything they might encounter; nobody could imagine everything, and it was the unforeseen that had slain the forerunners. A question to
Envoy
would be more than half a minute on the way. The response would take as long, or longer—for the black hole would be whipping the station around at well over a hundred kilometers per second. Time lag could prove fatal.

A command vessel must needs go along, prepared to shepherd, prepared if necessary to plunge in, lay alongside, grapple fast, and correct the course before speeding back toward safety. Kilbimie steered
Herald.

On the half day of the inward fall she hovered over her instruments, hummed, sang snatches of song, looked out at the stars, raised memories in her head and smiled at them. Colin sat for the most part wrapped in ens Tahirian thoughts.

“Uh-oh.
We got trouble.”

For a moment Kilbirnie’s glance left the pilot console and flicked to the forward viewscreen, as if she could see the wrongness happening. Only stars and a restless blue-white blur that was the accretion disk, images enhanced against interior lighting and exterior night, were visible to her, there where she swung in orbit The station had left her hours ago, boosting to its new path.

“¿Qué es?
What’s the matter?” rapped Nansen’s voice.

“Radar tracking shows sudden deviation. We don’t know why, but it doesn’t look good. Hang on.”

Data poured in. Colin toiled at ens computer.

Presently en took up a parleur. Kilbirnie leaned around in her seat to read the writing, as well as see, hear, and smell the other components of Cambiante when used by a
Tahirian. A human could only supplement with sign language, though that included several facial expressions. “(Apparently the station passed near a large mass,)” Colin said. “(The gravity flung it off course. It will plunge much lower than we planned before rounding periastron and receding.)”

“God! What—” She reached for her own parleur. “(What can the mass be? A wandering planet, sucked in by sheer chance at the exact worst moment for us?)”

“(Possibly. We know such objects exist in interstellar space. The radar indications were unclear, and it is now hidden on the farther side. But you may recall that we have often observed knots, temporary concentrations of plasma, form in the disk. We do not know what the mechanism is, although I have speculated about shock-wave resonance effects. They may create plasmoids in the huge flares we frequently see, reaching far beyond the disk before falling back. Such a plasmoid could be held together for a while by its self-generated magnetism, and might have the mass of a large asteroid. If it came close to the station, the event, although unfortunate, was not unbelievably improbable.)”

However academic the statement, Colin’s body shivered in ens seat, the fur stood stiff, the mane tossed like gale-blown leaves, a brimstone reek gusted out.

Kilbirnie nodded, her neck as stiff as her mouth. “Simple bad luck. And the unknown, which we can’t ever provide against” Her fingers asked, “(What is the situation, then?)”

“(The radar is collecting data.)” Colin returned to ens work. Kilbirnie reported to
Envoy.

Time wore away. She wasn’t hungry, but forced herself to go aft, take a few bites of dry rations, swallow a half liter of water. It helped more to do a set of limbering exercises. The Tahirian didn’t seem to want anything but information.

Shortly after she came back, en told her: “(The station’s new orbit has now been computed. It is highly eccentric and will rapidly decay.)”