To the Pratt family, with thanks for fine times.

1

“Fire... it’s on fire!”

“EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY.”

“Attention everyone. Emergency in cryonics area six. Damage Control and Life Support groups to cryonics area six immediately. Emergency.”

“The whole area’s a mass of flames! The standby equipment is out! Get more men up here, quick!”

The starship had no name. The people aboard merely called it “the ship.” It had originally been a huge artificial satellite orbiting around Earth, a minor city in space, hugging close to the Mother World. Then it was made into a prison for thousands of the world’s best scientists and their families. Now it was a starship, coasting silently from the solar system toward the triple star system, Alpha Centauri.

Inside the main control center, things were anything but quiet.

“There are fifty men and women in cryosleepers in number six area. If you can’t get that fire under control they’ll die.”

Larry Belsen was standing up on the ship’s bridge. It was actually a long curving row of desk consoles, where seated technicians worked the controls that watched and directed every section of the mammoth ship. Larry’s job was as close to a ship’s captain as any job on the ship; he was in charge of this Command and Control center, he had a finger on every pulsebeat in the ship.

The technicians were hunched over the keyboards, fingers flying over the buttons that electronically linked all of the great ship’s machinery and people. In front of each of their desks were viewscreens that showed them pictures, graphs, charts, every kind of information from each compartment and piece of equipment aboard engines, computers, life support, living quarters, work areas, cryonics units, power systems, all on view in the hundreds of screens.

Normally, Larry thought of the curving ring of screens as the eye of a giant electronic insect, multifaceted to see into all the areas of the ship. He had studied about Earth’s insects briefly in a biology course, on the learning tapes. But now his attention was riveted to one particular screen, where the fire was raging in cryonics area six. There wasn’t much he could see smoke obscured almost everything.

He put a hand on the shoulder of the girl working that console.

“Can’t you get the emergency equipment functioning?”

She was a thin, dark-skinned girl, with close-cropped hair. Glancing up at Larry. “It should’ve gone on automatically. But it won’t respond at all. I’ve tried . “ Her eyes were wide with fear, anxiety.

“It’s not your fault,” Larry said calmly “Don’t blame yourself.”

“But there are fifty sleepers in there!”

Larry shook his head. Without bothering to go across to the life support displays, he said, “They must be dead by now, Tania. No sense tearing yourself up over it.”

He took a step to the guy sitting at the next desk console. “You in touch with the Damage Control group?”

“Yes they’ve plugged into a wall phone out in the main corridor, just outside area six.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“It’s Mort Campbell’s unit, but he’s not the one on the phone.”

“Let me talk.”

“Is it cryonics six?”

Larry turned to see Dan Christopher at the door down at the far end of the bridge. For an instant, everything seemed to stand still people frozen at the console desks, communications speakers quiet, viewscreens stilled.

The two of them looked almost like brothers, at first glance. Larry was tall and slim with dark hair that he kept clipped fairly short. His eyes, though, were a cold gray, like a granite rock floating in space far from the warmth of a star. Dan was the same height and also youthfully slim. His hair was a lighter shade, and almost shoulder length. It curled slightly. His eyes were fiercely black, deep and flashing. Both of them were wearing workshift coveralls, Larry’s the blue-gray shade of the ship’s Command and Control personnel, Dan’s the howling orange of the Propulsion and Power section.

“Is it six?” Dan demanded, his voice rising.

Larry didn’t answer, he merely nodded slowly.

“My father’s in there!”

By now Larry had crossed the plastic tiled floor of the bridge and was within arm’s reach of Dan. He took him by the arm.

“So is mine! There’s nothing you can do, Dan. The Damage Control group’s already there, but…”

“My father!”

Dan pulled loose and yanked the door open. Larry stood there and watched him disappear down the corridor running, until the door automatically slid shut again.

With a sad shake of his head, Larry went back to the control desks and viewscreens.

“You still in contact with the Damage Control party?”

The fellow nodded and pointed to the main screen over his desk, in the center of a group of seven screens. A scared-looking teenager was in view. He was looking somewhere off camera, coughing in the smoke that was drifting past him.

“What’s going on up there?” Larry asked sharply

The kid in the screen seemed to jerk with surprise. Then turning full face toward the screen, he said:

“Mr. Campbell and the crew are in there I saw flames coming through the main hatch a few minutes ago, but there’s only smoke now.”

“Is anybody hurt?”

“I don’t know. They’re all inside; there nobody’s come out.”

“Did they have smoke masks?”

“Yeah “

“Where’s yours?” Larry asked

The kid looked startled again “I—uh—yeah, it’s right here. I got it.”

More gently, Larry said, “Don’t you think it might be a good idea to put it on? It can’t protect you while it’s zipped to your belt.”

Larry found that he was bending over the shoulder of the seated technician. He straightened up and glanced at the life support screens on the next console. They were blank, dead.

Fifty people in there. Dan’s father... and my own.

“Larry... look.”

He turned his attention back to the viewscreen. The Damage Control group was trudging wearily back into the corridor. Their faces’ were smudged, their coveralls blackened. The foamers and other fire-fighting equipment they dragged seemed to weigh tons.

There was hardly any smoke coming from the hatch now. The last man to step out into the corridor slowly unclipped his smoke mask. Larry recognized him as Mort Campbell stocky, slow-moving but always sure of himself, one of the oldest men working on this shift—nearly thirty.

Then Dan Christopher came dashing into view. He pushed wordlessly past the first few men of the Damage Control group, his eyes wild, his mouth open in silent frenzy.

Campbell stopped him at the hatch. Dan tried to dodge around him, but Campbell grabbed Dan by his slim shoulders and held him firmly.

“Don’t go in there. It’s not pretty.”

“My father...”

“They’re all dead.”

Watching them in the viewscreen, Larry felt his insides sink. You knew he was dead, he told himself. But knowing it in your head and feeling it in your guts are two entirely different things.

He knew all the technicians, all up and down the long row of consoles, were staring at him now. He stood unmoved, his face frozen into a mask of concentration, and kept his eyes on the viewscreen. Inside his head, he was telling himself over and over, You never knew him. He was frozen before you were old enough to remember him. There’s no reason for you to break up.

Dan’s reaction was very different.

“NO!” he screamed, and he twisted out of Campbell’s grasp and darted into the still smoky cryonics area. The older man slipped his face mask back on and went in after him.

“The cameras inside the cryonics area aren’t working now,” the girl tech said quietly, her fingers still tapping on her keyboard, trying to coax life back into the dead machines.,

“Never mind,” Larry said woodenly. “There’s nothing in there that we should see.”

2

Larry sat in his living quarters, in the dark. It was a single compartment, barely big enough for a bunk, a desk, and a chair. The bunk and desk were molded into the curving walls of the compartment. Drawers and sliding partitions to the closet and sanitary blended almost invisibly with the silvery metal of the walls.

In the darkness, as he sat in the only chair and stared at nothing, there was only the residual glow of the viewscreen at the foot of the bed and the faint fluorescence of the wall painting that Valery had done for him years ago, when he had first been assigned a compartment of his own.

So you’ve lost a father you’ve never known, Larry still argued with himself. You’re not the only one. Every one of those fifty frozen people was a father or mother to somebody aboard the ship. Look at Dan; it’s hit him a lot harder.

But as he thought about it, slowly Larry began to realize that something else was bothering him. It wasn’t the deaths. Not really. That left nothing but a cold emptiness inside him. It was something else—

What caused the fire?

According to the ship’s computer records, they had been crawling through the huge gulf of space for nearly fifty years. Twenty-some thousand human beings, exiles from Earth, on their way to Alpha Centauri in a giant pinwheel of a ship. Nearly fifty years. Almost there.

But the ship was starting to die.

The men and women who had started on this long, long voyage were exiles. They had been scientists—molecular geneticists, most of them. The world government had rounded them up and placed them in a prison, this ship, which was then only a mammoth satellite orbiting Earth. Earth was overcrowded, it needed peace and above all it needed stability. The scientists represented the forces of change, not stability. The geneticists and their colleagues offered the ability to alter the human race, to make every baby into a superman or a slave, into a genius or a moron. On demand. Pay your money and take your choice.

The world government was humane. And very human. Its leaders decided such power would be too tempting, too easy to corrupt. So, as humanely as possible—but with thorough swiftness—they arrested all the scientists who were involved in genetic engineering and exited them to the satellite. Their knowledge was never to be used to alter the precious, hard-won peace and stability of Earth.

It had been Dan Christopher’s father—with the help of Larry’s father—who worked out the idea of turning their satellite prison into a starship. The Earth’s government agreed, reluctantly at first, but then with growing enthusiasm. Better to get rid of the troublesome scientists completely. Let them go toward Alpha Centauri. Whether they make it or not, they will no longer bother the teeming, overcrowded Earth.

