Starborne (4 page)

The year-captain says nothing: he has run out of sophomoric no
n
sense at last, and he is afraid that what he has already said has done te
r
rible damage. He knows why Noelle is here, and she knows that he knows. How could he
not? She is essential to the mission; her particip
a
tion in it was less of a choice than the inevitable assumption of an unr
e
fusable mantle, involving a terrible sacrifice of the one precious thing in her life. It was contemptible of him even to ask.

His th
roat is dry, his heart is pounding; his entire performance of these past few minutes amazes him. It is as though he has been po
s
sessed, yes. Transformed. He makes an effort to get back in touch with the self that he regards as his own, and, after a moment,
seems to su
c
ceed in reaching some vestige of contact with the man he believes hi
m
self to be.

Can anything be salvaged now? he wonders.

As calmly as he can, he says into her tense silence, “
This has all been very far out of line. I hope that you
’
ll forgive
me for the things I
’
ve said.”

She remains silent. He sees a barely perceptible nod.

“
I
’
m sorry that I upset you, Noelle. It was the last thing I intended when I came in here.”

“
I know.”

“
Shall I go?”

“
There
’
s a report to transmit, isn
’
t there?”

“
Do you think you
’
d be able to transmit it just now?”

“
I
’
m not sure. I
’
m willing to try, though. Wait a little, all right?”

“
Whatever you want.”

She appears to be collecting herself. Her eyes are still closed but he can see them moving about less rapidly be
neath the lids. Unreadable furrows appear and vanish on her broad forehead. The year-captain thinks of the meditation exercises he learned to practice in his island days, under the bright Arctic sky of Lofoten. She must be doing som
e
thing like that now her
self, he thinks. He sits quietly, watching her, waiting.

Finally she looks at him, at any rate looks
toward
him, and says, after a moment, in a calm tone more like the one she normally uses, “
How do you think they see us at home? As ordinary human beings d
oing an u
n
usual job, or as superhuman creatures engaged in an epic voyage?”

“
We don
’
t really need to continue this discussion, do we, Noelle? It isn
’
t getting us anywhere useful.”

“
Let
’
s just finish it with this one last point.
—
Tell me what you think. Wha
t do we seem like to them?”

“
Right at this point, I suppose, as superhuman creatures engaged in an epic voyage.”

“
Yes. And later, you think, they
’
ll regard us as being more ord
i
nary
—
as being people just like themselves?”

He searches himself for his truest
beliefs. He is surprised at what he finds, but he shares it with her anyway, even though it tends to support the dark, unexpectedly harsh words that had come blurting from him earlier. “
Later,”
he says, “
we
’
ll become nothing to them. They
’
ll forget us. Wh
a
t was important to them was the great global effort of getting this expedition launched. Now that it
is
launched, everything that fo
l
lows is an anticlimax, for them. We
’
ll go on to live our lives, whatever they
’
re going to be, and they
’
ll proceed with thei
rs, pleasant and shallow and bland as always, and they and we will travel on separate and e
v
er-diverging paths for all the rest of time.”

“
You really believe that?”

“
Yes. I
’
m afraid I do.”

“
How sad that is. What a bleak finish you foresee for our grand a
d
v
enture.”
Her tone tingles with a grace-note of irony. She has become very calm; she may be laughing at him now. But at least there is no danger that he will unsettle her again. She has taken command. “
One more question. You yourself, year-captain? Do you
p
icture yourself as ordinary or as superhuman?”

“
Something in between. Rather more than ordinary, but certainly no demigod.”

“
I think you are right.”

“
And you?”

“
I regard myself as quite ordinary,”
she says sweetly. “
Except in two respects. You know what th
ey are.”

“
One is your
—”
He hesitates, mysteriously uncomfortable for a m
o
ment at naming it. Then he pushes ahead. “
Your blindness. And the ot
h
er, of course, is your telepathic communion with your sister.”

“
Indeed.”
She smiles. Radiantly. A long moment
’
s pa
use. Then she says, “
Enough of this, I think. There
’
s work to be done. Shall we send the report, now?”

The speed with which she has regained her poise catches him off balance. “
You
’
re ready to go? You
’
ve been able to make contact with Yvonne?”

“
Yes. She
’
s
waiting.”

“
Well, then.”
He is numb, hollow. She has completely routed him in whatever inexplicable duel it is that they have been waging here. His fingers tremble a little as he unfolds his notes. He begins slowly to read: “
Shipday 117. Velocity.…
Apparent
location.…”

***

Noelle naps after every transmission. They exhaust her terribly. She was beginning to fade even before he reached the end of today
’
s me
s
sage; now, as the year-captain steps into the corridor, he knows she will be asleep before he closes the door. He leaves, frowning, troubled by that odd outburst of tension between them and by his mysterious attack of brutal “
realism,”
from which he seems
to be recovering almost at once, now that he is no longer in Noelle
’
s presence.

