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PART I: FUSEKI

The kneeling man settled into himself on the mat, hakima billowing oddly in the low gravity. His palms rested high on his thighs, his elbows were out, and his back straight. He looked down at the mat beneath him and his lips moved as he softly spoke a single phrase.

There was a rustle of motion and suddenly the sword was free of its scabbard, whipping across in front of him as he rose on one knee. Without stopping, the blade came back and overhead, slashing down in a two-handed cut that ended a foot above the mat. Slowly and fluidly the man rose, sword still in front of him. Then the blade swept around the side and over his head, ending with a flicking motion down his front and to the side.

Without looking he flipped the sword up and across his body, catching the back of the blade with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while the other fingers held the mouth of the scabbard. The blade slid out and the tip clicked into the scabbard. The man dropped slowly to one knee as the sword slid softly home in the sheath. The fingertips of the right hand moved caressingly out to the end of the long handle, partway down the inside of the handle and came to rest on the inner side of the right thigh.

And all was still and calm again.

Around him no one paid attention. The people doing aerobics in the great curved gym gave him wide berth, but the men and women working at the weight machines along the walls well away from him ignored him completely, concentrating on their own internal agonies as weights they could never have handled on Earth rose and fell.

The old man stood, smoothed his hakima and knelt again to repeat the exercise.

Beautiful, thought Sharon Dolan from where she stood watching. Like a dancer. Her face was still beaded with sweat from her own workout, but she had stopped on her way to the shower to watch Dr. Sukihara Takiuji in his daily practice. Beautiful, archaic and deadly all at once.

That was the impressive thing, she decided. It wasn’t the motions themselves. It wasn’t the grace with which he handled that sword. It was the utter concentration, as if every cut was directed at the body of a real enemy. Sharon had taken one semester of fencing in college, but that was totally different. None of the fencers she knew gave that sense of actually trying to kill someone.

Dr. Sharon Dolan shivered slightly and it wasn’t from the sweat slowly drying on her body.

She turned away from the exercise area and glanced up at the big clock on the wall. Nearly an hour to spin-down. Enough time for a long shower before the ship’s living quarters lost gravity. A good thing, too, she thought, wrinkling her nose. I need one and if I don’t get a shower now, it will be zero-G sponge baths for a day or two.

###

“Time to jump two hours, fifty-five minutes.”

Captain Peter Jenkins floated in near darkness and watched the stars. He didn’t need the pilot’s call, but he was glad for it just the same.

In addition to the big three-dimensional screen ahead of him—“above” him when the ship was under acceleration and the term had any real meaning on the bridge—there were actual ports to either side. His own displays showed a multitude of views of essentially the same scene, some with almost photographic realism and others abstracted to a network of colored lines.

Beneath the spangled display of the heavens, the bridge was a blood-red pit lit by the dim glow of screens and the dimmer reddish work lights. It struck groundsiders as eerie, but to Jenkins and the rest of the bridge crew, it was just “the office.”

As a Space Force officer, Captain Peter Jenkins had spent most of the last fifteen years working under red lights in an office just like this one.

No, he corrected himself, not just like this one. Not like this one at all. He pulled his lank frame down into his command chair and belted himself in extra tight. This one was very, very different.

The annunciator on the edge of his screen lit up. “Dr. Aubrey calling,” the synthesized voice announced.

Jenkins shook off the mood. Then he summoned up his patience and punched the “accept” button.

Dr. Andrew Aubrey blossomed into existence in one corner of his screen, the full-color image clashing with the abstract diagrams that filled most of the space.

“Smooth” seemed to have been coined to describe the man. His skin was smooth as if the flesh was packed tightly into it. His brown hair was smoothly cut and laid. His clothes were as neat as if they were still on the rack. But most of all, his manner was smooth. He exuded confidence and an easy grace. It was hard to imagine Andrew Aubrey committing a gaffe of any sort.

“Yes, Dr. Aubrey?”

“Captain, the Ship’s Council has asked me to discuss leaving spin on one more time.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor, but the decision stands. We will restore spin as quickly as possible after we have jumped and stabilized, but we will jump spun down.”

“Captain, may I speak frankly?”

“Of course, Dr. Aubrey.”

“There is a sizable faction on the Council who feel that your insistence on removing artificial gravity before we jump is not a matter of safety at all. They see it as a rather crude attempt to assert superiority over the technical staff.”

Jenkins kept a tight rein on his temper. “Believe me, Dr. Aubrey, it is and always has been a matter of safety and ship handling. When Spin is spun up, it acts as an enormous gyroscope and it makes it that much harder to maneuver the Maxwell quickly.”

Aubrey nodded sympathetically. “I understand your concern, Captain, and I’m sure it would be ideal to jump spun down. But I ask you to consider the problems and resentment it will cause as well as the human misery involved in leaving us without gravity for two days or more.”

“I have considered it, Doctor. Believe me, I know how miserable zero-G makes most people. But I must have the ship as maneuverable as possible when we jump.”

“Surely the matter can’t be that clear cut,” Aubrey protested. “The Einstein jumped spun up on her last two missions.”

“With no disrespect to Captain Anguro, I disagree with his decision,” Jenkins said, a little more forcefully than he intended.

“Captain, I wish you would be a little more flexible on this.”

“Dr. Aubrey, as I have been telling you for the last three months, I must insist on spinning down before we jump. This is a matter of ship safety and handling and no matter how badly the Ship’s Council wants it, I cannot compromise.”

Aubrey nodded. “Very well, Captain, I won’t take up more of your time. Good day.”

Aubrey vanished and was instantly replaced by the leathery brown face of Iron Alice DeRosa, Jenkins’ pilot and second-in-command. As number two, DeRosa was automatically cut into conversations on the captain’s channel.

“As if we could change now if we wanted to,” she rasped. “Christ! Less than three hours to jump and that bozo is still after us.”

Jenkins shrugged uncomfortably. “Not him so much as some of the people on the Ship’s Council, I think.”

She snorted. “The authority of the Ship’s Council stops at the edge of Spin. Formally, they don’t even have that much. There’s nothing in the orders for this expedition authorizing a Ship’s Council. I still think you’re soft in the head for encouraging Aubrey and his pack of trained seals.”

No one else in the crew would have dared to speak to the captain like that, but Jenkins and DeRosa had served together for years. Besides, Iron Alice DeRosa was a legend in the Space Force and legend has its privileges.

“I ‘encourage’ them, as you call it for three reasons.” He held up three fingers. “First, we’ve got almost six hundred people, nearly two-thirds of those aboard, who are not Space Force and who are only nominally subject to Space Force discipline. Second, those people arrived at the idea of a Ship’s Council consensually and democratically.” DeRosa snorted again, but Jenkins ignored her.

“And third,” he ticked off the final finger. “The Ship’s Council keeps those people out of my hair. Better to deal with Aubrey than listen to the complaints of fifty dropsick passengers.”

And fourth, neither of them added aloud, it’s the scientists who are running this show and they’ve got a lot more pull than the ship’s captain.

“So now the Ship’s Council thinks we can change our plans just like that. What do those yutzes think this is, the Toonerville Trolley?”

“They have a point, Al. Nearly two-thirds of the people aboard are dirtsiders. They’re going to be pretty miserable for the next couple of days.”

DeRosa looked sharply at her superior. “You going to change plans?”

Jenkins shook his head. “No. But it’s important to remember that the Council is expressing a legitimate concern. Now,” he said more briskly, “let’s get back to business. We’ve got a long way to go in the next three hours.”

DeRosa snorted again and broke the connection.

###

“Hello, Sharon.”

Sharon Dolan turned to the voice behind her and Major Autro DeLorenzo flashed a smile. His tee-shirt was dark with sweat and his curly hair damp from whatever exercise he had been pursuing. “Resting?” he asked in his faintly accented English.

“No, I just finished. I’m going to try to get a shower while we still have gravity.”

At five-four, Sharon barely came up to DeLorenzo’s shoulder. He was broad and heavily muscled. She had the slender build of a dancer. He was darkly handsome, with almost black, curly hair. Sharon had fair skin and a short mop of reddish blonde hair.

DeLorenzo chuckled. “I know what you mean. I tried bathing once in zero-G and nearly drowned. Never again.”

Sharon found herself warming to him. His charm was infectious in spite of everything and she realized she did enjoy herself in his company.

“How about you? Weights today?”

“Nope, handball.” Again the smile. “It never ceases to amaze me what you can do on a handball court in half-gravity.”

It was Sharon’s turn to smile. “You should try it in zero-gravity.”

DeLorenzo laughed. “I think I’d spend more time bouncing myself off the walls than I would the ball.”

“That’s part of the fun.”

“Well, I’ll have to try it sometime, if I can find a partner that is.”

“It will have to wait until we get back then,” Sharon told him. “The gym isn’t open when we’re spun down.”

“Pity,” he said and then his smile froze on his face as he caught sight of something over her shoulder.

Sharon looked around and saw Andrew Aubrey coming their way.

Last night in the Sunset Lounge, the pair had another one of their political “discussions” that broke up in a shouting match. She hoped they wouldn’t start up again here in the gym.

But DeLorenzo was apparently in no mood to resume the argument.

“I’ll see you later, Sharon,” he said and walked across the gym floor to ostentatiously strike up a conversation with a man working at one of the weight machines. She turned to greet Dr. Aubrey.

“How are you this morning, Dr. Dolan?”

Sharon smiled at him. “Hello, Dr. Aubrey. Are you down here for the exercise?”

“No, just finishing up a few matters of Council business before we jump.” In addition to his regular duties, Aubrey was presiding officer of the Ship’s Council.

“Spin down?”

He nodded. “The Council asked me to try one more time. I’m afraid the captain is as adamant as ever, though.”

“That’s too bad,” Sharon said sympathetically.

Aubrey sighed. “I’m sure the captain feels strongly about this, but it is unfortunate he can’t see how undesirable it is.” He shrugged. “But that’s as it is. Where are you off to?”

“I’m going to take a shower. If I don’t hurry, it will be too late.”

“Quite right,” Aubrey nodded. “See you at dinner perhaps?”

“If either of us has any appetite,” Sharon said.

The director’s face clouded. Like most of the non-crew on board, he was fundamentally a ground hugger and he didn’t enjoy zero-G.

“I’m sure it won’t affect you at any event.”

“Doctor, I’m afraid Spacers get dropsick just as easily as groundlings. We just get more used to it.”

Behind him, she saw Dr. Takiuji kneeling once again to repeat his sword exercise.

Sharon turned and walked away, vaguely dissatisfied by something about the two men. It wasn’t until she had her leotard off and she was standing in the shower stall that she finally pinned it down.

He’s a lot nicer than DeLorenzo, she thought as she turned on the water. Why is it I don’t like him as much?

###

Aubrey watched the planetologist as she headed back through the gym to the showers. Then he sat down on a bench behind him to see who else came along.

Andrew Aubrey genuinely liked people and the gym was the best place on the ship to meet them. Everyone had to exercise to keep muscle tone and prevent physiological problems in the half-gravity maximum that Spin provided and there was only one gym. By contrast, there were four cafeterias and a dozen or more lounges scattered throughout the enormous revolving cylinder that constituted the ship’s living quarters.

As president of the Ship’s Council, Aubrey conducted a lot of business in the gym. DeLorenzo and his friends might snort and call it “holding court,” but a large part of modern management was meeting people on a personal level to understand their concerns. Aubrey was fond of saying that only old-style hierarchical managers tried to run things from behind a desk. A consensual manager should try to meet people in less formal surroundings, he maintained.

He didn’t have long to wait. Sharon Dolan was barely out of sight when a dark-clad man in a clerical collar came into the gym and turned toward the locker room.

“Father,” Aubrey nodded.

Father Simon looked up, as if he was slightly startled. “Oh, hello, Dr. Aubrey.”

Father Michael Simon, SJ, was short, with graying hair and a face that was saved from ugliness only by his air of good humor. Under gravity, he was awkward, and in zero-G, he was notoriously clumsy. He was quiet and self-contained in a way that came off as superiority to the less perceptive and as shyness to the keener observers.

“Going to exercise?”

“Oh, no. I’ve already been today. In fact, I left something back in my locker. And you?”

“Just sitting here, enjoying the last of the gravity. I’ve been talking to the captain about spinning down.”

Father Simon nodded. The spin-down controversy had been the main topic of conversation in the sealed little world of the Maxwell for the last few weeks. Even someone as resolutely aloof from the ebb and flow of the ship’s politics as Father Simon was thoroughly familiar with it.

“Without success, I take it?”

“I’m afraid so. We will spin down on schedule. I’m afraid the captain puts abstract principles of ship handling above the welfare of the people on board. I’m sorry, Father.”

“Oh, I expect I’ll be all right. I have a fairly strong stomach.” The priest smiled shyly. “Mostly I’m just anxious to get to our destination and begin observing.” As an astrometrician from the Vatican Observatory, Father Simon was especially interested in the ultra-long baseline observations the Maxwell would be making.

Aubrey returned the smile. “I’m excited too, Father. Still, it’s a shame that so many people will be made so miserable for such trivial considerations.”

“So our safety is unimportant, eh?” Major DeLorenzo said loudly. He had come back when he had heard what Aubrey was saying to Father Simon.

Like a lot of military men, DeLorenzo was slightly deaf from being around explosions. He compensated by talking loudly and even in normal conversation his voice carried. All over the gym people paused and looked. Some of them continued to stare and listen, some of them made a great show of going back to their workouts. Only Dr. Takiuji continued his sword exercises uninterrupted.

“All this fuss over a few upset tummies,” DeLorenzo made a throwaway gesture. “The problem with you people is you don’t have any willpower. Discipline yourselves and you’d never notice there is no gravity.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Father Simon put in. “You know space sickness is real and extremely debilitating to those who suffer from it, even if you don’t.” DeLorenzo was one of those lucky people who was naturally immune to space sickness and he delighted in proving it.

“Bull. A couple of days of zero-gravity won’t hurt anyone.”

“But it is unnecessary,” Aubrey said. “You know the Ship’s Council voted to recommend that we stay spun up.”

“And you know, I voted against it. If the captain says it’s too dangerous, that’s good enough for me.”

“Of course,” Aubrey said deprecatingly. “After all you are steeped in hierarchical thinking. But we need a more consensual approach here.”

“Doctor, in this case, your ‘consensual approach’ is based on the idea that the opinions of a dozen ignoramuses is worth more than the opinion of one expert.”

“Those ‘dozen ignoramuses’ represent a consensus of nearly six hundred people.”

“A dozen or six hundred, it doesn’t make you any more expert at ship handling.”

“It’s not really an issue of ship handling. I have no doubt the captain is right in principle,” Aubrey said. “But simple calculations show that in practice the added margin is negligible.”

“So now you’re an expert on ship handling,” DeLorenzo retorted. “Look around you. Spin is nearly two hundred and fifty meters across and another two hundred and fifty meters long. Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of tonnes this all masses? What do you think it would be like trying to maneuver this ship with a gyroscope that big?”