But the ship itself was overcrowded. Twenty thousand people can’t be kept alive for year after year, decade after decade, for half a century or more. Not on a spacecraft. Not on the ship. So most of the people were frozen in cryogenic deepsleep, suspended animation, to be reawakened when they reached Alpha Centauri, or when they were needed for some special reason. The ship was run by a handful of people—no more than a thousand were allowed to be awake and active at one time. All this Larry knew from the history tapes. Much of it he had learned side by side with Dan, his best friend, when they were kids studying together. Both their mothers had died of a virus infection that killed hundreds of people before the medics figured out a way to stop it. Their fathers had handed the infant sons over to friends to be raised, and went into cryogenic sleep, to be awakened when they reached their destination. If they made it. The people who had built this ship were engineers of Earth.

The people who lived in it, riding out to the stars, were mostly scientists and their children. The ship had to operate far more than fifty years, if they were all to stay alive. The time was almost over, and the ship’s vast intricate systems were starting to break down, to fail. Youngsters trained as engineers and technicians had all the learning that the tapes could provide. But could they keep the ship going indefinitely?

A month ago it was the main power generator that failed, and they began to ration electrical power. Last week it was a pump in the hydroponics section; if they hadn’t been able to repair the pump they would have lost a quarter of their food production, plus the even more important oxygen-recycling ability of the green plants that grew in the long troughs of chemical nutrients. And now the fire. Fifty people dead.

Will any of us make it?

A soft tapping at his door. Fingernails on plastic. Valery.

“Come in,” Larry said, getting up from his chair.

The door slid open and she stood there framed in the light from the corridor.

Valery looked small, but she was actually almost Larry’s height, and he had known since their childhood together that she was as tough and supple as plastisteel. Her face was broad, with high Nordic cheekbones and wide, always-surprised-looking eyes. Changeable eyes; sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes something else altogether. Very fair skin with a scattering of freckles. Very, very pretty.

She was wearing a simple white jumpskirt and blouse. Like most of the girls aboard the ship, Valery made her own clothes.

“I heard about your father,” she said, her voice low.

Without waiting for him to say anything, she stepped into the compartment. Automatically, the door slid shut behind her. The room was suddenly plunged into darkness again. In the faint glow from the fluorescent painting, he started to reach for the light switch.

“No—” she said. “It’s all right like this. We don’t need lights.”

“Val—”

She was standing very close to him. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.

“I saw Dan. They took him to the infirmary. He collapsed.”

“I know,” Larry said.

He wanted to touch her, to put his arms around her and let her warmth engulf him. But he knew he couldn’t.

“You’d better... sit down,” he said.

Valery went to the plastic chair in front of the desk. She sat on it and tucked her feet up under her, as simple and feminine as a cat. Larry could see her in the darkness as a gleam of white, like a pale nebula set against the depths outside. He sat on the edge of the bunk.

“I wish there was something I could say,” Valery began. “I just feel so helpless.”

Larry found himself gripping the edge of the bunk hard with both hands. “Uh... how’s Dan?”

“Asleep. The medics have sedated him. He’s... he’s not strong, like you.”

“He does his thing, I do mine,” Larry said. “He shows his grief on the outside.”

“And you keep yours locked up inside you, so nobody can see.”

He didn’t answer.

“I can see it,” Valery said, her voice soft as a star-cloud. “I came over to tell you. I know what’s going on inside you, Larry. I...”

“Stop it!” he snapped. “You’re going to marry Dan in two more months. Leave me alone.”

Even in the darkness, he could sense her body stiffen. Then she said, “But I don’t love Dan. I love you.”

“That doesn’t make any difference and you know it.”

“You love me, Larry, I know that too.”

He shook his head. “No... I don’t. Not anymore.”

Her face was lost in shadow, but her voice smiled. “Larry—remember when we were just six or seven and we snuck into the free-fall playroom... you and Dan and me? And we were playing tag, and you got racing so fast that you flew smack into a wall—”

“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.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked.

Dan said, “Good enough. I’ve got to get out of here today. How long have I been here?”

“This is the third day.”

Dan could feel a shock race through him. “Three days? Then the Council meeting...”

“It’s over. They picked Larry as Chairman.”

“Larry!”

Joe shrugged and evaded looking straight into Dan’s eyes. “Larry was there, you weren’t. I don’t know what went on before the meeting, what Larry did to convince them. The rumble is that Larry let them know he wanted to be Chairman, and as long as you were too sick to depend on, he ought to have the job.”

Dan sagged back in the bed.

Looking worried, Joe added “They ... uh, they held services for the people who died in the fire—yesterday.”

“Yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“My father too? They didn’t wait...”

“Everybody. One single service. Their remains went into the hydroponics tank.”

“They couldn’t wait for me?”

Joe shrugged and looked away.

Dan reached up and grabbed his wrist. “They couldn’t wait a day or two for me to be there?” he shouted. “For my own father!”

“Larry decided...”

“Larry!”

“Listen,” Joe said, his voice suddenly low and urgent. “I know you and Larry have been friends since you were kids. But he sure isn’t acting like a friend of yours right now.”

Dan let himself sink slowly back into the yielding warmth of the bed again. He could feel his heart racing. Deliberately, he took a deep, calming breath.

“I’ve got to be calm,” he said, his voice steady now. “If I get excited, the medics will trank me again. If I show them I’m calm and relaxed, then they’ll let me out.”

Joe looked at him for a moment. “What’re you going to do when you get out?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said. “Something... but I don’t know what.”

Joe left shortly afterward. Dan held himself rigidly under control, not speaking, not moving, trying to not even think. He concentrated on the sensor screens next to his bed. Keep those luminous traces as calm and steady as you can. Watch them wiggle across the screens; heartbeat, blood pressure, alpha wave, respiration, basal metabolism. Calm and steady. Calm and steady. Stare at them, let them hypnotize you. Feel your heart muscle working inside you. Slower. Slower. Calm. Steady.

He fell asleep watching the screens. And he dreamed. Dreamed of the luminous lines worming across the screens; they were ropes, they were snakes, twining around him, choking him, crushing him. But then he was watching from somewhere far off as the glowing snakes squeezed the life out of someone else. His father! Himself!

He woke screaming.

“The more I think about it, the more glad I am that we voted you Chairman,” said Dr. Loring.

Larry Belsen was sitting in the main room of the Lorings’ quarters.’ Valery sat next to him on the foldout couch. Her father was comfortably sunk in the depths of a webchair. Every time he moved, the plastic webbing creaked; Larry was afraid it would give way under his weight.

Dr. Loring was one of the twelve oldest men awake, and thus was a permanent member of the Council. He had been a child when the ship had left Earth, and had never undergone deepsleep. “I want to see it all, from beginning to end,” he often said. The Council balanced age, tradition and stability against youth, vigor and change. The twelve oldest people awake were permanent members. The remaining Council seats were filled by younger men and women, and the Chairman was always elected from the younger generation, for a one-year term.

“Yes, you’ll be a good Chairman, Lawrence, my boy,” Dr. Loring went one. “Frankly, I always had my doubts about Dan...” he glanced at his daughter, “... as far as being Chairman is concerned. Too emotional. That’s not bad in some aspects of life, of course, but as Chairman...”

Valery smiled at the old man. “Dad, you’ve told us the same thing three times now.”

“Oh? Really? Well...” He shook his head, looking slightly embarrassed. Dr. Loring was a heavy man, big-boned and round with paunch. He was nearly bald, nothing but scraggly white tufts of hair sticking out around his ears. H is eyes were big and moist and always blinking. Larry thought of him sometimes as a frog who’d been turned into a prince... fifty years ago.

Dr. Loring turned in his webchair, producing a chorus of groans from the plastic, and called to his wife: “What about dinner?”

She was standing in the kitchen alcove, thoughtfully watching the bank of dials set alongside the eye-level oven.

“I’m trying to time everything so that it’s all done together, and everything will be hot when we sit down.... Valery, you can fold out the table and set places.”

As Val got up, Dr. Loring complained, “It was a lot easier when the microwave ovens were working. This business of using heat for cooking... it’s barbaric.”

Larry said, “We just can’t afford the electrical power for microwave cooking until the main generator’s back on the line.”

“Hmmph. There’s another thing about Dan. How long has that generator been out? It’s his responsibility—”

“Now don’t go blaming him,” Larry said strongly. “It’s not his fault. Nobody aboard ship knows much about the generator— Dan’s had to train himself and a special crew just to get ready to tackle the job.”

Dr. Loring mumbled, “Well it’s been a long-enough time, certainly.”

