Tau zero (7 page)

"Is that why you despise today's women?" she asked.

He started. "No! Never!"

"Why, then, have none of your liaisons lasted beyond a week or two—mostly a single offwatch at a time?" she challenged him. "Why are you only at ease and merry among men? I believe you don't care to know our half of the human race except as bodies. You don't think there's anything else worth knowing. And what you said a minute ago, about sluts—"

"I came from Delta Pavonis wishing for a true wife," he answered as if being strangled.

Lindgren sighed. "Boris, mores change. From my viewpoint, you grew up in a period of unreasonable puritanism. But it was a reaction to an earlier easiness that had perhaps gone too far; and earlier yet— No matter." She chose her words with care. "The fact is, man has never stayed by a single ideal. The mass enthusiasm when you were young gave way to cool, rationalistic classicism. Today that's being drowned in turn by a kind of neoromanticism. God knows where that will lead. I probably won't approve. Regardless, new generations grow up. We've no right to freeze them into our own mold. The universe is too wide."

Fedoroff was unmoving for so long that she started to rise and go. Suddenly he whirled, caught her wrist, and pulled her back down beside him. His speech labored. "I would like to know you, Ingrid, as a human being."

"I'm glad."

His mouth tightened. "You had better leave now, though," he got out. "You are with Reymont. I don't want to cause trouble."

"I want you for a friend too, Boris," she said. "I've admired you since we first met. Courage, competence, kindliness—what else is there to admire in a man? I wish you could learn to show them to your shipmates that happen to be female."

He opened his grasp on her. "I warn you to go."

She considered him. "If I do," she asked, "and we get to talking

another time, will you be at ease with me?" "I don't know," he said. "I hope it, but I don't know." She thought awhile further. "Let us try to make sure of it," she

suggested finally, gently. "I don't have to be anywhere else for the rest

of my watch."

Chapter 6

Every scientist aboard had planned at least one research project to help fill the half decade of travel. Glassgold's was tracing the chemical basis of the life on Epsilon Eridani Two. After setting up her equipment, she began putting her protophytes and tissue cultures through their experimental paces. In due course she got reaction products and needed to know exactly what they were. Norbert Williams was performing analyses for several different people.

One day late in the first year, he brought his report on her most recent sample to her laboratory. He had taken to doing this in person. The molecules were strange, exciting him as much as her, and the two of them often discussed the findings for hours on end. Increasingly, the conversation would veer toward other topics.

She gave him cheerful greeting as he entered. The workbench behind which she stood was barricaded with test tubes, flasks, a pH meter, a stirrer, a blender, and more. "Well," she said, "I'm quite agog to learn what metabolites my pets have been making now."

"Damnedest mess I ever saw." He tossed down a couple of clipped-together pages. "Sorry, Emma, but you're going to have to run it over. And over and over, I'm afraid. I can't get by with micro quantities. This wants every type of chromatography I've got, plus X-ray diffractions, plus a series of enzyme tests I've listed here, before I'd venture any guess at the structural formulas."

"I see," Glassgold replied. "I regret making more work for you."

"Shucks, that's what I'm here for, till we reach Beta Three. I'd go nuts without jobs to do, and yours is the most interesting of the lot, I'll tell you." Williams ran a hand through his hair; the loud shirt wrinkled across his shoulder. "Though to be frank, I don't understand what's in it for you, other than a pastime. I mean, they're tackling the same problems on Earth, with bigger staff and better facilities. They ought to've cracked your riddles before we come to a stop."

"No doubt," she said. "But will they beam the results to us?"

"I expect not, unless we inquire. And if we do, we'll be very old, or dead, before the reply arrives." Williams leaned toward her across the bench. "The thing is, why should we care? Whatever type of biology we find at Beta Three, we know it won't resemble this. Are you keeping your hand in?"

"Partly that," she admitted. "I do think it will be of practical value. The broader a view I have of life in the universe, the better I should be able to study the particular case where we are going. And so we learn sooner, more certainly, whether we can build our homes there and call others to follow us from Earth."

He rubbed his chin. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Hadn't thought of that angle."