“I hardly think it takes an expert to understand the situation,” Aubrey said. “The fact is that other captains have made jumps spun up. Captains with more experience commanding starships than Captain Jenkins.”

“So now he’s incompetent,” DeLorenzo flared. “Just because he has the guts to put the safety of the ship ahead of what you and your so-precious Council want, he’s not fit to command.”

“Oh nonsense!” Aubrey snapped. “I did not at any time question the captain’s fitness to command. At most I questioned his judgment on this one issue.”

“No, of course not. You’d never do anything as direct as questioning someone’s ability outright. They might have a chance to defend themselves. No, you’ll just insinuate, you’ll just hint. You’ll just poison the minds of everyone around that person until everyone looks at him like a monster.”

“I think this has gone quite far enough.”

“Quite far enough,” Father Simon put in tartly. “Especially since you have had this argument a dozen times before and neither of you has budged an angstrom. Unless you propose to resort to something other than argument you will just have to agree to disagree.”

DeLorenzo glared at Aubrey. “You’re right,” he said finally. Then he turned and nodded to the priest. “Father,” he said and stalked off to the locker room.

“ ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ eh Father?” Aubrey said as they watched him go.

“It didn’t seem to be a very productive discussion.”

Aubrey sighed. “You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t let myself be drawn by that man.”

“I imagine he feels very much the same way about you.”

The administrator smiled. “Father, you have a remarkable ability to see both sides of a discussion. You know, you really should have a seat on the Ship’s Council. You have a tremendous amount to contribute.”

“Thank you, no,” Father Simon said. “I’ve already told you I have no interest in participating in the ship’s government.”

“It is onerous, I know, but consensual management works best when widely divergent viewpoints and experience are represented.”

“I’m afraid you overestimate my uniqueness,” Father Simon said. “I believe there is already at least one astrometrician on the Council.”

That wasn’t what Aubrey had meant and they both knew it. Catholics were rare in space, so the priest was an object of curiosity and a fair amount of misunderstanding.

“Well, if you should ever change your mind . . .”

DeLorenzo came out of the dressing room wearing the neatly pressed khaki shirt and pants that were his everyday wear. Aubrey saw him across the gym and his mouth tightened.

“You’re certainly much better qualified than some of our present members.” Father Simon followed Aubrey’s eyes and saw DeLorenzo. “To have a man like that in close quarters with hundreds of other people for months,” Aubrey shook his head. “And then to put him on the Ship’s Council.”

“Major DeLorenzo is opinionated and rather loud, but his behavior seems civilized,” Father Simon said mildly. “As for his Council seat, he was elected, was he not?”

“By the construction workers and technicians primarily,” Aubrey said disparagingly. “Oh, I can understand his appeal. He is a forceful speaker and he does have an attraction to people who prefer slogans and simplistic answers to careful consideration of real problems. Very frankly, though, he is a major source of dissension on the Council. A number of our difficulties stem from him and the few he influences.”

“I thought you said that consensual management worked best with many different viewpoints represented.”

Aubrey raised his eyebrows. “But a man like him? With his background?”

“All I know of his background is rumor and second-hand stories. I am not called on to judge him on that basis, or indeed on any basis.”

“You mean you sympathize with him?”

Father Simon sighed. “No, by and large I do not. However, that is not the same thing as judging him.”

“Father, I’m not interested in judging him either. But I have to run this ship.” Father Simon wondered what the captain would have thought of that claim, but he kept quiet. “He presents an immediate and continuing problem for me. Besides, if even half the stories about him are true, he represents something abhorrent.”

“First, we don’t know that the stories are true. I think that charity demands we ignore them. Second, even if the outlines of the incident are true, it is not clear he deserves condemnation for his actions.”

“But you’re a man of peace,” Aubrey said, surprised. “Isn’t that the essence of the Christian message?”

“I think you misunderstand Christ’s position,” Father Simon told him, “and the Church’s. The Church puts no prohibition on force per se, even on war. Indeed, in some circumstances the use of force is specifically approved.”

“The doctrine of the Just War?”

“Properly construed. That and much else.”

“I would have thought you would have abandoned that idea by now.”

“Self-defense remains as valid a concept today as it ever was.”

“Oh, but surely . . .” Aubrey broke off. “Forgive me, Father, I don’t mean to argue religion with you.”

Father Simon smiled. “Please, no apology necessary. Now if you’ll forgive me.”

Father Simon was frowning as he left the gym. He shouldn’t allow himself to become annoyed with Aubrey and he shouldn’t bait the man the way he had. He made a special note to confess that when they returned to Earth and he could go to Confession again.

It was even worse because for all his refined backbiting, Aubrey did have a point, Father Simon admitted to himself. Having someone as notorious as DeLorenzo on board did upset people. Given the lurid incident that had sent the Brazilian-Argentine into exile it could hardly be otherwise.

Ostensibly, DeLorenzo was attached to the Construction and Engineering section. He was to help with rigging the giant telescopes which were the reason for the Maxwell’s mission. In reality, he was in exile, swept under a convenient rug while the Brazilian-Argentine Confederation waited for the storm to die down.

Major Autro DeLorenzo’s last job for his government had been roadbuilding, turning a muddy rutted track through the hills along the Bolivian border into an all-weather road. It was typical of the kind of projects modern armies were used for all over a war-ravaged planet. But this one was more difficult than most. In addition to the usual problems of supply, labor and equipment shortages, a torrential rainy season and atrocious terrain, there were the bandits.

They were called Pacuarequeros, after the fortified hilltop villages where they lived. From time out of mind they had preyed on the people in the valleys below and collected tribute from travelers through the border region.

The hilltop villages were over the border in Bolivia and seemed invulnerable. Neither country had the men or the resources to police the area effectively. Expeditions by either government produced, at most, a temporary end to the raiding and banditry.

At first, DeLorenzo tried the traditional solution to dealing with the Pacuarequeros. He paid the bribes they demanded. But that was insufficient. The construction crews were too rich and tempting a target in a poor, backward land. Besides, the Pacuarequeros had an uneasy sense that the road meant change and that the change might destroy them.

DeLorenzo appealed to his government for troops to guard his men, but there were none to be had. The bandits continued their raids on his camps and their ambushes of his construction crews.

Finally, Major Autro DeLorenzo opted for something direct and more permanent. He picked a dozen men, armed them and turned them into a flying squad. Then he commandeered a tiltrotor VTOL aircraft at so close to gunpoint as made no difference.

With a few rifles and a plentiful supply of blasting explosives, he loaded them into the tiltrotor and raided the hilltop villages at night.

While some of DeLorenzo’s commandos stayed outside the village and shot anything that moved, the others went from house to house lobbing dynamite grenades into the huts. Surprise was complete. The Pacuarequeros never had a chance. Neither did their wives and children. In less than a month, Autro DeLorenzo effectively ended the Pacuarequero threat that had plagued the high plains for at least a century.

DeLorenzo completed his road and returned home to a hero’s welcome. And a simmering pot of political trouble.

His mission had succeeded, but far too many people had died. The confederation government was not unhappy to see the Pacuarequeros destroyed, but it did not want trouble with Bolivia and it didn’t want the unfavorable comment the action got from the rest of the world. It seemed prudent to stash DeLorenzo someplace until the heat died down.

What, if anything, the silent brown people of the valleys thought of Major Autro DeLorenzo, no one ever bothered to ask.

###

From the shuttle hays aft of Frame 23 there is a manually operated scuttle that leads to a trunk paralleling the ventilation risers to . . . no, that’s only on Bays 1, 2 and 3. On Bay 4 it’s . . .

“Still at it, Mr. Kirchoff?” The voice boomed in his ear. Barry Kirchoff jumped and whirled, lost his purchase on the console and spun helplessly for a second before hooking his foot on the couch to bring himself under control.

Hanging nonchalantly behind him was Karl Ludenemeyer, the Chief Engineering Officer. His feet brushed the overhead, putting him upside-down in relation to Kirchoff.

“Yessir,” Kirchoff said lamely, furious at himself for his own clumsiness.

“You’ll never get it all, you know,” he said shaking his head. “This ship is nearly four thousand feet long and eight hundred in diameter. There is no way you can memorize the entire layout.”

“Perhaps not, sir.” But see if I don’t, dammit!

“Even if you did, what good would it do when you’re transferred?” the older man went on, not unkindly. “You’d be better off practicing skills like working in zero-G. You should never be so startled you lose your grip. And floating over the couch on your stomach like that isn’t smart. One quick burst of acceleration and you’d get the back slammed into your gut.”

You’re a fine one to talk, hanging upside down. But Kirchoff knew that if he said anything, Ludenemeyer would probably demonstrate some tricky maneuver that would bring him down easily on his feet no matter which way the thrust came from. Once more he felt completely inadequate.

“Spin down’s coming up,” Ludenemeyer said. “Make sure your station’s secured.”

“I’ve already been over it twice, sir.”

“Then go over it again, Mr. Kirchoff. Engineering is no place to have something come loose under acceleration.” With that he twisted and darted away like a minnow—a bulky minnow in khaki coveralls.

Kirchoff bit his lip. As a product of the new engineering officers’ school on Luna he was considerably different from Ludenemeyer and the rest of the engineering crew who had come up through the informal apprenticeship program that served to train most workers in space. That not only made him different, it grated on the other engineering officers.

He knew he had a theoretical grounding that most engineering officers did not. But he was also keenly aware that Ludenemeyer and the other senior officers had years of practical experience that he lacked. That only made him more determined to show the value of the Academy approach. He was also years younger than most engineering officers. It didn’t help that he was slender with a shock of dark hair and a fair, almost girlish, complexion that made him look like an adolescent.

With a last look at the diagram, Barry Kirchoff turned away and started to make one more inspection of his area.

###

All through the ship, the speakers chimed, their voices resonating and beating together like the echoes in some impossibly shaped space.

“Five minutes to spindown. Secure for zero-gravity. Five minutes to spindown.”

Throughout the living quarters of the ship there was a bustle as fittings were given a last-minute check. In the garden spaces near the core the last of the nutrient-rich water drained from the racks of growing plants back into the tanks. The super-humid air around the roots would keep the plants supplied for several days. Further out toward the hull other workers went over their sections looking for anything loose which might float away.

Fore and aft of Spin, the motors spaced around the ship’s central core ceased receiving energy from the power system and gradually started sucking energy from the huge turning cylinder within the Maxwell’s hull.

It was a slow, tedious process. Spin was almost two hundred fifty meters in diameter and nearly two hundred fifty meters long. It massed in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes and revolved just under four times a minute. That represented a lot of energy to manage and it was best bled off under careful control. So the computers monitored the motor/generators and humans monitored the computers and everywhere on the ship humans and computers looked for the least sign that something was amiss.

As the rotation drained away, the humans in their bunks around the periphery of Spin felt weight drain away with it. Their bodies became lighter and lighter on the pads. Their blood pulsed in ways unfamiliar to people who had spent their lives in gravity. Inner ears and stomachs also responded to the sensations. Some of the people clenched their eyes tight to try to hold down their stomachs. Some of them forced their eyes wide and stared fixedly at the walls to convince themselves they were not falling, no matter what their bodies told them. Many of them were miserably sick and most of them prayed for it to be over soon.

###

The speaker chimed again. “Full stop. Spin zero. Full stop. Prepare for jump.”

At his station, Captain Peter Jenkins rechecked the status display and nodded to the pilot. Grim gray, Iron Alice DeRosa played the sidestick under her right hand gently, delicately giving the final orders to the ship.

At the far rear of the ship, Michael Clancy ran his hand through his curly gray hair and checked his instruments one more time. Then he dogged his spacesuit helmet and checked them again. A few feet from him the ship’s torch pile stood ready and waiting.

“All stations report ready, sir,” Lieutenant Kirchoff told his superior.

The chief of engineering looked coldly at his subordinate.

“Don’t tell me, Mr. Kirchoff”. Tell the captain.”

Kirchoff reddened. “Yessir.”

Ludenemeyer sighed audibly and turned back to his own display. He hated managing people almost as much as he loved his machinery. If he had his choice would have been back doing Big Mike Clancy’s job, but that wasn’t possible. The Engineering Officer’s place was forward, in front of the ship’s main pile and next to the drive room. Although what Ludenemeyer or anyone else on board could do if the star drive malfunctioned, he hadn’t the faintest idea.

Just out of curiosity he had asked Dr. Takiuji—or was it Dr. Sukihara?—that question once. The Japanese physicist merely smiled and answered, “Perhaps some things.” The way he had said it did nothing for Ludenemeyer’s confidence.

###

“Heading on,” Iron Alice DeRosa reported. Jenkins looked down at his screens. The captain’s console showed him the same information the computers were giving the pilot. DeRosa’s announcement was perhaps unnecessary, but it was both correct procedure and comforting.

“All sections report ready,” the deck officer called out. Again Jenkins looked at his board to confirm.

“Stand by for drive,” Jenkins said. On his touch panel a palm-sized square glowed red, deeper and brighter than the red bridge lights, like a hot coal on the instrument panel.

Jenkins took a deep breath and placed his fingers over the glow, as if to block it out. A timer sprang into existence on his screen, its numbers unreeling frantically as it counted off the hundredths of a second.

Clancy got the signal and increased the speed of the turbo-pumps. The torch was hot and ready, waiting only the fuel.

Once more the signal sounded. Sharon sighed, climbed into her combined bunk and acceleration couch and tightened the safety straps over her shoulders and midriff.

###

When the clock reached zero, the drive kicked in automatically. There was no lurch, no inside-out feeling, no distortion of the star field in the view ports. One instant they were looking at one set of stars and the next instant the stars had changed as if someone had changed channels. The only sensation was a not-quite feeling of incompleteness, as if they had missed something or blinked at a critical moment.

Instantly, Iron Alice DeRosa was very busy.

The most difficult time in using the KOH drive was not travelling between the stars, it was right after you arrived.

A KOH drive provides instantaneous transport, but it does not repeal the laws of physics. You break out with at least the total kinetic energy you went in with, including the energy inherent in your path about a star, and your rotation about the center of the galaxy. It also includes the energy inherent in the galaxy’s motion through space, but that can be neglected as long as you stay within the galaxy.

This is both exacerbated and mitigated by two other things. The mitigating factor is that the drive tends to automatically seek points where the ship’s energy is most nearly in balance with its surroundings. A KOH starship tends to travel between isogravs.

The exacerbating factor is that there are quantumlike effects at work which add a measure of uncertainty to the ship’s position and velocity. A component of the difference in total energy between where you started and where you finish shows up as velocity in a random direction.

You cannot in principle know which way you will be heading when you break out, nor can you predict your exact velocity and position. It is entirely possible to break out with more total energy than you went in with and for various complex and subtle reasons this does not represent a violation of the law of conservation of energy.

Not all this uncertainty shows up in velocity. Some of it is released as heat. A KOH ship that comes out on a really bad vector will cook its crew like microwaving ants in a vacuum bottle.

