THREE

Beth Marble felt life coming back into her like a muddy, warm flow. Seeing Cliff first made her last thoughts—those fears of decades ago, as the sedative swarmed up in her—trickle away. He’s here! Looking the same. It worked! We’re at Glory, then.

A few minutes ago in relative time, she had felt the old clammy panic. This could be the last sight I see.… And the adrenaline surge of dread still pounded through her. And I thought I was so ready, so sure.…

She smiled at this memory of her former self and carefully put that past aside. What was that mantra in high school? Be here now.

Cliff spoke, his words warm and steady. “Everything’s fine.”

She answered with a croaking, “If you’re here, it’s gotta be.”

His hands on her felt wonderful and she followed his whispered orders. Lie back, just take it, enjoy. Smell the cool metallic air. The spreading glow of tissues swelling, blood flowing at speeds her cells had not known for years, tingling, surges of pleasure as her senses revived … Hey, I could get to like this.

Then she heard the growl of the ship.

The vast majority of the crew had gone into sleep before SunSeeker even started, but as pilot she had stayed up for over a year as Seeker gathered speed. It felt good, to be at the helm of a starship, she recalled—even if the yoke helm was nearly superfluous, since electronics really steered the magnetics and lepton-catalytic fusion burn.

So she knew the thrumming long bass notes that told her the ship was running full bore. She didn’t need to hear that; she could feel it.

And the subtle tenor in the background, when Seeker was in reversed configuration, and so decelerating—it wasn’t there.

She listened hard as Cliff’s hands welcomed her back into the world, and no, they weren’t at Glory. Something was wrong.

*   *   *

Redwing’s well-managed face was a study in guarded reluctance.

He did not like any of the alternatives on the table. Nobody did. But Cliff could see in the doubting downturn of his mouth that he did not want to forge ahead into long, lean years, hoping the drive would improve.

Abduss scribbled on a work slate. By this time, Cliff could read his expression pretty well. The man was steady and reliable, risk averse, with an automatic distrust of radical new ideas—just right for crewing the long years out here. Yet despite himself, Abduss was trying out the idea, and liking it. Now he had a share in a great discovery, and it was dawning that he wanted more. So did Cliff, for that matter.

But mostly, Cliff wanted to live. With Beth. They could marry, after the longest courtship in history.

Cliff knew enough to let the silence in their wardroom lengthen. Beth sensed the score now, and her careful look took in the tension: Redwing’s folded hands, Abduss and Mayra keeping their eyes on their slates. The background rumble of the ramscoop fusion engines was like a persistent reminder; Newton’s laws don’t wait. Redwing stared into space. In the end, Abduss looked up. “We could make such a maneuver, yes. But very vigilantly.”

“What do you make of it, Beth?” Redwing asked softly.

“I’m pretty sure the ship can be helmed in that accurately,” she said. “It’s within specs, the delta-V and aiming. I can tune the comm deck AIs to smooth it a bit. It’ll be a ten-day maneuver. But I do wish I knew why the engines aren’t working to design.”

“Don’t we all,” Redwing said ruefully, unfolding his hands. “But we play the hand we’re dealt.”

It was as though fresh air had come into the room. Four faces awaited the captain’s word.

They had awakened him to make this decision, and so far he had shied away from it. Now Cliff had a slender moment to wonder at his own ideas, if he’d followed them far enough. Life’s a gamble. He had a gathering, foreboding sense—and a heart-pounding curiosity that would not give him rest. Life persists.

Redwing’s mouth firmed up. “Let’s do it.”

*   *   *

Beth had the flight plan Alfvén numbers tuned just about right. She found it gratifying to see the ship respond to her helm, even though it was a bit spongy. It took eleven days to make the swerve. There were dark days when it was not clear whether Seeker was responding correctly to the maneuver. The magnetic scoops rippled with stresses but performed to code. With Abduss checking her every move, she brought them through, though not without some polite arguments.

Cliff and Beth spent a lot of time in their room together. The warm comforts of bed helped.

She preferred taking ginger snaps from her recovery allotment of “indulgences.” These she had selected for just this, a crisp bite floating on sugar, to the richness of chocolate chip, which she also had because Cliff liked them. Though with either she always had a cup of cocoa, the warm brown mama she needed, Cliff had carried none but stern Kona coffee in his wakeup stash. No cookies at all.

“What do you remember about going into the chill-sleep?” she asked while they licked crumbs off each other.

He smiled dreamily. “They said I would feel a small prick in my left hand and I thought that was funny but couldn’t laugh. Could barely crack a smile. Then—waking up.”

Beth grinned and finished her cocoa. “I thought of the same dumb joke. Not that, in your case, I know what a small one feels like.”

The remark got more laughter than it deserved, but that was just fine, too.

Beth said with a thin voice, “Y’know, looking at that round thing from this angle, first thing I thought was, it seems like a giant wok with a hole at its base.”

“You’re thinking about food again. Time to eat.”

Her old fear subsided while she worked, and to keep it at bay she indulged herself with Cliff. He was the sun of her solar system, had been since the first week they met during the crew selections trials. Her parents had both died the year before in a car crash, and that cast a shadow over her application, in the eyes of the review board. They wanted crew with a long history of steady performance, no emotional unsettled issues that might boil over years later.

Losing the two central figures of her life had eclipsed her joy, made her withdraw. She had not thought of the affair with Cliff as an antidote to her grief, but its magic had played out that way. He brought out the sun again, eclipse over, and it showed up in everything she did. Especially in her psych exams and, more tellingly, in the return of her social skills. Later, in training, she had learned that about the time she met Cliff, she was slated to be cut in the next winnowing. As she put it later, “Then Cliffy happened to me.” The visible changes in her had saved her slot. Then her performance at electromagnetic piloting, a still-evolving new discipline, had excelled.

She was here because of him. She let him know that, in long, passionate bouts of lovemaking. Sex was the flip side of death, she had always thought—the urge to leave something behind, ordained by evolution way back in the unconscious. Their sweaty hours “in the sack” (not a phrase she liked, but it sure fit here, because Cliff used a hammock) certainly seemed to confirm the idea, as never before in her admittedly rather scant love life. At meals, she was afraid that it showed in her face, which now reddened at the slightest recollection of how different she was now, wanton and happy and well out of the eclipse shadow.

One evening, after she had set them in a long, curving arc toward the bowl, the captain allowed spirits to be broken out. They held a sort of impromptu group brainstorming session, with Mayra presiding as de facto referee. Ideas flew back and forth. What would they find up ahead? What the hell could the bowl be? Squeezebulbs were lifted, and lifted again. Beth got them all laughing. There was singing, predictably awful, which made more laughter. The captain drank more than the rest of them put together and she began to understand the pressures the man was under.