“Wha…?”
“Oh Larry—it’s all so mixed up! I don’t want Dan to hurt you. He… he said he’d almost be willing to let you stay Chairman if I’d marry him.”
Larry felt his insides going numb. “And you said?”
“I… I let him think I’d do it, if he’d forget about trying to hurt you.”
He knew how it felt to have liquid helium poured over you: scalding cold. “You let him think that.”
“I did it for you!”
“Thanks. That’s an enormous favor. Now he knows that anytime he crooks his finger, you’ll come running to him. All he has to do is start an argument with me, and he’s got you.”
“No… that isn’t…”
Larry’s hands were clenching into fists. “I must have been out of my mind to believe that you’d prefer me over him. You’ve always wanted him. Now you’ve got the perfect excuse to get him.”
He heard her gasp. “Larry… no… please…” Her voice sounded weak, far away.
“All this time you’ve been letting me think that you loved me… it was only because Dan seemed out of it. But whenever he’s around, you end up going for him.”
“You’ve got it all wrong!”
He stood up. For an instant, staring out at the stars, he felt as if he could fall right through the metal and plastic wall and tumble endlessly into the cold of eternity.
“Wrong?” he asked in a near-whisper. “Do I have it wrong?”
And then she was standing up in front of him, her face suddenly blazing with anger.
“You two are exactly alike!” Val snapped. She didn’t raise her voice, but now there was steel in it, hot steel that threw off sparks. “You think that you can own me. Both of you. Well, I’m not a possession. I’m me, and I’m not going to sit around here like some silly Earth flower while you two big strong men fight over me. From now on, you and Dan both can do without me. I don’t want to see either of you! Do you understand?”
Larry staggered a step backward. “Val…”
“If you and your ex-friend want to battle it out, it will have to be over some other reasons than me. I’m not a prize to be handed over to the winner. You two can knock your heads together… I don’t care anymore! I tried to save you, both of you. I love you both! Can’t you understand that? I love you both, but I’ve always loved you best, Larry. I’m the one who made you go after the Chairmanship… because I’m the one who wanted you. But you’re so intent on flexing your muscles and being jealous—You’re scared of Dan! And you’ll never be able to be happy or free or yourself until you stop being scared of him. And the only way that’s going to happen is for you to kill him… or him to kill you. That’s what you’re both heading for. But I won’t have any part of it! Go ahead and kill yourselves! See if I care!”
And she turned away and ran down the corridor.
Larry was too thunderstruck to go after her. Besides, he knew she was right.
10
The conference room filled slowly with Council members. At the head of the table, standing there and watching them drift in, Larry thought they looked almost reluctant to get the meeting started.
They know that a battle’s coming; they’ve got a hard choice to make, and they don’t want to face it.
His own thoughts kept slipping back to Valery, to the angry, sad, scared look in her eyes the night before. She can’t stay away from us both, he knew. The ship’s laws were lenient in some ways, but inexorable in others. Valery was at the age for marriage. She must marry. The computer’s genetics program had listed the men who were genetically suited for marriage with her. There was no way for her to avoid it; she had to marry someone on that list.
Either Dan or me, Larry thought. Then, Or somebody else? No, she couldn’t marry somebody else. She wouldn’t.
But now there was another part to the problem. If the Council decides to stay at Alpha Centauri, then we’ll have to genetically alter this next generation of children. Val’s children — whoever she marries — will be sulfur-breathing, high-gravity monsters. She won’t be able to live with them; they couldn’t stay in the same sections of the ship, except for brief visits. They couldn’t breathe the same air.
Someone coughed, and Larry snapped his attention back to the conference room, the Council meeting, the men and women who were now in their seats and looking up at him.
Only three seats were still vacant: Dr. Loring’s, Joe Mailer’s, and Dan’s. Before Larry could say anything, the door at the far end of the room slid open and Haller and Dan stepped in. Dan was smiling.
They took their seats at that end of the table, and Larry sat in his chair.
“I assume you’ve all reviewed the minutes of our last meeting, and know the agenda for today.”
A general mumble and nodding of heads.
“We’ve all seen Dr. Polanyi’s data tapes from the probes.”
Assent again.
The nervousness that Larry had expected to feel just wasn’t there. He hunched forward in his chair, feeling… detached, remote from all this, as if he himself, the real Larry Belsen was somewhere lightyears away, looking back and watching the meeting, watching the person in his skin the way a scientist watches an experimental animal.
Leaning his forearms on the table, Larry said, “All right, we can get right down to it. The basic question is simply this: do we end our voyage at Alpha Centauri, or do we go on to try to find a better, more Earthlike planet at another star?”
For a moment none of the Council members said anything; they looked at each other, none of them apparently willing to start the debate.
Then Mort Campbell cleared his throat. His voice was deep, his usual speech pattern was slow and methodical. Put together with his solid frame and beefy face, he gave the impression of being a stolid, slow muscleman. But Campbell was the ship’s champion chess player, as well-as its top wrestler. His scientific skills, as chief of the Life Support group, spanned medicine, cryogenics, electronics, and most of the engineering disciplines. When he talked, no matter how slowly, people listened.
“I can’t really say much about the choice we have,” he rumbled. “But I do know something about the life support equipment on board this shin. We’re in no condition to go farther. The air regenerators, the waste cyclers, the cryonics units, the rest of it—everything’s being held together with that leftover gunk from the cafeteria that the cooks call coffee, plus what little hair I have left.”
Several people chuckled. Campbell grinned lazily.
“Seriously,” he continued, “I think it’s foolish to talk about going farther.” He turned toward Dan’s end of the table. “How about you lads in Propulsion and Power? Is your equipment in as bad a shape as mine?”
Dan gestured with one hand. “We haven’t started pulling out our hair yet, but the reactors and generators aren’t going to last another five-six decades. Not even five or six more years.”
“And what choice do we have?” Joe Haller asked. “There’s no evidence of a better planet anywhere.”
“Dr. Loring was searching for such evidence when his accident occurred,” Dr. Polanyi said. “Unfortunately, there was no record of his work in the computer memory core.”
Larry started to reply, but Polanyi went on, “However, I received a call last night from Dr. Loring’s daughter. She believes she has found some of her father’s handwritten notes, and she would like to tell the Council about them.”
“What?” Vat’s got evidence of her father’s work?