With careful navigation the mismatch will never get that bad. But preventing a serious mismatch requires detailed knowledge of the target area, especially the gravitational fields. That kind of knowledge is easier to get about the edge of a star system, away from the competing gravitational effects of the planets, so jumps tend to be made to and from the edge of star systems and the ship proceeds in or out on a conventional drive. There is also the fact that coming out of drive in a volume of space containing an appreciable amount of matter will rather nicely reproduce the condition of the universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang on a much smaller scale.

As a practical matter, what happens is that a ship breaking out of drive finds itself in a strange solar system heading in a random direction with an uncertain amount of velocity. The first order of business is to get the velocity under control and that takes very sharp piloting.

The sensors on the ship’s hull took a quick and dirty reading on the apparent movement of the star field, the ship’s computers translated that into a rough guess as to the ship’s direction and velocity, and Iron Alice DeRosa reacted.

Thrusters swung the ship around so the stern was pointed in the direction of travel. Then the pilot hit the main engines.

Far back at the rear of the elongated teardrop that was the Maxwell, Clancy’s turbopumps poured a river of hydrogen slush enriched with deuterium and tritium into the fusion torch. An appreciable fraction fused to helium, and lambent flame too bright to have a color lanced from the rear of the ship.

Clancy kept his eyes on his displays and his hands on the fusion control panel. In theory there was no need for the torch watch. The computers were capable of overseeing the enormous forces unleashed and channeled by the torch. In practice there wasn’t a torch captain alive who trusted the pile that far and the engineers trusted it less than that. Next to the pilot’s chair, the torch watch was the most important job on a fusion ship.

Slowly the Maxwell’s mad dash through space slowed as the great reaction engines bled off the excess velocity.

“Sir, we have achieved orbit,” DeRosa reported formally.

Jenkins nodded. Then the gray-haired woman smiled wryly.

“The sixteenth human expedition outside our own solar system. Gets to you, doesn’t it?”

The captain knew precisely what she meant. The first interstellar expeditions had belonged to world powers in the southern hemisphere and the vital young states of the Pacific Rim. The old worn-out nations like the United States, Japan and the fragments of Europe had no role. This was a sop, an unimportant voyage meted out as a reward for political favors. But it’s still an interstellar expedition, dammit!

Jenkins smiled back at his second-in-command. “Don’t let it get to you too much, Al. Just get me the station reports.”

###

And far, far away, millions of miles and hours of light travel, the Maxwell announced herself to other ears with a burst of radio noise. The others were as quick in reaction as they were tireless in scanning the heavens. Other instruments swiveled onto the radio source. Optical detectors found the brilliant flame of the Maxwell’s fusion drive. Infrared arrays followed it too and as the flame died they picked up the Maxwell’s heat against the background of space.

From one end of the system to the other the word went out by ways both secret and open. “Others have arrived. Make ready.”

###

Again the gongs boomed and echoed through the ship. “Secure from acceleration stations.”

Back in the passenger section, Sharon Dolan breathed a sigh and loosened her harness.

The romance of space travel, phooey! she thought, massaging her shoulders. I bet I’ll have black and blue marks for days. She wondered how long it would take to spin backup and restore gravity. Normally it took at least twenty-four hours. It was a fairly complex process and had to be done carefully.

Then maybe I can stop playing passenger and get down to work.

The Maxwell’s job was astronomy, part pure science, part practical. The ship had gone deeper into space than any human vessel and the astronomers and astrophysicists who made up the majority of the scientific contingent were hoping to literally see the universe from a new angle.

Sharon was along almost as an afterthought. The main interest was stellar astronomy, not planetology. The system they had entered probably had planets—most single stars do—but there were no plans to come in beyond the fringes of the system.

Like the theoretical part of the mission, the practical part was much more concerned with other stars than this one. Their destination was simply a convenient place to stand while they did their observations.

With the KOH star drive, the limiting factor on how far you could travel was not range, it was location and gravitational energy. Like the Portuguese explorers working their way down the coast of Africa nearly seven hundred years before, the starships needed “landmarks” to work from and information on which harbors might be safe.

The essence of the landmarks were long-baseline observations. That meant an elaborate series of observations taken light-years apart and closely tied to an object whose position relative to Earth was well known. A star, in other words.

From this point new observations could be made to precisely locate other stars, and information on the gravitational lay of the land could be inferred from those observations. With that information stars further out could be plotted precisely enough for other expeditions, and crude gravitational maps constructed to help later explorers.

Maxwell’s interest was less in this star system per se than in what could be seen from the system. The distance and motion of the star was known and the information gathered here could be tied into observations taken in other star systems to extend the baseline. In turn that longer baseline could be used to send starships even further out to extend the baseline even more.

###

On the bridge Jenkins scanned the spangled black sky laid out ahead of them.

DeRosa looked over her shoulder. “Try about two o’clock and maybe one thirty down,” she told him.

The captain shifted his gaze and picked out “their” star.

Far away the ruddy sun glowed in the depths of space. At this distance it was merely the brightest star in the sky. They were far out from it and suns of its type do not shine brightly in any event.

The star was a perfectly ordinary M2 red dwarf, so ordinary it had no name. Although it lay only seventy light-years from Earth it was invisible to the naked eye and hard to see from an Earth-based telescope.

It had a number, of course. It was AC + 37° 30242. There were other designations in other catalogs, but never a name. It was too small and too plain to have ever gotten a name.

It looks so, well, ordinary, Jenkins thought. Intellectually, he had known what it would look like, but he still had a feeling that somehow it ought to be special.

Jenkins’ contemplation was broken by a chiming on his screen.

“Dr. Aubrey on line two,” the synthetic voice reported.

Jenkins touched his panel and Andrew Aubrey’s face sprang to life on his screen.

“Captain, do you have any idea how soon we will be able to spin up?”

“Not yet, Dr. Aubrey. We are still checking.”

Aubrey nodded. “I’d appreciate if you could let me know as soon as possible. It will make the discomfort easier to bear if people know how long it will last.” Aubrey looked none too good himself. He was pale and his easy air seemed just a trifle forced.

“Of course, Dr. Aubrey,” Jenkins said soothingly. “I will let you know as soon as I have the information.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Aubrey said and cut off.

###

The cafeteria wasn’t crowded, even though it was the only one on the ship fitted out for zero-gravity and the only one on the ship serving tonight. Much of the crew was at their maneuvering stations and zero-gravity upset too many stomachs.

Still, some stomachs are stronger than others and even the weakest stomach has to be fed. There was a slow but steady flow of people through the line and on to the tables beyond.

They wore a variety of costumes. The crew generally wore jumpsuits in the colors that denoted their sections. The civilians dressed in everything from street clothing to jumpsuits of their own.

In all the group, Dr. Sukihara Takiuji stood out. Suki was dressed in his normal mode. Which is to say in a manner a preMeji Japanese would have regarded as normal and that nearly any twentieth-century Japanese would have considered eccentric for everyday wear.

His hakima, a long divided skirt, floated around his legs. His tabi, divided socks, were white. His kimono, tucked into the hakima, was brown patterned with white. Suki was completely at ease and after months in space, no one else paid any attention.

In modern Japan, Dr. Takiuji’s clothing marked him as an adherent of one of the traditionalist parties, trying to revive a country damaged for the second time in as many centuries by atomic fire with the virtues of the past. Sharon knew that the details of his clothing proclaimed more precisely where his loyalties lay to anyone who could read the signs. Possibly his practice of iaido, the art of drawing the samurai sword, and his obsession with the ancient game of go indicated his political beliefs as well.

Sharon noticed that the soles of his tabi had very untraditional dark patches of Grip Sole sewn neatly to them.

Like the decks and bulkheads in the passenger spaces and the corridors everywhere, the cafeteria was carpeted in a short-pile fabric. To the hand it felt slightly stiff. The loops in the pile caught at the special material on the soles of the slippers everyone wore. The result was a slight “tack” that held you to the floor—if you didn’t push too hard or try to walk too fast. To Sharon it was like walking on the sticky floor in a busy movie theater, but it was better than floating off the floor every time you took a step.

Tonight the cafeteria’s food tended to be sparse and bland. Sharon was thankful there was nothing spicy or pungent or worse yet, greasy, filling the air with an odor that would challenge her stomach. She selected an insulated bulb of tea from the rack and took two slices of toast, neatly wrapped in plastic.

Ahead of her, one of the crewmen in the tan coveralls of engineering was heaping his tray with wrapped sandwiches. Sharon shuddered.

###

The watchers did not know yet what to make of their visitors. Typically, they did not announce themselves directly. Perhaps the newcomers were ignorant of their presence or perhaps they believed that the watchers were ignorant of theirs. In either event, best to keep silence and watch.

###

Suki stopped at the steam table holding sticky oriental rice and a few other equally bland dishes for those who wanted hot food. He heaped rice into a covered bowl as nonchalantly as if they had not come nearly a hundred light-years between breakfast and dinner. His appetite was still good, although, Sharon noticed with a slight smile, he eschewed the pungent pickled vegetables that normally accompanied his meals.

The cafeteria was a big room. On special occasions it might feed five or six hundred people. Although there were empty tables everywhere, the diners tended to cluster at the round four- and six-person tables near the serving line. There was something about being sealed in an enormous steel bottle a hundred light-years from home that encouraged sociability.

Another mark of how far we’ve come, Sharon thought, like the murals of Earth scenes on the walls.

The long back wall of the cafeteria was a forest glade. The water in the brook meandering through it and the leaves on the trees moved as if the wall was a picture window. Another wall showed the red rock desert of North America, the fantastically carved spires of pink and buff sandstone soaring out of the reddish soil. An occasional eddy of dust or quiver of the scraggly greasewood bushes in the foreground gave the illusion of wind.

There were no cities on the walls. That might have been too painful.

The catering crew understood the psychology perfectly and had not bothered to activate most of the farther tables. The vacuum intakes in the middle of each functioning table made a slight hissing noise as they sucked crumbs, spills and debris into the cleaning system.

Sharon eased her way in to a vacant seat at the table with the Japanese physicist and several other people. She watched, fascinated, as Dr. Takiuji produced a pair of chopsticks and began to eat from the bowl, holding it close to his mouth. A single grain of rice floated free and the Japanese deftly plucked it out of the air with his chopsticks.

“You know that’s probably more efficient than a fork in space,” she said.

Suki looked up at her and grinned. “Better control,” he said in his accentless English.

She sucked tea from a bulb and watched again. “I wish I had a better understanding of the principles behind something that’s taken us a hundred light-years from home,” Sharon said.

Dr. Takiuji smiled at her. “So do I.”

“But you helped develop the drive,” one of the engineering crew put in.

“That does not mean I understand it, I am afraid,” Suki said. “It is very difficult.”

“What is the maximum speed with the drive anyway?” a stocky man in a vacuum jack’s coverall asked.

Suki smiled slightly. “No speed.”

“Come again?”

The Japanese physicist gestured. “First we are here. Then we are there. Instantaneous. No speed.”

“That’s how we avoid the Einsteinian effects,” Sharon said.

“How does it work?”

Again the slight smile. “Very complicated. It is not easy to describe without mathematics.” He turned back to eating.

“But you worked with Kerensky and Omo on the drive?” someone else asked.

Dr. Takiuji picked the last grains of rice out of his bowl. “I worked on it, yes.”

“What did you do?”

Suki rested his chopsticks on the edge of his now-empty bowl and thought for a moment. “Without mathematics, the best I can think to say is that I helped define the difference between ‘nothing’ and ‘almost nothing’.”

Sharon continued to watch out of the corner of her eye as she sucked on her bulb of tea.

And you, Dr. Takiuji, Sharon thought as she watched him. What did you do to earn exile?

She knew in a general way. There had been some kind of struggle within the traditionalist parties in Japan and it had been considered politic for Suki to absent himself for a while. In another time he might have shaved his head and become a monk. Now he went out among the stars he had helped open for Man.

But there were no details. Like so much in Japanese society it was closed and opaque, hidden behind a curtain of natural reticence and cloaked in inflections, sub-texts, and things half-said.

###

Captain Peter Jenkins sucked lukewarm food out of a plastic pouch. Then he took the package away from his lips and looked at it disgustedly. The label said it was “turkey dinner with dressing and gravy.” The contents were the consistency of thick mush with little bits of stuff in it. Some of the bits were crunchy. That meant they were celery. Some of them were rubbery. That meant they were turkey. Overall it tasted of salt, sage and artificial turkey stock.

Jenkins made a face and put the package down on his console. The opening had sealed itself automatically as soon as he stopped sucking and the pouch stuck lightly to any surface it touched.

It could be worse, he thought, wrinkling his nose. It could be ham and lima beans.

One of the privileges of being captain was you got first pick of the food packs in the closet-size duty galley aft of the bridge. Of course, being the captain, you were also usually the last to get off the bridge to choose.

Four thousand feet of starship, a catering staff of nearly fifty and the captain still eats slop.

He knew fatigue was getting to him. He and DeRosa had both been on the bridge for nearly twenty hours. Now their long watch was coming to a close. The ship was in orbit about the star, the systems had been checked and minor damage either repaired or worked around until it could be repaired. There were just a few things left to set in motion before both of them would turn their stations over to other officers. With the next watch the real work of the expedition would begin.

He punched up engineering and Ludenemeyer’s face appeared.

“Final status?”

The engineering chief shrugged. “About the same. Pretty good and getting better.”

“How soon can we begin deploying the gravitational telescope?” Jenkins asked.

“It’s not a telescope,” Ludenemeyer said. “According to the astronomers it’s an array. A telescope produces images.”

“How long, Mr. Ludenemeyer?”

“Probably next wake cycle. There’ll be an engineering meeting in a little under an hour and I can tell you more then.”

“As soon as you know.” He caught himself. “No, make that as soon as I come back on. I don’t need to know badly enough to be woken up.”

He made to sign off and then he paused. “And what the hell are you doing still on duty, Mr. Ludenemeyer? You started before I did.”

Ludenemeyer shrugged, a little embarrassed. “You know how it is, Captain. Besides, I sent my seconds to get something to eat in the cafeteria. I’ll go off as soon as they get back.”

“Lucky stiffs,” Jenkins said. “I’m still on zero-G rations.”

“It could be worse,” the engineer told him. “We’re on them too. All we’ve got left down here is ham and lima beans.”

###

Mike Clancy and three others from the engineering section squeezed into an unoccupied table in the cafeteria. Barry Kirchoff followed them through the line and sat down with them. The others made no comment, but they moved over to give him room.

There weren’t many people in the cafeteria, Kirchoff saw. A couple of tables away a mixed group of crew, technicians, scientists and vacuum jacks was talking noisily. He noticed it included the Japanese guy who always dressed funny and the foxy little blonde astronomer. They were all eating lightly, he saw.

In contrast, the engineers had loaded their plates and Clancy was holding forth.

“You know what I hate about being spun down on this tub? You can’t get anything decent to eat.” He gestured at the pile of sandwiches. “Damn galley shuts down.” He tore the wrapper off one of the sandwiches and stuffed half of it into his mouth. “Now when we were running from the Moon to L5, last night out we’d always have spaghetti.”

“Spaghetti in zero-G?” Kirchoff blurted out.

