The Sails of Tau Ceti (11 page)

She was in her cold sleep tank in
Austria
’s converted bunkroom! She was still puzzling over that fact when a flesh colored blur entered her field of view. There was a quiet clicking noise from somewhere far off. Her vision suddenly cleared as the glass cover retracted into its recess. Several moisture globules were dislodged by the sudden motion. They floated up and away, confirming what Tory’s body had been telling her for the past several minutes. The thrum of the engines was absent and the ship was in zero gravity. She had no opportunity to wonder whether that was good or bad before a haggard Kit Claridge leaned over her.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.

Tory let the words trickle down through her brain as she pondered their meaning. It was only after her strangely lethargic mental processes converted the sounds into words that she thought to wonder the same thing. How
was
she feeling?

There was the cold, of course; but that was an external stimulus, and so it did not really count. As she tried to swallow, she became aware that her throat and mouth were as dry as Martian dust. Her stomach was tied into a small, hard knot. She became aware of a dull ache that suffused her muscles, and sharper pains coming from the various places where the medical cuffs encircled her limbs. The soles of her feet burned, too. She could think of no reason why that should be.

She took a long rasping breath and croaked out, “I’m cold.”

The doctor’s concerned look was transformed into a quick smile. “Hell, who isn’t? Here, let me help you out of the tank!”

Kit did something out of her line of sight and the long cylindrical lid moved up and out of the way. The doctor helped free her arms and feet from the cuffs, then leaned over, and lifted her bodily.

“Where’s Garth?”

“Up in control catching up on the mail. You are third to be awakened. Eli’s last.” Kit maneuvered her weightless form to the sanitary compartment as she spoke.

Tory nodded her understanding. The movement caused the liquid in her inner ear to slosh unpleasantly. She wondered whether she should activate her implant, then put it off when another question occurred to her.

“How long?” she whispered. With her throat, a whisper was the best she could manage.

“Five hundred and twelve days,” Kit said. “Right on schedule.”

“And the alien?”

“A hell of a lot closer than it was, but still nothing to brag about.”

“Then we made it!”

The doctor nodded. “We begin decelerating one week from today.” She maneuvered Tory’s body to the ship’s zero gee shower. When they reached it, she anchored herself to a stanchion and pushed Tory inside the closed cubicle. “I’ve programmed it for a quick warm up,” she explained as she activated the watertight door.

Tory grabbed the railings inside the stall just as a stream of tepid liquid sprayed out of the overhead. The water warmed swiftly as it flowed down her flanks in rivulets and then into the gridwork built into the shower base. A stream of swiftly moving air carried the liquid away.

Tory lifted her head to face the oncoming stream. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, slaking her thirst. Then she went limp and held on to the railings as the life giving flow chased the cold from her body.

#

When she finally exited the shower, she found Kit ready with a large, fluffy towel. She wrapped herself in it. After the warm embrace of the water, it was a shock to return to the cold air of the cabin.

“What do you remember?” the doctor asked as she handed Tory a fistful of pills to swallow.

“I remember launching, and the outbound flight.”

“Do you remember going into the tank?”

Tory concentrated. It seemed to her that she
did
remember it, but hazily. She had been frightened, she remembered that well enough. In her opinion the cold sleep tank looked entirely too much like a coffin. There had been something else, too …

When she had arrived in the bunkroom, one tank had already been occupied and its top frosted over. As the oldest person onboard, Eli Guttieriz had the honor of being first into the tanks and the last out.

She remembered Kit ordering her out of her clothes, and giving her a fistful of medications to swallow as she floated naked next to her open tank. They had reached cruising speed two days earlier and had shut down the engines. Tory remembered pulling herself down against the soft interior lining as she slipped her feet into the restraints at the base. Kit had helped snap restraints onto her arms. Shortly after that, Tory had felt the sudden prick of a needle, after which she had lost feeling from her neck down. She remembered Kit’s explanation that the anesthetic was to allow her to be intubated without discomfort.

