The following week they did have a birthday cake for me at our table and everybody sang to me and I got a lot of pleasantly intended but useless presents-you can’t give a person much aboard ship when you are eating at the same mess and drawing from the same storerooms. I stood up and thanked them when somebody hollered “Speech!” and I stayed and danced with the girls afterwards. Nevertheless it still did not seem like my birthday because it had already been my birthday, days earlier.
It was maybe the next day that my Uncle Steve came around and dug me out of my room. “Where you been keeping yourself, youngster?”
“Huh? Nowhere.”
“That’s what I thought.” He settled in my chair and I lay back down on my bunk. “Every time I look for you, you aren’t in sight. You aren’t on watch or working all the time. Where are you?”
I didn’t say anything. I had been right where I was a lot of the time, just staring at the ceiling. Uncle Steve went on, “When a man takes to crouching in a corner aboard ship, it is usually best, I’ve found, to let him be. Either he will pull out of it by himself, or he’ll go out the airlock one day without bothering with a pressure suit. Either way, he doesn’t want to be monkeyed with. But you’re my sister’s boy and I’ve got a responsibility toward you. What’s wrong? You never show up for fun and games in the evenings and you go around with a long face; what’s eating you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” I said angrily.
Uncle Steve disposed of that with a monosyllable. “Open up, kid. You haven’t been right since the Vasco was lost. Is that the trouble? Is your nerve slipping? If it is, Doc Devereaux has synthetic courage in pills. Nobody need know you take ‘em and no need to be ashamed-everybody finds a crack in his nerve now and again. I’d hate to tell you what a repulsive form it took the first time I went into action.”
“No, I don’t think that is it.” I thought about it-maybe it was it. “Uncle Steve, what happened to the Vasco?”
He shrugged. “Either her torch cut loose, or they bumped into something.”
“But a torch can’t cut loose… can it? And there is nothing to bump into out here.”
“Correct on both counts. But suppose the torch did blow? The ship would be a pocket-sized nova in an umpteenth second. But I can’t think of an easier way to go. And the other way would be about as fast, near enough you would never notice. Did you ever think how much kinetic energy we have wrapped up in this bucket at this speed? Doc Babcock says that as we reach the speed of light we’ll be just a flat wave front, even though we go happily along eating mashed potatoes and gravy and never knowing the difference.”
“But we never quite reach the speed of light.”
“Doc pointed that out, too. I should have said ‘if.’ Is that what is bothering you, kid? Fretting that we might go boom! like the Vasco? If so, let me point out that almost all the ways of dying in bed are worse … particularly if you are silly enough to die of old age-a fate I hope to avoid.”
We talked a while longer but did not get anywhere. Then be left, after threatening to dig me out if I spent more than normal sack time in my room. I suppose Uncle Steve reported me to Dr. Devereaux, although both of them claimed not.
Anyhow, Dr. Devereaux tackled me the next day, took me around to his room and sat me down and talked to me. He bad a big sloppy-comfortable stateroom; he never saw anybody in surgery.
I immediately wanted to know why he wanted to talk to me.
He opened his frog eyes wide and looked innocent. “Just happened to get around to you, Tom.” He picked up a pile of punched cards. “See these? That’s how many people I’ve had a chat with this week. I’ve got to pretend to earn my pay.”