“Sure,” Clancy drawled. “ ’Course you’ve got to learn to suck down an entire strand in one breath. You can’t cut it up and eat it with a fork like an officer and a gentleman.”

From Clancy’s grin and the way the others were smiling, Kirchoff realized he had been caught in another space crew joke. He smiled weakly to show he was a good sport and went back to eating.

Damn, he thought. Space crews were the ultimate insiders. They lived in each other’s pockets for months at a time and they had made a whole subculture out of it. He had been catapulted from the Academy directly into the engineering department and he simply didn’t have the background.

Clancy had launched into a complicated aneC.Dote involving a catcher ship at L5 and several people whose nicknames apparently meant something to everyone else at the table. Kirchoff kept his head down and tried to concentrate on his food.

Two technicians came in and sat down at the table next to the engineers. They had practically nothing on their trays and they moved slowly and carefully, with the gait of men who expect that their bodies will betray them at any second.

“God, another day to go. I hope that bastard’s enjoying this,” said one of the technicians loudly enough to be overheard at the next table.

“And which bastard did you have in mind?” Mike Clancy said very quietly.

The technician was too miserable to take the hint. “The captain. I hope he’s happy now that half the people on board are puking their guts out.”

“Part of the price of space travel,” Kirchoff said mildly.

“Bull!” the technician said. “You can jump without spinning down. Other ships do it all the time. But our captain’s got to show how important he is. So he makes everyone else miserable.”

Clancy shifted in his seat, but Kirchoff leaned over and grabbed his wrist. Their eyes locked and then the older man settled back.

“Have you ever seen a man who’s been decompressed?” Clancy asked evenly. “The way his eyes bug out and bleed? The frozen black froth where he’s tried to breathe vacuum and his lungs burst? The way the veins ruptured under the skin and his body blows up like a balloon, the way his guts push out his asshole?”

The two technicians shifted uncomfortably and turned even paler.

“And you ever smelled someone like that when you bring ’em back inside and the body warms up? The shit and the blood and all the other juices that get squeezed out of the body in vacuum.”

One of the technicians jumped up from the table and made a dash for the door, bouncing along as he barely kept contact with the floor.

“Now you think about that,” Clancy went on inexorably, his eyes locked on the complainer. “You think about how it would feel if we hit a piece of ice or rock out here because we couldn’t maneuver fast enough and you lost all this nice warm air. You think about it and you tell me if it’s worth trying to keep spin on when we jump.”

The engineer shrugged. “Now me, I don’t care. When we jump I’m back in the ass end of this thing in a pressure suit babysitting the torch. Anything goes wrong, I’m either fine or I’ll never know what hit me. You’re the one who would be sticking your finger down your throat trying to hold your lungs in place.”

The technician muttered something incomprehensible, got up from the table and followed his friend out.

“Assholes,” Clancy said conversationally and went back to his aneC.Dote.

Sharon Dolan turned back to her table and started eating again. Nearly everyone in the cafeteria had heard the argument and it had obviously struck a cord. What had been a casual mix at her own table had suddenly separated as completely as oil and water under gravity. Although everyone was trying to ignore it, a gap had opened between the crew and the scientists and technicians.

The argument, even the whole question of spinning down, were just symptoms, Sharon admitted. The problem was there really was a gap between the crew and the passengers and it was getting bigger every day.

Part of it was that very few of the passengers had ever been in space before they shuttled up to join the Maxwell. The vacuum jacks who were along to rig and maintain the arrays had, of course, but almost none of the astronomers had. Ironically, only a few astronomers had ever been off Earth. The huge instruments floating in space or anchored to the airless surface of the Moon were mostly run by remote control to meet the needs of scientists at institutes and universities around the globe. Space sickness was something every crewman had learned to handle long ago. To most of the scientists and technicians it was a whole new level of discomfort.

Worse, the scientists and technicians didn’t understand the limits and problems of space living that the crew and vacuum jacks took for granted. To them the rules and precautions seemed unreasonable and the crew seemed arrogant bullies. To the crew the passengers seemed like dangerous ignoramuses.

Conversation had picked up again around the table; a strained, artificial chatter as the group tried to recapture the mood of a few minutes ago.

It wasn’t just being in space, Sharon thought. The crew and the passengers had totally different styles. The crew was much more hierarchically oriented. They were used to commanding and being commanded, to orders generated at the top and passed down a chain of command. Even the vacuum jacks, that band of happy anarchists, was used to working that way. It was hard for them to understand the more consensual, collegial style of decision making the scientists and technicians were used to.

Over at the other table the crewmen had gathered up their trays and headed for the door. The scientists and technicians at the nearby tables seemed to stiffen and flinch away as they passed with the easy gliding steps of people used to zero-gravity.

Put it all together and it spelled friction, Sharon realized. If someone doesn’t do something, we’re going to have real trouble before this is over.

###

Clancy caught up with Kirchoff in the corridor outside the cafeteria and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Thanks, kid,” he said quietly. “Ludenemeyer wouldn’t have liked it if I gave that shit what he really deserved.”

Kirchoff flushed. “I think what you did was much more effective than hitting him,” he said. “Maybe he learned something.”

The older engineer looked him up and down. “You know if you weren’t such a puke you’d be all right.” Then Clancy moved off down the corridor in easy bounds, leaving Kirchoff to wonder if he’d been insulted and complimented.

###

Iron Alice was already on the bridge when Captain Peter Jenkins came back on watch the next morning.

“What’s the word on the gravity array?” he asked as soon as he had formally taken command of the bridge.

“We’re about ready,” DeRosa told him, still standing next to his console. “Ludenemeyer says we can spin up in another eight hours. Formal report’s waiting for you.”

The captain punched it up on his screen and studied it. “After we deploy the array, then.” He had hoped they could spin up first, but the schedule lines on the report chart showed that would mean delaying the deployment.

“Anything else I should know?”

The second-in-command shrugged. “Not really.”

Jenkins looked around to make sure no one else was close. Then he leaned over to her. “I understand Mike Clancy nearly decked someone in the cafeteria last night.”

Iron Alice shrugged. “Just a little discussion.”

“I’d appreciate it if there weren’t any more of those little discussions.”

“Ludenemeyer’s already talked to him about it.” She dropped her voice even more. “But if something doesn’t shake some sense into our passengers, we’re going to have real trouble sometime soon.”

“I intend to talk to Aubrey as soon as we’re spun up,” Jenkins said. “He’s the expert on conflict resolution.”

“I just hope it does some good. Some of those people need a real attitude adjustment and we’re all sealed in here like flies in a bottle for eight more months.” She shook her head. “Jesus.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t turn into scorpions in a bottle,” Jenkins told her. “Don’t worry. Things will get better when we get down to work.” I hope, he added to himself.

“Well, the sooner we get these arrays deployed, the sooner we’ll know. Any word from Ludenemeyer and the others yet?”

“Any minute, I imagine,” the captain told her.

Iron Alice nodded and returned to her pilot’s chair. The leathery woman might be pushing sixty, but she was still far and away the best pilot on the ship for anything that didn’t take lightning reflexes. A thousand-meter-long starship doesn’t do anything at lightning speed and for this job Jenkins wanted the best he had.

###

There were only two people in the Telescope Shack. That was one more than necessary, but Dr. Pete Carlotti wanted to be there for the first quick-and-dirty scan.

Not that there would be much to see. The great arrays that made up the Maxwell’s real observing power were still stowed in the holds aft of Spin. The only instruments available now were finder scopes, a battery of twenty-four-inch optical instruments and small radio, IR and UV arrays mounted on the ship’s hull. Compared to the tools of modern astronomy they were only toys.

The real astronomical work wouldn’t start until the riggers and vacuum jacks had deployed the big arrays and the technicians had calibrated them. For now the view wasn’t much better than it was from the giant telescopes in the Earth system.

Of course any of the astronomers who wanted to could tap into the data and images flowing back from the instruments on the terminals in their quarters or the public areas of the ship. A few probably had out of curiosity. But no one was going to go to work until the big equipment was broken out. The only astronomer doing anything productive right now was the junior staff member directing the system from the cabin in Spin still called the Telescope Shack.

Carlotti was there because he wanted to be. He felt it was somehow right that as the head of the Maxwell’s astronomy group he should be where the action was when the ship broke out into the new system. Typically, he was completely oblivious to the effect his presence and nervous energy was having on his subordinate.

Already the subordinate had completed his first quick scan of the neighborhood. Within the limits of their drive, they were where they were supposed to be. Now several of the instruments were trained inward, to check out the sun they were orbiting.

“Dr. Carlotti, what do you make of this?”

Peter Carlotti was small, dark and intense, with a big beak of a nose and a thinning thatch of dark hair. He called up the display on his workstation and scowled at the information coming up on the screen. He was unusual among astronomers in that he had actually spent considerable time in space. That deep-space experience was one of the reasons he had been chosen to head up the astronomical team on the Maxwell.

“Millimeter wavelength. And strong,” he said to his subordinate. “That star is doing some damned odd things.” He watched the data a minute more and his scowl deepened.

“I think we’d better let the rest of the team in on this. Call the heads of the astronomy departments and tell them well have an additional agenda item at the First Look meeting.” He glanced at his watch. “When is that meeting, anyhow?”

“A little more than four hours from now.” His subordinate popped up a schedule window. “That will be just after spin’s scheduled to be restored.”

“Good. Maybe everyone’s stomach will have settled down by then. Make sure everyone is notified.”

The subordinate snorted, but very softly. His job was to direct the instruments, not to set up a meeting. Carlotti could do that just as easily from the other console and he wasn’t supposed to be on duty.

“Even the deep-sky people and the theoreticians?” his subordinate asked. The distinction between stellar and deep-space astronomers and the larger gap between observing astronomers and theoreticians was centuries old, but it was still as true as it had been when telescopes were tied to the Earth.

“Especially the theoreticians,” Carlotti grinned. “They’re going to go nuts.”

“What about the crew? Should I alert them?”

“No reason. We won’t need a maneuver right away and I imagine they’re all busy doing whatever it is they do on this thing.” He paused. “Oh yes, make sure Dr. Dolan’s notified. This could have some very interesting implications for planetary formations and surfaces.”

He was almost rubbing his hands with excitement as he watched the data pour onto his screen.

###

The gravitational detection array was four cylinders, each about the size of one of the Maxwell’s shuttles. The tanks were filled with liquid helium and carefully shielded from the star even at this distance. In each tank were carefully sized masses of metal with sensors that measured the size of the masses very, very precisely. Gravity waves moving through the cylinders changed the size of the masses and the changes were measured.

In operation, the cylinders were placed at the vertices of a tetrahedron spaced an exact distance apart and held in position by sensitive maneuvering units. From the six baselines so constructed—and a mass of highly sophisticated processing equipment on both the array and the Maxwell—the strength and direction of gravity waves could be determined.

That information would be integrated with the data from the various optical and radio telescopes the ship carried and the data painstakingly reduced both by workers on the ship and later back on Earth.

The array was finicky beyond belief and the gravitational map it produced was coarse and crude, but it was the best humanity had. The map would aid future expeditions as they moved further out in the galaxy.

When the Maxwell left the system, the array would be left in place and operating. At intervals, a ship would visit the system to collect the data the array produced.

Jenkins had barely settled into his command couch when Ludenemeyer’s face flashed up on his screen.

“We’re ready to deploy, sir.”

“Then deploy, Mr. Ludenemeyer.” He touched another stud. “Pilot, you have the conn.”

With that Jenkins became an observer. Ludenemeyer and DeRosa would handle the deployment as they had practiced it so many times on the ship’s simulators. He was superfluous unless something went really wrong.

The captain watched on the screen as the enormous doors far back on the Maxwell’s hull slowly split open. Except for the space-suited men hovering gnatlike around the hatch it was impossible to determine the scale.

Slowly, carefully the space-suited workers brought the first cylinder free of its cradle. They were in no hurry. The cylinder’s mass was considerable and the more carefully the cylinders were handled, the sooner the array would stop ringing, settle down and start producing useful data.

Once the cylinder was eased out into space on the shadow side of the ship, the workers erected a sun screen, a shade of thin plastic on threadlike struts. Even this far from the star the differential heating caused by sunlight could affect observations.

On signal, the ship rotated gently to bring the next sensor bay to the shadow side. Again the doors opened and the ballet was repeated.

Gently the scooters drew the four sensors off several kilometers from the Maxwell. Two or three space-suited figures trailed along like pilot fish on a couple of sharks. As soon as they were a safe distance away, Jenkins ordered the ship to slide away on its maneuvering jets.

DeRosa played her sidestick gently and Jenkins heard the low “whoosh” of the bow thrusters and the ship eased away. It was so gentle there was no sensation of motion. Only the tendency of dust motes and other objects to float to the left told him the ship had been briefly under acceleration.

The units still needed to be positioned and aligned, but that was best done without the ship hovering so near. The scooters would ferry the workers back when their shifts were done and in an emergency, their inflatable auxiliary cabins would provide refuge for the crew.

While he watched the work, Jenkins considered the other problems he faced. Like most of the difficulties that have occupied captains from time immemorial, the people problems were a bigger headache than the problems with things.

The worst one, he acknowledged, was to keep the crew and the technicians and scientists from clashing. Hell, he thought, I’m a ship’s captain, not a social director. But he was the ship’s captain and that made it his problem. For perhaps the hundredth time he wished he had Andrew Aubrey’s easy way with people.

Maybe I should try to learn consensual management. The theory and practice of getting groups of people to work together by forging agreement was alien to him. Most of the time in the Space Force you never needed to work at it. Crews were small and most of the time everyone understood their jobs. If there was a problem you tried talking it out and if that didn’t work, you gave a direct order.

I feel like a damn dinosaur, Jenkins thought as he watched the intricate zero-G ballet unfold on his screen.

###

There were nine people in the conference room when Carlotti walked in. Some of them were studying the display on the wall-sized screen at one end of the little room and others were reading off the smaller screens in the wood-grain top of the long table that nearly filled the room. One or two were huddled over a screen speaking in low tones.

“Well,” Carlotti said without preamble, “I assume you’ve all seen what we’ve got so far. Does anyone have any thoughts on what that star is doing?”

“What is the spectrum on this radiation anyway?” asked Dr. C.D. MacNamara, a big soft man with a potato face and unruly blond hair.

“Surprisingly narrow,” replied elegant little Winston Chang. “Within that spectrum there are three or four strong peaks close together.”

Charlie George, the head of the spectroscopy section, ran a liver-spotted hand through his thinning white hair. “That’s a damned odd configuration,” he said as he scowled at the displays.

“A natural maser!” MacNamara exclaimed. “The star has a thick hydrogen corona and it’s masing.”

“That’s been theorized, of course,” Carlotti said.

“And here we have the first true example of it,” MacNamara said triumphantly. In astronomical circles he was known for his rather heterodox views on stellar atmospheres.

“I wonder,” Chang said. “It doesn’t precisely conform to the theoretical predictions for a natural maser. Dr. George?”

Charlie George shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s damned odd, but I’ve seen stranger emission spectra.”

