“What? Married…” Dr. Loring blinked at him.
Mrs. Loring didn’t seem surprised at all. “Why, that’s marvelous. And now that you’re Chairman, you don’t have to be hemmed in by all those silly computer rules, do you?”
Dr. Loring broke into a huge grin and grabbed Larry’s hand. Pumping it hard enough to shake the table, he said heartily, “Congratulations. I’m very glad… very glad!”
Larry felt a thousand kilos lighter. He looked at Valery. Her mother kissed her cheek. They were both beaming.
“The wine,” Dr. Loring said, finally letting go of Larry’s hand. “Yes, by heaven, this is a special occasion.” He got up from the table and waddled back toward the kitchen alcove. Opening a closet door, he muttered, “It’s in here someplace.”
“I’m very happy for the two of you,” Mrs. Loring said quietly. “I know that Valery thinks the world of Dan—but you were her first choice.”
Larry grinned foolishly, but inwardly he was thinking about Dan. First the Chairmanship, now Valery. He’s going to hate me. And I don’t blame him.
Valery said, “I’ve been thinking… maybe it would be best if we didn’t tell Dan about… us. Not yet. He’s upset enough right now.”
Mrs. Loring nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”
“I don’t know…” Larry started to object.
Valery turned to him and smiled her prettiest. “Please, Larry. It wouldn’t be fair to Dan to hit him with this. Not just now.”
“But it’s not fair to let him think…”
“Let me handle it,” she said.
“Well…”
“Please?”
He melted. “All right. But don’t let him think the wrong thing for too long. It’ll just get worse, the longer we wait.”
“I know how to handle him,” Valery said.
Dr. Loring pulled a green bottle from the bottom of the closet. “Ahah!” He held the bottle up by the neck. “Not much left, but enough to toast the happy couple.”
Larry smiled, even though he didn’t feel particularly happy at that moment.
4
Dan Christopher floated in nearly perfect weightlessness in the bulbous plastiglass observation blister at the ship’s hub.
There was no up and down; or rather, any direction could be up or down, depending on your own point of view. At the moment, Dan was gazing out at a particularly bright star. It stood out among the millions of stars that were sprinkled like gleaming powder across the infinite black of space. Looking closely at it. Dan could see that it was actually two stars: the two main members of the triple star system, Alpha Centauri. Their destination.
Far, far behind the ship—nearly forty trillion kilometers, if you were silly enough to express interstellar distance that way—lay the sun, and Earth.
It was cold in the observation blister. The death-cold of emptiness seeped through the plastiglass. Dan pulled his electrically heated robe tighter around him.
“The dreams,” he muttered to himself. “If only I could stop the dreams.”
He had told no one about them. The medics hadn’t wanted to release him from the infirmary, but he had argued them into it. He was perfectly healthy, except for the dreams. And in the week since his father’s death, he had steeled himself to dream without screaming, without even tossing in his sleep. Your mind controls your body, he told himself. Your mind can make your body do anything.
All the anger and terror was buried inside him now, seething inside. But no one could tell it was there, not even the medics, although they hadn’t been happy about releasing him.
Dan heard a hatch sigh open behind him. He turned, and in the dimness of the blister’s anti-reflection lights, made out the sturdy form of Joe Haller. He was upside-down as he came through the hatch. He drifted that way in midair as he floated toward Dan, slowly righting himself in the last few meters as he approached.
“So this is where you are,” Joe said.
“This is where I am.”
“I went to see you at the infirmary, but they told me you’d been released. I’ve been searching the ship for an hour—”
“I came up here to think,” Dan said quietly.
“Geez, it’s cold in here… wish we could get the main generator back on the line. We’re going to need it when we get to Alpha C.”
“Will the work be done by then?”
“Think so… if we don’t run into any major snags.”
Dan nodded. Then, “What caused the generator’s failure? Have you found that out yet?”
“Old age, more’n anything else. You just don’t run a machine for fifty years without wearing it out. Even if it doesn’t have any moving parts.”
“Wasn’t it overhauled regularly?”
“Sure… but still, some of the electrical connections and the insulation hasn’t been changed since day one.”
Dan thought for a moment, then asked, “Is there any evidence of… tampering?”
“Tampering?”
“Deliberate damage. Sabotage.”
Even in the dim lighting, he could see Joe’s mouth hang open. “Sabotage? Who in hell would do a thing like that?”
“You found no evidence.”
“Nobody looked for any. We’re just in there to get the damned thing fixed, not play detective.”
“Then the generator could have been deliberately knocked out.”
Joe shook his head, a motion that made his body drift away slightly in the zero gravity. “Who’d want to do that? It’s like slitting your own throat. We all need that electrical power—”
Dan turned away from him and looked back at the stars. At the double star, close, beckoning.
“One thing leads to another,” he said. “The generator blows out. This puts an extra load on the auxiliary power units. The circuits in the cryonics section overheat. A fire starts. My father dies. I get hospitalized. The Council elects a new Chairman…”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” Joe’s voice was barely audible, shocked.
Dan nodded grimly. “That’s why I’m speaking softly, and saying it here, and only to you. If I had anything more than a few bad dreams, a few ugly thoughts—I’d be screaming it over the intercom system and going after the murderers with any weapon I could lay my hands on.”
“Murderers? Dan—that’s crazy!”
“Is it? Is it really?”
Joe didn’t answer, merely shook his head.
“In another two months we’ll be in orbit around the major planet of Alpha Centauri,” Dan said. “Key people among the cryosleepers will be awakened. My father—who was in charge of this when the voyage started—would have naturally resumed command…”
“No, the Chairman elected by the Council would be in charge.”
“I would have been that Chairman! But Larry’s taken it over. He took it while I was locked in the infirmary. And after my father died.”
Joe actually backed away from him now. “Dan… you’re accusing Larry… my god, he lost his father in the fire, too.”
“I’m not accusing anyone,” Dan replied, barely controlling the heat he felt within himself. “Not yet. There’s no proof of anything. But it looks rotten to me, Joe, and I’m going to find out if I’m right or wrong.”
“How?”
“I don’t know—I’ll need help. Your help.”
“Doing what?”
Dan grimaced. “Watching. Looking for evidence. I… could be all wrong, I know that. But—Joe, I can’t sleep, not until I’m certain that this is all a nightmare, or…” his voice hardened, “…or, I find the proof and punish the murderer.”
“Murder,” Joe whispered back to him. “Do you really think somebody aboard the ship could … murder?”