The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (8 page)

The last person to enter the compartment was Abel, brusque and officious; he ignored the sudden silence and went directly to Pipit for his tray. He glared at Noah, which surprised me since they had been friendly in sick bay, then anchored himself in a corner.

“Keep right on talking—nobody has to be quiet on my account.”

But everybody watched what they said after that and even Thrush guarded his tongue. Once again I had misjudged someone. Banquo may have been the Captain’s man but he wasn’t nearly as close to the Captain as Abel. The more serious implication was that the Captain had informers among the crew and Abel was one of them.For what reason? I wondered. I felt uneasy, suspecting that I had become a player in a game whose rules I didn’t know and whose penalties might be more serious than I could imagine.

I shivered and went back to feedingK2 and myself. A moment later the glow tubes flickered red and the crew members finished their breakfast and drifted out the hatch to start their shift. Ophelia touched my arm just before she left and said, “You’ve been assigned to Snipe for indoctrination. Check in with Tybalt when you’re through.”

K2twisted in my arms, trying to find the best position for a nap. I glanced at the young woman named Snipe. “Where’s the nursery?”

She wiped her hands on her waistcloth and said, as if I should have known, “Where you were—sick bay.” She heldK2 by one arm; I took the other and we pushed out of the compartment.

“Who’s his father?” I asked.

“For now?You.”I looked surprised and she sniffed, “It’sship’s custom, you took an interest. Anybody can take an interest—sometimesit’s women who never had a chance to be birth mothers but when men do it, they become fathers, at least for a while. I think everybody should take an interest in one of the children, don’t you?”

I didn’t think I was all that involved withK2 , though I was sure that of the three-year-olds on board he was probably the smartest and the strongest and the best looking. Then the whole subject struck me as maudlin and I refused to think about it any more.

What I did think about was Noah, who hadn’t said a word during the meal but had roosted quietly by himself, watching all of us while we ate. And I thought about those who had remained silent while the rest of us talked, and realized there wasn’t one crew aboard the
Astron,
there were two—though what the differences between them were, I wasn’t sure.

But mostly I wondered why all of them had spent so much time studying me. And why nobody had mentioned the crewman who had died that sleep period.

“I expect I’ll have to show you everything,” Snipe said, “right from the very beginning.”

We were standing at one end of the darkened hangar deck where they kept the Landers and Rovers and where they docked the huge Inbetween Station, the planetary orbiter they used when they couldn’t bring the
Astron
in too close. The rest of the bay was empty. A gigantic shadow screen covered the glassteel docking doors that formed the immense overhead, hiding the view of Outside.

“Pipit already showed me the ship,” I said, annoyed. “You don’t have to.”

“Pipit showed you
her
ship,” Snipe corrected. “She didn’t show you
my
ship.”

Which irritated me even more, but this time I bit my tongue. I waved at the huge hangar deck surrounding us.

“Why are we up here?”

“Because this is where the stage is.”

I looked surprised.“Stage for what?”

“Plays,” she said, impatient once again.“Plays about the
Astron
and its mission.It’s one way we keep our continuity with previous crews and with the Earth itself. It’s not the only way but it’s probably the best way.”

“Plays,” I said, mystified.

“Plays,” she repeated. She drifted over to the palm terminal. There was a flickering on the hangar deck and I was suddenly looking at a vast expanse of purple sand dotted with small hillocks sweeping upward toward a range of pink mountains. It was an alien planet at dusk, with two moons overhead and an impossibly large spaceship settling to the ground a kilometer away. Two odd-shaped military tanks came clanking around one of the small hills between us and the ship but I could see nothing else moving. I stared, fascinated, hastily shielding my eyes when flares exploded above the ship. The scene faded and Snipe said, “That was the invasion of Pilar , this is—”

“Did that really happen?”

“It could have.” The difference didn’t seem to matter to her. “We use it for training.”

“I didn’t see any people.”

She made a face. “Of course not, that’s just the set.”

“And the actors?”

