We Have Fed Our Sea

13

As he came around the gyro housing and pulled himself forward to the observation deck, David Ryerson heard the guitar skitter through half a dozen chords and Maclaren’s voice come bouncing in its wake. He sighed, pushed the lank yellow hair back out of his eyes, and braced himself.

Maclaren floated in the living section. It was almost an insult to see him somehow clean all over, in a white tunic, when each man was allowed a daily spongeful of water for such purposes. And half rations had only leaned the New Zealander down, put angles in his smooth brown countenance; he didn’t have bones jutting up under a stretched skin like Ryerson, or a flushed complexion and recurring toothache like Nakamura. It wasn’t fair!

“Oh, hullo, Dave.” Maclaren continued tickling his strings, but quietly. “How does the web progress?”

“I’m done.”

“I just clinched the last bolt and spotwelded the last connection. There’s not a thing left except to find that germanium, make the transistors, and adjust the units.” Ryerson hooked an arm around a stanchion and drifted free, staring out of sunken eyes toward emptiness. “God help me,” he murmured, “what am I going to do now?”

“Wait,” said Maclaren. “We can’t do much except wait.” He regarded the younger man for a while. “Frankly, both Seiichi and I found excuses not to help you, did less out there than we might have, for just that reason. I’ve been afraid you would finish the job before we found our planet.”

Ryerson started. Redness crept into his chalky face. “Why, of all the—” His anger collapsed. “I see. All right.”

“These weeks since we escaped have been an unparalleled chance to practice my music,” remarked Maclaren. “I’ve even been composing. Listen.

“Will you stop that?” screamed Ryerson.

“As you like,” said Maclaren mildly. He put the guitar back into its case. “I’d be glad to teach you,” he offered.

“No.”

“Care for a game of chess?”

“No.”

“I wish to all the hells I’d been more of an intellectual,” said Maclaren. “I never was, you know. I was a playboy, even in science. Now… I wish I’d brought a few hundred books with me. When I get back, I’m going to read them.” His smile faded. “I think I might begin to understand them.”

“When we get back?” Ryerson’s thin frame doubled in midair as if for a leap. “If we get back, you mean!”

Nakamura entered. He had a sheaf of scribbled papers in one hand. His face was carefully blank. “I have completed the calculations on our latest data,” he said.

Ryerson shuddered. “What have you found?” he cried. “Negative.”

“Lord God of Israel,” groaned Ryerson. “Negative again.”

“That pretty well covers this orbit, then,” said Maclaren calmly. “I’ve got the elements of the next one computed — somewhere.” He went out among the instruments.

A muscle in Ryerson’s cheek began to jump of itself. He looked at Nakamura for a long time. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?” he asked. “The telescopes, the — Do we just have to sit?”

“We are circling a dead sun,” the pilot reminded him. “There is only feeble starlight to see by. A very powerful instrument might photograph a planet, but not the telescopes we have. Not at any distance greater than we could find them gravitationally. S-s-so.”

“We could make a big telescope!” exclaimed Ryerson. “We have glass, and… and silver and—”

“I’ve thought of that.” Maclaren’s tones drifted back from the observation section. “You’re welcome to amuse yourself with it, but we’d starve long before a suitable mirror could be ground with the equipment here.”

“But — Maclaren, space is so big! We could hunt for a million years and never find a planet if we can’t… can’t see them!”

“We’re not working quite at random.” Maclaren reappeared with a punched tape. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten the principle on which we are searching. We position ourselves in an orbit about the star, follow it for a while, check our position repeatedly, and compute whether the path has been significantly perturbed. If it has been, that’s due to a planet somewhere, and we can do a Leverrier to find that planet. If not — if we’re too far away — we quarter to another arc of the same path and try again. Having exhausted a whole circumference thus, we move outward and try a bigger circle.”

“Shut up!” rasped Ryerson. “I know it! I’m not a schoolboy. But we’re guessing!”

