Tau Zero

Chapter 17

Light began to glimmer ahead, a scattering of starlike points which waxed, in numbers and brightness, toward glory. Their dominion widened; presently the viewscope showed them occupying nearly half of heaven; and still that area grew and brightened.

They were not stars forming those strange constellations. They were, at first, entire families of galaxies making up a clan. Later, as the ship advanced, they broke into clusters and then into separate members.

The viewscope’s reconstruction of this stationary-observer sight was only approximate. From the spectra received, a computer estimated what the Doppler shift, and thus the aberration, must be, and made corresponding adjustments. But these were nothing except estimates.

It was believed that the clan lay about three hundred million light-years from home. But no charts existed for these deeps, no standards of measurement. The probable error in the derived value of tau was huge. Factors like absorption simply were not in any reference work aboard.

Leonora Christine might have sought a less remote destination, for which more reliable data were tabulated. However — bearing in mind that at ultra-low tau she was not very steerable — that route would have taken her through less matter within the Milky Way-Andromeda-Virgo clan. She would have gained less speed; and now she was running so close to c that every increment made a significant difference. Paradoxically, shipboard time to the nearest possible target would have been more than to this one.

And it was not known, either, how long her people could endure.

The cheer brought by the repair of the decelerator was short-lived. For neither half of the Bussard module could work in interclan space. Here the primordial gas had finally gotten too thin. For weeks, therefore, the ship must go powerless on a trajectory set by the eldritch ballistics of relativity. Within her hull was weightlessness. There was some talk of using lateral ion jets to put a spin on her and thus provide centrifugal pseudo-gravity. Despite her size, it would have generated radial and Coriolis effects that were too troublesome. She had not been designed nor had her folk been trained for such.

They must bear the weeks, while the geological epochs passed by outside.

Reymont opened the door to his cabin. Weariness made him careless. Bracing himself a trifle too hard against the bulkhead, he let go the handhold and was propelled away. For a moment he cartwheeled in mid-air. Then he bumped into the opposite side of the corridor, pushed, and darted back across. Once within the cabin, he grabbed another bar before shutting the door behind him.

At this hour, he had expected Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling to be asleep. But she floated wakeful, a few centimeters off their joined beds, a single line anchoring her. As he entered, she switched off the library screen with a quickness that showed she hadn’t really been paying attention to the book projected on it.

“Not you too?” Reymont’s question seemed loud. They had been so long accustomed to the engine pulse as well as the force of acceleration that free fall still brimmed the ship with silence.

“What?” Her smile was tentative and troubled. They had had scant contact lately. He had too much work under these changed conditions, organizing, ordering, cajoling, arranging, planning. He would come here merely to snatch what slumber he might.

“Have you also become unable to rest in zero gee?” he asked.

“No. That is, I can. A strange, light sort of sleep, filled with dreams, but I seem fairly refreshed afterward.”

“Good,” he sighed. “Two more cases have developed.”

“Insomniac, you mean?”

“Yes. Verging on nervous collapse. Every time they do drift off, you know, they wake again screaming. Nightmares. I’m not sure whether weightlessness alone does it to them, or if that’s only the last thing needed for breaking stress. Neither is Urho Latvala. I was just conferring with him. He wanted my opinion on what to do, now that he’s running short of psychodrugs.”

“What did you suggest?”

Reymont grimaced. “I told him who I thought unconditionally had to have them, and who might survive awhile without.”

“The trouble isn’t simply the psychological effect, you realize,” Chi-Yuen said. “It is the fatigue. Pure physical tiredness, from trying to do things in a gravityless environment.”

“Of course.” Reymont hooked one leg around the bar to hold himself in place and started to unfasten his coverall. “Quite unnecessary. The regular spacemen know how to cope, and you and I and a few others. We don’t get worn out trying to coordinate our muscles. It’s those groundlubber scientists who do.”

“How much longer, Charles?”

‘‘Like this? Who knows? They plan to reactivate the force fields, at minimum strength off the interior power plant, tomorrow. A precaution, in case we strike denser material sooner than expected. The last estimate I heard for when we’ll reach the fringes of the clan is a week.”

She relaxed in relief. “We can stand that. And then … we will be making for our new home.”

“Hope so,” Reymont grunted. He stored his clothes, shivered a little though the air was warm, and took out a pair of pajamas.

Chi-Yuen started. Her tether jerked her to a stop. “What do you mean by that? Don’t you know?”