“Almost everybody acts in them from time to time.” She looked me up and down, obviously unimpressed. “If you can act, maybe we can find a part for you. But Ophelia said she didn’t think you would be very good.”

The projections were changing now, from the alien battlefield to a jungle of huge trees with trailing vines and many-colored birds flying through the branches overhead, to an outer-space battle between a ship I took to be the
Astron
and vessels crewed by intelligent insects. There were at least fifty “sets” that flickered in and out of existence so fast they became a confusing blur—a universe of alien creatures and civilizations, the purpose of the
Astron
made fresh every time actors appeared to bring that purpose to life.

The last of them faded and I said, “Do you ever act in them?”

Snipe became surprisingly shy and said, “Sometimes.”

“Which ones?”I persisted.

She gave me a sidelong glance, debating whether to trust me.

“The historical—those where I can dress up.You know…” She opened her eyes wide and suddenly looked small and demure and three years younger.

“‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek for that which thou has heard me speak tonight.’”

She relaxed into herself again. “That’s from
Romeo and Juliet
by Shakespeare. He’s… very good.”

I was astonished. For a moment she had become a character who had lived and died in imagination thousands of years before. I took a closer look at her as she floated in the flickering glow from the terminal. She was skinny, her nose was too big, her hips stuck out, and she was much too quick to tell you the truth about yourself even if it hurt—or maybe especially if it hurt. But despite all of that, she was very pretty.And fragile. And she had trusted me enough to let me see her fragility.

“Which plays are the most popular?”

“The historicals , of course.We like to live other people’s lives because our own are so dull.”

I was surprised. “Do you really believe that?”

In a small voice: “Most of the time.” Then, irritated by her own weakness, she burst out: “You have eyes. Can’t you see?” She immediately followed it with a contrite “I forgot, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t ask what she forgot, but changed the subject to something more important to me. “Did I ever act in the historicals ?”

“Everybody on board does at one time or another.” As Crow had when I asked too many questions, she suddenly became evasive. “I really don’t remember,I didn’t know you very well.”

In seventeen years, it would have been difficult for Snipe
not
to know me very well. But whatever I had been like before, Snipe wasn’t about to tell me. She was no different from Crow in that respect. Thinking about Crow made me remember something from breakfast. “Crow and Pipit,” I said casually.

“They’re lovers?”

She pursed her lips. “Pipit’s a friend of mine. I won’t talk about her.”

I smiled to myself; she
would
talk about Pipit, and probably as soon as possible. “How did Thrush know I had been to see the Captain?”

She sniffed. “Thrush knows everything. Or thinks he does.” Without a pause she added: “He’s jealous with no reason to be. He and Pipit have already been with each other, why should he begrudge Crow?”

At first, I didn’t realize what she meant. I wanted to ask her more,then decided against it. “Tell me about Tybalt .”

“He’s my father.” She said it with an affectionate enthusiasm and I knew she meant he “took an interest.”

She was relaxed arid talkative now and I asked her about other members of the crew. She had an endless supply of gossip and a ready imagination. I don’t think she ever consciously lied but I wasn’t always sure when she was telling the truth. To Snipe, what might have been was just as exciting as what was.

She told me almost everything I had wanted to know about the crew on the
Astron
and quite a bit that I hadn’t. But of all her store of gossip, she hadn’t mentioned the one thing I thought she would.

“Somebody died the other time period,” I said.

She paused, her face suddenly pale.

“People die,” she said in a faint voice.“All the time.” For once, she didn’t want to talk about it, and that surprised me more than anything else.

The glow tubes suddenly flickered red around the palm terminal. It was time to report to Tybalt in Exploration.

“I can’t stay with you this sleep period,” Snipe said casually. “I’m on shift.”

I wondered how she knew. It had been a stray thought at best; I hadn’t been about to ask and I knew my body hadn’t given me away.

“We’re still friends?” I remembered when Crow had asked that and had a glimpse of how much it had meant to him when I realized how much it now meant to me.

