‘But it's the starship I want to see.’

‘For that you will have to wait.’

‘I have no time. I have no time,’ rasped Tanayama in a voice that was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. A fit of coughing shook him again.

And Wendel said in a low voice that perhaps only Tanayama heard, ‘Even your will cannot move the Universe.’

The three days devoted to officialdom in what was unofficially known as Hyper City had passed grindingly, and now the interlopers were gone.

‘Even so,’ said Tessa Wendel to Crile Fisher, ‘it will take two or three more days to recover and get back to work with full intensity.’ She looked haggard and intensely displeased as she said, ‘What a vile old man.’

Fisher had no trouble divining the reference to be to Tanayama. ‘He's a sick old man.’

Wendel shot an angry look at him. ‘Are you defending him?’

‘Just stating a fact, Tessa.’

She lifted a finger in admonishment. ‘I am quite certain that that miserable relic was as irrational and unreasonable in days past when he was not sick, or, for that matter, when he was not old. How long has he been Director of the Office?’

‘He's a fixture. Over thirty years. And before that he was Chief Deputy for almost as long and probably the real power behind a succession of three or four figurehead Directors. And no matter how old or sick he gets, he'll stay Director till he dies - maybe for three days afterward, while people wait to make sure he doesn't rise from the dead.’

‘I gather you think this is funny.’

‘No, but what can you do but laugh at the spectacle of a man who, without open power, without even being known to the general public, has kept everyone in the government in fear and subjection for nearly half a century simply because he has firm control over everyone's disreputable secrets and would not hesitate to make use of them.’

‘And they endure him?’

‘Oh yes. There's not a person in the government who has ever been willing to sacrifice his own career with certainty, merely on the chance of bringing down Tanayama.’

‘Even now when his hold on matters must be growing tenuous?’

‘You're making a mistake. His grip may fail with death, but until his actual death that grip of his will never be tenuous. It will be the last that goes, sometime after his heart stops.’

‘What drives people so?’ asked Wendel with distaste. ‘Is there no desire to let go early enough to have a chance to die in peace?’

‘Not Tanayama. Never. I wouldn't say I'm an intimate of his, but in fifteen years or so, I have made contact with him now and then, never without being badly bruised in the process. I knew him when he was still vigorous, and I always knew he would never stop. To answer your earlier question, different things drive different people, but in Tanayama's case, it's hatred.’

‘I should think so,’ said Wendel. ‘It shows. No-one that hateful can fail to hate. But who does Tanayama hate?’

‘The Settlements.’

‘Oh, he does?’ Wendel was obviously remembering that she was a Settler from Adelia. ‘I've never heard a Settler say a kind word for Earth either. And you know my feelings for anyplace without variable gravity.’

‘I'm not talking dislike, Tessa, or distaste or contempt. I'm talking blind scarlet hatred. Almost any Earthman dislikes the Settlements. They have all the latest. They're quiet, uncrowded, comfortable, middle-class. They have ample food, ample recreation, no bad weather, no poor. They have robots that are kept smoothly out of sight. It's only natural for people who consider themselves deprived to dislike those who seem to have everything. But with Tanayama, it's active boiling hatred. I think he would like to see the Settlements destroyed, everyone.’

‘Why, Crile?’

‘My own theory is that what gets him is none of the things I have listed. What he can't stand is the cultural homogeneity of the Settlements. Do you know what I mean?’

‘No.’

‘The people of the Settlements select themselves. They select people like themselves. There's a shared culture, even, to some extent, a shared physical appearance on each Settlement. Earth, on the other hand, is, and through all of history has been, a wild mixture of cultures, all enriching each other, competing with each other, suspicious of each other. Tanayama and many other Earthmen - myself, for instance - consider such a mixture to be a source of strength, and feel that cultural homogeneity on the Settlements weakens them and, in the long run, shortens their potential life span.’

‘Well, then, why hate the Settlements for possessing something you consider a disadvantage to them? Does Tanayama hate us for being better off and for being worse off? It doesn't make sense.’

‘It doesn't have to. Who would bother hating, if it had to be reasoned out into sensibleness first? Perhaps - just perhaps - Tanayama is afraid that the Settlements will succeed too well and will prove cultural homogeneity to be a good thing after all. Or perhaps he thinks that the Settlements are as anxious to destroy the Earth as he himself is to destroy the Settlements. The matter of the Neighbor Star infuriated him.’

‘The fact that Rotor discovered the Neighbor Star and did not inform the rest of us?’

‘More than that. They did not bother to warn us that it was speeding toward the Solar System.’

‘They might not have known, I suppose.’