“Not quite,” said Maclaren. “You were occupied with the web when I worked out the secondary principle… yes, come to think of it, you never did ask me before. Let me explain. You see, by extrapolating from data on known stellar types, I know approximately what this star was like in its palmy days. From this, planetary formation theory gives me the scale of its onetime system. For instance, its planets must have been more or less in the equatorial plane; such quantities as mass, angular momentum, and magnetic field determine the Bode’s Law constants; to the extent that all this is known, I can draw an orbital map.

“Well, then the star went supernova. Its closer planets were whiffed into gas. The outermost giants would have survived, though badly damaged. But the semimajor axes of their orbits were so tremendous — theoretically, planets could have formed as much as a light-year from this star — that even a small percentage of error in the data makes my result uncertain by Astronomical Units. Another factor: the explosion filled this space with gas. We’re actually inside a nonluminous nebula. That would shorten the orbits of the remaining planets; in the course of millions of years they’ve spiraled far inward. In one way that helps us: we’ve an area to search which is not hopelessly huge. But on the other hand, just how long has it been since the accident? What’s the density distribution of the nebula now, and what was it back then? I’ve taken some readings and made some estimates. All very crude, but—” Maclaren shrugged — “what else can we do? The successive orbits we have been trying are, more or less, those I have calculated for the surviving planets as of today. And, of course, intermediate radii to make sure that we will be measurably perturbed no matter where those planets actually are. It’s just a matter of getting close enough to one of them.”

“If our food lasts,” groaned Ryerson. “And we have to eat while we finish the web, too. Don’t forget that.”

“We’re going to have to reorganize our schedules,” declared Maclaren thoughtfully. “Hitherto we’ve found things to keep us occupied. Now we must wait, and not go crazy waiting.” He grinned. “I hereby declare the Southern Cross dirty limerick contest open and offer a prize of—”

“Yes,” said Ryerson. “Great sport. Fun and games, with Chang Sverdlov’s frozen corpse listening in!”

Silence clapped down. They heard the air mumble in the ventilators.

“What else can we do with our poor friend?” asked Nakamura softly. “Send him on a test rocket into the black sun? He deserved better of us. Yes-s-s? Let his own people bury him.”

“Bury a copy of him!” shrieked Ryerson. “Of all the senseless—”

“Please,” said Nakamura. He tried to smile. “After all it is no trouble to us, and it will comfort his friends at home; maybe yes? After all, speaking in terms of atoms, we do not even wish to send ourselves back. Only copies.” He laughed.

“Will you stop that giggling!”

“Please.” Nakamura pushed himself away, lifting astonished hands. “Please, if I have offended you, I am so sorry.”

“So sorry! So sorry! Get out of here! Get out, both of you! I’ve seen more of you than I can stand!”

Nakamura started to leave, still bobbing his head, smiling and hissing in the shaftway. Maclaren launched himself between the other two. He snapped a hand onto either wrist.

“That will do!” They grew suddenly aware, it was shocking, how the eyes burned green in his dark face. His words fell like axes. “Dave, you’re a baby, screaming for mother to come change you. Seiichi, you think it’s enough to make polite noises at the rest of the world. If you ever want to see sunlight again, you’ll both have to mend your ideas.” He shook them a little. “Dave, you’ll keep yourself clean. Seiichi, you’ll dress for dinner and talk with us. Both of you will stop feeling sorry for yourselves and start working to survive. And the next step is to become civilized again. We haven’t got the size, or the time, or the force to beat that star: nothing but manhood. Now go off and start practicing how to be men!”

They said nothing, only stared at him for a few moments and then departed in opposite directions. Maclaren found himself gazing stupidly at his guitar case. I’d better put that away till it’s requested, he thought. If ever. I didn’t stop to think, my own habits might possibly be hard to live with.

After a long time: Seems I’m the captain now, in fact if not in name. But how did it happen? What have I done, what have I got? Presently, with an inward twisting: It must be I’ve less to lose. I can be more objective because I’ve no wife, no children, no cause, no God. It’s easy for a hollow man to remain calm.

He covered his eyes, as if to deny he floated among a million unpitying stars. But he couldn’t hunch up that way for long. Someone might come back, and the captain mustn’t be seen afraid.

Not afraid of death. Of life.