Part 5 (2/2)

They regained their floating positions. Nakamura let go and took a fresh cigarette with shaking fingers.

The silence grew thick.

Maclaren said at last, not looking toward the Saraian: ”Why not tell me the reason? It might relieve you a bit.”

Nakamura drew a breath. ”I have always been afraid of s.p.a.ce,” he said. ”And yet called to it also. Can you under-stand?”

”Yes. I think I know.”

”It has-” Nakamura giggled. ”Unsettled me. All my life. First, as a child I was taken from my home on Earth, across s.p.a.ce. And now, of course, I can never come back.”

”I have some pull in the Citadel. A visa could be arranged.”

”You are very kind. I am not sure whether it would help. Kyoto cannot be as I remember it. If it has not changed, surely I have, yes-s-s? But please let me continue. After a few years on Sarai, there was a meteor fall which killed all my family except my brother. A stone from s.p.a.ce, do you see? We did not think of it that way, then. The monastery raised us. We got scholars.h.i.+ps to an astronautical academy. We made a voyage together as cadets. Have you heard of theFirdawzi disaster?”

”No, I'm afraid not.” Maclaren poured smoke from his mouth, as a veil against the cosmos.

”Capella is a GO star like Sol, but a giant. TheFirdawzi had been long at the innermost planet of the system, a remote-controlled survey trip. The radiations caused a metal fatigue. No one suspected. On our cruise, the s.h.i.+p suddenly failed. The pilot barely got us into an orbit, after we had fallen a long way toward Capella. There we must wait until rescue came. Many died from the heat. My brother was one of them.”

Stillness hummed.

”I see,” said Maclaren at last.

”Since then I have been afraid of s.p.a.ce. It rises into my consciousness from time to time.” Maclaren stole a glance at Nakamura. The little man was lotus-postured in midair, save that he stared at his hands and they twisted together. Wretch-edness overrode his voice. ”And yet I could not stop my work either.

Because out in s.p.a.ce I often seem to come closer to oneness . . . that which we all seek, what you have called understanding. But here, caught in this...o...b..t about this star, the oneness is gone and the fear has grown and grown until I am afraid I will have to scream.”

”It might help,” said Maclaren.

Nakamura looked up. He tried to smile. ”What do you think?” he asked.

Maclaren blew a meditative cloud of smoke. Now he would have to pick his words with care-and no background or train-ing in the giving of succor-or lose the only man who could pull this s.h.i.+p free. Or lose Nakamura: that aspect of it seemed, all at once, more important.

”I wonder,” Maclaren murmured, ”even in an absolutely free society, if any such thing could exist-I wonder if every man isn't afraid of his bride.”

”What?” Nakamura's lids snapped apart in startlement.

”And needs her at the same time,” said Maclaren. ”I might even extend it beyond s.e.x. Perhaps fear is a necessary part of anything that matters. Could Bach have loved his G.o.d so mag-nificently without being inwardly afraid of Him? I don't know.”

He stubbed out his cigarette. ”I suggest you meditate upon this,” he said lightly. ”And on the further fact, which may be a little too obvious for you to have seen, that this is not Capella.”

Then he waited.

Nakamura made a gesture with his body. Only afterward, thinking about it, did Maclaren realize it was a free-fall pros-tration. ”Thank you,” he said.

”I should thank you,” said Maclaren, quite honestly. ”You gave me a leg up too, y' know.”

Nakamura departed for the machine shop.

Maclaren hung at the viewport a while longer. The rasp of a pocket lighter brought his head around.

Chang Sverdlov entered from the living section. The cigar in his mouth was held at a somehow resentful angle.

”Well,” said Maclaren. ”How long were you listening?”

”Long enough,” grunted the engineer.

He blew cheap, atrocious smoke until his pocked face was lost in it. ”So,” he asked, ”aren't you going to get mad at me?”

”If it serves a purpose,” said Maclaren.

”Uh!” Sverdlov fumed away for a minute longer. ”Maybe I had that coming,” he said.

”Quite probably. But how are the repairs progressing out-side?”

”All right. Look here,” Sverdlov blurted, ”do me a favor, will you? If you can. Don't admit to Ryerson, or me, that you're human-that you're just as scared and confused as the rest of us. Don't admit it to Nakamura, even. You didn't, you know so far . . . not really. We need a, a, a c.o.c.ky dude of a born-and-bred technic-to get us through!”

He whirled back into the quarters. Maclaren heard him dive, almost fleeing, aft along the shaftway.

NAKAMURA noted in the log, which he had religiously maintained, the precise moment when theCross blasted from the dead star. The others had not even tried to keep track of days. There was none out here. There was not even time, in any meaningful sense of the word-only existence, with an unreal impression of sunlight and leaves and women before existence began, like an inverted prenatal memory.

The initial minutes of blast were no more veritable. They took their posts and stared without any sense of victory at their instruments. Nakamura in the control turret, Maclaren on the observation deck feeding him data, Sverdlov and Ryer-son watchful in the engine room, felt themselves merely doing another task in an infinite succession.

Sverdlov was the first who broke from his cold womb and knew himself alive. After an hour of poring over his dials and viewscreens, through eyes bulged by two gravities, he ran a hand across the bristles on his jaw. ”Holy fecal matter,” he whispered, ”the canine-descended thing is hanging together.”

And perhaps only Ryerson, who had worked outside with him for weeks of hours, could understand.

The lattice jutting from the sphere had a crude, unfinished look. And indeed little had been done toward restoring the transceiver web; time enough for that while they hunted a planet. Sverdlov had simply installed a framework to support his re-fas.h.i.+oned accelerator rings, antimagnetic s.h.i.+elding, cir-cuits, and incidental wires, tubes, grids, capacitors, transform-ers . . . He had tested with a milliampere of ion current, cursed, readjusted, tested again, nodded, asked for a full amp, made obscene comments, readjusted, retested, and wondered if he could have done it without Ryerson. It was not so much that he needed the extra hands, but the boy had been impossi-bly patient. When Sverdlov could take no more electronic mis-behavior, and went back into the s.h.i.+p and got a sledge and pounded at an iron bar for lack of human skulls to break, Ryerson had stayed outside trying a fresh hookup.

Once, when they were alone among galaxies, Sverdlov asked him about it. ”Aren't you human, kid?

Don't you ever want to throw a rheostat across the room?”

Ryerson's tone came gnatlike in his earphones, almost lost in an endless crackling of cosmic noise. ”It doesn't do any good. My father taught me that much. We sailed a lot at home.”

”So?”

”The sea never forgives you.”

Sverdlov glanced at the other, couldn't find him in the tricky patching of highlight and blackness, and suddenly confronted Polaris. It was like being stabbed. How many men, he thought with a gasp, had followed the icy North Star to their weird?

”Of course,” Ryerson admitted humbly, ”it's not so easy to get along with people.”

And the lattice grew. And finally it tested sound, and Sver-dlov told Nakamura they could depart.

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