Tyra had more and more enjoyed her voyage, until near the end. Everyone aboard was an interesting person. While not yet ready to do formal interviews, she took pleasure in cultivating their acquaintance, from Captain Worning on down. She had met some of the half-dozen crew before, but not all, and none of the scientists except Jens Lillebro, a physical chemist at the University of Munchen; the rest were from Earth. Not that the distinction was absolute. Anybody serving on an explorer was necessarily a technician of wide-ranging skills and scientific turn of mind. Thus, the work gang who would assemble the hyperwave unit, engineer Reiner Koch and boat pilots-cum-rockjacks Birgit Eisenberg and Josef Brandt, would be much in demand after they rejoined the ship. Tyra heard many good stories and found ample cause for admiration.
She was oftenest in Craig Raden's company. She preferred to believe there was more on both sides than physical attraction. Of course, that played its part. Among other factors, she was the only woman out of the six with whom anything but the mildest flirtation was possible. Biologist Louise Dalmady made a team with her husband, Emil. Stellar astronomer Maria Kivi, middle-aged, kept quiet faith with her husband at home. Planetologist Toyo Takata was young and pretty but, in spite of being as shy as her colleague Verwoort was bluff, made plain that this was her great career opportunity and she wanted no distractions. Matronly mate Lili Deutsch had her own family back on Wunderland and seldom missed a chance to speak of the new grandchild. Pilots Eisenberg and Brandt had for years been a pair in every sense of the word. Once Tyra spied Raden and physicist Ernesto Padilla exchange a wry glance and a rueful grin. Had the first staked his claim on her? Whether or no, he was never offensive, merely fun and fascinating. They played games physical, intellectual, and childish; they listened to music and watched drama and quoted favorite poetry, they explored the ship's wine stock, they joked, they talked.
And talked and talked. He was a magnificent conversationalist, who always made it a two-way thing.
His account of the finding of their destination fascinated her. She knew about spaceborne interferometry—Wunderland had lately embarked on a project to build a set of such instruments and orbit it around Alpha Centauri C—but why had Earth's matchless facilities not identified this situation long ago? He explained in some detail how many other, more obviously exciting ventures were absorbing funds and attention, notably though not exclusively visits to the sites themselves, while the search for additional high-tech civilizations, beyond known space, grew ever more tantalizing. The star they were seeking had of course been catalogued in early times, but nothing further. It appeared completely ordinary, obscure in its remote location. Finally a slight spectral flutter, noticed in the course of a systematic survey of that region, betrayed it.
How had this given data enough to show not only what was happening, but when the climax would come? Raden had a gift for making analytical techniques clear to a non-mathematician. The precision awed her.
"Well, there's a significant probable error," he admitted. "We'll be getting there none too soon, possibly a little too late for the actual event. Let's hope not! Sheer luck, making this discovery just when we did. True, it isn't unique, but to have one within our own lifetimes, at an accessible distance—" He laughed. "We live right, I suppose."
The last weekly dance of the trip became an especially gleeful occassion. The gym was festooned with homemade decorations. Champagne sparkled on a sideboard. Every woman joined in, with no lack of partners, while music lilted from the speakers. Best for Tyra was when she and Craig were together. She was a good dancer; he was superb.
The hour was late when he saw her to the compartment known as her stateroom. They paused at the door, alone in the passageway. He took both her hands. "It's been wonderful," he murmured. "Throughout."
"Yes." She felt the blood in her face and her pulse.
"It needn't end immediately, you know."
"We have three daycycles left."
"Once I'd have thought that was three too many. Now it's far too few." He stepped close and laid arms around her waist. "Tyra, we do have them. Beginning this nightwatch."
Not altogether surprised, she slipped free with a motion learned in a dojo and drew back a pace. Though her heart thudded, she was able to look into his eyes and say quite steadily, "I'm sorry, Craig. I like you very much, but I don't do casual."
Robert Saxtorph thinks I do, wrenched within her. I had to make him think that, didn't I? After I saw I had no right to ruin his marriage. The kindest way—make it not too hard for him to let go—wasn't it? Wasn't it?
"We don't have to stay casual, Tyra," Raden said. "I'm hoping we don't."