“They’ve got to be very careful,” Larry insisted. “Joe Mailer’s going through the computer core for instructions about the generator. If they goof, you know, we’ll be in real trouble.”

“Don’t get so upset, dear,” Mrs. Loring said. “Dinner’s ready at last... I think,” she added.

The meal was fine. The vegetables and fruits came from the ship’s hydroponics gardens; the synthetic meat came from the biochemists’ “ranch,” where nutrients and enzymes and other special chemicals were put together to form a constantly-growing blob that had all the nourishment of real organic protein. No one awake had ever tasted actual meat from a real animal, except in dimly remembered childhood, but the biochemists insisted that their synthetics tasted “just like steak... even better.”

Larry found that he was getting more and more nervous as the meal went on. Got to tell them about us sooner or late, he kept saying to himself. But the dinner-table conversation kept rolling along, and he couldn’t find an excuse to bring the subject around to himself and Valery.

He kept glancing at Valery, waiting for her to say something, to help him get started. But she looked more amused at his consternation than anything else.

As usual. Dr. Loring was doing most of the talking. Ordinarily, Larry could let the old man’s rambling speeches go in one ear and out the other; but tonight he was getting edgy. Damn, I wish he’d shut up for a minute!

It was Mrs. Loring who finally came to his rescue. She was the model from which Valery got her looks. Even at her age, she still looked lovely, strong, vital. Her hair was still the same sun-gold as Valery’s; her eyes sparkled the same way.

She laid a hand on her husband’s arm and said, interrupting him, “Dear, why don’t we have some wine with our dessert? Is there still some left in that bottle you made?”

He looked at her, puzzled, for a moment. “H’mm? Uh, why yes... but..,”

“I know we save it for special occasions,” Mrs. Loring said, “but this is a special occasion, isn’t it? After all, it’s not every day that we elect a new Chairman.”

As Dr. Loring pushed his chair back from the table, Larry took the opportunity:

“It’s a double occasion— Valery and I want to get married.” He said it as quickly as he could.

“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?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

Larry sat nervously at the head of the long Council table.

The Council members were filing into the narrow room, in twos and threes. Dr. Loring took his seat close to Larry, smiling at him. Trying to make me feel at ease. The permanent members were seated in the even-numbered chairs. The younger temporary members sat between them, heads of thick dark hair, or blond, or red, alternating with the grays, whites, and bald heads of the older generation. Of the twenty-four Council members, nine were women.

The table was almost filled when Dan Christopher and Joe Haller came in together.

Larry felt a flash of surprise go through him. Then he rose from his chair and went down along the table to Dan.

“Hey, it’s good to see you back on your feet again,” he said, putting out his hand. “How do you feel?”

Dan shook Larry’s hand without enthusiasm. “I’m all right,” he answered.

“I didn’t know you’d be out of the infirmary today,” Larry apologized. “I was going to visit you. I did drop in once, but they told me you were sleeping.”

“I’m fine now,” Dan said.

And sore as hell, Larry realized. “Look... uh, why don’t we get together after this meeting and talk. There’s a lot we ought to hash over.”

Dan nodded. “Okay.”

Feeling even shakier than before, Larry went back to the Chairman’s seat and opened the meeting. He let the automatic procedures of every meeting smooth over his nervousness, and sat there listening to his pulse beating in his eardrums as the minutes of the previous meeting flashed on the wall screen at the far end of the long, narrow room.

They rumbled through old business, and listened to Joe Haller’s report on progress with the generator. Adrienne Kaufman, head of the Genetics Section, recommended that the Council offer its official expression of sympathy for those who lost family members in the recent fire. Larry glanced at Dan while the unanimous vote was made; Dan was staring at him, his eyes ablaze.

Then came new business, and Larry heard himself saying:

“As you know, we’ll be in the Alpha Centauri system in about two months. Our trajectory will bring us to a point where we fly-by the major planet. At some point before our closest approach, we must decide if we want to decelerate and take up orbit around the planet, or continue onward and out of the Centauri system. So it’s time for us to begin a serious review of what’s known about the planets and to consider launching our remote probes, to gather more data on them.”

Pressing a stud set into the tabletop before him, Larry said, “Here’s the best holo of the major planet that we have, taken by the original probe from Earth, nearly a century ago.”

The wall screen seemed to dissolve. In its place, deep space itself took form, with stars hanging everywhere, and a fat, yellowish ball of a planet sitting in the middle of the emptiness.

“Dr. Loring, could you review what’s known about the major planet?” Larry asked.

“Not terribly much, I’m afraid,” Loring began in his most pedantic style. “That primitive probe was woefully small, and a horrendous communications problem—transmitting holographic data over more than four light-years is no simple problem, believe me! And, of course, the men who launched the probe weren’t considering settling down on the Centaurian planets to live. In fact, they didn’t even know there were any planets in the Alpha Centauri system when the probe was launched.”

“All right,” said one of the other elder Councilmen. “Now how about telling us what we do know?”

“Certainly, certainly,” Dr. Loring replied. “I won’t even discuss the minor planet... it’s airless, bare rock, baked by the big star, Alpha Centauri A... which, as you know is almost exactly like the sun. I don’t foresee any radiation problems for us from A... and star B is small and cool, no problems there either. No worries about high fluxes of ultraviolet or x-rays and such. Now Proxima—the third star of the system—is so dim and so far away that it will look like an ordinary star up in the sky. No influence on the planet at all.”

“What about the planet itself?” Adrienne Kaufman asked sharply.

“Oh, yes... Frankly, it’s not going to be paradise. The white clouds you see flecking the surface are water vapor, all right, and the temperature range of the planet should permit liquid water on its surface. But, as you can see, that surface is mostly yellow-green. Watery planets, such as Earth, tend to look blue.”

“What is the yellow-green stuff?”

Loring shrugged elaborately. “I wish I could tell you. The spectroscopic data returned by the original probe was very scant. I’ve been doing additional work with our equipment in the hub, but it’s still very skimpy data. There’s no evidence yet of liquid water on the surface. The planet’s density appears to be rather high, judging from the orbits of its little moonlets. Its surface gravity might be as high as 1 1/2 g... certainly no lower than 1.2. Anyone standing on that planet is going to feel heavier than he does now by 20 to 50 percent.”

“That could make life unpleasant.”

The chief medic said, “It could make life impossible for us on the surface. Human beings can’t live normal, active lives under a continuous 1.5-gload. It would ruin your back, your abdominal wall, your feet and legs.”

“But the data’s so sketchy—”

Larry took over. “It’s very sketchy, and it could be wrong, too. I think we ought to launch our own probes as soon as possible, and start to get more detailed and reliable information.”

There was a general murmur of agreement.

Dan Christopher spoke up. “What happens if we find that the planet is as bad as we fear?”

Silence. Everyone turned to look at Dan, sitting down at the far end of the table, then one by one they turned back to look at Larry for an answer.

Larry hiked his eyebrows. “We’d have two possible alternatives. Either stay in orbit and live in the ship until we can raise a generation of children who are genetically altered so that they’re suited for life on the planet’s surface... or keep going and look for another star with a more Earthlike planet.”

“Which would you recommend, in such a case?” Dan asked.

Larry sensed danger, a trap. “It’s much too early to try to answer that question,” he said slowly. “There are too many variables, too many unknowns.”

Joe Haller said, “Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to bet on this bucket of transistors making it much farther than Alpha Centauri.”

“And we know nothing at all about possible Earthlike planets around other stars,” Dr. Loring pointed out.

“Then we’ve got to stay at Alpha Centauri and modify our children to live on the major planet,” Dan said.

Larry found himself shaking his head. “We don’t know yet. There’s a chance that we won’t be able to do that, even if we want to. And to expect the rest of us to live out our lives here in the ship while we’re raising children who’ll leave us and go live on the surface... well, I think we might run into some psychological problems there.”

“Wouldn’t there be psychological problems connected with sailing off for some unknown destination?” Dan asked.

“Yes, sure, but...” Larry stopped himself. Why does he want to start an argument? “Look., there’s no sense talking about this until we have some data back from the close-up probes.”

Emile Polany, chief of the engineering department, said in a deep voice that still carried traces of old Europe, “We can launch the probes after a few days’ checkout. They are capable of high acceleration, and could be in orbit around the major planet in a few weeks.”

“What about landing on the planet itself?” Dan asked.

“The probes are equipped with instrument packages that can be soft-landed on the surface.”

“Good. We ought to begin the checkout at once,” said Dan.

Only then did Larry realize what was happening. He’s trying to take the meeting away from me. He’s trying to show everyone that he’s in charge, no matter who they elected Chairman.

5

The meeting ended.