“Well, then,” Kit had said, smiling down at her patient. “Ready for dreamland?”

“I guess so.”

“All right, I’m starting the cycle. You will find yourself getting sleepy in a minute or so. Meanwhile, try to think of something else.”

“Like what?” Tory felt her inhibitions slowly drain away as drugs began to course through her veins.

“Anything at all. Eli took his mind off things by asking if I would share his cabin with him.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him that we would talk about it when we woke up.”

“And will you do it?”

Kit shone a light in each of Tory’s eyes. “I might. It gets lonely out here.”

“That it does.”

“You could ask the captain, you know.”

“Could I?” Her voice had slurred the words, as her eyelids grew heavier. How was that possible in zero gee?

“It would make things less awkward.”

Tory remembered being puzzled as the doctor’s voice faded into silence.

The present-day-Kit thumped on her bare knee, making Tory’s foot jump. “I said, do you remember going into the tank?” She wore a worried expression as she waited for Tory’s response. There were those who came out of the tank substantially less intelligent than they had gone in.

“I remember. We were talking about my asking the captain if he wanted to…”

“Wanted to what?” Garth’s voice boomed from across the cabin.

Tory found it impossible to be embarrassed with all of the chemicals coursing through her veins. Still, she realized that she ought to be. The doctor covered for her by saying, “Just girl talk, Garth. Nothing to bother command authority.”

“How’s the patient?”

“She seems to be coming around. It will be a few hours yet before she feels human.”

Garth looked at Tory and grinned. “When you feel better, come up to the control room and look at the light sail. It’s a hundred times brighter than the last time you saw it.”

#

Tory awoke again and this time knew immediately where she was. She was clipped to the bulkhead in her own cabin, having just slept an indeterminate time. She felt better than she had, which meant that she merely felt lousy. She carefully unclipped and pulled herself to the wash station. There she got her first good look in a mirror.

She grimaced. Her face bore the same haggard look that both Kit and Garth had. The gauntness, she knew, was a side effect of cold sleep. A few days of proper diet would fill out her cheeks, but how long would it take to overcome the lingering lethargy?

She unclipped her hairbrush and ran it through her locks. Her hair was just enough longer to confirm that she had been a year-and-a-half in hibernation. As she brushed it forward, she noted that she could now see the ends of her bangs. She made a sour face as she broke out an ugly zero gee hair net and slipped it on. She rummaged in a drawer for her makeup kit, and spent another couple of minutes putting on a proper face. She checked her image in the mirror one last time and decided that it would have to do.

She opened the hatch and floated out into the passageway. As she moved, she remembered Garth’s arrival in the bunkroom while she had been clad in a towel and looking like death warmed over. She also remembered what she and Kit had been talking about, and blushed in retrospect. The memory also got her to thinking about the social arrangements aboard ship.

As far as she knew, everyone had kept to their own cabins for the six weeks they had accelerated into the great black. If Kit had gone to bed with either of the men, she had been extraordinarily discreet about it. One reason had been the watch schedule, which had been as effective a chaperon as any teacher at a high school dance. With each of them on duty a quarter of each day, not to mention all their other duties, there had been little enough time for a couple to spend time in private.

Kit had confirmed that she would be moving in with Eli Guttieriz as soon as he recovered from cold sleep, making the social equation considerably more complicated. She had been right to suggest that it would be less awkward if Tory also formed a sexual liaison with the captain. Tory wondered if that was what she wanted.

She prodded her psyche and found no overwhelming objections. There was Ben to consider, of course. A liaison with Garth would lead to awkward questions when she returned home. Still, she had made no promises nor had she asked for any. Besides, the chance Ben would remain faithful to her for three long years was nearly infinitesimal.