“Look, Ai-Ling,” he said in an exhausted tone, “you’ve been briefed like everybody else on our instrumentation problems. How in hell’s flaming name can you expect an exact answer to anything?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Are the officers to blame if the passengers don’t listen to their reports, won’t understand?” Reymont’s voice lifted in anger. “Some of you are going to pieces again. Some of you have barricaded yourselves with apathy, or religion, or sex, or whatever, till nothing registers on your memories. Most of you — well, it was healthy to work on those R D projects, but that’s become a defense reaction in its own right. Another way of narrowing your attention till you exclude the big bad universe. And now, when free fall prevents you carrying on, you likewise crawl into your nice hidey-holes.” Lashingly: “Go ahead. Do what you want. The whole wretched lot of you. Only don’t come and peck at me any longer. D’you hear?”

He yanked the pajamas on, soared to the bed, and clipped the safety line around his waist. Chi-Yuen moved to embrace him.

“Oh, love,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. You are so tired, are you not?”

“Been hard on us all,” he said.

“Most on you.” Her fingers traced the cheekbones standing out under taut skin, the deep lines, the sunken and bloodshot eyes. “Why don’t you rest?”

“I’d like to.”

She maneuvered his mass into a stretched-out position and drew herself closer yet. Her hair floated across his face, smelling of sunshine on Earth. “Do,” she said. “You can. For you, isn’t it good not to be heavy?”

“M-m-m … yes, in a way… Ai-Ling, you know Iwasaki pretty well. Do you think he can manage without tranquilizers? The doctor and I weren’t sure.”

“Hush.” Her palm covered his mouth. “None of that.”

“But—”

“No, I will not have it. The ship isn’t going to fall apart if you get one decent night’s sleep.”

“Well … well … maybe not.”

“Close your eyes. Let me stroke your forehead — there. Isn’t that better already? Now think of nice things.”

“Like what?”

“Have you forgotten? Think of home. No. Best not that, I suppose. Think of the home we are going to find. Blue sky. Warm bright sun, light falling through leaves, dappling the shade, blinking on a river; and the river flows, flows, flows, singing you to sleep.”

“Um-m-m.”

She kissed him very lightly. “Our own house. A garden. Strange colorful flowers. Oh, but we will plant seeds from Earth too, roses, honeysuckle, apple, rosemary for remembrance. Our children…”

He stirred. The fret returned to him. “Wait a minute, we can’t make personal commitments. Not yet. You might not want, uh, any given man. I’mfondofyou, of course, but—”

She brushed his lids shut again before he saw the pain on her. “We are daydreaming, Charles,” she laughed low. “Stop being all solemn and literal-minded. Just think about children, everyone’s children, playing in a garden. Think about the river. Forests. Mountains. Bird song. Peace.”

He tightened an arm around her slenderness. “You’re a good person.”

“You are yourself. A good person who ought to be cuddled. Would you like me to sing you to sleep?”

“Yes.” His words were becoming indistinct. “Please. I like Chinese music.”

She continued smoothing his brow while she drew breath.

The intercom circuit clicked shut. “Constable,” said Telander’s voice, “are you there?”

Reymont snapped awake. “Don’t,” Chi-Yuen begged.

“Yes,” Reymont said, “here I am.”

“Would you come to the bridge? Confidential.”

“Aye, aye.” Reymont undid his lifeline and pulled the pajama top over his head.

“They could not give you five minutes, could they?” Chi-Yuen said.

“Must be serious,” he answered. “Don’t mention it around until you hear from me.” In a few motions he had resumed coverall and shoes and was on his way.

Telander and, surprisingly, Nilsson awaited him. The captain looked as if he had been struck in the belly. The astronomer was excited but had not wholly lost his self-command of recent months. He clutched a bescribbled sheet of paper.

“Navigation difficulties, eh?” Reymont deduced. “Where’s Boudreau?”

“This doesn’t concern him immediately,” Nilsson said. ‘‘I have been computing the significance of observations I’ve made with the newest instruments. I have reached a, ah, frustrating conclusion.”

Reymont wrapped fingers around a grip and hung in the stillness, regarding them. The fluorolight cast the hollows of his face into shadow. The gray streaks which had lately appeared in his hair stood forth sharp by contrast. “We can’t make that galactic clan ahead of us after all,” he foretold.

“That’s right.” Telander drooped.

“No, not right in a strict sense,” Nilsson declared fussily. ‘‘We will pass through. In fact, we will pass through not only the general region, but — if we choose — through a quite a fair number of galaxies within certain of the families which comprise the clan.”

“You can distinguish thatmuch detail already?” Reymont wondered; “Boudreau couldn’t.”

“I told you I have new equipment, with its balkiness now tinkered out,” Nilsson said. “You recollect that after Ingrid gave me some special lessons, I became able to work in free fall with a degree of efficiency. The precision of my data seems even more than hoped for when, ah, we instigated the project. Yes, I have a reasonably accurate map of that part of the clan which we might traverse. On such basis, I have calculated what options are open to us.”

“Get to the point. God damn you!” Reymont yelled. At once he curbed himself, inhaled, and said: “Apologies. I’m a little overwrought. Please go on. Once we get in where the jets have a decent amount of matter to work on, why can’t we brake?”

