Her deepening solitude must be frightful. The year-captain often yearns to extend some sort of comfort to her that would take the place of the ever more tenuous contact with her sister: to sweep her into his arms, to hold her close, to permit her to feel the simple proximity of another human being. But he does not dare. He is afraid of giving offense, or perhaps of frightening her. And he is afraid, also, of certain upwelling inchoate emotions of his own. He has no idea how far things might go once he lets them begin, and he fears letting them begin.
Noelle’s classic beauty no longer seems quite so marmoreal to him. He has started, since the time that that apparition of her intruded on his lovemaking with Julia, to admit to himself the existence of a feeling of something as uncomplicated as desire for her. Why else had she entered his mind at that moment in the cubicle, if not that hidden feelings, feelings to which even he himself had had no access up till now, were beginning to break through to the surface?
But he keeps his distance. He does not dare to touch her. He does not dare.
“Tell them,” he says, “that the transverse journey across nospace will take approximately four and a half ship-months, after which—”
“Wait. Too fast.”
“Sorry.”
She seems to be shivering. Some part of her mind, he knows, is linked to a woman essentially identical to herself who happens to be some twenty-odd light-years away, even as she seems to be focusing her attention on him. Who is more real to her, the identical twin far away on Earth, or the odd, edgy, troubled man just a hundred fifty centimeters distant from her in this cabin aboard this starship?
“The transverse journey across nospace,” he says again, and waits.
“Yes.”
“Will take approximately four and a half ship-months—”
“Yes. All right.”
“After which the Wotan will have reached the vicinity of—”
“Wait. Please.”
A ripple of something not much unlike pain crosses her face. This is hurting her, this unclarity, the effort of maintaining the weakening link to Yvonne. The year-captain clenches his fists and presses his knuckles together until they pop. Waits. Waits.
“Go ahead,” Noelle says. “Now.”
“Will have reached the vicinity of the G-type star which—”
“Wait. I’m sorry. It’s bad today.”
He waits.
They finish sending the message eventually. Noelle seems to be at the verge of tears by the time they are done. Her breath is coining in ragged bursts. Her dusky, lustrous skin has taken on a ghostly subcutaneous pallor. But after a moment she manages a sort of a smile.
“Yvonne says she’ll tell everyone the news right away. She says it sounds wonderful. She wishes us all the luck in the world. No. In the universe.”
Indeed, at the next transmission Noelle learns from Yvonne that the news of the Planet A surveillance mission has generated tremendous excitement everywhere on Earth. The reaction to the bulletin has been extreme, a kind of worldwide intoxication, a frenzied communal agitation such as has not been experienced by the staid people of Earth in centuries. It is as though the voyagers have announced not merely a surveillance mission but the actual discovery of a habitable New Earth. Yvonne says that they demand further reports at once: descriptions of the new planet’s climate and topography and other geographical details, conjectures about its possible flora and fauna.
The year-captain is pleased that the news from the Wotan is having the appropriate beneficial psychological effect on the citizens of the home world. But he knows he must clarify the actual situation, and quickly, before their unrealistic expectations become embedded so deeply that it will be difficult for them to deal with the possible, even probable, disappointment that awaits.
“Tell them,” he instructs Noelle, “that it’s too soon to start setting off fireworks — that this is probably only the first of many worlds that we’re going to have to explore before we find one that we can settle.”
It takes her more than an hour to send that one brief message. The communications difficulties seem to be growing worse all the time.
Huw holds his smooth blackGo stone lightly in the center of one broad fleshy fingertip, waggles the finger two or three times with great seriousness, as though trying to estimate the weight of the tiny polished disk, and says, apropos of nothing that anybody has been discussing this morning in the lounge, “Has he decided, I wonder, which of us are actually going to make the landing on Planet A?”
“Well, he’ll be one of them, for sure,” Leon replies. He is Huw’s opponent, doing poorly, and waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Huw to make his move. “That’s his big specialty, isn’t it, planetary exploration?”
Huw grunts and puts his stone down with a great flourish, clapping it against the board in a way that makes an emphatic, almost belligerent click. He has only recently surrendered to theGo -playing addiction, which by now is almost universal on board. Practically everyone except Hesper, Sieglinde, and a couple of the others has taken to spending three or four hours a day in the gaming lounge.
It is only a couple of ship-weeks now until the Wotan is due to reach the nospace vicinity of the solar system in which Planet A is the feature of greatest interest, and then must shunt back into realspace for the direct-vision survey work. A great many unanswered questions wall begin to receive their answers at that point, not the least of which is whether the starship has traveled in the right direction through nospace and whether it will be able successfully to return to realspace at all; and shipboard tensions have begun to run a little higher than usual as the moment of truth approaches.