Much more swiftly than they had drifted into the meeting room, the Council members cleared out. Larry watched them leave, all of them except Dan. Finally he was alone in the room except for Dan. They sat at opposite ends of the table staring at each other.

I’ve known him all my life, Larry thought, and now he’s a stranger.

He got up from his seat and forced himself to walk down along the table to where Dan was sitting.

“I guess you do feel okay,” Larry said, putting on a smile. He sat on the edge of the table, next to Dan’s chair. “You sure made yourself heard.”

Dan was slouched back in his seat. He looked up at Larry and asked, “Why’d you get yourself elected Chairman? We agreed that I’d take it this year.”

“I know,” Larry said, feeling rotten. “You... well, you were laid up in the infirmary, no telling how long you’d be there. The medics kept saying you were okay physically, but emotionally...”

“So you stepped in.”

“Yes.”

“And being Chairman gives you the right to marry Valery, too, doesn’t it?”

God, he can see right through me!

“Don’t tell me that never entered your head,” Dan insisted.

Keeping his voice steady, Larry answered, “You know we’ve both been in love with Val since we were kids—”

“The Lorings raised all three of us. But we’re not playing brothers and sister anymore. Are you going to marry Val?”

“That’s... up to her,” Larry said.

“She’s promised to me!”

“Computer selection. That’s not final.”

Dan’s eyes flared, but he said only, “You’re willing to let her make the decision between us?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

Larry felt the breath sag out of him in relief.

But Dan went on, “Have you appointed a board of inquiry to investigate the fire?”

“Board of... no, we have the report of Mort Campbell’s Damage Control group. That’s enough. What, good would a board of inquiry do?”

.Straightening up in his chair, Dan said, “The cause of the fire should be investigated. Fifty people died, and we should know why. Somebody’s responsible; accidents have causes.”

Feeling bewildered, Larry said, “We know why. The circuits were overloaded, the insulation gave—”

Dan banged a hand on the tabletop. “I want a full investigation! With a formal board of inquiry. And I want to head that board. If you won’t set it up, I’ll call for it at the next Council meeting.”

“But that would be like slapping Mort Campbell in the face. After all, he’s in charge of Life Support—”

“I don’t give a damn about Campbell!” Dan shouted. “Will you appoint a board or do I have to get the Council to do it?”

Larry felt ice-chilled inside. Another try to get the Council under his own control. “All right,” he said slowly. “I’ll appoint a board. You can even be its head. But you won’t find anything that hasn’t already been found.”

“Maybe.” Dan pulled himself out of the chair and strode to the door without another word or a backward glance. The door slid shut behind him with a click.

Larry sat there alone in the Council room for several minutes. Then he went back to his own seat and punched out a phone number on the tabletop keyboard.

“Infirmary,” said a pretty nurse. Her face was ballooned many times larger than life on the wall screen.

“Give me the chief psychotech, please.”

“Dr. Hsai? I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment—”

“See if you can interrupt him, will you? This is the Chairman; I must speak to him right away.”

“Oh... yessir, I’ll try.”

The screen went blank for a moment while a part of Larry’s mind smiled a little. Rank hath its privileges. The features of a thin-faced oriental in his thirties appeared on the screen.

“Mr. Belsen, what can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor, but this is important. I’m worried about Dan Christopher... he’s acting... well, strange.”

Hsai made an understanding face. “Yes, that is to be expected. He feels the loss of his father very deeply, you know.”

“Too deeply, do you think?”

The doctor smiled. “To paraphrase a venerable adage; How deep is too deep?”

Larry hesitated for a moment, then decided to say it. “Deep enough to unbalance him.”

“Ahhh... I see. You feel he is unstable?”

“He’s acting strangely, Doctor. Making veiled accusations. He wants to investigate the accident in which his father died. He talks as if he thinks somebody caused the fire deliberately.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Hsai thought for a moment. “Well, I had planned to check on him within a few days. Perhaps I had better make it sooner. And deeper.”

“I’d appreciate knowing what the results are.”

“Eh, the doctor-patient relationship...”

“Yes, I know. But Dan can be a very influential member of the Council. It’s important that I know whether or not we can trust his judgment.”

“I see. Well, I suppose I can give you some feeling in that regard without violating any sacred oaths.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Very well, Mr. Chairman. I shall see him tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Larry’s office, as chief of the Command and Control section, was actually a cubbyhole set between the ship’s bridge and the computer center. Barely big enough for a desk and a small wall-screen viewer, the office was well suited for someone who was frightened of crowds and open spaces—or for someone who hated to spend much time at a desk and preferred to be moving around the ship.

Larry went into his office and sat at the desk. Suddenly he was very tired. He ran a weary hand over his brow.

A tap at the door.

“Come in.”

It was Dr. Loring. “I am interrupting something?”

“No, not at all,” Larry said. “Sit down.” He gestured to the only other chair in the room.

Loring’s bulk seemed to make the walls bulge outward. He squeezed around the plastic chair and then plopped down on it. Larry winched as the metal legs seemed to sag.

“I wanted to congratulate you... you ran a good meeting, despite certain, ah—interferences.”

Larry nodded absently. “You know,” he mused, “I hadn’t really understood until today how likely it is that the planet we’re heading for won’t be suitable to live on.”

“Yes. That would be a disappointment.”

“Disappointment?” Larry swiveled his chair around to face Dr. Loring directly. “It’ll be a catastrophe. It’ll mean rethinking the whole purpose of this voyage. Do we really want to stay at a world that’s not like Earth, and change our children into... into something different from us?”

“Frankly, I don’t see any alternative,” Loring confessed. “We don’t know of any better planets elsewhere.”

“Well, we’d better start looking,” Larry said firmly. “I don’t like being put in a corner. I want to have some choice as to whether we stay at Alpha Centauri or not.”

Loring looked mildly shocked. “You’re serious? You would actually consider going farther?”

Larry nodded.

“But... everyone on the ship thinks that our voyage is almost over.”

“I know,” Larry said. “It might be just beginning.”

Dr. Loring shook his head, making his heavy jowls quiver. “The people won’t like it. They are not emotionally prepared for going farther. The ship isn’t built to...”

“The ship can be repaired, overhauled. The people—well, the people will make the final decision, I guess. But I’d like them to understand the alternatives. Or at least to have an alternative to Alpha Centauri.”

“We don’t have the equipment on board to study planets of other stars from the ship. We can barely make out details of the major Centaurian planet, as it is.”

“Then you’ll have to build the equipment,” Larry said.

“In two months? I’m ...”

“You’ve got less time than that,” Larry said, his voice hard and cold as plastisteel. “I want to be getting some data before we’re forced to settle into an orbit around the major planet.”

For once, Loring was speechless. He sat there open-mouthed, blinking wetly.

“You’ll get all the help you need,” Larry said. “I’ll see to that. But I want evidence of other Earthlike planets. They’ve got to be out there somewhere.”

“Why? Because you want them to exist?”

Larry could feel his teeth clenching. He forced himself to stay as calm as possible while answering, “No... it’s not just that. I don’t want to see my children altered to live on an inhuman world. Val’s children. Your grandchildren.”

Dr. Loring was silent for a long moment. Then, “He’s called her, you know.”

“Dan?”

“Yes. He wants to have dinner with her tonight.”

“She agreed?”

“Yes. I expect she’ll tell him about her decision to marry you.”

With a shake of his head, Larry replied, “No, I don’t think so. He’s been through enough recently; I don’t think Val will want to add that to his troubles.”

“But she’s got to!” Dr. Loring’s face started to redden. “Otherwise... she can’t let him think...”

“I know,” Larry said. “I know. But I’m afraid that Dan’s right on the edge of a real mental crackup. He’s like a man who’s gone outside and tethered himself to the level one wheel. He’s spinning around and around... and the more he spins, the wilder he feels.”

It had been a quiet, tense dinner. Valery and Dan had eaten in the ship’s main autocafeteria, in one of the shadowy little booths far away from the main dining area and the pickup lines with their crowds and noise.

They had said very little. Val looked beautiful but very serious in a red jumpsuit. Dan was dark and silent in a black coverall.

Now they were walking down a quiet corridor, back toward Dan’s quarters, a one-room compartment exactly like Larry’s. It even had one of Val’s paintings on its wall.

“You’ve decided on Larry, haven’t you?” Dan asked abruptly.

She stopped walking, right there in the middle of the nearly deserted corridor. “I think so. I told him-yes.”

He took her arm and resumed walking; she had to quicken her former pace to keep up with him. Without looking down at her, he asked, “You love him?”

“I love you both. You know that.”

“But you want to marry him.”

“He... he’s asked me to.”

“And you want your children to be the Chairman’s son and daughter.”

“No, it’s not that!”