What about her feelings for Garth? He was certainly an attractive man, and she respected him for the skill he had shown molding four disparate individuals into a team. However, that was not love. No, any arrangement they made would be one of convenience only. She remembered their conversation in The Eyrie, about relationships being based on nothing more than having a warm body to snuggle up to at night. She had to admit that particular reason was a lot more compelling than it had once been. There was something about the immensity of space that drove people to seek reassurance wherever they could.

The only problem lay in how to let Garth know of her interest. After all, she had grown up in a society where forwardness was frowned upon in young ladies. It made no difference that the attitude was a holdover from the days when Mars had been a barren frontier. It was the way Tory had been brought up.

She felt a flash of irritation at herself. She would be a fool to let her inhibitions rule her life for the next three years. They were a long way from home on a dangerous mission and no one knew what tomorrow would bring. Why shouldn’t she seek the companionship of a virile, considerate man? All she really needed was to screw up her courage and make Garth the offer. The worst he could do would be to turn her down.

That, she realized, was what frightened her most. What if she asked and he said no? Was it possible to die of mortification, and if not, was that good? It was a very hesitant Tory Bronson who made her way to the control room.

#

Garth was strapped into his acceleration couch, reading something on his screen as she drifted up through the open hatch. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and twisted around to look at her.

“Feel better?”

“Much,” she replied. “How long did I sleep?”

“Twelve hours.”

She let out a low whistle “That long?”

“About the same as Kit and I did when we first came out of the tank.”

“What about Eli?”

“He was decanted eight hours ago. He is in his cabin, recuperating. I predict that he’ll need at least a couple of days to bounce back because of his age.”

“And Kit?”

“She’s in the infirmary, cleaning things up. Care to hear what’s been going on at home since you went to sleep?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it seems some enterprising reporter wondered why we launched in secrecy and hired an amateur astronomer to get photos of the probe on its way to Alpha Centauri. When he could not find it there, he talked his editor into paying for a sky search. When they found that we were headed toward Tau Ceti, they also found the light sail.”

“What happened?”

“The shit hit the ventilator when the news broke. The system council went into emergency session and demanded to know why the vast majority of the councilors had not been told. Our friend, Minister de Pasqual came close to losing his job. The storm blew over, and for the past year, they have been building an impressive organization to evaluate data as we transmit it. By the way, your friend Ben Tallen has been promoted. He’s now the administrator in charge of alien investigations.”

“Good for him! Is he still on Mars?”

“Not according to the return address on the dozen or so private messages on file for you in the computer. They were all transmitted from Earth.”

“Oh.”

“Want to see the light sail?”

“I’d love to.”

Garth did something to the controls and the screen cleared to show a bright spark of blue-white near the now familiar ring of the Tau Ceti nova. Garth was right. It was a lot brighter than it had been. Even so, it was still only a dimensionless point of light, an electric spark silhouetted against a background of black velvet.

Tory stared at it for a long time while she worked up the courage to broach the subject she had come to talk about. Finally, she took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

“Uh, Garth, do you remember what we talked about that night in The Eyrie?”

“We talked about many things.”

“You were telling me about relationships aboard ship…”

“What about them?”

“Are you aware that Kit and Eli are moving in together?”

“I’d be a poor captain if I wasn’t.”

“And you approve?”

“It’s none of my business. It will only become my business if they can’t get along and it affects their … work.”

“Well, Kit suggested that things would be less awkward if … you know.”

He sat up in his acceleration couch and stared at her, unwilling to help her by acknowledging what must be blatantly obvious. She swallowed to regain control of her traitor voice and tried again.

“What I mean is, would you like me to move in with you?”

To her surprise, he did not answer immediately. When he finally did, he shook his head slowly, “I don’t think it would work.”

A sudden flame engulfed her face and ears. She was so surprised that she blurted out, “Why not?”

“Doctor Claridge and Professor Guttieriz may look upon sex as light exercise, but a pair of romantics such as ourselves need something more. I suggest that we fall in love with one another first.”