“What’s the idea?” Christine had pulled on her uniform blouse when she opened the door. “What do you want?”
Surgenor tried to smile. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“What do you want?” she repeated impatiently, ignoring his suggestion.
“Well…I was going to apologize.”
“What for?”
“For what happened at the meeting. And I guess I haven’t helped much, either.”
“I don’t need any help. Turkeys like Narvik and Schilling don’t bother me.”
“I dare say they don’t, but that’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it?” She sighed and he caught the tang of tobacco smoke on her breath. “All right—you’ve apologized, and that makes everybody feel better. Now, do you mind if I get some rest?” She closed the door and there came the sound of the lock being operated more firmly than was necessary. The do-not-disturb bezel began to glow.
Surgenor thoughtfully stroked his jaw as he continued along the corridor to his own room. When Christine Holmes was angry, as she undoubtedly still was, she could be as tough and abrasive as any man, but in the moment of being taken unawares she had reacted in a classically feminine manner. The ancient defensive gesture, the screening of the breasts from strange eyes, seemed to indicate sexuality, to show that in spite of everything she regarded herself as essentially female. Surgenor tried to imagine the Christine he knew—big-boned, sallow-complexioned, hard-handed, smoking, ready to take on a male world on its own terms—as the person she might once have been before life had started wielding the big stick, but he was unable to come up with a different picture. Recognizing the futility of the exercise, he put her out of his mind as he entered his own room. Kicking off his boots, he lay down on the bed and allowed himself to think about being stranded thirty million light-years from home. Was it any worse than being stranded one light-year from home? Rationally—no; but there was more to life than rationality. He did not exist as a pure intellect, and the coldness of the intergalactic gulf had seeped into his bones, into his guts, and he could feel it laying waste to his spirit, and he was unable to see how he would ever again be able to laugh, or sleep easily, or renew himself at the fountains of human friendship.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The print-out listed five G2 suns—all within a radius of six light-years—whose gravitational profiles showed the complexities caused by planets. One of them, designated as Prospect One by Aesop, appeared to have as many as thirty worlds swarming around it like electrons in a shell.
“That makes things simple,” Surgenor said, looking at the star which Aesop had enclosed in a pulsing green circle. “The sooner we get to Prospect One and start checking out the living accommodation the better it’ll be.”
Gillespie nodded. “There’s a lot of booze being shifted in the mess room.”
Surprisingly Mike Targett looked doubtful. “I’m not so sure about the whole programme Aesop has set out. I’ve been thinking things over all afternoon, and something tells me we should get out of this cluster altogether and start from scratch somewhere else.”
“Something tells you? We need more authority than that, Mike. It isn’t going to bother any of us if there are a few big bangs around here in a century or two.”
“I know, but…’ Targett hunched broodily in his chair, staring over the edge of the catwalk which seemed to bridge eternity. “I get a feeling there’s something really weird about this region.”
Surgenor recalled that Mike Targett, hard-headed young gambler, was not the sort of person to be influenced by moods or mysticism. “But it Aesop thinks it’s all right…’
“Aesop is a computer—as I know better than anybody else—and he is programmed. Admittedly, his programmes are big, subtle, sophisticated, open-ended, self-expanding, anything else you can think of, but they’re still programmes and therefore only equip him to deal with the conceivable. Faced with the inconceivable, Aesop can’t be relied on.”
“What’s so inconceivable about a condensing cluster?”
“How can I answer that?” Targett replied. “But for all we know we’ve strayed into a zone of time reversal. Perhaps the cluster is actually expanding when seen in normal time.”
Now, that’s inconceivable—so much so that I couldn’t swallow it.”
“We’d be able to detect the remains of the central explosion,” Gillespie said.
“Would we? With our basic constants no longer…’ Targett broke off and gave a wry smile. “I don’t believe we’re in a zone of time reversal, either—I was only trying to give you an example of something outside Aesop’s areas of competence.”
Surgenor cleared his throat significantly. “We’re wasting time, Mike. Unless you can come up with a more concrete objection, I’m going to move that we take Prospect One as our next destination.”
“I’ve said my piece.”
“That’s it then,” Gillespie said. “I vote for Prospect One, as well, so let’s get the show on the road. I’ll round up the others while you’re telling Aesop.”
The twelve chairs in the observation room were filled within a short time. Now that the initial shock had passed and there had been a period of adjustment, the crew members’ true reactions to their predicament were becoming apparent. Some were drinking hard to maintain a kind of grim joviality, some were watchful yet withdrawn, and others kept up a purposeful bustle of activity. The general atmosphere was one of calmness in the face of crisis, something for which Surgenor was grateful, even though he suspected that to some extent it had been brought about by Aesop. If tranquillizers had been introduced into the food and water it had been done discreetly and effectively.
Surgenor kept his gaze on the target star, mentally bracing himself for the instant in which it would be transformed from a distant point of light into the blinding disc of a nearby sun. The range was less than four light-years, which meant that Aesop should be able to take them right into the multi-world system in a single accurately judged leap. This was one of the reasons he had preferred to stay in a densely packed star cluster—most of the journey time on any mission was used up in the normal-space approaches to planets, and where food supplies were limited there was an advantage in making very short, very precise leaps right into the hearts of target systems.
As the seconds ticked by Surgenor felt the familiar build-up of excitement that always preceded the near-miracle of a beta-space jump. On this occasion, perhaps because so much depended on the outcome, the wait seemed more prolonged than usual, the tension more unbearable. Surgenor forced himself to sit without fidgeting, apparently at ease, while he struggled to relate subjective and objective time; not until he saw both Gillespie and Voysey glancing at their watches did he acknowledge a growing conviction that—monstrously unfair it might seem—something else had gone wrong on board the Sarafand.
“Do you think we should quiz Aesop?” Gillespie whispered from the seat beside him.
“If there’s any kind of hold-up he’s bound to…’ The sound of the chime which always preceded a general announcement froze Surgenor to silence.
“I must inform all those present,” came Aesop’s voice, “that it is not possible for the ship to complete the scheduled beta-space transition to Prospect One.”
There was an immediate ripple of surprise and annoyance, above which several men could be heard demanding an explanation. None of them seemed particularly alarmed, and Surgenor began to wonder if all his foreboding about a jackpot trip had made him unduly pessimistic.
“The reason we are unable to make the transition is that my beta-space sensors are supplying me with data which I cannot accept.” Aesop had adjusted the volume of his voice to make himself heard above the general noise level.