“And if I were Chairman?”

Valery shook her head. “You’re not.”

“I could be.”

“No... not now. Larry has it and they’ll re-elect him. You won’t get another chance.”

Still looking straight ahead, he asked, “Suppose he’s voted out? Even before his first year’s over?”

“What?” She stopped again and pulled her arm free. “What are you saying, Dan?”

With a shrug, he answered, “Chairmen have been voted out before their terms were up. When the Council decides that the Chairman can’t handle the job. Or when they think there’s a better man available.”

“Don’t try it,” Valery said earnestly. “You’ll be hurting Larry and you’ll be hurting yourself even more.”

“I deserve to be Chairman,” Dan insisted. “But more than that—much more!—I want you. I love you, Val. I’ve always loved you. I’d tear this ship apart to get you, if I had to.”

“Oh, Dan... don’t.,. please...”

He reached out and took her into his arms. “You’re not going to marry Larry or anybody else Only me You think you’ve made up your mind, but just wait By the time we go into orbit around the planet out there, you’ll see everything differently. You’ll see”

Something in her head was telling Valery to push free of him, but something even stronger made her stay in his arms Looking up into his intent, deadly serious face, she said, “Dan... don’t make me come between you and Larry You’ve been friends... “ It sounded pathetically weak, even while she was saying it.

“Larry might have murdered my father.”

“What?” In sudden amazement, she did push out of his grasp

“I don’t think that fire was an accident. Somebody caused it Larry benefited from it.”

“Dan, that’s insane! Larry’s own father...”

“What’ll you think when I prove it?” Dan said, his voice rising to nearly a shout “Would you like to be married to a murderer?”

“Dan, stop it!”

“Well, would you?”

Valery turned suddenly and began running back down the corridor, the way they had just come.

“Val... wait . “ He raced after her, caught her arm

“I’m going home!” She pulled her arm free. “If you have any sense of decency at all you’ll never mention such a crazy thing again. Do you understand? Not to me or anyone else!”

She left him standing there, looking suddenly alone and helpless—and yet, as Valery glanced back toward him, Dan also seemed darkly resolved, strong and purposeful She shuddered Larry, a murderer? It was insane. But.. that meant that Dan was—insane!

Which was it?

And with a final helping of horror, Valery realized, Whichever it is, I’ve helped to cause it’

Dan watched her hurry down the corridor, knowing that he had driven her away.

Maybe l am crazy, he said to himself. How could Larry…He couldn’t, not Larry!

But another part of his mind droned with remorseless logic.

Someone caused the fire. Someone killed fifty people and kept you from your rightful position as Chairman. Someone wants to change everything, have everything his own way.

Feeling sick and confused and more angry with himself than anyone else, Dan made his way back to his own quarters

It wasn’t until he had dropped onto his bunk that he noticed his viewscreen had MESSAGE WAITING written in glowing yellow letters across it.

He sat up on the bunk and punched the yellow button among the cluster on the keyboard beside the screen. The face of a young man appeared on the screen. Dan couldn’t quite place him, he knew he had seen him before, but didn’t know him personally.

“I’m Ross Cranston, from the computer section. I have a private message for Dan Christopher. I’ll be in my quarters until first shift starts tomorrow morning.”

The taped message faded from the screen. Puzzled, Dan touched the green button and said, “Get me Ross Cranston, please.”

The computer-directed phone circuits answered with nothing but a faint hum Then the same face appeared on the screen.

He looked just a little startled. “Oh, you’re Dan Christopher, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Dan said. “You wanted to speak to me.”

Cranston said, “Yes. But not on the phone. Are you busy? Can I come to your quarters?  Or you can come to mine.”

“What’s this all about?” Dan asked

Nervously, Cranston answered, “I’d rather .. it’d be better to talk in private.”

“About what?” Dan insisted.

“Your father.”

Dan was instantly taut with tension. “I’ll come to your place. What’s the number?”

Ten minutes later Dan was tapping on Cranston’s door. Politeness dictated a light tap with the fingernails, the compartments were all small enough for that sort of noise to be heard instantly, and it didn’t disturb the next compartment, just a few steps away But something in Dan wanted to pound on the door with both fists

Cranston slid the door open He was much shorter than Dan sandy hair, worn long; roundish face, too puffy for a young man but not yet really fat. Nervous, light brown eyes darting everywhere.

“What’s this all about?” Dan said as he stepped into the compartment. It was like all the other living quarters, except that Cranston had covered its walls with graphs and odd-looking sketches that appeared to be printouts of computer-directed drawings.

Cranston gestured Dan to a chair. He himself pulled a large pillow off his bunk, let it drop to the floor, and then sat on it cross-legged.

“I’m with the computer section,” he began.

“You said that on the phone.”

“Yes. Well, earlier today we were running routine statistical checks, inputting those fifty deaths so the computer could keep its memory banks up to date...”

Dan felt his insides churning. “And?”

“Well... when we input your father’s name, a special subroutine must’ve been triggered. We got a message.”

“A message?”

Cranston nodded. “It’s kind of strange— I’m not even sure what it means. But I thought you ought to know about it.”

“What did it say?” Every nerve in Dan’s body was tightening.

Cranston reached lazily up to his desk, beside him. “Here, I had a paper copy made.”

Dan snatched the flimsy paper scrap from his hand. He looked at it, shook his head, and looked at it again. It said:

PRTY SBRTN 7, PRM MMRY 2337-99-I

“It’s gibberish.”

“No,” Cranston said. “It’s just a shorthand that computer programmers used around the time when the ship began the voyage. I checked that much.”

“Then what’s it mean?”

“If I’m right—and I think I am—it means that there’s a priority subroutine number seven, in one of the prime memory banks. Those prime banks date back to the beginning of the voyage.”

“What do the numbers mean?”

“It’s some sort of code index, to tell us where the subroutine’s located.”

Suddenly Dan’s temper exploded. “Subroutine, code index, memory banks.. .what the hell are you talking about? Speak English!”

Cranston actually backed away from him. “Okay... okay, it’s simple enough. It looks to me like somebody put a special priority message of some sort into one of the earliest memory banks in the computer. The message was to be read out only in the event of your father’s death, because the computer didn’t tell us the message existed until we told the computer he had died.”

“A message from my father?” Dan’s pulse was going wild now. “Could he have suspected ... did he know ...?”

Cranston was staring at him quizzically.

Dan grabbed the computer tech by his coverall shirtfront. “You find that message, do you hear? Find it as quickly as you can! But don’t tell anyone else about it. Not a soul!”

“O... okay... whatever you say—”

“How quickly can you get it for me?”

Pulling free of Dan’s grip, Cranston said, “I dunno... hard to say. A day or two... if I have to keep it a secret from everybody else, maybe a few days.”

“Get it as fast as you can,” Dan repeated. “And not a word to anybody. Understand?”

“Yeah... sure...”

“All right then.” Dan got up and strode out of the compartment, leaving the computer tech squatting there on the floor, looking dazed and more than a little frightened, slowly smoothing his rumpled shirtfront.

A message from my father, Dan told himself. He must have known what was going to happen to him!

6

The bridge crackled with excitement.

Larry stood at his usual post, behind the curving bank of desk consoles and the seated technicians who operated them. Viewscreens flickered, showing every part of the ship, the pulsebeat of every system.

For an instant the whole bridge was silent, the silence of tense expectation. Everyone was holding his or her breath; the only sounds were the faint whispering of the air fans and the slight electrical murmur of the consoles.

Larry stood rooted behind one of the techs, watching a viewscreen on her console that showed the long glistening cylinders of four automated rocket probes. A red numeral 10 glowed on the screen, down on its lower right corner.

“Still holding at minus ten seconds,” the tech muttered.

Another tech, at the next desk, added, “All systems still in the green.”

On the desk just to the left of where Larry stood was a viewscreen display of a computer-drawn star map. Dozens of pinpoints of light were scattered across it. Off to one side of the screen, one of the pinpoints was blinking. This represented their target, the major planet of Alpha Centauri. It was moving across the screen, heading for a dotted circle drawn in the middle of the map.

Larry watched the map. The blinking dot reached the circle and stopped there.

“Acquisition,” said the tech at that console. “We’re in the launch window.”

The numerals on the picture of the probes began to tick downward: nine, eight, seven...

“Launchers primed and ready.” A light on a console went from amber to green.

“... six, five...”

“Probes on internal power.”

“... four, three, two...”

“Hatch open.”

Larry could see that the metal hatch in front of the probes had slid away, revealing the stars outside.

“... one, zero.”

“Launch!”

The four cylinders slid smoothly away and disappeared in an eyeblink into the darkness of space.