By what right, he wonders, has he said that Earth will grow jaded with the voyagers? And that the voyage will have no ultimate cons
e
quence for the mother world? He was blurting
idiotic foolishness and he knows it. The expedition is Earth
’
s redemption, the most interesting thing that has happened there in two hundred years, the last best hope of a sleepy stagnant civilization smothering in its own placidity: it matters to them,
i
t matters terribly, he has no reason whatsoever to doubt that. All during the hundred years of preparation for this first interstellar journey the public excitement had scarcely ever flagged, indeed had spurred the voyagers themselves on at times, when th
e
ir interminable training routines threatened
them
with boredom. And the fascination continues. The journey, eventless though it has been so far, mesmerizes all those millions who remained behind. It is like a drug for them, a powerful euphoric, hauling the
m up from their long lethargy. They have become vicarious travelers; later, when the new Earth is founded, they will be vicarious colonists. The benefits will be felt for thousands of years to come. Why, then, this morning
’
s burst of gratuitous pessimism?
There is no evidence for the position he has so impulsively espoused. Thus far Earth
’
s messages, relayed by Yvonne to Noelle, have vibrated with eager queries; the curiosity of the home world has been ove
r
whelming since the start. Tell us, tell us, tell us
!

And, knowing the importance of the endeavor they have embarked upon, the voyagers have tried to make full reply. But there is so little to tell, really, except in that one transcendental area where there is so much. And how, really, can any of that be to
ld?

How can
this
—

He pauses by the viewplate in the main transit corridor, a rectangular window a dozen meters long that provides direct access to the external environment of the ship. None of Hesper
’
s sophi
sticated data-gathering analog devices are in operation here: this is the
Wotan
’
s actual visual surround. And what it is is the void of voids. The pearl-gray utter em
p
tiness of nospace, dense and pervasive, presses tight against the
Wotan
’
s skin. During th
e training period the members of the expedition had been warned to count on nothing in the way of outside inputs as they crossed the galaxy; they would be shuttling through a void of infinite length, a matter-free tube, and in all likelihood there would b
e
no sights to ente
r
tain them, no backdrop of remote nebulas, no glittering stars, no stray meteors, not so much as a pair of colliding atoms yielding the tiniest momentary spark, only an eternal sameness, the great empty Intermu
n
dium, like a blank wall sur
rounding them on all sides. They had been taught methods of coping with that: turn inward, require no delights from the universe that lies beyond the ship, make the ship your universe. And yet, and yet, how misguided those warnings had proved to be! N
o
spac
e was not a wall but rather a window. It was impossible for those on Earth to understand what revelations lay in that seeming emptiness.

The year-captain, his head throbbing from his encounter with Noelle, now seeks to restore his shaken equanimity by indu
lging in his keenest pleasure. A glance at the viewplate reveals that place where the imm
a
nent becomes the transcendent: the year-captain sees once again the i
n
finite reverberating waves of energy that sweep through the grayness, out there where the contin
uum is flattened and curved by the nospace field so that the starship can slide with such deceptive ease and swiftness across the great span of light-years. What lies beyond the ship is neither a blank wall nor an empty tube; the Intermundium is a stunnin
g
prof
u
sion of interlocking energy fields, linking everything to everything; it is music that also is light, it is light that also is music, and those aboard the ship are sentient particles wholly enmeshed in that vast all-engulfing reverberation, that radi
ant song of gladness, that is the universe. When he peers into that field of light it is manifestly clear to the year-captain that he and all his fellow voyagers are journeying joyously toward the center of all things, giving themselves gladly into the ca
r
e of cosmic forces far surpassing human control and understanding.

He presses his hands against the cool glass. He puts his face close to it.

What do I see, what do I feel, what am I experiencing?

It is instant revelation, every time. The sight of that shi
mmering void might well be frightening, a stunning forcible reminder that they are outside the universe, separated from all that is familiar and indeed “
r
e
al,”
floating in this vacant place where the rules of space and time were suspended. But the year-cap
tain finds nothing frightening in that knowledge. None of the voyagers do. It is
—
almost,
almost!
—
the sought-after oneness. Barriers remain, but yet he is aware of an altered sense of space and time, an enhanced sense of possibility, an encounter with the a
wesome something that lurks in the vacancies between the spokes of the cosmos, something majestic and powerful; he knows that that something is part of himself, and he is part of it. When he stands at the viewplate he often yearns to open the ship
’
s great
hatch and let hi
m
self tumble into the eternal. But not yet, not yet. He is far from ready to swim the galactic Intermundium. Barriers remain. The voyage has only begun. They grow closer every day to whatever it is that they are see
k
ing, but the voyage has
only begun.