MacNamara waved that aside. “Perhaps our initial readings were not completely accurate. Or perhaps the mechanism is more complex than we had imagined. It is certainly coherent or near-coherent radiation.”

Sharon Dolan sat at one corner of the table and said nothing. As the only planetologist on board, she was the head of her own one-woman department. Professional courtesy demanded she be here but no one expected her to say anything.

Carlotti sighed. The eternal problem of astronomy was trying to decide whether anomalies meant something or if they were simply problems with the data. “The data is still coming in. We’ll know more as we get it analyzed. If worse comes to worst we can always divert one of the large arrays to study the system more closely.” He made a face. Any diversion would upset observation schedules which had been worked out months in advance. Worse, it was bound to produce strains and infighting among astronomers whose observations would have to be delayed.

“I think the appropriate thing to do is to let it ride for now. We can meet again tomorrow afternoon and see if the data makes more sense. Shall we say three p.m.?”

###

“I hope you like bread pudding because we’re going to have a lot of it. They didn’t even eat the toast.”

Carmella O’Hara ran a brush through her short dark hair while her friend chattered on.

“It must be rough to cook and then have nobody to eat it,” she said to her friend lounging on the bunk in her tiny cabin.

Mary Beth wrinkled her nose. “In catering you don’t expect to be appreciated. But when you overestimate or underestimate how much food you’ll need, you feel like you’re a professional failure or something.”

Carmella laughed and nodded. That was why she liked Mary Beth, she thought. When she was with the plump little blonde, it was easy to relax and laugh. Pilots, vacuum jacks and engineers were so damn serious all the time, and Mary Beth Villa didn’t know the meaning of the word.

There was a knock at the door. Hairbrush in hand, Carmella swiveled around to open it.

There was Iron Alice DeRosa.

“Hello Cammy,” the older woman said.

Carmella O’Hara’s stomach tied itself in the old familiar knot.

“Come in,” she said softly.

Iron Alice stepped into the room and at Carmella’s gesture settled herself on the bunk next to Mary Beth.

“This is Mary Beth Villa,” Carmella said by way of introduction.

Iron Alice nodded and looked at the young woman. “You’re not a pilot, are you?” she asked in her gravelly voice.

“No ma’am,” Mary Beth used the title automatically. “I’m in the Quartermaster division.” She fidgeted and tried not to stare at the legend sitting next to her.

“Well, I won’t stay,” Iron Alice said. “I just came off shift and I wanted to say hello. How you doing?”

“Just fine,” Carmella said.

“Getting your simulator time in?”

“Oh yeah. They keep us pretty busy.”

“That’s good. Very good.” She got up. “I’ll talk to you later, then. A pleasure meeting you, Mary Beth.” She patted Carmella on the shoulder and was gone.

“Jesus,” Mary Beth said, eyes wide. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

“Oh yeah,” Carmella said uncomfortably. “Yeah, I know her. She’s my aunt.”

“Oh. So that’s what they meant.”

Carmella’s antenna quivered. “Who? What did they mean?”

Her friend looked embarrassed. “Well, I heard some people talking once, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Carmella said tiredly. “Look, Mary Beth, I’ve never asked Aunt Alice for anything. No special favors, nothing.”

“Sure. I understand.”

Like hell you do, Carmella thought. No one understood what it was like to have a legend for a relative, someone who insisted on doing things for you whether you wanted it or not. Someone you looked up to and were scared to death of at the same time.

When she found out the Americans were going to get an interstellar mission, Carmella had put in for a slot. Naturally. She’d remembered how thrilled she’d been when she had not only been chosen, but had been given the rank of Senior Pilot.

She also remembered how it had all turned to dust when she found out who the Command Pilot for the Maxwell was. In addition to acting as pilot for the ship and executive officer, the Command Pilot had a major role in picking the pilots for the ship’s tugs and shuttles. Naturally.

The knot in her stomach drew even tighter.

“Carmella,” Mary Beth asked at last, “is she always like that?”

“Well, no, I mean she wasn’t around home. Look, Mary Beth, let’s just drop it, okay? And please don’t talk about this. I mean to anyone.”

###

The next “afternoon” a very confused group of astronomers met in the conference rooms in the forward part of Spin. It was a larger room than the one the department heads had used the day before because there were a lot more people at this one. Word of the star’s anomalies had spread and as more data had come in more people had gotten interested in this very strange new sun.

In addition to the department heads, a number of other specialists were there. Father Michael Simon had joined the group and even Dr. Takiuji had forgone his usual iaido practice to be in on the meeting.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Dr. George said half-disgustedly as he studied the information displayed on the wall-sized screen at the end of the room. “This isn’t a picture of a star, it’s a portrait of madness.”

That wasn’t a new observation. For nearly an hour the group had been poring over the data and the results of the analysis programs trying to fit what the instruments were telling them into some coherent picture.

“Are we sure the instruments are functioning correctly?” C.D. MacNamara asked almost petulantly. The new data made it very obvious that if the star was masing nearly everything he believed about stellar atmospheres had to be wrong.

“The instruments, yes,” Peter Carlotti told them. “We think the processing and data-reduction software is correct as well, but there’s always the possibility of an obscure bug of some sort.”

He looked like he had just found half a worm in an apple and so did a couple of the others. A major software problem would seriously damage their ability to make meaningful observations.

“A bug like that would hardly be obscure, I think,” Father Simon said.

“All right,” Carlotti announced, “brainstorming time. Does anyone have a hypothesis, no matter how far-fetched, that might possibly explain all this?”

“There is one hypothesis under which it does make sense,” Winston Chang said softly.

“Which is?” MacNamara snapped.

“Which is that the system has a high civilization of its own. What we’re seeing is produced by intelligence.”

For a moment no one said anything.

“Oh my,” Dr. George murmured from the end of the table. “Oh my.”

“Well, it would explain the readings,” Chang said.

“That hypothesis would explain anything,” MacNamara said tartly.

“LGM? It has for over a century,” Carlotti said. LGM was astronomers’ shorthand for “Little Green Men,” the explanation that anomalous results are caused by alien civilizations. In its time it had been suggested to account for phenomena that later proved to be things as diverse as quasars and pulsars. It remained the hypothesis of desperation in astronomy.

“If there was someone out there we would have seen something more concrete by now,” someone objected. “Even those small sensors could have picked them up at this distance.”

“Not necessarily,” Sharon Dolan said. “You have been concentrating on the star and ignored the planets and the space around them.”

Carlotti had the grace to look uncomfortable. Sharon had asked for early observing time for the planets on the small scopes and been turned down.

“It’s still preposterous,” MacNamara said.

“Fortunately it’s testable,” Carlotti said. “It won’t take much to scan those planets and the nearby regions. If there is something there we should find it fast enough.” He shifted in his chair, as if to rise. “It will take us several hours to organize a program of observation for these new phenomena anyway. While we are doing that, we might as well check the planets. Shall we meet again in four hours to discuss observing strategy?” There was a chorus of assent and the meeting broke up.

###

Four hours! Sharon thought as she settled herself down at the workstation in the Telescope Shack. The implication was clear. She’d have the use of the scopes only until the rest of the astronomical team was organized. That was barely enough time to start examining the planets, much less do any serious work. There was no time to implement a systematic observing plan. She’d just have to sweep the inner planets with the instruments and try to analyze the data on the fly. With luck maybe something would turn up that she could use to argue for more instrument time.

Later on she’d be able to use the smaller instruments freely, of course—after the big ones were deployed and the more senior researchers were occupied elsewhere. But that would take weeks and she wanted to know what was going on near that star now.

Well, she thought, maybe I’ll get lucky.

The first information came from the arrays. The images from the telescopes had to be enhanced to be meaningful and even with the Maxwell’s computers that took time. The array data would benefit from enhancement too, but it could be run through simpler, faster programs to get a first cut.

Sharon called for an overview of the inner system and frowned at the result. The infrared scan was showing point sources everywhere. There was a band of roughly equally active heat sources around the star and many others scattered more-or-less randomly throughout the field of view.

The creases on her forehead got deeper and she punched a few keys. There were objects that produced an effect like that, but the display showed an absurdly large number of them.

Then the second display came up and she caught her breath. Most of the heat sources were at about the same temperature no matter how far they were from the star! That implied that the objects were producing their own heat and that made no sense at all.

Or maybe it does!

“Jaysus,” Sharon Dolan breathed. “Oh Jaysus.”

Frantically, she began punching buttons to train one of the telescopes on the nearest of the heat sources.

###

Carlotti was on the screen. That in itself was odd, Jenkins thought. The astronomer usually liked to be where the action was and unlike most of the scientific personnel he wasn’t afflicted with space sickness.

“Captain, can you turn the ship to a bearing of twenty-seven degrees?” Carlotti was pale and his dark hair was even more unruly than usual.

“Turn the ship?” Jenkins repeated, mystified.

“Slew it, actually. We want to bring all four of the forward telescopes to bear on something.”

“Well, we aren’t scheduled for maneuvering . . .”

“Captain, please.” Carlotti’s voice was agonized.

“You in, Al?” Jenkins asked.

“Here.” DeRosa’s face blossomed in a window at the bottom of Jenkins’ screen.

“You heard what he wants? Can we do it?”

“Yeah. Not much of a maneuver. Take us about ten minutes to do it, plus thirty minutes to secure for maneuvering.”

“Thirty minutes?” Carlotti sounded like he was in pain.

“This is a big ship, Dr. Carlotti.”

“Yes, you’re right. Very well, but please as quickly as possible.”

“Would you mind telling me what this is about?”

Carlotti looked uncomfortable. “We have an anomalous object we wish to observe using all four telescopes as a synthetic aperture optical array. I’d rather not say more until we have more data.” With that he blinked off.

Jenkins touched a pad and his pilot’s face grew to fill the whole screen.

“What do you suppose that’s all about?”

Iron Alice shrugged. “Someone probably spotted a comet or something.”

“Think they’ll tell us about it when it’s all over?”

DeRosa made a face. “For weeks. At every opportunity.” Captain Jenkins and the crew had their own telescopes of course, but they were widefield instruments trained outward to precisely fix the Maxwell’s position and relative motion. There were position checks on the star but the navigation software wasn’t looking for oddities. It was where it was supposed to be and their relative motion to it was within parameters. That was enough.

###

Dr. Peter Carlotti was practically beside himself. “Dammit, there can’t possibly be life in this system! That’s an M2 red dwarf. The life zone’s too narrow and none of those planets are the right type.”

In spite of efforts to keep the discovery a secret, there were nearly thirty people jammed into the conference room and more gathered outside the door. The meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another fifteen minutes but already the arguments waxed hot and heavy.

“Not right for our kind of life, but obviously right for someone’s,” Winston Chang corrected him smoothly.

“Not right for anyone’s,” Carlotti snapped. “The inner planet is as hot and airless as Mercury and the two others are Mars-types.”

“There was a lot of speculation about men from Mars.”

Carlotti snorted. “Then where are the signs? Any civilization able to go into space would leave traces all over the surface of its planet and there are none here.”

“We would,” Chang said. “That doesn’t mean everyone would. Besides, what about the Jovians? There seems to be a lot of traffic around them.”

“If they evolved on a Jovian world then why are the habitats all further in toward the star?” Carlotti shot back.

Chang shrugged. “Insufficient data. All we know is that intelligent life did evolve here.”

“Oh, but it didn’t,” Sharon Dolan put in breathlessly as she elbowed her way into the room. “At least, I doubt seriously it did.”

Everyone looked at her and her cheeks grew red.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said quietly. One of the seated astronomers got up to give her a chair and, flushed with her new importance, Sharon plopped down in it.

“What leads you to that conclusion, Dr. Dolan?” Andrew Aubrey asked from his place at the head of the table. He hadn’t been formally invited but no one was really surprised he was attending.

“Well, none of the planets in the system are habitable by our standards. And the placement of the habitats indicates they prefer conditions much like ours.”

“Some of those habitats are out to the orbit of the Jovians,” Carlotti objected.

“Yes, but those have what appear to be mirrors to concentrate the sunlight. Wherever they live now, they prefer a temperature range much like ours. That argues for a water-based metabolism and probably oxygen/water, although that last is somewhat speculative. Besides,” she added, “the star’s too cool for life to develop here. So they came from somewhere else.”

“So not only have we found our first intelligent species, we have also found an intelligent interstellar species.”

“But how in the world could something like that remain hidden from us?” MacNamara asked.

“For one thing, we weren’t looking,” the planetologist told them. “After the shock wore off, I went back over our software. It’s designed to discard readings that are outside the accepted parameters on the grounds that they are obviously artifacts.” She made a face. “Our so-helpful computers were discarding about ninety percent of the readings that indicated intelligent life here.”

“Well, why haven’t we detected their radio signals?” demanded another person. “We’re certainly close enough.”

“Two reasons,” Dr. George put in. “First, we’re still not finding a lot of radio. We suspect they transmit information by laser. At least we’ve seen some modulated monochromatic light sources at frequencies that would be good for intra-system transmission.

“The other reason is that their signals are digitized and highly complex. At first hearing they sound like noise. If you apply analysis you will find regularities, but it is not something obvious like Morse Code.”

“What?” said one of the astronomers and his neighbor, a communications buff, leaned over to whisper an explanation to him while the main discussion went on.

“I wasn’t thinking just of this expedition,” MacNamara said. “I was thinking of all the time we have spent in the last hundred years looking for intelligent radio signals. Surely they would maintain communication between the star systems even if there wasn’t much direct trade.”

“Perhaps they don’t have a faster than light communicator,” Carlotti said. “We don’t. Or if all their messages are going by ship we’d never detect them.”

“Ridiculous!” someone snapped and that produced another babble.

“Gentlemen,” Andrew Aubrey’s voice cut through the buzz, “ladies. This clearly needs to be shared with the rest of the people on the ship. I intend to convene a meeting of the Ship’s Council in,” he looked at his watch, “say, ninety minutes. Dr. Carlotti, do you think you could pull together a presentation by then to brief the rest of the ship on the basics of the situation?”

“Dr. Dolan is really the person to make the presentation,” Carlotti said. “It was her discovery, after all.”

Aubrey turned to her. “Dr. Dolan.”

“Of course I can.” Then she paused. “But has anyone told the captain about this?”

Carlotti looked stricken. “Oh dear.”

###

“You mean you have known this system was inhabited for hours and you didn’t notify me?” Captain Peter Jenkins demanded.

“We have suspected something for hours,” Andrew Aubrey corrected him. “We did not reach a consensus until a few minutes ago.”

“Jesus,” said Iron Alice DeRosa from the pilot’s station. If Aubrey heard he took no notice.

“Did it ever occur to you that this was a circumstance that might affect the safety or functioning of this ship?”

Aubrey nodded. “Yes, Captain, you’re quite right. We should have notified you. I am sorry for the oversight, but in the rush of the moment . . .”

“Dr. Aubrey,” said Captain Jenkins tightly, “I would appreciate if there were no more oversights.”

“Of course, Captain. We will do our best to see that there are not.”