“Radar plot,” a voice said crisply. “On course. Ignition on schedule— All four of ‘em are on their way.”

Larry didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out in a long, relieved sigh. The technicians whooped triumphantly, turned to each other with grins and handshakes and backpoundings. The girls got kissed.

“They’re off and running,” one of the techs said to Larry. Neither of them knew where the phrase had come from, but it sounded right for the occasion.

He stood in the center of the celebrating crew, smiling happily. In another month we’ll have Hose-up data on the planet. Then we can decide logo into orbit or fly past and head out-system.

They were all standing around him now, clapping him on the back and laughing with him.

Larry threw up his hands. “Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with it. You guys launched the probes. I just stood back and watched you. You deserve all the congratulations, not me.”

They milled around for a few minutes more, before Larry finally said, “Okay, okay, you got off a good launch. Now how about the regular duty crew getting back to their stations. Don’t want to give the computer the impression it can run the ship by itself, do you?”

They grumbled light-heartedly, but -most of the techs returned to their desks. The few extra people who had been present for the launch drifted away from the bridge, out the two hatches at either end of the curving row of consoles.

Satisfied that everything was going smoothly, Larry went over to his own seat along the back wall of the bridge and relaxed in it. But not for long.

Dr. Loring pushed his way past the last of the departing launch techs and entered the bridge. Larry suppressed a frown as the old man stood there momentarily, fat and wheezy and blinking, peering at the console screens.

He knows no one’s allowed up here without permission unless he’s a member of the working crew!

Loring turned his frog-eyed face toward Larry. “Ah, there you are,” he said, and lumbered over to Larry’s seat. “Congratulations, I was watching on the intercom. The launch seemed to go quite smoothly.”

Larry got up slowly from his chair. “Thanks. But... you know that the bridge is off limits for non-crew personnel.”

Loring waved a chubby hand in the air. “Oh, yes, of course. I apologize. But I, ah... I have other reasons for looking you up.” He glanced around at the techs, who were all busily at work with their backs to him. “Ahh... could we step into your office for a moment? This is rather delicate.”

There were times when Dr. Loring amused Larry, and other times when the old man exasperated him. This was one of the latter times. Stay cool, he told himself. After all, he is practically a father to you. He thinks he’s got a right to butt in.

Nodding, Larry led Dr. Loring through the door in the middle of the bridge’s back wall. It opened onto a short corridor that linked the bridge with the computer center. Off to one side of this hallway was Larry’s office. They stepped inside and Larry passed his hand over the light switch. The infrared sensor in the switch detected his body warmth and turned on the overhead light panels.

Larry gestured to the webchair and sat himself behind his desk. Loring sat down with great caution, lowering his weight onto the fragile-looking chair very slowly. The plastic squeaked.

“What’s the matter?” Larry asked.

“It’s about Dan Christopher,” Dr. Loring said, looking troubled.

Larry waited for the old man to add something else. When he didn’t, but merely sat there looking unhappy, Larry urged, “Well? What about Dan?”

“And Valery.”

Larry automatically tried to hide the jolting shock that went through him. Idiot! What are you afraid of? She loves you.

Patiently, he asked Dr. Loring, “Okay, what about Dan and Valery?”

Shaking his head, Dr. Loring said, “She’s seen him a couple of times since the fire. Had dinner with him.. .alone.”

“I know that.”

“I told her that I didn’t think it was right; nothing can come of it but trouble.”

“Is that what you came here to tell me? Val’s told me about it already. We’re not keeping secrets from each other. There’s nothing wrong with her having dinner with old friends—”

“He still wants her, you know.”

“I know.” I remember how I felt when she was promised to him.

“He’s asked her not to marry you until after we’ve decided about the Centaurian planet.”

Larry nodded again.

“He’s going to cause trouble.”

Larry’s patience was starting to wear thin. “Look, Dr. Loring, I know how Dan feels. I know he’s trying to gain control of the Council and have me pushed out. But you’ve got to remember that he and I were friends for a long time and ...”

“He believes,” Dr. Loring said, his voice rising to interrupt Larry, “that the fire in the cryosleepers was no accident. He thinks his father was deliberately killed. Murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“That’s right.”

“By whom? Who’d do such a thing? Why?”

Dr. Loring almost smiled. “You see, there are some things that you don’t know. Valery’s been afraid to tell you everything, for fear that it would cause more trouble between you and Dan. But I wormed it out of her. She can’t keep secrets from her father!”

“Why in hell would Dan think his father was murdered? What possible reason could there be?”

Shrugging, Loring replied, “I happen to_ know that he has a computer technician digging through the oldest memory cores on the ship for some special instructions that his father fed into the computer—apparently when the voyage first began. Perhaps even before the voyage started, when the ship was still in orbit around Earth.”

Larry sank back in his chair.

“Take my word for it,” Loring insisted, shaking a stubby finger in the air, “Dan is dangerous. I think he’s unbalanced ... insane. And he’s determined to get his own way—with the ship, with Valery, with everything. That means he’s got to get rid of you, one way or another.”

Dan Christopher’s job aboard the ship was in Propulsion and Power.

Trained from childhood in physics and electrical engineering, Dan watched over the ship’s all-important hydrogen fusion reactors, the thermonuclear power plants that provided the ship’s rocket thrust and electrical power. Using the same energy reactions as the stars, the fusion reactors were small enough to fit into a pair of shielded blisters up on level seven—the innermost ring of the ship, closest to the hub. Small, yet these reactors had enough power in them to drive the ship across the light-years between the stars and to provide all the electrical power needed by the ship and its people for year after year after year.

The fusion reactors were like miniature suns. Inside each heavy egg-shaped radiation shield of lead and steel was a tiny, man-made star: a ball of glowing plasma, a hundred million degrees hot, held suspended in vacuum by enormously powerful magnetic fields. Deuterium—a heavy isotope of hydrogen—was fed into the fusion plasma almost one atom at a time. Energy came out, as the deuterium atoms were fused into helium. The same process that powers the sun, the stars—and hydrogen bombs.

There was enough energy in the fusion reactors to turn the entire ship into a tiny, glowing star—for an explosive flash of a second.

In theory, the reactors were expected to be quiet, almost silent. And the energy converters that changed the heat of the fusion plasma into electricity were supposed to be virtually silent too.

Yet as Dan prowled down along the metal catwalk that hung over one of the reactors, he could feel through the soles of his slippered feet the low-frequency growl of a star chained to a man’s command. The metal floor plates vibrated, the air itself seemed to be heavy with the barely audible rumbling of some unseen giant’s breathing.

Dan leaned over the catwalk’s flimsy railing and peered down at the work crew on the floor below. The railing could be flimsy because the gravity factor at level seven was only one-tenth of Earth-normal g. The ship’s designers had put the heaviest equipment in the areas where weight was almost negligible. People had to live at full Earth g, so that the living quarters were down in the outermost wheel, level one. But the big equipment was up here, where a man could haul a five-hundred kilo generator by himself, if he had to.

Dan could feel the frail railing tremble in his hands from the reactors’ deep-pitched subsonic song. The reactors themselves were little to look at, just a pair of dull metal domes some twenty meters across: like a brace of eggs lain by a giant robot bird. Off on the other side of level seven was another pair of reactors, and the smaller auxiliary electrical power generators. Between the two blisters housing the big equipment was nestled the control instrumentation and offices for the Propulsion and Power group.

The work crew on the main floor below the catwalk was still trying to get the main generator going. All the repairs had been made, and the generator had been reassembled in its place between the two reactors. But it would still not light off.

As Joe Haller had put it after an exasperating week of working on the generator: “It’s an engineer’s hell. Everything checks but nothing works.”

Dan knew they’d get it going sooner or later. But he couldn’t help wondering why the generator wasn’t working, when all the calculations and tests showed that it should.

Is there a saboteur in Joe’s team? he wondered, watching them work. And if so — why? Who’s behind all this?

“MR. CHRISTOPHER, MESSAGE FOR YOU,” said the computer’s flatly calm voice over the intercom loudspeakers.

Dan reluctantly turned away from the sweating crew beneath him and strode back toward the control area. The magnetized metal foil strips in his slippers clung slightly to the floor plates of the catwalk.

Shutting the door behind him, Dan felt the bone-quivering rumble of the reactors disappear, to be replaced by the higher-pitched hum of electrical equipment monitors, computer terminals, viewscreens. A half-dozen people were seated at monitoring desks, watching the performance of the reactors and generators.

Dan spotted an empty desk, slid into its chair, and touched the phone button. “Dan Christopher here,” he said.

The little desktop viewscreen glowed briefly, then Dr Hsai’s features took shape. The psychotech smiled a polite oriental smile.