‘Tanayama would never believe that. I'm sure that he feels that they knew and deliberately refused to warn us, hoping that we would be caught unprepared, and that Earth, or at least Earth's civilization, would be destroyed.’

‘Has it been decided that the Neighbor Star will approach closely enough to damage us? I haven't heard that . It's my understanding that most astronomers think it will pass at a great enough distance to leave us substantially untouched. Have you heard differently?’

Fisher shrugged. ‘No, I haven't, but I think it feeds Tanayama's hatred to believe that there is danger here. And from that, you move logically to the notion that superluminal flight is what we must have in order to locate an Earth-like world elsewhere. Then we can transfer as much of Earth's population as possible to that other world - if the worst comes to worst. You'll have to admit that's sensible.’

‘It is, but you don't have to imagine destruction, Crile. It is a natural feeling that humanity ought to spread outward even if Earth remains perfectly safe. We've moved out to the Settlements and reaching for the stars is a logical next step, and for that next step, we must have superluminal travel.’

‘Yes, but Tanayama would find that a cold view. The colonization of the Galaxy is something I'm sure he is willing to leave to generations to come. What he wants for himself is to find Rotor and punish it for having abandoned the Solar System without regard for the rest of the human community. He wants to live to see that and that's why he keeps pushing you, Tessa.’

‘He can push all he wants, and it won't help him. He's a dying man.’

‘I wonder. Modern medical procedures can perform marvels and I'm sure the doctors will go all out for Tanayama.’

‘Even modern medicine can only go so far. I asked the doctors.’

‘And they answered? I would have supposed that the question of Tanayama's health was a state secret.’

‘Not to me, under the circumstances, Crile. I went to the medical team that attended the Old Man here and told them that I was anxious to build an actual ship capable of carrying human beings to the stars, and that I wanted to do so before Tanayama died. I asked them how much time I had.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘I had a year. That's what they said. At the most. They urged me to hurry.’

‘Can you do it in one year?’

‘In one year? Of course not, Crile, and I'm glad of it. I find pleasure in the fact that that poisonous person won't live to see it. What are you making faces about, Crile? Does it bother you that I make so cruel a remark?’

‘It's a petty remark, anyway, Tessa. That Old Man, however poisonous, has done all this. He's made Hyper City possible.’

‘Yes, but for his own purposes, not mine. And not Earth's or humanity's. And I'm allowed to have my pettiness, too. I am sure that Director Tanayama never once pitied anyone he considered his enemy or lightened the pressure of his foot on that enemy's throat by a dyne. And I imagine he doesn't expect pity or mercy from anyone else. He would probably despise, as a weakling, anyone who offered it.’

Fisher still looked unhappy. ‘How long will it take, Tessa?’

‘How can anyone say? It might take for ever. Even if everything broke reasonably well, I don't see how it could take less than five years at the least.’

‘But why? You already have superluminal flight.’

Wendel sat up straight. ‘No, Crile. Don't be naïve. All I have is a laboratory demonstration. I can take a light object - a Ping-Pong ball - in which a tiny hyperatomic motor makes up 90 per cent of the mass, and move it superluminally. A ship, however, with people aboard, is a totally different thing. We'll have to be certain, and for that five years is optimistic. I tell you that before the days of modern computers and the kind of simulations they make possible, five years would be an unrealizable dream. Even fifty years might have been.’

Crile Fisher shook his head, and said nothing.

Tessa Wendel watched him thoughtfully, then said, almost testily, ‘What's the matter with you? Are you in such a great hurry also?’

Fisher said soothingly, ‘I'm sure you're as anxious to get this done as anyone, but I do long for a practical hyperspatial ship.’

‘You, more than someone else?’

‘I, quite a bit.’

‘Why?’

‘I'd like to go to the Neighbor Star.’

She glared at him. ‘Why? Are you dreaming of reuniting with the wife you abandoned?’

Fisher had never discussed Eugenia with Tessa Wendel in any detail, and he had no intention of being trapped into it now.

He said, ‘I have a daughter out there. I think you can understand that, Tessa. You have a son.’

So she did. He was in his early twenties, attending Adelia University, and he occasionally wrote his mother.

Wendel's face softened. ‘Crile,’ she said, ‘you mustn't allow yourself false hopes in this. I'll grant you that since they knew about the Neighbor Star, that's where they went. With merely hyper-assistance, however, the trip must have taken over two years. We can't be sure that Rotor survived such a trip. And even if they did, the chances of finding a suitable planet around a red dwarf star is just about zero. Having survived that far, they might then have traveled on in search of a suitable planet. Where? And how would we find them?’