“We can,” Nilsson replied quickly. “Certainly we can. But our inverse tau is immense. Remember, we acquired it by passing through the densest attainable portions of several galaxies, en route to interclan space. It was necessary. I don’t dispute the wisdom of the decision. Nevertheless, the result is that we are limited in what paths we can take that intersect the space occupied by this clan. The paths form a rather narrow conoidal volume, as you might guess.”

Reymont gnawed his lip. “And it turns out there doesn’t happen to be enough matter in that cone.”

“Correct.” Nilsson’s head bobbed. “Among other things, the difference in velocity between us and these galaxies, due to the expansion of space, reduces the effectiveness of our Bussard engine more than it reduces the amount of deceleration required.”

His professorial manner was returning to him: “At best, we will emerge on the other side of the clan — after an estimated six months of ship’s time under deceleration, mind you — with a tau that remains on the order of ten to the minus third or fourth power. No further important change of velocity can be made in the space beyond, interclan space. Hence it would be impossible for us to reach another clan — given that high a value of tau — before we die of old age.”

The pompous voice cut off, the beady eyes looked expectant. Reymont met them rather than Telander’s sick, gutted stare. “Why am I being told this, and not Lindgren?” he asked.

A tenderness made Nilsson, briefly, another man. “She works cruelly hard. What can she do here? I thought I had best let her sleep.”

“Well, what can I do?”

“Give me … us … your advice,” Telander said.

“But sir, you’re the captain!”

“We have been over this ground before, Carl. I can, well, yes, I suppose I can make the decisions, issue the commands, order the routines, which will take us crashing on through space.” Telander extended his hands. They trembled like autumn leaves. “More than that I can no longer do, Carl. I have not the strength left. You must tell our shipmates.”

“Tell them we’ve failed?” Reymont grated. “Tell them, in spite of everything we did, we’re damned to fly on till we go crazy and die? You don’t want much of me, do you, Captain?”

“The news may not be that bad,” Nilsson said.

Reymont snatched at him, missed and hung with a raw noise in his throat. “We have some hope?” he managed finally.

The fat man spoke with a briskness that turned his pedantry into a sort of bugle call: “Perhaps. I have no worthwhile data. The distances are too vast. We cannot choose another specific galactic clan and aim for it. We would see it with too great an inaccuracy, and across too many millions of years” of time. However, I do believe we can base a hope on the laws of chance.

“Someplace, eventually, we could meet the right configuration. Either an especially large clan through whose galaxy-densest portions we can lay a course; or else two or three clans, rather close to each other, more or less along a straight line, so that we can pass through them in succession; or else one whose velocity with respect to us happens to be favorable. Do you see? If we could come upon something like that, we would be in reasonable shape. We would be able to brake in a few years of ship’s time.”

“What are the odds?” Reymont’s words clanked.

Now Nilsson shook his head. “I cannot say. Perhaps not too bad. This is a big and varied cosmos. If we continue sufficiently long, I should imagine we have a finite probability of encountering what we need.”

“How long is sufficiently long?” Reymont made a gesture to halt. ‘‘don’t bother answering. I can tell. It’s on the order of billions of years. Tens of billions, maybe. That means we’ve got to have a lower tau yet. A tau so low that we can actually circumnavigate the universe … in years or in months. And that, in turn, means we can’t start slowing as we enter this clan up ahead. No. We accelerate again. After we’ve passed through — well, we should have a shorter period of ship’s time in free fall than the current one has been, until we strike another clan. Probably there, too, we’ll find it advisable to accelerate, running tau still lower. Yes, I know, that makes it still harder to find a place where we can come to rest; but anything else gives us no measurable chance at all, right?”

“I expect we’ll be taking every opportunity to accelerate that we come upon, till we see a journey’s end we can make use of, if we ever do. Agreed?”

Telander shuddered. “Can any of us hold to it?” he said.

“We must,” Reymont stated. Once more he spoke crisply.’TU figure out a tactful way to announce your news. It was among the possibilities that have been discussed by nearly everyone. That helps. I’ll have the few men I can trust ready … no, not for violence. Ready with leadership, steadiness, encouragement. And we’ll embark on a general training program for weightlessness. No reason why it has to cause trouble. We’ll teach every last one of those groundlub-bers how to handle himself in zero gee. How to sleep. By God, how to hope!” He smote his palms together with a pistol sound.

“Don’t forget, we can depend on some of the women too,” Nilsson said.

“Yes. Certainly. Like Ingrid Lindgren.”

“Like her indeed.”

“M-hm. I’m afraid you will have to go rouse her, Elof. We’ve got to assemble our cadre — the unbreakables; the people who understand people — assemble them and plan this thing. Start suggesting names.”