Awe dwelt beneath the prosaic words. For the expedition was not merely going for a look: not at such cost in resources, labor, skill, dreams, and years. Nor could it hope for anything as easy to subdue as America had been.

At a minimum, these people would spend another half decade in the Beta Virginis System, exploring its worlds in the ship's auxiliary craft, adding what little they could to the little that the orbiting probe had garnered. And if the third planet really was habitable, they would never come home, not even the professional spacemen. They would live out their lives, and belike their children and grandchildren too, exploring its manifold mysteries and flashing their discoveries to the hungry minds on Earth. For indeed, any planet is a world, infinitely varied, infinitely secret. And this world appeared to be so terrestroid that the strangenesses it must hold would be yet the more vivid and enlightening.

The folk of Leonora Christine were quite explicit in their ambition to establish that kind of scientific base. Their further, largest hope was that their descendants would find no reason ever to go back: that Beta Three might evolve from base to colony to New Earth to jumping-off place for the next starward leap. There was no other way by which men might possess the galaxy.

As if shying away from vistas that could overwhelm her, Glassgold said, reddening a trifle: "Besides, I care about Eridanian life. It fascinates me. I want to know what . . . makes it tick. And as you point out, if we do stay we aren't likely to get the answers told us while we are alive."

He fell silent, fiddled with a titration setup, until ship-drive and ventilator breath, sharp chemical odors, bright colors on the reagent and dye shelves, shoved forward into consciousness. At length he cleared his throat. "Uh, Emma."

"Yes?" She seemed to feel the same diffidence.

"How about knocking off? Come on down to the club with me for a drink before dinner. My ration."

She retreated behind her instruments. "No, thank you," she said confusedly. "I, I do have a great deal of work."

"You have time for it, too," he pointed out, bolder. "Okay, if you don't want a cocktail, what about a cup of coffee? Maybe a stroll through the gardens— Look, I don't aim to make a pass. I'd just like to get better acquainted."

She swallowed before she smiled, but then she gave him warmth. "Very well, Norbert. I would like that myself."

A year after she started, Leonora Christine was close to her ultimate velocity. It would take her thirty-one years to cross interstellar space, and one year more to decelerate as she approached her target sun.

But that is an incomplete statement. It takes no account of relativity. Precisely because there is an absolute limiting speed (at which light travels in vacuo; likewise neutrinos) there is an interdependence of space, time, matter, and energy. The tau factor enters the equations. If v is the (uniform) velocity of a spaceship, and c the velocity of light, then tau equals

/ ^

y/ 1-c 2

The closer that v comes to c, the closer tau comes to zero.

Suppose an outside observer measures the mass of the spaceship. The result he gets is her rest mass—i.e., the mass that she has when she is not moving with respect to him—divided by tau. Thus, the faster she travels the more massive she is, as regards the universe at large. She gets the extra mass from the kinetic energy of motion; e = mc 2 .

Furthermore, if the "stationary" observer could compare the ship's clocks with his own, he would notice a disagreement. The interlude between two events (such as the birth and death of a man) measured aboard the ship where they take place, is equal to the interlude which the observer measures . . . multiplied by tau. One might say that time moves proportionately slower on a starship.

Lengths shrink; the observer sees the ship shortened in the direction of motion by the factor tau.

Now measurements made on shipboard are every bit as valid as those made elsewhere. To a crewman, looking forth at the universe, the stars are compressed and have gained in mass; the distances between them have shriveled; they shine, they evolve at a strangely reduced rate.

Yet the picture is more complicated even than this. You must bear in mind that the ship has, in fact, been accelerated and will be decelerated in relation to the total background of the cosmos. This takes the

whole problem out of special and into general relativity. The star-and-ship situation is not really symmetrical. The twin paradox does not arise. When velocities match once more and reunion takes place, the star will have passed through a longer time than the ship did.

If you ran tau down to one one-hundredth and went into free fall, you would cross a light-century in a single year of your own experience. (Though, of course, you could never regain the century that had passed at home, during which your friends grew old and died.) This would inevitably involve a hundredfold increase of mass. A Bussard engine, drawing on the hydrogen of space, could supply that. Indeed, it would be foolish to stop the engine and coast when you could go right on decreasing your tau.

