“It was the ceiling,” he said.
“You hurt your shoulder, but you kept telling us it wasn’t hurt. But I could see your pain, Larry. I could see it.”
“Okay, so I broke my shoulder.”
Suddenly she was beside him, kneeling alongside the bunk. “So don’t say you don’t love me, Larry Belsen. I know you do.”
“It’s no use,” he said, his voice as cracked and miserable as he felt inside. “The computer selection was final. Not even the Council can revoke it. You can’t have people just flying off and marrying anybody they feel like marrying! That’s what happened to old Earth. The genetics went from bad to worse. We’ve got to live by the rules, Val… there’s no other way.”
“And the rules say I have to marry Dan.”
“He loves you, Val.”
“And you don’t?”
He couldn’t answer. Instead, he stared down at her for an infinite moment, then pulled her up to him and kissed her. She felt soft and good and loving. She clung to him hard, warmly. Everything else left his mind and he thought of nothing but her.
When he finally surfaced for air, she asked sleepily, “You don’t have a duty shift, do you?”
Shaking his head, “No. Excused from duty until after the funeral services.”
“Oh.”
He sat there on the bunk, loving her and hating himself. This is all wrong. What I’m doing…
“Larry?”
“What is it?”
“If the Council would allow it, would you want to marry me?”
“Don’t make it worse than it is, Valery.”
“But would you?”
“Sure.”
She sat up beside him. “We can do it, you know. If you really want to.”
“You must be…”
“No, we can,” she insisted. “The Council’s due to vote on the new Chairman in two days, right? The Chairman and the permanent Council members are Class A, aren’t they? Their genetic options are much wider than B’s, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but…”
“I checked it all out. The computer selection rated you and Dan so close together that it wasn’t until the third-order effects were taken into account that it rated Dan ahead of you. And then it was only a shade. But if you’re elected Chairman, then…”
Larry shook his head. “It’s Dan’s turn to be Chairman. He’s a year older than I am. Besides, he wanted to revive his father when we got to Centauri and turn the Chairmanship over to him.”
“But that’s all changed now.”
Larry frowned. “No… Dan and I talked it over a long time ago. He’s a year older than I am, so he’ll get a chance to be Chairman first—”
Very softly, Valery said, “That means in two months I’ll be Mrs. Christopher. Unless you do something about it now.”
“I can’t…”
“Dan’s in no condition to run the Council,” she said. “When they vote, two days from now, he’ll still be in the infirmary. And a lot of the older Council members have always thought he’s much too emotional to be Chairman, even if it’s only for a couple of months. Especially now, when we’re about to make landfall… they’d rather have a stronger, cooler Chairman. You can ask my father; that’s what they’re saying.”
Larry knew. He knew all of it. To be Chairman when we reach the new world. Every eligible young man and woman aboard wanted that honor.
“Do you think Dan could handle that responsibility?” Valery asked, sliding a hand around the back of Larry’s neck.
Not as well as I can, he answered silently.
“As Chairman, you can marry me,” she said.
“Val…”
“Don’t send me to Dan. Please. It’s you I want.”
I CA N do a better job than he would. And marry Val.
“Larry, do I have to beg you?” She leaned her cheek against his. It felt wet. Tears.
“But it’s wrong,” he muttered. “It’s like kicking my best friend when he’s down.”
“It’s the only chance you’ve got, Larry. We all need you, everybody aboard the ship. You’re the best one to be Chairman, everybody knows that. And I need you! I can’t live without you!”
He closed his eyes and heard himself saying, “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”
3
The ship was built on the principle of wheels within wheels. It consisted of seven ring structures, starting from a central bulbous hub. Going outward, each ring was bigger and held more room for equipment and living space. The entire ship was turning, revolving slowly, to provide an artificial gravity. The outermost wheel, level one, was at one full Earth g, and everyone felt his normal Earth weight there. Going “upward,” toward the hub, weight and gravity fell off consistently, until at the hub itself, there was effectively no gravity, weightlessness.
The thousand or so people who were awake and active had their living quarters in level one. All the levels were linked by tubes.
The infirmary was on the second level, where the spin-induced gravity was slightly less than I g. It made for an unconscious buoyant feeling, a sense of well-being and optimism, that the medics claimed helped to get patients recovered from their ailments.
The infirmary stretched over a long section of the second level. Instead of viewports looking outside, the main wall of the infirmary was made up of viewscreens that showed constantly changing pictures of Earth; old Earth, before the bursting population had torn down most of her forests, ripped open her mineral-rich lands, covered vast stretches of ground with festering cities.
Dan Christopher was sitting up in his infirmary bed, floating lightly on the liquid-filled mattress. He had drifted in and out of sleep several times this morning. When he had first been awakened for his morning check by the automated sensor system at his bedside, the scene on the wall screens outside his plastiglass-walled cubicle had shown an impossible blue sky and a vista of rugged white mountains dotted by patches of green, under a gleaming sun.
Dan knew that the sun was a star, but it didn’t look like any star he had ever seen. Now, later in the morning, the scene was a deep green forest, where the sunlight filtered down in dusty shafts and strange four-legged animals tip-toed warily through the underbrush.
Wasting electrical power to show these scenes, he told himself. Dan still felt woozy, as much from the medicines they had been filling him with as from the dreams that haunted his sleep. The medics had pumped him full of tranquilizers, he guessed. But underneath their flat calming effect he knew there was a core of terror and rage inside him.
He’s dead. The man who gave us this ship, the man who started this mission, the man who gave me life. The most important man aboard. Dead. A couple of months before we’re due to reach our destination. A couple of months before he’d be reawakened and I’d get to really know him. Now he’s dead.
Two nurses walked briskly past his cubicle, chatting together. Dan paid no attention to them. The chief medic would be here soon. Dan wanted to get out of the infirmary.
A tapping on his door snapped him fully awake. Through the plastiglass he saw Joe Haller: solid, dependable Joe. A good engineer and a good friend. Joe’s long hair and beard turned off many of the older people, but he was one of the most reliable and brightest men aboard. Next to Larry, Joe was Dan’s best and longest friend.
Dan waved him in, and Joe opened the plastiglass door and stepped into the cramped cubicle. There was no room for a chair, so he simply stood next to Dan’s bed.