The way he said it made Jenkins feel as if he had made an unreasonable request and Aubrey was graciously ignoring his bad manners by granting it.

“I have already convened a meeting of the Ship’s Council for an hour from now, if that is convenient?”

An hour, Jenkins thought, but he said, “That will be fine.”

As Aubrey twisted and swam clumsily toward the exit and gravity, Jenkins turned away.

“Get me Ludenemeyer,” he barked over the intercom. “I want to know how soon we can get out of here.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance they don’t know we’re here?” the navigation officer asked.

“Only if they’re deaf,” Iron Alice told him. “The blast of radio noise this thing puts out when it breaks in is enough to alert the whole system. By now everyone in the system knows something is up. And if they bring their telescopes around they’ll have seen our torch flame.”

“Damn,” said the navigator without heat.

###

In contrast to the babble and confusion of the astronomers’ meeting, the meeting of the Ship’s Council was subdued. The twenty members listened intently as Sharon Dolan made her presentation. Occasionally someone’s attention would wander to a desk screen as they used hypertext to call up an explanation of a point, but most of them simply sat and listened intently.

Abstractly, Sharon Dolan was glad everyone was so quiet. She had never addressed anything bigger than a poster session at a scientific meeting before and her voice was thin and weak from strain and excitement.

“In conclusion, we know that, first, the system is definitely inhabited. There is absolutely no question of that now. Second, the aliens have a high technological civilization. Since we modified our software, we have found literally hundreds of O’Neill colonies in orbit around this star and we are finding more all the time. There is also a ring of power satellites in closer to the star and there are signs of mining activities in the asteroid belt and in the Jovian systems.” She paused to take another drink of water. In less than a half-hour, she had nearly emptied the pitcher on the table.

“Beyond that we know very little. We can only speculate until we get more data.”

“Which planet are they from?” someone broke in.

“We don’t know yet,” Sharon said. “There are no definite signs of habitation on any of the planets we have examined.” By mutual consent she had not mentioned her belief that the aliens came from outside the star system.

“Do we know if they know we’re here?” another Council member asked.

“Probably,” Sharon said. “They couldn’t have missed the burst of noise the drive makes in breaking out and if their instruments are any good they may well have picked up the flame of our torch as we maneuvered.”

Autro DeLorenzo slammed his hand down on the table with a noise that rang out like a pistol shot. “That settles it. We leave now.”

“What?” Sharon said, bewildered by his statement and his vehemence.

“We get the hell out of here,” DeLorenzo growled. “We’re virtually unarmed and we’ve blundered into something we can’t handle.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hasty?” Aubrey said mildly. “There is an enormous amount we can learn here, surely.”

“And an enormous amount they can learn from us,” the South American shot back. “We’re scouts and part of a scout’s job is to know when to run for it.”

“I don’t think our mission was conceived in military terms.”

“Well, we’d better start thinking of it in military terms.”

“What makes you think they are hostile?”

“What makes you think they aren’t?” DeLorenzo countered.

“We’ve seen no evidence of anything hostile.”

DeLorenzo grinned wickedly. “You want to bet your life on that, Aubrey? You want to bet the ship on it? Do you want to bet all of Earth on it? Because those are the stakes. If they are hostile there is enough stuff on this ship to lead them right back to where we come from.”

“Major,” said MacNamara, “I wish you would stop talking like a character in a bad science fiction movie.”

“Doctor, I wish you would get your head out of your ass.”

MacNamara’s head jerked back as if he had been slapped. “I hardly think vulgarity will help us handle the situation, Major.” He emphasized DeLorenzo’s title with just a hint of a sneer.

“The only thing that will help us, Doctor, is to get out of here and I mean right now.”

“Gentlemen, please,” Aubrey put in. “This is highly premature. Besides, whether we leave or not is really the captain’s decision, isn’t it? You’ve always been a strong supporter of the captain’s authority, Major, and I’m sure you have no wish for the Council to usurp it now.”

“The captain is going to order us out of here real quick,” DeLorenzo predicted.

“That is the captain’s decision,” Aubrey told him.

###

In the control room Captain Peter Jenkins looked up at the big overhead screen and examined the sight. The scale was compressed and within the orbits of the gas giants the screen appeared spangled with points of silver, each representing a floating habitat. There were already more than five hundred of them and as Jenkins watched another silver pinpoint sprang into existence.

“Fantastic,” breathed a voice behind him. “Utterly fantastic.”

Jenkins turned and saw Andrew Aubrey on the bridge for the second time today, staring transfixed at the display. He was so engrossed he didn’t show his usual discomfort in zero-gravity. Then he seemed to shake himself and turned to Jenkins.

“Captain, may I talk to you privately?”

Jenkins nodded. “Of course, Dr. Aubrey. Please step into my office.”

The office was a cubbyhole off the bridge. There was barely enough room for a desk and the affectation of three chairs—practically useless in a part of the ship that never knew gravity.

“You might be more comfortable if you belted yourself in,” Jenkins told his guest, pointing to the restraints attached to the chair arms as he closed the door behind him. Aubrey strapped himself down and Jenkins eased into his seat.

“Now, Doctor, what can I do for you?”

“Captain, the Ship’s Council has been meeting to decide what we should do. I wanted to get your thoughts.”

“I really haven’t had time to think about it, Dr. Aubrey. I do know one thing. If there is any possibility of danger to the ship or the crew, we’re leaving immediately.”

“I’m sure the Ship’s Council would agree with you,” Aubrey said. “However, the Council is also concerned that we don’t jeopardize this enormous opportunity.”

“With all due respect, Doctor, this is a matter of the ship’s safety. It is not a matter for the Ship’s Council.”

“I understand your concern. But surely you would consult before taking any action.”

“Not if I believed our safety was involved.”

“Captain, may I speak frankly again?”

“You usually do,” Jenkins said with a slight smile.

Aubrey returned the smile, charmingly. “I realize this has not been an easy voyage for you because of the, ah, cultural conflicts, and believe me when I say that the Council has done everything in its power to minimize the problems. However I think that on this issue the conflicts come to a head.

“Now obviously we have a common interest here,” he went on. “No one wants to see the ship endangered. You do see that, don’t you?” Again the smile and Jenkins nodded half-reluctantly.

“Good. Because what we are really dealing with here is a difference in methods, not goals.”

Aubrey leaned forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped. “You mentioned your concern for the people on the ship as well as the ship itself. Don’t you think that part of that concern should be to involve them in deciding their own fate? What the Council is essentially saying is that it’s important for everyone to have some control over what happens to them.”

“Of course I agree, to an extent,” Jenkins said. “But I’m still the one responsible for the ultimate safety of the Maxwell.”

“And that’s where the clash of cultures enters in. In a hierarchical system, like the Space Force, decision making and power flows from the top down. In a consensual system, decisions are made by those affected. Aside from the military,” Aubrey pronounced the word in a way that wasn’t quite a sneer, “the Space Force is perhaps the most rigidly hierarchical system left. Scientists, by the nature of their work, are among the most consensual.”

He held up a hand to forestall an objection Jenkins had no intention of making. “I’m not trying to be insulting in saying that. Hierarchical organization isn’t always a bad thing. I can understand why it has survived so long in the Space Force, for example. But it isn’t the way most of the modern world works and it isn’t what most people are used to any more. We’ve learned to do things differently because we had to. And we very nearly didn’t learn it in time.”

“What’s your point?”

“Simply this. No one wants to put the ship in danger. But any danger is not going to be immediate. We’re in no danger now and we can see anything coming for millions of kilometers in any direction, correct?”

Jenkins nodded.

“That being the case, there is time for all of us to have a role in making the decision. We would have hours or days to forge a consensus before we act.”

“Dr. Aubrey, I cannot abdicate my responsibility for the ship’s safety.”

“No one is asking you to, Captain. Only that you take us into your confidence before deciding our futures.” He paused, studying Jenkins intently. The captain said nothing.

“Captain, will you promise me one thing?” Aubrey said at last. “That when the time comes you will make your decision based on the facts, not fears or speculations.”

Jenkins considered, looking for traps. “That seems reasonable enough,” he said finally.

Aubrey’s smooth face split into a grin. “Fine, Captain. That’s all I ask.”

“Don’t read too much into that,” Jenkins said. “If there is any sign . . .” The intercom chimed before he could complete the sentence.

“Captain, you’d better get up here,” DeRosa’s voice came over the speaker. “There’s something I think you should see.”

Without another word, Jenkins stood up and catapulted past the startled Aubrey. The scientist hesitated a second and then followed.

One look at the big display told him why DeRosa wanted him back on the bridge. On the screen, one of the dots flamed a brilliant green.

“Strong energy emission from that habitat,” DeRosa said. “It appears to be monochromatic.”

The captain started. “A weapon? An attempt to communicate?”

“Not communication,” the pilot reported. “There’s no modulation of the beam.” A pause. “I don’t think it’s a weapon either. At least nothing that can reach us this far out.” Another pause. “I think it’s a launcher. I think they just used a laser to launch something in our general direction.”

“A laser launch in space?”

Iron Alice shrugged. “Makes sense of a sort. It’s a real efficient way to give something an initial kick. Not the way we’d do it, but . . .” She shrugged again.

“And it would keep the level of pollutants near the habitat,” Aubrey said breathlessly as he came swimming through the door. “Beautiful.”

The captain crossed to his console and punched into the comm. Carlotti’s face bloomed on the screen. “Ah, Captain, I was just going to call you. There’s been a change—”

“I know Dr. Carlotti, we have it here too. Can your people get us spectroscopic data on that emission?”

The astronomer hesitated. “We can try. I think one of the smaller instruments might be adapted for that sort of work. We’d need a low-power wide-field scan, but yes, I think we have something that will work.”

“Fine. And once you get started on that can you come to the bridge? And bring Dr. Dolan with you. And Major DeLorenzo.” Out of the corner of his eye Jenkins saw Aubrey wince.

“Doctor, if you’re going to stay, please strap yourself into one of the observer’s couches,” he directed. Aubrey really had nothing to contribute, and Jenkins would have preferred to send him off the bridge, but he knew it would cause more problems than it would solve. He needed Carlotti and Dolan for their technical knowledge and DeLorenzo because of his all-around engineering background, but he doubted that explanation would wash with Aubrey. Fortunately, he thought, we’ve got the room on this ship. The control room on the average space force vessel was cramped with just the officers. The Maxwell’s bridge had been designed to take a lot more visitors.

DeLorenzo came charging onto the bridge in less than five minutes. Carlotti and Dolan arrived a few minutes later. Still the single point flared a brilliant green on their screens. He directed Carlotti to a vacant console and DeLorenzo went to peer over his shoulder.

“Any more information?” he asked as soon as Carlotti was settled in.

“Just that what we’re seeing is consistent with a laser launch. And there definitely appears to be something in front of those beams. Possibly a light sail.”

The captain punched more buttons and Ludenemeyer blinked up in a corner of his screen. “Mr. Ludenemeyer, is that heading for us?”

The engineer shrugged. “We don’t know the mass of the object, but, yes, it is possible that an object launched on that trajectory might intercept us.

“Of course, I really can’t tell much with what I’ve got down here,” he added hopefully.

“All right Mr. Ludenemeyer. Come forward to the bridge. You might as well join the party too. But keep the drive hot!” he commanded as the engineering officer grinned and broke contact.

For the next several hours, there was nothing for the group to do but watch the unwavering green point of light and do makework extrapolations as new data arrived. Jenkins moodily sucked coffee bulbs until he knew his stomach was going to pay for it tomorrow and watched as the lines and projections grew on his screen.

Sharon drifted over to look over his shoulder. Normally that would have irritated Jenkins, but he found her presence comforting instead.

“Dr. Dolan,” he said as she made a move to drift back to Carlotti’s station, “could you explain to me why this system isn’t supposed to have life?”

“Because that’s an M2 star,” Sharon said, surprised.

“Yes, but why does that preclude life?” Jenkins looked apologetic. “Forgive me, but I am not very well versed on planetology.”

“Well, there are several things. M2s put out a lot less energy than our sun. Their surface temperature is around half that of the sun, you know, and that means the life zone—the area where water can exist as a liquid—is considerably closer to the star and much smaller than it is on a G-type like our sun.

“That introduces two problems. First, it’s much less likely that a planet’s orbit will fall within the life zone and in fact none of the planets in this system do, really.

“The second problem is that the drag from the star’s gravity will have slowed the rotations of the inner planets considerably. The outermost Mars-type has a rotation period several times that of Earth and the ones further in probably barely rotate at all. A very slow rotation usually makes conditions on a planet unsuitable for life.”

She paused. “At least that’s the pattern we’ve found so far.”

“And we’ve seen a lot of planets,” Jenkins added.

Oh yes, thought Sharon, we’ve seen lots of planets. But none you’d care to live on. None that could be like Earth again.

When the star drive had been developed, man had gone looking for real estate. The first expeditions had gone out to the nearest stars that might have Earthlike planets.

The results had been scientifically fascinating and uniformly disappointing. The expeditions had found planets, but none of them Earthlike. Every single star in this neck of the galaxy seemed to have its quota of Jovian gas giants, small desolate Mars-types and a few hot hellish Venerian worlds. But no Earthlike planets at all. No oxygen worlds, no seas of liquid water and no life.

“They’ve cut off their lasers,” DeRosa announced, scanning her console quickly.

“Yes, but there’s something else there now,” Carlotti said. “There’s a rocket exhaust of some kind.”

“What kind?” Jenkins demanded.

“Tell you in a minute.” He turned back to his instruments.

No one was terribly surprised. Although you could propel a ship all the way to its destination on lasers alone, it made more sense to use them just for the initial launch. Their projections of the object’s course had made allowances for a shift to a reaction engine at some point.

“We got a reading on their exhaust, Captain,” Carlotti said. “It’s hydrox.”

“What?”

“Hydrox,” the astronomer repeated. “You know, hydrogen-oxygen.”

Jenkins turned that over in his mind. An H2-02 rocket had considerably less specific impulse than the fusion torch the Maxwell used. A culture capable of building advanced laser launchers ought to be able to do better than that.

“If that’s the best they can do, then what the hell are they using to power those lasers?” DeLorenzo asked.

“That’s another very good question, Major,” Jenkins put in. “I hope we can get some answers before we have too many more of them.”

###

The mission had been hasty and ill-prepared. It was driven by a single imperative—reach the strangers quickly! Hence the laser launch.

But even in haste there are rules that must be obeyed and constraints to be considered. As the ship hurtled out, driven first by the bank of lasers and then by the thrust of its rockets, frantic negotiations continued in its wake. Decisions were reached, exceptions made and conventions set aside. At last the permission the ship’s captain had awaited since launch came blasting through on a tight beam of laser light.

###

“Captain, their rockets just went out.”

With a flip of his arms and a flick of his leg, Jenkins scooted over to look at the readout. “Where are they headed?”

Iron Alice punched in a few commands and scowled. “It doesn’t look like they’re headed anywhere,” she said. “Maybe it’s a rendezvous, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Wait a minute,” the astronomer called out. “I think I’m still getting something.”