Therefore, to reach other suns in a reasonable portion of your life expectancy: Accelerate continuously, right up to the interstellar midpoint, at which point you activate the decelerator system in the Bus-sard module and start slowing down again. You are limited by the speed of light, which you can never quite reach. But you are not limited in how close you can approach that speed. And thus you have no limit on your inverse tau factor.

Throughout her year at one gravity, the differences between Leonora Christine and the slow-moving stars had accumulated imperceptibly. Now the curve entered upon the steep part of its climb. Now, more and more, her folk measured the distance to their goal as shrinking, not simply because they traveled, but because, for them, the geometry of space was changing. More and more, they perceived natural processes in the outside universe as speeding up.

It was not yet spectacular. Indeed, the minimum tau in her flight plan, at midpoint, was to be somewhat above 0.015. But an instant came when a minute aboard her corresponded to sixty-one seconds in the rest of the galaxy. A while later, it corresponded to sixty-two. Then sixty-three . . . sixty-four ... the ship time between such counts grew gradually but steadily less . . . sixty-five . . . sixty-six . . . sixty-seven. . . .

The first Christmas—Chanukah, New Year's, solstice festival season— that the crew spent together had come early in their voyage and was a feverish carnival. The second was quieter. People were settling down to their work and their fellows. Nevertheless, improvised ornaments glittered on all decks. The hobby rooms resounded, the scissors and needles clicked, the galley grew fragrant with spice, as everybody tried to make small gifts for everybody else. The hydroponics division found it could spare enough green vines and branches for an imitation tree

in the gymnasium. From the enormous microtape library came films of snow and sleighs, recordings of carols. The thespian contingent rehearsed a pageant. Chef Carducci planned banquets. Commons and cabins rollicked with parties. By tacit agreement, no one mentioned that each second which passed laid Earth three hundred thousand kilometers farther behind.

Reymont made his way through a bustling recreation level. Some groups were stringing up the most newly made decorations. Nothing could be wasted, but aluminum-foil chains, blown-glass globes, wreaths twisted from bolts of cloth, were reclaimable. Others played games, chattered, offered drinks around, flirted, got boisterous. Through the chatter and laughter and shuffling, hum and crackle and rustle, music floated out of a loudspeaker:

"Adeste, fideles,

Laeti, triumphantes,

Venite, venite, in Bethlehem."

Iwamoto Tetsuo, Hussein Sadek, Yeshu ben-Zvi, Mohandas Chidambaran, Phra Takh, or Kato M'Botu seemed to belong with it as much as Olga Sobieski or Johann Freiwald.

The machinist bellowed at Reymont: "Guten Tag, mein lieber Schutzmann! Come share my bottle!" He waved it in the air. His free arm was around Margarita Jimenes. Suspended above them was a slip of paper on which had been printed MISTLETOE.

Reymont halted. He got along well with Freiwald. "Thank you, no," he said. "Have you seen Boris Fedoroff? I expected him to come here when he got off work."

"N-no. I would expect it too, as lively as things are tonight. He's become a lot happier lately for some reason, hasn't he? What do you want of him?"

"Business matter."

"Business, forever business," Freiwald said. "I swear your personal amusement is fretting. Me, I've got a better one." He hugged Jimenes to him. She snuggled. "Have you called his cabin?"

"Naturally. No response. Still, maybe—" Reymont turned. "I'll try there. Later I'll come back for that schnapps," he added, already leaving.

He took the stairs down past crew level to the officers' deck. The music followed. "—Iesu, tibi sit gloria." The passageway was deserted. He pushed Fedoroff s chime button.

The engineer opened the door. He was clad in lounging pajamas.

Behind him, a bottle of French wine, two glasses, and some Danish-style sandwiches waited on the dresser top. Surprise jarred him. He took a backward step. "Chto —you?"

"Could I speak with you?"

"Um-m-m." Fedoroff s glance flickered. "I expect a guest."