He could be lying. She recalled his reputation. Or he could be sincere . . . temporarily. Or if he really meant it, or if there was a chance he might come to mean it, still, the gulf between them was interstellar. Not easily or surely bridged. Nevertheless— "Let me think, Craig. We'll have time, also at the star and on the voyage back. We'll stay friends at least. Won't we?"
He nodded. "At least," he answered low, with a smile. "Goodnight, then, dear." He leaned across, kissed her gently on the lips, and departed.
She stood for a moment staring after him. He knew better than to insist, tumbled through her. A gentleman, as well as everything else. Suppose he had kept trying—
Memory stabbed her again. Perhaps that was why she went to her bunk bewildered.
She slept poorly and awoke feeling on edge. At breakfast in the saloon she ate skimpily, said nothing, and when she was done returned to her room and screened book after book. None could hold her. When she went to the gym, it lay hollow and forlorn. Just the same, a workout followed by a shower was refreshing. She came to lunch with an appetite.
Raden was on hand, chatting easily with others. He gave her a smile as if nothing had happened, and brought her into the conversation. Afterward, however, as they were going out, he came alongside and asked, "Can we talk a bit?"
"What about?" Her voice sounded ragged in her ears.
He shrugged. "Anything you like. If I upset you, I'm terribly sorry and want to make amends."
So he had read her mood in spite of her effort to seem her usual self. "No, I'm not upset, not offended." She managed to give him back his smile. "A compliment, really, and if I couldn't accept, I did appreciate." How honest was she? She didn't know.
He took her elbow. "Look, it's early in the watch for a drink, but on that account we should have the wardroom to ourselves. No harm in nursing a beer. Can we sit down and simply talk? I promise not to go importunate on you."
It wasn't possible to refuse, was it? She liked the idea, didn't she?
Yet she must work to keep from showing her tension. To gaze across the table into his handsomeness reawakened the old pain and whetted it. She'd laid it aside, she'd actually been happy, now she must start over.
Self-pity wasn't in her nature. Resentment took its place. Oh, she had more sense than to blame him. He'd had no way of knowing what a nerve he touched. For that matter, she hadn't known it was still so raw. To rail at dice that fell wrong was idiotic. However, the anger had to strike at something.
"Yes, we'll be busier than a one-armed octopus," he was saying. "Perhaps with the kzinti too."
"God, I hope not!" burst from her.
"I'm hoping for it, actually. I'll see what I can do toward bringing it about, in whatever degree."
Startled, she asked, "What?"
"We might manage some scientific collaboration. You know how fruitful, how inspiring and stimulating, our exchanges with other races have been," he said earnestly. "We're overdue for an interaction with the kzinti that isn't hostile."
"How?" demanded scorn.
He raised his brows. "How not? They're intelligent, sentient beings. Their civilization surely has its own riches. What might we learn from them?"
"New ways of murder and torture, maybe," she sneered.
"You can't be serious, Tyra. Yes, they've been aggressors, they've committed atrocities, but that's been true of humans in the past. Read your history. Nor have we lost the potential, I'm afraid." He gulped from his stein. "Blood guilt is one of the most vile and dangerous concepts our race ever came up with. We've got to put it behind us, for decency's sake, for survival's sake."
She unclenched her teeth. "I'm not talking about inherited guilt. I'm talking about inherited drives and instincts. The kzinti are what they are. You can no more deal with them in good faith than you can with a—a disease germ."
"They live among us, Tyra!" he protested.
"A few. In their enclaves. Eccentrics, misfits, atypical—abnormal, for kzinti. But don't ever turn your back on one."
His whisper sounded aghast. "I didn't imagine you were a racist."
"I didn't imagine you were an utter fool." The flare damped down. "Craig, I know them. I grew up under their occupation. I saw what they did to my people. I felt what they did to—my father, my family—" The tears stung. She blinked them away. "And then I myself—but that doesn't matter. They tried their best to kill my friends and me, that's all. What does matter is how often they've succeeded with others."
"Culture— Ethnic character is mutable. It can grow in the right directions."
"When enough of their most murderous are dead, out of their gene pool, maybe then," she said. "You and I won't live to see the day, if it ever comes. And first the weeding has to be done."
"This is appalling." Raden sighed. "Well, evidently the attitude is a common one. We'd better drop the subject."
"Yes," she said coldly. She knocked back her beer and rose. "Thank you for the drink." She left him.
The relationship continued amicably, but warmth had gone out of it.