“Cooling engines?” Jenkins suggested.

“I don’t know. I don’t think . . . hold it.” He fiddled frantically with his display and patterns of lines danced across the screen.

“Ion drive,” he said, looking up. “They just switched to an ion drive using cesium as the reaction mass.”

“Al, what’s their acceleration?”

“Take time to be sure. Right now just under one hundredth of a G. It may go higher.” She called up another display on her screen. “Then again it may not. If they hold their acceleration about where they have it now they’ll be on an intercept course with us.” She scowled at the screen. “It will have to go a little higher since presumably they are going to do a turn-around and start breaking at mid-course, but yeah, in about six weeks were gonna have company.”

“Constant acceleration drive,” said Jenkins. “Laser launch to give them an initial boost and then drive straight on. They can reach any place in this system in a few weeks.”

“So why wait until they were so far out to light up?” the pilot asked. “They could be here a hell of a lot sooner if they had turned on their drive as soon as the lasers shut down instead of using hydrox to start.”

“Maybe it takes time to light and they were in a hurry.”

The pilot frowned. “Maybe, but they still would have been ahead if they waited until the drive was ready instead of using those boosters.”

“I don’t think you’d want to turn on that ion drive too close to the habitat,” Carlotti said. “Between the electric field and the cesium ions it could interfere with a lot of space-based activities.”

“That explains the laser launcher, but not the hydrox rockets,” DeRosa said. “Why load yourself down with a lot of tankage and propellant when you’ve got an ion drive? You just don’t gain that much velocity.”

Sharon Dolan came up beside Jenkins. “Captain, would you explain something to me now?”

“If I can.”

“If those aliens are as advanced as we think they are, and if they’re in such a hurry to meet us, why don’t they use a fusion-powered ship?”

“I can think of several possible reasons. For one thing, a fusion torch is big. You need a separate fusion pile to drive the torch, plus whatever power source you use for your ship—in our case a second fusion pile.”

Sharon frowned, prettily, Jenkins thought. “But it is still a constant acceleration drive.”

“No, it’s a high acceleration drive, not a constant acceleration one,” Jenkins told her. “It can drive us at a steady acceleration for some weeks if it had to, but that’s not what it’s designed for.

“Basically a torch is supposed to produce a lot of thrust over a fairly short period of time. It’s not nearly as efficient as an ion engine, but it gives a hell of a push when we need it. And we need it. A starship has to be able to shed velocity fast when we break out from KOH drive. That takes very powerful engines.

“Besides that, a fusion torch is hideously expensive to run. It took an appreciable fraction of the deuterium and tritium mined over two years to enrich the hydrogen in the Maxwell’s tanks. You couldn’t do that for every ship in the system. We can barely afford to do it for the star ships we have operating.”

Sharon was silent for a moment watching the displays. Out of the corner of his eye Jenkins watched her.

“Do you think they can build a fusion torch?”

“Probably. A torch is just a modified fusion pile and they must have something like that on the ship to power the ion drive. An ion drive is much more efficient. It makes better use of its energy than nearly any other form of propulsion and it is ideally suited to constant acceleration missions.”

“Then why don’t we have one?”

“Two reasons. First, an ion drive by its nature has a relatively low maximum acceleration. We need a high maximum acceleration because we may not have much room to slow down when we break out. The second reason is we can’t build one capable of giving high enough acceleration to a ship to make it worthwhile.”

“So they’re more advanced,” Sharon said slowly, not liking the idea.

“Let’s just say they do some things more efficiently than we do.”

“If they’re so much more efficient, why don’t they use beamed power to power their ships?” Carlotti put in from where he had been listening. “That would give them efficiency and high acceleration.”

“Maybe they don’t know how,” Sharon suggested.

“They beam power from those power stations near the star out to the Colonies. For that matter, we use the same technique with our powersats.”

“I’ll tell you why not,” DeLorenzo said. “Because our alien friends are not fools. To power a ship you would have to concentrate the beam down to a few square meters. If it jiggles even just a little you have a sword of energy reaching out across your system. Any kind of accident or failure of control and poof!” He made a throw-away motion.

“Makes sense,” Ludenemeyer said. “Living in space habitats as they do, they would be terribly vulnerable to an accident like that.”

Sharon turned back to Jenkins. “What’s going to happen when they reach us?” she asked.

“That’s a very good question. I wish I knew the answer.”

“I wonder what the hell that ship looks like,” Ludenemeyer said thoughtfully. “An ion drive needs a long, long accelerator sticking out the back and a laser-launched ship wants some kind of big sail structure to catch the light. It must be an ugly sucker.”

“Their standards of beauty may be different from ours,” Aubrey said from his couch.

Ludenemeyer shrugged. “Hybrid propulsion systems like that are damned near impossible to make pretty by any standard.”

Aubrey smiled tolerantly. “Ethnocentrism?”

“Nope, engineering.”

“Can we get a visual image of them?” Jenkins called across the bridge.

Carlotti shook his head. “We don’t have anything designed for that kind of work. We could deploy one of the large arrays, I suppose, but that would take several days.”

“Damn,” Jenkins breathed. “A starship full of astronomical equipment and we don’t have anything that will track an object right in the planetary system.”

“That was hardly one of the parameters in our planning,” Carlotti told him.

###

Again the Ship’s Council met in the large forward conference room; this time Captain Jenkins and Ludenemeyer were present, along with Sharon Dolan and one or two other specialists. Although the meeting had been physically closed to keep down the crowds, screens all over the ship were tuned in. Clearly, this was the most critical meeting the Ship’s Council was ever likely to have and no one wanted to miss it.

Aubrey started off by bringing the Council, and through the screens, the rest of the ship’s complement, up to date.

“The upshot is,” he paused briefly and went on, “the aliens definitely know we are here. They have launched at least one ship out to meet us. We may assume we are under observation by instruments at least as good as our own.”

That produced a ripple throughout the room. Almost everyone at the table knew just how good modern astronomical instruments were. Even an object as small as the Maxwell could have little to hide at these distances.

“If we stay where we are the aliens will be in physical contact with us in less than six weeks. The question is,” he looked up and down the table, “what do we do?”

“Aren’t there some kind of rules about alien contact?” one of the Council members asked.

“Very sketchy,” Jenkins said. “Anyone who thinks they have seen any sign of intelligent non-humans is supposed to report immediately.”

“There was a lot of discussion about fifty or sixty years ago,” Sharon Dolan said from down the table. “There were proposals to establish a very elaborate system of rules to govern first contact, but eventually they all fell through. We realized we simply didn’t know enough about possible aliens to set firm guidelines.” And besides, we lost faith that there were any aliens, she thought.

“But the standing orders are to report immediately?” DeLorenzo asked sharply.

“Well, yes,” Jenkins said.

“That settles it then,” the major said firmly. “We run for Earth. Right now.”

“Captain, I believe you have considerable latitude in how you carry out your orders?” Aubrey put in. “Those orders were hardly drawn to cover a starship a hundred light-years out. They were drawn up to cover the situation in the solar system and they were not revised when we started sending out star-ships. Besides, what can we report? We don’t know anything.”

“We know there’s someone else out there,” DeLorenzo replied. “That’s enough.”

“I beg your pardon Major, but I don’t think it’s nearly enough,” Aubrey said. “After all, what can we tell Earth? Only that there are aliens here with a space-faring civilization. We know nothing else about them, not even what they look like. How much good would that information do Earth?”

“That’s enough.”

“Be reasonable, Major,” Aubrey went on. “It will take us months to get home and months to mount another expedition. Two or three years at least before an expedition can reach here again. What harm is there in waiting a while longer until we can report more accurately?”

“Plenty if we never make it home,” DeLorenzo told him.

“I see no reason to assume we won’t,” Aubrey said.

“Captain, what is our armament like?” DeLorenzo asked.

Jenkins blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Armament? How are we armed?”

“Well, we aren’t. I mean there are the pistols in the provost marshal’s locker. Six or eight of them, as I recall, but that’s it.”

“And Dr. Takiuji’s samurai sword,” DeLorenzo said with a tight grin. “But we’ve got nothing bigger. No missile launchers, no fighting lasers. And a ship that’s built to commercial standards.”

“There is always the fusion torch,” Ludenemeyer said. “Makes a pretty good weapon close in.”

“With no tracking and the slew rate of an arthritic snail,” DeLorenzo said. “No thank you.”

“This is a scientific expedition, not an attack,” Aubrey said stiffly.

“I’m not concerned about attack, Dr. Aubrey, I’m worried about defense.”

“Defense against what?”

“Them,” DeLorenzo gestured sunward.

“Major, we have been over this repeatedly. There is not one single shred of evidence they intend to attack us or anyone.”

“And there’s no evidence they don’t,” DeLorenzo said. “We need to get out of here now.”

“Formally, that is the captain’s decision,” Aubrey said carefully. “After all, this could be construed as a matter of ship’s safety.”

Jenkins looked up and down the table. And there’s no doubt which way you want me to decide, he thought, looking at the expectant faces. He didn’t like it, his instincts told him he was wrong. But there was no hard evidence to back him up.

“All right, we make contact,” Jenkins said firmly. “But we don’t do it here.”

“Where then?”

“In the main settlement belt. I want to get close enough to learn something and I want them to know we can come and go instantaneously.” He turned to his engineering officer.

“Ludenemeyer, how close to the center of their belt of habitation can you get us?”

“Depends on where we are positioned and what our relative energy profiles are like. I’d say pretty close.”

“Fine. We’ll jump down into the gravity well and aim for a stable position within the habitation zone. We’ll plan to undershoot rather than overshoot and try to close to our desired position on the torch.”

“Moving that close to the star will play hell with our observations,” Carlotti said gloomily.

“Doctor, I don’t think astronomy is our main mission anymore,” Aubrey said.

“Oh and Ludenemeyer . . .”

“Yessir?”

“Once we jump, the drive stays hot. I want to be able to jump out of there at a moment’s notice.”

“Yessir, but we can’t update our position often enough.”

“I’m not concerned about that. I just want to be able to jump instantly. We’ll worry about where we are later.”

He looked up and down the table.

“If that’s all then . . .” Aubrey said, and picked up his computer.

“Not quite all,” DeLorenzo said as the others made to rise.

“Major?”

DeLorenzo turned to Jenkins. “Scuttling charges.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I want permission to rig scuttling charges in case we are in danger of capture.”

“Absurd!” someone further down the table exploded.

“Captain, your decision carries with it enormous risks for our entire race. We need to be able to destroy the ship, or at least the most important parts of it to prevent their capture.”

“I don’t see that it’s necessary, Major,” Jenkins said soothingly. “We can jump out of here as fast as we could blow ourselves up.”

“What if something knocks a hole in our hull?”

“That’s not very likely.”

“But we can’t jump unless we can run the drive field over the entire hull, can we? One good hole and we’re stuck here.”

“Major, long before anything could punch that big a hole in us, we’d be out of here. Meanwhile, a destruct mechanism would be at least as big a threat to us as it would be to our aliens.”

###

Suki sat in one corner of the Maple Lounge intent on the go board in front of him. On every side of him an electronic wind rustled the images of the sun-dappled leaves on the walls. The Japanese ignored them, just as he ignored the two or three other people in the lounge.

He had gotten into the habit of coming here every day at this time to play the ancient Japanese game with anyone who cared to challenge him. Most days that was Father Simon, but today the priest had not come.

“What are you doing?” Carlotti asked as he meandered up to Suki’s table.

“Fuseki. Beginnings. Openings, you call them in chess.” He pointed out the scattering of black and white stones on the board.

Carlotti stared at the board, divided by dark lines into a nineteen by nineteen grid with a half-dozen stones sitting on intersections near the corners. “You study them like chess openings?”

“Yes. For many hundreds of years. Fuseki are very important in go. They make shape that determines the rest of the game.

“Here,” he gestured at two seemingly unconnected stones in the lower left hand corner of the board. “Those two establish that black will be very strong in the corner, but not so strong towards the center. That is an invitation to white to build territory there.”

“But those are just two stones. Couldn’t white still take that corner?”

“Oh yes. But it would be difficult. Perhaps not too profitable. While white is doing this, black would be gaining advantage elsewhere. Perhaps white would win the corner, perhaps not. But he would lose more than he gains.”

The elderly Japanese looked down at the board again.

“In go one must consider the whole board. In fuseki, the board is open. There are many opportunities. Each player must decide where his advantage lies.”

Carlotti nodded. “What you’re saying is that it’s more like cooperation than competition. Each player stakes out territory and doesn’t try to cut into the other player’s territory.”

“Each player strives for the greatest advantage. To clash too soon is not advantageous.” He paused. “Much like life, you see.”

“I see.” Carlotti looked again at the board with its few stones. “By the way, we’re going to be making another jump shortly. We’re staying to study the aliens, but we will jump inward to be closer to their colonies.”

The Japanese nodded and continued to place stones on the board in an opening pattern.

###

Deep in the bowels of the Maxwell, Billy Toyoda half-sat, half-floated and watched the data pouring in. His world was a glowing three-dimensional construct and he was at the very center of it.

The computer room was within Spin, but it was high up toward the central shaft. Gravity was never strong here and it was easy for the Japanese-American computerman to imagine himself floating in a sea of data.

For him, cyberspace was a dark vastness shot through with neon-bright lines that wavered and pulsed and broke apart and reformed in ever more elaborate arabesques.

From here he saw the world around him as the ship saw it, in raw inputs or neatly organized ranks of massaged data. He floated and watched as the information poured in, totally immersed in it.

But somewhere a fly was buzzing. Caught in the web of glowing, throbbing sense impressions there was a discordance, something beating futilely against the structures trying to get out—or trying to get in.

What? Oh yeah, the comm circuit. Slowly Billy pulled his way back up to the real world and reached over to answer the call.

Peter Jenkins stared distastefully at the young man with the brush-cut hair who blinked at him out of the screen.

“Yessir?” he slurred. “What can I do for you?”

If Toyoda had been a vacuum jack or even an ordinary crew member, Jenkins would have been all over him for being drunk on the job. But he recognized that the man was coming out of a cybertrance and kept his temper. After all, part of Toyoda’s job was to be intimately familiar with the Maxwell’s cyberspace.

“Mr. Toyoda,” Jenkins snapped, “we’re making a major change in the mission. We’re not going to deploy the rest of the arrays and I need an inventory of computing resources that frees up and how we can use them to help us contact these aliens.”

Billy blinked and smiled slowly. “Oh wow, Telescope’s not going to like that.”

“Who?”

“Telescope. The AI that runs the arrays.”

“Right now that’s the least of our worries, Mr. Toyoda. How soon can you get me that information?”

“The inventory? Maybe three hours. You want recommendations on what we can use where?” He shrugged. “That’ll take a little longer, maybe another five, six hours.”

“As quickly as you can, Mr. Toyoda,” said the captain and broke contact.

“He’s damn good at his job,” Iron Alice said neutrally from her little corner of the screen as Jenkins continued to scowl at the place where Toyoda’s face had been.

