In the refectory Marie-Claude Stockbridge had the tact to let Viktor carry her tray to the table. He was extremely careful about it. In the gentle gravity of the ship's fractional-G acceleration slippery foods could slide right off the plate if you moved too fast in the wrong direction, but he delivered the trays to the table magnets in perfect order. Then he set himself the task of making grown-up dinner-table conversation. "Vegetable protein again," he announced, stirring the thick stew. "I can't wait to get there and get a decent meal."
"Well, don't get your hopes too high. The meals might not be too good right away," Mrs. Stockbridge said politely. There were plenty of food animals in the livestock section of the freezers, but of course they would have to be allowed to breed and multiply before many of them could be turned into steaks or pork chops or fried drumsticks. "Although the first-ship colonists ought to have some stocks built up by the time we're there." She looked absently past Viktor, catching a glimpse of herself in the wall mirror—half the walls on the ship were mirrored to make the rooms seem more spacious. She touched her hair and said remorsefully, "I'm a mess."
"You look all right," Viktor growled, frowning down at the rest of his stew.
But that wasn't the whole truth. Marie-Claude looked a lot better than "all right" to his lascivious pubescent eyes. She was taller than his father, and more curved than his mother. Her hair was tangled, and her fingernails were still cracked from the freezer, and there was a faint, sweet smell of healthy female perspiration about her … and all of that was inexpressibly alluring to twelve-year-old Viktor Sorricaine.
Although Viktor wished no harm at all to Werner Stockbridge, one of his best daydreams (and sometimes night dreams) involved Marie-Claude's husband somehow losing the power of reproduction. He had learned that such things sometimes happened to men. He viewed it as a potential opportunity for himself. After all, everyone knew that when the ship landed it would be everyone's duty to have children. Lots of children—the planet had to be populated, didn't it? Lacking the ability to participate in the process himself, Werner Stockbridge would surely accept the necessity of his wife becoming pregnant now and then—and who better to do the job for him than their good family friend, young (but by then, with any luck, not too young to do the job) Viktor Sorricaine?
Some of the details of Viktor's fantasy were pretty hazy. That was all right. The important parts of the fantasy came later on. After all, Mr. Stockbridge was much older than his wife—thirty-eight to her twenty-five—and males were at their sexual peak in their teens. (Viktor knew a lot about the subject of reproductive biology. The teaching machines had not always been a disappointment.) After that age male vigor slowly declined, while the sexuality of women grew from year to year. Viktor took comfort in the fact that the thirteen-year difference between Marie-Claude's age and her husband's was exactly the same as between hers and Viktor's own, though of course in the opposite direction. So (Viktor calculated, as he gallantly escorted Marie-Claude back to the room where her husband and sons slept) in a few years, say seven or so, he would be nineteen and she would be no more than thirty-two; very likely, he speculated, the very peak years for both of them, while old Werner Stockbridge would be well into his forties and definitely well on the downhill path at least, if not actually out of it …
He turned and glanced up at her. "What?"
Marie-Claude was smiling at him. "We're here, Viktor. And, oh, Viktor, I know what a nuisance those two little monsters can be. Thank you!" And she reached down and kissed his cheek before she disappeared into the family cubicle.
So, of course, then there was no help for it. From then on Viktor doggedly baby-sat the two Stockbridge brats, however hateful they got. Which could be pretty hateful. When they awoke from their nap he organized a game of gravity-tag in the treadmill, hoping to tire them out. When they still wouldn't tire he took them on a tour of the ship. By the time it was their bedtime he realized it was also his own; he had never before understood how wearying taking care of small children could be for an adult, or anyway a near-adult, like himself.
When he woke up it was because his parents were calling him. "I thought we'd all have breakfast together for a change," his mother said, smiling at him. "Things are almost getting back to normal."
Breakfast was no different from any other meal except that they had porridge instead of stew, but what was different was the atmosphere. His father was relaxed for the first time since their defrosting. "The flare star's dying out," he told his son. "We're watching it pretty closely—there are some funny things about it."
Viktor always had permission to ask for explanations. "Funny how, Dad?" he asked, settling down for one of those wonderful father-and-son talks he remembered from the old days. His father was one of those priceless few who didn't think little children should ever be told "You'll understand when you're older." Pal Sorricaine always explained things to his son. (So did Amelia Sorricaine-Memel, but other things, and not as interesting to Viktor.) Some of the things Pal had explained as he tucked his son in, instead of telling silly children's stories about the three bears, were the Big Bang, the CNO hydrogen-to-helium cycle that made stars burn, the aging of galaxies, the immensity of the expanding universe. Of course, Amelia had interesting technical things to talk about, too, but her specialty was physics and mechanics. Things like entropy and the Carnot efficiency of heat engines weren't nearly as wondrous to a child as the stories of the stars they were wandering among.
This time Viktor was disappointed. All his father said was, "It just doesn't match any of the known profiles of flare stars. It might be a nova, but it's a funny one. It's got two big jets. Matter of fact. I've sent a report to the International Astronomical Society about it—who knows, they may even name it after me as a new class of objects!"
"They ought to," Viktor said decisively, pleased because his father looked pleased too—almost as pleased as he was puzzled. But his father shook his head.
"It'll be twenty years before they hear it and another twenty before they acknowledge, remember?" he said. "Anyway, it looks as though we can handle the navigation."
"Maybe," Viktor's mother said.
"Well, yes, maybe," his father conceded. "There's always a maybe." He pushed aside his empty porridge bowl and took a deep swallow of the one cup of coffee he was allowed each day. Fifth Officer Pal Sorricaine was a plump, smooth-faced, blue-eyed man with a cheery disposition. He smiled often. He was smiling now, though with a little quizzical twist of the lip to acknowledge the "maybe." He had close-cropped pale hair, and he ran his hand over it as he gazed benignly at his son. "Marie-Claude says you've been a sweetheart about her kids," he said.
Viktor shrugged, scowling into his bowl.
"Got a case on her, have you?" his father asked, grinning. "I can't say I blame you."
"Pal!" his wife warned.
Sorricaine relented. "I was only teasing you a little, Vik," he apologized. "Don't be touchy, okay? Anyway, I think we can go back in the deep freeze in a day or two, after all. So if there's anything you specially want to do on the ship this time …"
Viktor made a face. "What is there to do?"
"Not much," Pal Sorricaine agreed. "Still—have you taken a good look at the ship? It's changed a lot since we took off, you know. And you'll never see it this way again."
Later on, being a surly "sweetheart" once more for Marie-Claude Stockbridge, Viktor was minding the kids in a roughhouse game of catch. After a wildly thrown ball had bounced around a corner of the passage and hit one of the maintenance crew in the face, Viktor remembered what his father had said. "Enough ball playing," he announced. "I want to show you something."