Today, though, the sense of isolation was stronger by orders of magnitude. Even he, with his previous experience, found their flight daunting. Should anything go wrong here in hyperspace, nobody was ever going to find them. It made him grateful for the way the starship had been constructed. This mission, he realized, had an altogether more mature feel to it than the Ulysses flight ever had.
It was a civilized voyage. First of all there was the gravity. It might only be an eighth of a gee around the rim of the life-support wheel, but it made sure everything flowed in the right direction. His body was so much more comfortable with that. Then there was the food. Instead of neat, efficient, rehydratable packets of precooked meals, the Second Chance canteen served dishes like pan-fried diver scallops with herb risotto, or loin of lamb with tarte Tatin of vegetables drizzled with a thyme and tomato sauce; and the dessert selection was dangerously broad. For recreation there were a number of gyms, which everyone dutifully attended. But most of the crew spent their spare time accessing TSI dramas. They had a huge library on board, with sexsoaps inevitably the most popular, though first-life first romances were equally fashionable, and there were numerous adaptations of classic fiction and biographies of historical characters. Wilson spent several days immersed in a sumptuous production of Mansfield Park . He’d read the novel in his first life, and was interested in the societal structure of the era that it conjured up (intriguing parallel with present-day Earth, he felt), though he was fairly sure there hadn’t been quite so many lesbian love scenes in the original book.
Between fitness sessions, meals, TSIs, and ship’s duty, he spent most of his hours with Anna. Even after all this time, he still preferred a one-woman-at-a-time lifestyle. The kind of arrangements many of the Commonwealth’s wealthy, and not-so-wealthy, favored had never really appealed to him, not like Nigel Sheldon with his thousand children and dozen-strong harem, or the Kandavu multi-families, or any other of the hundreds of variants on relationships. At heart, he knew he was as old-fashioned as the era he’d come from.
Anna, though, was good company; never demanding, happy to keep things comfortably casual. It was almost the same as before the launch, the difference this time being that everyone onboard knew about them. It didn’t cause any resentment or whispering; they were all grown-ups. Although it had never been a firm policy, one you could find written down or in a program, Wilson had rejected all applications from first-lifers.
He was convinced they didn’t have the temperament he wanted from his crew. The voyage so far had confirmed that in his own mind. There had been so little trouble, so few “personality clashes,” that he’d begun to regard the ship’s psychologist as superfluous. Even now, as he waited on the bridge for the hyperspace flight to end, there was no sign of any tension among those around him.
“No significant mass within a hundred AUs,” Oscar reported.
“Thank you,” Wilson said. He glanced around at the portals himself, seeing the gravitonic spectrum displays almost blank, like the eye of the storm. They’d obtained their last accurate navigational fix flying within three hundred AUs of a red dwarf, now ten light-years distant. That put them close to twenty-five light-years from Dyson Alpha, in clear interstellar space. “Okay, stand by to take us out of hyperspace. Anna, let’s have the main sensor suite on-line please.”
“Aye, sir,” She didn’t even grin at him. On the bridge, she took her duties very seriously indeed. Two seats away, OCtattoos on her hands and forearm began to shimmer like pulsing silver veins as her palms rested on the console i-spots, readying the equipment up at the bow of the starship.
“Astrophysics?” Wilson asked.
“Ready, sir.” Tunde Sutton was waiting at the rear of the bridge, along with two of the science officers, Bruno Seymore and Russell Sall. Their consoles all had double the number of portals and screens than the others, capable of displaying a vast amount of data. In addition, all three men had upgraded retinal inserts, giving them a high-quality virtual vision field. If there was any anomaly out there in real space, they’d have it located and analyzed almost instantaneously. They were also sharing the data with the astrophysics office, on the deck above, where the majority of specialists were waiting, including Dudley Bose.
“Oscar, bring the force fields on-line, please, and take tactical control.”
“Aye, sir.”
Part of Wilson’s virtual vision display showed him the power being routed into their force fields and atom lasers. Sensor data was also fed directly into the targeting control, with Oscar assuming executive authority for their missile arsenal. Wilson moved his virtual fingers to activate a general channel throughout the ship. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s see what’s out there. Tu Lee, take us out of the wormhole. But keep the hyperdrive on-line. We may need a fast exit.”
Tu Lee grinned broadly. “Yes, sir.”
The blue mist filling the two big high-rez portals at the front of the bridge began to darken. A ripple of black broke out from the center, expanding rapidly. Clear pinpoints of light speckled the deep night outside the ship as the starfield appeared around them once more.
“Tunde?” Wilson demanded.
“Nothing obvious, sir. Electromagnetic spectrum clean. Gravitonic empty. Standard particle density. Immediate quantum state stable. Zero radar return. Neutrino flux normal. Cosmic radiation high but not excessive.”
“Sensors, show me Dyson Alpha,” Wilson said.
Anna centered the main telescope, feeding the image to the left-hand portal. Slim red brackets indicated the position of the shielded star. She bled in the infrared emission, and it appeared as a pale pink dot. Dyson Beta materialized slightly to one side. “Doesn’t look like there’s any change to either of the barriers,” she said. “They were both still intact twenty-five years ago.”
“Any activity in the surrounding area?”
“Not that I can locate. Do you want an hysradar sweep?”
“Not yet. Expand our baseline for the current sensors. I want a clearer picture of the area. Astrophysics, keep monitoring. Pilot, hold us stable here.”
“Aye, sir.” Anna began to manipulate virtual icons. “Prepping for sensor module launches.”
Wilson let out a quick breath of relief. His virtual finger was tapping icons almost unconsciously. On the console in front of him, one of the small screens flicked between camera images. Each one had a small portion of the starship superstructure: the forward sensor array, a slice of the life-support wheel, the plasma rockets. But no matter which camera he chose, there was never anything other than the ship and the very distant stars. Nothing. The emptiness was awesome. Frightening.
When he was a boy, Wilson had enjoyed swimming. His parents had a small pool in their yard, and he’d used it every day. That didn’t stop him from continually nagging his parents to take him to the larger pool at the county sports center. He’d been nine on the day of that visit, he and a whole group of friends ferried out there by some harassed mother. With his skill and confidence he’d not been intimidated by the size or depth of the big pool, and was soon leading the others through the water. When he was in the deep end he dived to the bottom, sure he could touch the tiles. He made it easily enough, his strong strokes hauling him down away from the surface, popping his ears against the pressure twice on the way down before slapping his fingertips on the smooth blue tiles. Sound from the rest of the pool was curiously muted so far below, the thrashing feet above, dull, like the filtered blue light. Pressure squeezed him gently. So he started to swim up. And only then did he realize his mistake. He’d taken enough breath to get him down, but now his lungs were burning. Muscles twitched as the need to suck down fresh air swelled desperately. He began to claw frantically at the water, which did nothing to increase his terrible slow speed. The need for air became overwhelming. And his chest began to expand, lungs working to pull in that sweet oxygen. Wilson felt the water sliding up his nostrils like some unstoppable burrowing creature. Right that second he knew if it got any farther he would drown. It was enough to send his body into a frenzy, kicking and struggling. At the same time he found the discipline to stop his lungs from trying to inhale. Somehow he managed to break the surface without the water spilling any farther inside him. Only then did he suck down a huge breath of beautiful clean air, almost sobbing as the shock of what’d happened struck him. For a long time he’d clung to the side of the pool as big shivers ran up and down his body. Finally, he regained enough control to swim back out to his friends.