Other people were terrified, and I had some sympathy with them. Since we didn’t know what mechanism was sucking air out of the small space, how could we know that the same mechanism might not empty out whole rooms, whole floors–the entire ship!
Teresa Larson and her co-religionists were actually smug: here was something going on that the scientists and engineers couldn’t explain. Something mystical, that was happening for a purpose, and God would reveal Her purpose in due course. I asked her whether she would like to spend the night in the grain locker, to test God’s sympathy with her belief. She patiently explained the fallacy behind my logic. If you “tested” God, that was the direct opposite of belief, and of course She would punish you.
I kept my silence about that elaboration of foolishness. I like Teresa, and she was probably the best farmer aboard, but her grasp of reality beyond the tilled field or hydroponic tank was seriously impaired.
Most people were in the same middle ground that I inhabited. Something serious was going on that we didn’t yet understand. For now, the practical course was to seal the locker and store the grain elsewhere, while people mulled it over.
The most disturbing reaction was from Antres 906. It asked for permission to do a complete systems check on the escape vessels, with the help of a few human engineers. It said we would need them soon.
Antres 906 approached me first. If it had been a human, I would have said no; we’re close enough to panic, and don’t need to fuel it. But Tauran logic and emotion are odd, so I took him up to Marygay for a captain’s decision.
Marygay was reluctant to grant special permission, since of course we did have a regular inspection schedule, and it could look like panic. But there was no actual harm in it, so long as it was done quietly, as if it were routine. And she did have sympathy for Antres 906 in its isolation. A human locked in a ship with a hundred Taurans would be forgiven for odd behavior.
But when she asked it to elaborate on why it thought the inspection was necessary, the response was creepy. “Not long ago, William asked me about that piece of paper? The one from Earth? `Inside the foreign, the unknown; inside that, the unknowable.’ ”
It did the little Tauran dance of agitation. “We are inside the foreign. Your airless locker represents the unknown.”
“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying that that homily is a kind of prophecy?”
“No, never.” The dance again. “Prophecy is foolish. What it is, is a statement of condition.”
Marygay stared at him. “You’re saying we should be ready for the unknowable.”
It rubbed its neck and rattled assent and danced, and danced.
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book four
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
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Chapter eighteen
It took two months for the unknowable to catch up with us.
Marygay and I were asleep. A chime woke us up. “Sorry, but I have to disturb you.”
Marygay sat up and touched the light. “Me?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Both of you. We’re losing fuel.”
“Losing fuel?”
“It began less than a minute ago. The antimatter is steadily decreasing in mass. As I speak, we have lost about one half of one percent.”
“Good God,” I said. “What, is it leaking?” And if so, how come we still exist?
“It is not physically leaking. It is in some way disappearing, though.” It made a rare humming sound, that meant it was thinking. It thought so fast it could solve most problems between phonemes.
“I can say with certainty that it is not leaking. If it were, the antiprotons would be receding from us at one gee. I sprayed water back along our path, and there was no reaction.”
I didn’t know whether that was good or bad. “Have you sent a message to Middle Finger?”
“Yes. But if it continues at this rate, the antimatter will be gone long before they receive it.”
Of course; we were more than four light-days away. “Charge up every fuel cell to the maximum.”
“I did that as we were speaking.”