“Kind of you to answer my call so quickly,” Dr. Hsai said softly. “I know you must be very busy.”

Dan smiled back. “You’re a busy man, too. What can I do for you?”

Looking slightly more serious, the psychotech replied, “I am concerned that you haven’t kept in touch with us, Mr. Christopher. We have set up three appointments for your examination, and you haven’t shown up for any of them."

Dan shrugged. “As you said, I’m very busy.”

“Yes, of course. But your health is of primary importance. You cannot perform your exacting tasks if you are in poor health.”

“I feel fine.”

Dr Hsai closed his eyes when he nodded. “Perhaps so. But your condition may not reflect itself in physical symptoms that are obvious to you. You were discharged from the infirmary with the understanding that you would return for periodic examinations."

Dan could feel the heat rising within him. “Now listen. I am busy. And all you want to do is ask me more stupid questions and probe my mind. I don’t have to allow that. I’m performing my job and I feel fine. There’s no way you can force me to submit to your brain-tinkering!”

“Mr. Christopher!” Dr Hsai looked shocked

“Let me remind you of something, Doctor,” Dan went on “We’re right now decelerating toward Alpha Centauri. Our reactors are feeding the ship’s main engines on a very, very carefully programmed schedule. This ship can’t take more than a tiny thrust loading—we’re simply not built to stand high thrust, it’d tear us apart.”

“Everyone knows this.”

“Do they? This is a very delicate part of the flight A slight miscalculation or a tiny flaw in the reactors could rip open the ship and kill everybody. I’d suggest that you stop bothering me and let me concentrate on my job. Save your brain-picking for after we’re safely in orbit and the rocket engines are shut down.”

“I am only…”

Dan could sense that the others in the control room had turned to stare at him. But he concentrated on the phone screen. “I don’t care what you are only,” he snapped “And I don’t care who’s trying to find reason to slap me back in the infirmary even if it’s the Chairman himself. I’m going to stay on this job and get it done right. Understand?”

Dr Hsai nodded, his smile gone. “I am sorry to have interrupted your very important work,” he said.

The psychotech gently touched his phone’s switch, and Dan Christopher’s image faded from the screen. Dr Hsai sat in his desk chair for a long moment, eyes closed, mouth pursed meditatively.

7

It was late at night. Dr. Loring padded slowly up the long, winding metal stairs toward the observatory section in the ship’s hub. The tubes that connected the lowermost rings of the huge ship had power ladders, and a man could ride comfortably at the touch of a button. Most people climbed the stairs anyway, because of the shortage of electricity while the main generator was dow.n But Dr Loring felt it was his privilege to ride the power ladders.

Up here, though, above the fourth level, it was all muscle work. No power ladders, just endless winding metal steps. Not easy for a heavy old man. Even though the gravity fell off rapidly at these higher levels, Loring sweated and muttered to himself as he climbed. It was dark in the tunnels. The regular lights had been shut off, and only the widely spaced dim little emergency lights broke the darkness.

He stopped at the seventh level to catch his breath. Halfway up the next tube, he knew, he could just about float with hardly touching the steps at all. Time for a rest

The hatch just to his left opened onto the Propulsion and Power offices, he knew. The hatch to his right led to the reactors. Loring wanted no part of them. With an effort he began climbing the next set of steps, leaving level seven below him.

“Insomnia,” he muttered to himself. “The curse of an old man. Bumbling about in the dark, ruining my heart and my stomach, when I ought to be sound asleep in my own bed.”

The weightlessness was getting to him now. No matter how many times he came to the observatory, the first few minutes of nearly O g always turned his stomach over. It felt like falling, endlessly falling. Something primitive inside his brain wanted to scream, and his stomach definitely wanted something more solid to work with.

If only it wasn’t so dark, Loring thought. He held tightly to the stair railing as his feet floated free of the steps. At least he could keep some sense of up and down, that would help. Like a swimmer guiding himself along a rope, he pulled himself along the railing until his balding head bumped gently on a hatch.

Dr Loring swore to himself softly, opened the hatch manually—the automatic controls were shut down—and floated through into the observatory.

For a terrified moment he thought he was outside in space itself.

The observatory was almost entirely plastiglass, a big dome of transparent plastic that made it look as if there was absolutely nothing between him and the stars. In an instant his fright passed, and then he smiled and floated like a child on a cloud, turning slowly around in midair to see his oldest friends.

Alpha Centauri, and way out there, I see you. Proxima. The Cross and Achernar. He turned again. How dim and far away you are, my Sun. And Cassiopeia, and bright Polaris. Yes, still there. Eternally, eh? Eternally. Or close enough to it.

Gradually, he became aware of dark shapes around him, blotting out parts of the sky. He knew what they were. Telescopes, recording equipment, video screens and cameras, computer terminals. The tools of the astronomer’s trade.

He “swam” down to the desk that was shoehorned into the midst of all the equipment, and touched a button on its surface. The viewscreen on the desktop lit up, showing an intensified view of what the main telescope was looking at the two main stars of the Alpha Centauri system, and between them, two specks of light that were planets.

Dr. Loring swiveled his chair around and activated the computer terminal. Its smaller screen stayed dark, but the READY light beside it glowed green.

Checking the time on his wristwatch, Dr Loring stated the date, his name, and the code words for the computer memory section that his work was being filed under. Then…

“Re-position the main telescope for observation of Epsilon Indi.”

The hum of electrical motors, and the bulky shape of the main telescope began to swing across the background of stars over the old man’s head. Loring watched the viewscreen, and saw a bright orange star center itself in the picture.

“Analysis of last week’s observations have shown,” he recited for the computer’s memory bank, “that both Epsilon Eridani and Epsilon Indi have planetary companions. Both stars are K-sequence, brighter and hotter than the red dwarfs observed earlier. The mass of Epsilon Eridani's companion is about one-hundredth of Jupiter’s or roughly three times Earth’s. This is a preliminary figure, and may apply to the total masses of several planets, although only one has been observed so far. The purpose of tonight’s observation is to gain mass data on the companion or companions of Epsilon Indi. Spectroscopic measurements can be…”

He stopped. There was something moving among the shadows. The only light in the huge sepulcher-like observatory came from the dimly glowing viewscreen and the stars themselves But something had definitely moved out near the main telescope.

“Who’s there?” Dr Loring called out.

No answer.

Annoyed, he raised his voice “I know I saw someone moving out there. Now, I don’t want to ruin my night sight by turning on the lights, but if you don’t come out and… “

A hand on his shoulder made him jump.

“Wha...who...”

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” a voice whispered “Old fool, you should have been safely in bed.”

“Who is it? What…”

Loring caught just the swiftest impression of a hand swinging toward him, then his skull seemed to explode and everything went completely blank

As the old man slumped in his seat, the lean figure standing over him bent down and felt for a pulse. Then he pushed Loring out of the seat. The astronomer drifted weightlessly off, bumped against the computer terminal desk, and slid gently to the deck.

The lithe dark figure touched buttons on the computer terminal. Dr Loring’s series of observations played out on the screen all the astronomer’s words, the notes he made, the figures he had the computer draw up, the tapes of the telescope pictures. The finger touched one more button. ERASE. The computer thought it over for a microsecond, then flashed a question onto its screen: PLS CONFIRM ERASE COMMAND.

“You don’t want to be blanked out either, do you?” The figure smiled, and touched the ERASE button again. WORKING, the computer flashed. ERASURE COMPLETED. The dark figure nodded solemnly, then turned and picked up Dr Loring by the collar of his coverall and dragged him lightly to the hatch. Opening it, he pushed the astronomer’s portly body through. It floated down the tube, slowly at first, but as the gravity force steepened, it began to fall faster and faster. The dark figure watched as Loring’s body flicked past the dim emergency lights.

“Dropping like a bomb,” he murmured without humor, without hatred, without any emotion at all. “They’ll find him three or four levels below; what’s left of him.”

Larry strode stiffly down the corridor, which was still shadowy in the dim night lighting. It seemed like an endless treadmill, featureless except for the doors on each side. The soothing pastel colors of the walls were faded to an undistinguished gray in the poor light. The tiled floor curved up and away in both directions, following the huge smooth circle of the ship’s largest ring, it was uphill no matter which way you looked, although there was never any sensation of climbing at all.

But it looked uphill, and Larry felt as if he was straining up a sheer cliff wall. He didn’t even bother to glance at the nameplates on the doors he knew exactly which door he wanted.

He got there and stopped. With a deep breath, he tapped lightly on the door.

Valery opened it immediately.

“Larry, what is it?” she whispered urgently “What’s wrong? On the phone you looked…”

He still looked haggard, worried, deeply troubled.

“Is your mother awake?” he asked as he stepped into the Loring’s quarters.

