“A long separation,” escaped him.
She was mute for a while in the frost. When she spoke, it stumbled. “Skipper, that’s what I — I hoped to say — that it is unfair to you, Ricardo Nansen.”
He rallied. “But you feel that forbidding it would be unfair to you.”
“Not me, not too much. Hanny and Tim — and, yes, poor, lonely Al — and those Tahirians who long to go starfaring …”
“And perhaps the star itself,” he conceded. “It does offer some fantastic opportunities . . . almost as if God is being generous —” He pulled loose from abstractions and returned to her. Breath had caught in stray locks over her brow and frozen to make starlit sparkles. “You burn to go, don’t you?”
“I could stay — aye, quite happily — if…”
“But you would always wonder what you had missed, wouldn’t you, Jean?”
Her eyes widened when he said her first name. He hurried on: “And your points about the others, and what it could all mean to the mission, yes, they are valid.” I can give you this gift, Jean, if I can bring myself to it.
“Always the man of duty, no?” He couldn’t tell whether she admired or reproached or tenderly mocked. On Earth he would soon have found out, but this wasn’t Earth.
“Let me think further,” he said. “Meanwhile, the hour’s grown late, and we’re tired and cold.”
“And you’re heavy burdened. Aye, let’s go to our sleep.”
CHAPTER 27
Year three.
Envoy had been a star, hastening through night heaven to vanish in the planetary shadow, emerging to sink toward the eastern horizon. Now it was gone. For a while people found themselves glancing aloft before they remembered. At first they were glad of the undertakings that kept them occupied. Later, one by one and more and more, they were troubled.
A hurricane formed in midocean. On a previous trip, the Tahirian he called Stefan had shown Ruszek the energy projectors on the little moon. With animated graphics — using conventions lately developed, mutually comprehensible — en had explained that focused beams, precisely aimed, changed the courses of such storms; they veered from coastlands where they could wreak harm. Now en and he boarded a robotic aircraft, among those that were to monitor events from within. “You’re really learning to read our feelings, aren’t you?” Ruszek exulted.
The teardrop sped through the stratosphere. Ruszek kept his instruments going, recording whatever they were able to. Eventually he might accumulate such a stack of information that Yu could make something of it, maybe even figure out how the jetless drive worked. He suspected the principle was quantum mechanical, and a starship’s engineer was necessarily a jackleg quantum physicist. At least, when Dayan got back —
The teardrop plunged. The weather loomed black ahead. He recalled Nansen’s story about flying through stuff like this, once . . . but that was five thousand years and light-years away. . . . The boat slammed into the dark. Wind raved, lightning flared. Forces shoved Ruszek brutally back and forth against a safety web improvised for him. “Ha!” he bawled, and wished he were the pilot.
But the pilot was a machine. Its purpose was not to have fun but to collect data and shoot them up to the moon. Harnessed nearby, Stefan stared at a crystalline ball en clutched. Glints danced in it, barely visible to the man. Another kind of instrument, he guessed while his skull rattled. Keeping track of… velocities, pressures, ionizations, a barrelful of shifty rages. Why? The robot must have full, direct input. Does Stefan want to follow along? Does en want to share the stress, effort, risk? Did any Tahirian do anything like this, before we arrived from beyond?
Stefan gestured. The fuselage went opaque. Interior lighting went out. Ruszek sat tossed about in a blindness that shuddered and howled.
Enjoy, he told himself, and did.
Light returned. This was no place to use a parleur, but Stefan fluted notes that were perhaps apologetic while looking with ens middle eyes at Ruszek, touching the globe, and waving at the lightnings.
En needed total darkness to take a delicate reading, Ruszek deduced. No . . . not total. Just no background. We’ve wondered if Tahirians can see single photons. Why not? Humans almost can. A coldness crept up his spine. Yes, I think that’s so. And. . . all the chaos while they evolved — let the science gang chew on the idea — but I think they think more naturally in quantum mechanics than we do. What does that mean for the way they understand the universe?