“No argument there.”

“So why are you so down on him?”

Jenkins sighed. “I suppose because he represents everything that is wrong with this expedition.”

The pilot waited.

“You know why he’s aboard?”

She shrugged. “Not my department.”

“He’s here because his uncle thought it would do him good to get off Earth. And his uncle is a congressman from Middle California. Half the crew is like that and the passengers are worse. Dammit, this crew wasn’t selected. It was negotiated!”

“And?”

“And all of a sudden we’re in shit up to our necks. It would have been hard enough to run this ship on a simple astronomical mission, but this . . .”

“So why don’t we pack up and run?”

“Because the Ship’s Council insists we stay.”

Iron Alice carefully said nothing.

“Look Al, we’re truck drivers on this one. Our job is to take the scientists where they want to go, give them the opportunity to see what they want to see and to ‘assist in any way possible’ as our orders put it.”

“You couldn’t convince them?”

Jenkins made a face. “I didn’t even try. The consensus was so strongly against me it wasn’t even worth opening my mouth.”

He paused for a minute before going on. “The Council does have a point. There is no clear threat to the ship or the crew. They want to stay and see what we can learn.” He shrugged. “So we stay.”

“I wish you’d quit trying to make excuses for them,” DeRosa said.

“I’m not making excuses. I’m trying to see their side of it. You know, Aubrey’s right in a way. Humans do have to learn how to get along with each other better and that means we need to work by consensus rather than command. We’re pretty old fashioned in the Space Force, I guess.”

DeRosa made a face. “I’d like to see someone run a ship consensually.”

“When it gets as big as this one it just about has to be run that way,” Jenkins responded. “At least partially.”

“Partially. So we stay. But with the drive hot.”

“With the drive hot,” Jenkins agreed. “I want to be able to get out of here instantly if we have to.”

###

“Based on the telescope data we have done a reconstruction of those colonies,” Carlotti said. Instantly, his face was replaced by the diagram. A pointer moved to the center of the picture. “The core is that cluster of rotating cylinders in the center. We think that’s where the aliens live. The mirror behind it catches sunlight, reflects it off the smaller forward mirror and that shoots it down the center of the tube cluster.”

“Neat,” Ludenemeyer said. “I suppose that forward mirror also serves as a radiation shield for direct solar radiation.”

“We think so. M-type stars are notoriously variable, sometimes as much as twenty percent. That forward mirror is backed by a thick layer of something that looks pretty dense. There may also be an electromagnetic field around it to help control charged particles. That and the spacing would keep down the secondaries. The outsides of the central cylinders are apparently thick enough to provide adequate shielding from other directions.”

Ludenemeyer nodded. “And they control the amount of solar radiation arriving at the colony by changing the size of the mirror. Neat.”

“And the mirrors helped to shield the colonies from us,” Jenkins said.

“Precisely. The colonies on the other side of the system were hidden by the glare from the sun and the ones on this side were covered by their mirrors. Those mirrors radiate remarkably little infrared from their backs, by the way. The reflecting surfaces must be incredible.”

“How big is this thing?” Ludenemeyer asked.

“We’re not exactly sure, but we think each of those cylinders is several kilometers long.”

Ludenemeyer whistled. “That’s a lot of real estate. What do you think the population is, anyway?”

The astronomer shrugged. “Tell me how big the aliens are, how well they stand crowding and how efficient their life support systems are and I might hazard a guess. I’d say it would have to be in the tens of thousands and it might be an order of magnitude above that.”

“And how many colonies have you found?” Jenkins asked.

“There are something over a thousand complexes we have identified so far. Most of them have a structure like this in them, but they have other structures as well.”

“That makes sense,” the engineer said. “With no planet to run to you wouldn’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. Besides, there are some jobs that are better done in separate complexes.” He grinned. “You don’t want to put your petrochemical plant in the same atmosphere as your apartments.”

“What about the aliens themselves?” Jenkins asked.

The astronomer pursed his lips. “That is somewhat harder. You understand we are handicapped because we don’t have a xenologist on board, or even a linguist. As a planetographer, Dr. Dolan is the closest we have to an expert on alien species since it’s a hobby of hers, but we’re still severely handicapped. As for the linguists, well, we’ll just have to do the best we can.” Carlotti sighed. “It’s hardly an ideal situation.”

“Well, do the best you can,” Jenkins told him. “And keep us posted. The more we can learn and the faster we can learn it, the better off we’ll be.”

###

The cafeteria was crowded and noisy. Most of the tables were taken by the time Sharon got her tray filled and there was still a long line in by the serving area. In another twelve hours, the Maxwell would be spinning down again for another jump and this was the last chance many of the ship’s complement would have to digest a meal on a calm stomach for several days.

But this time, Sharon noticed, no one was complaining about jumping spun down.

“Sharon! Dr. Dolan. Over here.” Major Autro DeLorenzo beckoned to her from a table he shared with several other people.

Sharon wove her way through the room and dropped into the seat next to him.

“Thank you. I was afraid I was going to have to eat standing up.” The others at the table, one of the maintenance people and a young Oriental who Sharon vaguely associated with computers, ignored her and went on with their own conversation.

DeLorenzo gave another of his infectious smiles. “Eat, drink and be merry. So, what did you think of the Ship’s Council meeting?”

Sharon paused, fork halfway to her mouth. “Well, I’m glad we’re staying, of course. I suppose of all the people on the ship I have the most to gain from it professionally.”

“And we all stand to lose,” DeLorenzo said. “I tell you, Sharon, I think this is a dangerous business.”

“Why didn’t you object when the captain said we’d jump deeper into the system?”

DeLorenzo smiled again, but grimly. “The captain is smarter than that weasel Aubrey gives him credit for. By appearing in the middle of them rather than waiting for them to come to us we gain the initiative. We also make it plain we can flick out of their space in an instant.”

“And that keeps us safe?”

“It will help, surely. But the only true safety is in leaving immediately. Unfortunately, the captain will not stand up to the Ship’s Council to go that far.”

Sharon concentrated on her food and said nothing.

DeLorenzo caught the change in her mood immediately. “Oh, our captain is a good man, Sharon, do not misunderstand me. But at bottom he is weak. He does not have the strength to do what he knows to be right.”

“That’s the first time I have ever heard running away characterized as courageous,” she said tartly.

“Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is to be a coward.” He tapped his chest. “Now me, I am often a great coward. It has kept me alive.” He smiled that infectious little-boy smile of his again.

“I think it’s blasphemous!” another voice put in. Sharon looked up and saw that a dumpy woman in a technician’s smock had put her tray down at the other end of the table. “It’s blasphemous to even think about dealing with these things.” She sat down heavily, deliberately. “Not that that counts for much on this ship.”

“Perhaps you are right,” DeLorenzo said politely and turned his attention to his food.

“Darned right I’m right,” the woman said. “Oh, no good is going to come of this, I can tell you.” She sniffed. “Not that this trip deserves any good, the way they treat people.”

Sharon kept her eyes on her plate and gradually the woman’s litany of complaints dropped to a grumble. Through it all the computer type kept talking to his friend as though there was no one else there.

“Okay look,” Billy Toyoda said earnestly. “How do we know what we know? I mean how do you know I’m sitting here talking to you? You don’t really. All you know is the input from your senses and what your nervous system tells you after it’s processed that shit.” He waved a hand airily. “You’re constructing your reality, man. You’re building it up out of that sense data and you call the result ‘reality’.”

His companion frowned, not really liking the course the conversation was taking. “So what’s that got to do with you and the computers?”

“It’s a different construct is all. Different i/o, different senses. I get a different reality.”

“So you’re saying there is no real reality?”

Billy grinned and ran his hand through the rough-cut black mop of hair. “Reality? Man, reality is just a bigger simulation. We’re all running around inside some computer that’s simulating the entire universe. Not even a good one at that.”

“Huh?”

“Precision. The thing only goes between plus and minus ten to the thirty-eighth on the constants of the universe.”

“How do you figure that?”

Billy waved a hand. “Look at the cosmological constant and some of the other magic numbers. They all fall right around that range.”

“Um, interesting. But what do we do about it?”

“Nah, man. We’re inside, see? We can’t do anything about it.”

“Well, what happens if the computer gets shut off?”

“We never know. When we’re not running, we don’t exist. Probably happens all the time.”

At the end table, Lulu Pine hunched deeper over her meal. Blasphemy, she thought. Even for this ungodly place that was a new level of blasphemy.

###

Sharon Dolan hung in darkness before the port and sang to the stars that bloomed around her.

The song was an ancient Irish lullaby about a woman held prisoner beneath an elf hill. Someone lost and alone and wanting desperately to be back in her home.

The thirty-foot bubble about her displayed the stars like a planetarium. But these stars were real, not optical projections. Only the double layer of curved window separated the singer from the depths of space.

Her voice was not strong, but it was sweet and pure as she crooned the words in a language she did not understand. Her mother had sung it to her, long ago in a radiation-scarred land light-years away. A neighbor who spoke Irish had told her what it meant once.

On the ship’s blueprints the bubbles were called auxiliary observation stations, although what anyone was supposed to observe from them that couldn’t be seen by the hull-mounted arrays or the deployed sensors wasn’t clear. There were four of them, spaced equidistantly around the blunt nose of the Maxwell.

But if you didn’t mind zero-G you could darken the room and float in the midst of the universe.

For Sharon, the song was comforting and full of yearning at the same time. It held longing for the land half-remembered and the warmer, greener, better land that she knew only through the memory of others.

Sharon was vaguely aware that the door had opened behind her, but she kept her attention on the blazing heavens and continued with her song. Her voice trailed away and she floated silently in the starry sphere.

“That was beautiful, Miss Dolan,” Father Simon said at last.

Sharon flinched at the broken silence and then relaxed. “Thank you, Father,” she said without taking her eyes off the panorama.

Father Simon was the only person on the ship who called her “Miss Dolan.” Titles for marital status had largely gone out of fashion and everyone either called her Sharon or Dr. Dolan. Somehow the old form of address was comforting in the priest’s mouth.

“What does it mean?”

Sharon shrugged, not willing to share the secret of the song with anyone. “It’s an old lullaby. In Irish.”

He swam forward and for a while they both stared out at the sun before them and the star field all around.

“Limbo,” Father Simon murmured at last.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said Limbo. Souls floating suspended between Heaven and Hell.”

“But no Eden,” Sharon said.

Father Simon turned to her. “You expected one?”

“No, not really.” But I hoped. “You know, it’s funny. We knew that Earth-type planets would be rare, but we expected intelligence to be rarer yet. And of course we always assumed where we found intelligence we’d find Earthlike planets. But here we’ve found intelligent beings and we still haven’t found our first Earthlike world.”

“Still even without the aliens there are planets here for you to study.”

“Yes. Mars-type planets.” Sharon shrugged. “Oh, the work on the Martiform planets is valuable, but we’ve seen those before, more than fifty of them in the last eight years. Still, I’m sure there will be things to learn here.”

“But you hoped for more.”

Sharon sighed. “Yes, Father, I had hoped for more. It would have been tremendously exciting to find an Earth-type planet for a change.”

“So far there is only one of those.”

“I know,” Sharon said quietly.

“You’re a Spacer, aren’t you?” Father Simon asked.

“I am now. Originally I was Irish.”

Father Simon nodded. Ireland had escaped the worst of the War in Europe, but conditions were still brutally hard. The bombs that had brought an end to thousands of years of European culture had not completely spared Europe’s westernmost outpost. There were a lot of Irish in space.

“How long has it been since you’ve been to Confession?” he asked.

“I said I was Irish; I didn’t say I was a Catholic. My family was originally from Belfast.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Sharon shrugged. “No problem. One of the things the War did was put an end to a lot of the sectarianism.”

Along with most of the Irish, thought Father Simon.

“Anyway,” Sharon went on, “I became a planetographer because I hoped—” she smiled deprecatingly—“I hoped we might find someplace where we could get a second chance.”

“A new Eden? That’s what drew you to this expedition?”

“Well, in a way.” She shrugged. “Oh, I knew by the time I finished my studies how unlikely that was. But I always hoped.

“And besides,” she concluded practically, “by that time I was committed to my career. Making an interstellar voyage is a considerable help in my career.”

They both fell silent again under the light of alien stars.

“And you?” Sharon asked at last. “Why did you come?”

Father Simon smiled nervously. “Well, astrometry is my field, after all. The chance to get a longer baseline was nearly irresistible. When the opportunity arose I was fortunate enough to be chosen to represent the Vatican Observatory on this expedition. No great story there, I’m afraid. I was available, I was called, and I came.”

“You’re not an exile, then?”

“Far from it. But are there exiles among us?”

“Lots of them. Major DeLorenzo, Dr. Takiuji. Maybe a third of the ship’s complement are exiles in some way or another.”

“Even Dr. Aubrey?”

Sharon smiled. “Especially Dr. Aubrey. You know about the disagreement in the Scientists’ Union?”

“No,” said Father Simon, “I didn’t know.”

“You are a member, aren’t you?”

The priest looked a little embarrassed. “As a matter of fact, no. I’m not much of a joiner, you see.”

“Oh,” said Sharon, slightly taken aback. “Well, there was a considerable contest for the presidency in the last election and Aubrey lost. So they offered him the leadership of this expedition.”

“Exile? That’s rather heavy punishment for losing an election, isn’t it?”

“Dr. Aubrey called it an ‘opportunity’,” Sharon said. “Besides, it wasn’t just the election. There were some complaints about tactics, you see.”

“My goodness, I wasn’t aware that scientific politics got that rough. It sounds like astronomers trying to get telescope time for their projects.”

Sharon smiled. “There is a lot of similarity.”

“Still, it seems like an odd punishment. To send astronomers out to study the stars.”

“Oh, it’s not punishment, not exactly. It’s just that certain governments or institutions function better when some people aren’t around. It’s a convenient way to getting them out of circulation until things cool down.”

“I see.”

“We should be thankful, actually. It had a lot to do with the decision to give this expedition to the Americans, Europeans, Japanese and some of the other lesser powers.”

“I thought that was a matter that was worked out nationally.”

“It was, but having the leaders of the Scientists Union backing the American proposal on the condition that Aubrey go along didn’t hurt.”

“You seem very knowledgeable on all this,” Father Simon said.

Sharon shrugged. “I’m a people watcher. Or maybe a gossip.” She paused. “I guess I’m going to get the chance to watch more than people this time.”

“So it would seem.”

They stared at the stars for a while. “What do you think they’re like?” Sharon asked at last.

“The aliens?” The priest spread his hands. “I really haven’t any basis to form an opinion. Besides, you’re the planetologist.”

Sharon made a face. “That doesn’t make me a xenologist. I can probably tell you more about their home world than I can about them.”

“Well, we certainly have a mystery,” Father Simon said. “I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”

“Doesn’t it scare you?”

The priest considered before answering. “There is a certain unease. But it is confirmation that God’s creation is at least as rich and diverse as ever we dreamed.”

She turned back to the viewing bubble. “Wonder what they’ll make of us?”

“And we of them,” Father Simon replied.

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