“During his term of office the year-captain isn’t allowed to leave the ship for any reason whatsoever, unless we’ve come to our final destination,” Chang says from across the room. “It’s in the Articles of the Voyage.”
“His year is almost up,” Leon says. “Once he’s out of office he’ll be free to take part in the exploration mission. My bet is that he’ll name himself to the landing party as one of his last official acts.”
“Why do you think he’ll leave office when his year is up?” Paco asks. “What if he puts himself forward for reelection? I think he’d win. Who else would want that bloody job, anyway? And there’s nothing in the rules preventing a year-captain from succeeding himself when his year is up.”
“Is he so power-hungry that he would want a second term, do you think?” Julia says.
“Nobody in his right mind would want a second term,” Paco tells her. “Or even a first one. But is he necessarily in his right mind? Are any of us? Would anyone in his right mind have agreed to go on this voyage in the first place?”
Calmly, Heinz, who is playing a game with Sylvia at the far side of the lounge, says, “My opinion is that a second term is the last thing he wants. I think he would very much prefer to be part of the landing party, and, as Chang says, having a second term would disqualify him from joining that. So he intends to step down. But if he does, who are we going to elect in his place?”
The question lands with sudden force among them, like a fist slamming down on everyone’s gaming board. There is a long moment of surprised silence in the lounge. Has this abruptly become an impromptu nominating convention? In that case, why is no one speaking out?
“What about you, Heinz?” Chang says at last.
“Don’t speak foolishness. I’m not a reliable person. Not in the way a captain needs to be.”
“Well, then, who would you suggest?”
“I’m not suggesting anyone. I simply raised the question.” Heinz looks around at each of the others. “What about you, Sylvia? A year as captain — why not? You don’t have any other urgent responsibilities at this stage in the voyage. Or you, Paco? You say you wouldn’t want the job, but you’d be a nice contrast with him, all sound and fury in place of chilly Nordic restraint. And what about Sieglinde, maybe? She’d nominate herself, I suspect, if we gave her half a chance.” They all laugh at that. Sieglinde is not a popular member of the expedition. “Or you, Huw,” Heinz says, grinning and pointing at the heavyset red-faced Welshman. “You’d make a damned good captain.”
“No. Not on your life. If I took the job, I would then face the same problem that he does, of the year-captain’s not being permitted to take part in a planetary exploration mission,” Huw reminds him. “And this entire conversation began with my question about the possible makeup of the planetary landing mission, if there is indeed to be one. Of course, I’m intending to be part of it. So obviously there’s no chance I’d let myself be put forth for captain.”
“Who would we pick, then?” someone asks.
Again, silence. There is no clearly apparent consensus candidate and they all know it. They have all become accustomed to the captaincy of the incumbent in these eleven months; he seems well fitted to the role, and it seems a useful employment of his strange restless intensity. Many have voiced the hope that he will simply remain in office, which would spare the rest of them the bother of having to do the job and also keep him safely busy. Which is why discussions of the upcoming expiration of the year-captain’s term have been few and far between, and why this one has rapidly petered out.
Huw says, “If we may return to the question of the makeup of the landing party now—”
“Play your stone, Huw,” Leon grunts.
Huw flamboyantly sweeps a black stone out of the pile of loose ones and slaps it almost without looking against the board, capturing a little group of Leon’s that evidently had been left undefended for some time now. Leon gasps in surprise. Huw says, addressing the others, “The exploration team ought to consist, I would think, of three people, no more, no less. Obviously we can’t send one person down alone, and two is probably too few to deal with the risks that might arise. On the other hand, we mustn’t risk any big percentage of our total complement in any landing. Three is probably the right number.”
“You’ve put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?” Leon says sourly.
Huw ignores him. “The ideal exploration party, it seems to me, would include one biologist, one planetographer, and, of course, one man to operate and do necessary maintenance work on the vehicle the party uses. The year-captain is the expert on alien biologies: he’s an obvious choice, though we could send Giovanna or even Elizabeth if for some reason the year-captain can’t or won’t go. As for the planetographer—”
“I don’t think we should let any women be part of the group,” Paco says firmly.
The unexpected remark cuts across Huw’s line of discourse so completely that Huw falls silent and his mouth gapes open two or three times, fishlike. Everyone turns to stare at Paco. He is beaming in a very self-satisfied way, as though he has just demonstrated the existence of a fourth law of thermodynamics.