“Oh, yes, we’re friends.” And then a speculative look crept into her eyes. “But we’re not friends, too.”

It wasn’t until after we parted that I realized all the time I had been asking Snipe questions and judging her character, she had been judging mine. On a personal basis, I knew instinctively that I had passed. But she had been passing judgment on another level as well; what its qualifications were, and whether or not I met them, I had no idea. But I suspected that the dead crewman in the strange compartment had played a part.

T ybaltclung to the railing of the observation deck overlooking the main control room, watching me while I watched the crewmen swarming over the huge plotting globe in the control room below.

“You don’t remember any of this, do you?”

I shook my head. “No, sir, I wish I did—I’ve tried.”

He slipped over the railing, motioning me to follow. Waving the operators aside, he pressed his hand to the palm terminal on the control board. The galaxy in the plotting globe exploded outward in light streaks that made the surface of the globe look like the working end of a brush. The streaks thinned and vanished, replaced by a single yellow star surrounded by seven planets, the two outer ones gas giants and the five inner ones iron core. The first was too close to the primary to have any prospects for life. The second was far more likely; the rest were too far away.

“That’s Aquinas II,” Tybalt said, pointing. “We’ll be there in eight months. No sign of alien scouts, though there’s a chance we might run into some.”

“Have you run into any before?” I asked, surprised.

He nodded. “No doubt about it, though only a few ever caused us any trouble. Probably as frightened of us as we would have been by them.”

Scouts.I felt the sudden thrill of danger and promptly strained my eyes by looking into the globe for exhaust glows impossible to see. Aquinas II was still too soon after Seti IV—but that was a fading thought.

Tybaltpalmed the terminal again and a column of statistics scrolled over the surface of the globe.

“It’s your job to match physical descriptions with needed supplies when we go in. Watch for anything unusual that might require Shops to make special equipment.” He turned thoughtful as he read the flowing rows of numbers.

“Composition reminds me a lot of Midas IV—did I ever tell you about Midas IV, Sparrow?” He caught himself, muttering, “No, of course not.”

He lifted his hand and the scrolling in the globe vanished. “Try it.” He pressed my hand against the palm terminal. “Each pad is programmed for a specific number of functions. Move your palm and your fingertips—remember what happens and see if you can re-call the graph we just looked at. Don’t forget, pressure is as important as touch.”

The soft face of the terminal molded itself to my hand. It felt like living flesh, sensitive to pressures and shifts of direction and the faint stroking of my fingers. It was quieter and less confusing than speech, faster and more precise than keyboarding.

My mind remembered nothing but my palm and fingers remembered everything. It took only instants for the original graph to swim back into view.

Tybaltgrunted approval. “You learn fast, Sparrow, but then it was second nature to you before, no reason it shouldn’t be second nature now.”

He scanned the columns again. “You know, we almost died on Midas IV,” he said. “Our shields were up going into orbit, nothing should have gotten through—but something did.Sucked out a dozen compartments before Damage Control closed the hatches. Never did know what they hit us with.”

My admiration for Tybalt grew with every word.

“What happened when the exploration teams landed?”

He shrugged, still studying the image in the globe.

“Not much of anything. The bastards were well hidden, we never found a trace. But camouflage is the oldest form of self-protection—we probably looked right at them a dozen times and never saw them.”

After a few minutes Tybalt turned the palm terminal back to the chief computerman , a fat crewman named Corin . He had been working at another station and occasionally glanced over to check my progress. I was reluctant to leave; the terminal felt familiar and comfortable and I was very proud of my ability to operate it.

In the small compartment where Exploration was headquartered, Tybalt pointed out the two types of suits: those that needed repair and those so far gone they were only good for cannibalizing parts. I inspected the cloth and the fittings, did a quick inventory, and felt the sweat start in my armpits. As a generational ship, the
Astron
must have had a huge surplus of suits at Launch, but that had been long ago. Those currently available had been patched and mended hundreds of times; few of their fittings were original issue.