“No, I didn’t wake her. I think Dad’s up at the observatory. I heard him go out a couple of hours ago. He was trying to be quiet, but he can never...”

She saw the expression on his face and stopped talking. Now Valery looked alarmed.

“There’s been an accident,” Larry said.

Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

“Your father... he must’ve slipped off and fell... down three levels of tube...”

“Oh no!” Val covered her face with her hands.

Larry went on in an emotionless monotone. “One of the camera monitors spotted him. We’ve got him in the infirmary— the medics don’t think he’ll make it. He’s pretty badly mangled.”

She collapsed into his arms. Larry held her and fought down every impulse to relax his inner self-control. Somebody’s got to be strong. Somebody’s got to keep his head clear. Can’t give in to emotions. Can’t relax. Not now. Not yet.

So he was strong and calm, any sense of fear or sadness or guilt bottled deep inside him. He helped Val to calm down. Then they woke Mrs. Loring and broke the news to her. It took the better part of an hour before she was dressed, trembling and with tear-streaked face. The three of them went wordlessly to the infirmary.

Dr. Loring was in the same cubicle that Dan had been in. His body made a puffy mound on the liquid-filled mattress. His face was unrecognizable: half hidden in plastic spray bandages, half battered and discolored. Arms and legs were covered by plastic casts. Tubes ran from a battery of machines alongside the bed into his body, his nostrils, his head.

Larry glanced at the life indications panel above the bed: heart rate, respiration, alpha rhythm, metabolic level, blood pressure—all low, feeble.

Mrs. Loring collapsed. She simply fainted, and Larry had to grab her before she slumped to the floor. A pair of nurses appeared out of nowhere and took her off, muttering, “Shock... hypertensive...”

A medic came in a few moments later.

“I think it would be best for us to keep Mrs. Loring here, at least for the rest of the night.”

Larry nodded.

“How’s...” Val’s voice was shaky. “Wh...what are the chances for my father... ?”

The medic tried to smile but couldn’t quite force it through. “We’re doing everything we can. I think he’s stabilizing—that is, his life signs aren’t growing any worse, at least not over the past half-hour or so. But he’s in very poor shape... he needs extensive surgery. It’s probably beyond our limited capabilities. ...”

Larry said, “There are expert surgeons in cryosleep, aren’t there?”

“A few.” The medic nodded. “I don’t know the details of their backgrounds—”

“I’ll have them checked out. Maybe we can revive them.”

“Revive them? That takes special permission—”

“I know,” Larry said.

“And the revival procedure itself takes weeks,” the medic went on. “We’d have to suspend Dr. Loring in cryosleep until the surgical team could be made ready for him. I’m not certain he’d survive freezing, in the condition he’s in.”

Larry could feel Val’s weight leaning against his arm. Without looking down at her, he told the medic, “Dr. Loring is a very important member of the Council, and as close to me as my own father. Closer, in fact. I want every resource at our disposal brought to bear to save him. I’ve already lost one father... I don’t want to lose another. Do you understand?”

“Certainly, Mr. Chairman.” The medic almost bowed. “Everything that can be done, will be, I assure you.”

Turning to Val, Larry said, “All right. Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s nothing we can do except wait.”

Slowly, he led her out of the infirmary.

As they walked along the curving corridor to nowhere in particular, Larry said, “I want you to call a friend, somebody who can stay with you. I don’t want you to stay alone.”

“All right,” she said quietly.

He glanced at his wristwatch: almost time for the morning shift to start.

“Larry...”

“What?”

Valery’s face was pale, her eyes frightened. “It’s like a sickness is sweeping through the ship, isn’t it? The fire, and Dan’s accusations, and now Dad.. .everything’s going crazy.”

For a few moments Larry didn’t answer. The only sounds were the padding of their slippered feet on the floor tiles, their own breathing, and the vaster breathing of the ship’s air circulation fans.

“Maybe,” he said at last, “it is a sickness. Maybe there’s a madman among us.”

She should have looked surprised. But she didn’t. “You mean Dan." It wasn’t a question.

Larry shook his head “I don’t want to make accusations. Dan’s been acting peculiarly since his father died, but that doesn’t mean…”

“It’s all my fault!” Val suddenly burst out, her eyes filling with tears.

“Your fault?”

“I’ve come between you. Dan hates me because I picked you, not him. He wants to get rid of you...destroy you. He thinks you killed his father, deliberately. And now…and now..." She couldn’t speak anymore. She was crying.

And now he’s tried to kill Dr Loring, my foster father. Is that what she’s saying?

The Council members were already in their seats, looking deathly grim, when Larry entered the Council room. The only empty chair was Dr Loring’s.

Taking his own seat, Larry said as unemotionally as he could, “I’m sorry to be late I was in the infirmary. Dr Loring is still alive, but just barely. The medics have decided to place him in cryosleep until a surgical team is revived for an attempt to save his life.”

“If there is such a team among us,” said one of the older Council members. “I don’t seem to recall too many surgeons among our original number .Biochemists and geneticists, yes, plenty of those But surgeons?”

Larry nodded curtly “The computer is searching the personnel files for the right people. If they’re found, I assume the Council is willing to waive the usual rules about retiring one person for each person revived? This is an emergency situation, after all.”

They muttered and nodded assent.

“And if there is no surgical team capable of helping him?” Adrienne Kaufman asked.

“We’ll just have to keep Dr Loring in cryosleep until some of our younger members can be trained sufficiently well to operate on him.”

“That could take a generation!”

“Once he’s in cryosleep safely, it doesn’t matter.”

“The old man shouldn’t have been wandering around the tubes by himself,” said a young Councilman. “Accidents can happen to the best of us.”

“Was it an accident?” Dan Christopher asked, from his seat at the far end of the table “Seems to me we’ve been having far too many accidents lately.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Larry wanted to say something, to take command of the discussion, but he didn’t know how to do it without stirring Dan’s antagonism even further.

“What was Dr Loring doing up there,” Dan asked, “at that time of night? What was he working on? His daughter tells me he’s been spending lots of his time in the observatory on some special task.”

A couple of the Council members turned to glance at Larry. He would mention Valery, Larry said to himself, trying to keep cold hatred from numbing his whole body.

“It’s no secret,” Adrienne Kaufman said haughtily. “Everyone knew that Dr. Loring was looking for other Earthlike planets, around other stars. At least, almost everyone knew.” She stared icily at Dan.

“But there’s no record of his work in the computer memory,” Dr. Polanyi said. “I ran a check yesterday, when I first heard about the accident.”

“It was no accident,” Dan said firmly “And his work was erased from the computer.”

“What?”

“How can you say that?”

“It’s ridiculous.”

Dan leaped to his feet. “Ridiculous, is it? How’d you like to see proof that there’s a murderer among us?”

Everyone started talking, arguing, shouting at once.

“Quiet!” Larry roared.

They all froze in mid-word. Arms stopped waving, voices hushed, and everyone turned to look at the Chairman.

Quietly, calmly, coldly, Larry said to Dan, “What’s this all about?”

“I’ve been checking into the computer, too,” Dan said, his dark eyes flashing. “And I’ve found something that shows there’s an organized plot to undermine our whole flight...a madman’s running loose, trying to kill us all!”

They all started jabbering again.

“Wait,” Larry said, silencing them with a raised hand. “Dan, if you have such proof, by all means, let’s see it. Right now.”

Dan jabbed at a button on the small tabletop keyboard at his place. “You’ll see it all right.”

The wall screen at the far end of the room lit up and showed a human face. Louis Christopher, Dan’s father, the driving force that made the ship, the voyage, their lives possible.

As Louis Christopher began to speak, Larry could think of nothing except the enormous likeness between father and son. The same long, lean, dark face. The same handsome features. The same intense, burning eyes.

“None of you will see this tape until I’m dead,” Louis Christopher was saying. “The fact mat you are viewing it now means that I have died. I hope that my death was a solitary affair, and hasn’t affected the performance of our ship or the success of our voyage.”

Christopher seemed to be staring straight at the camera, trying almost to hypnotize it, Larry thought. The effect was as if he was staring straight at the viewer, face to face.

“As I speak to you, our journey has just begun. Earth still looms large behind us. The stars are very far away. There are many among us who oppose this voyage, who think it’s madness. Many among us were satisfied to remain aboard this ship in orbit around the Earth forever, prisoners, exiles for life.

“We voted to aim for the stars, though, and that’s where we’re going. Still, many are grumbling. They fear the unknowns of deep space. They’re afraid of leaving Earth behind permanently.

“They may try to subvert our voyage. They may decide that they’d rather be exiles near Earth than free men among the stars. They may try to get us to return to Earth.

“That’s why I’m making this tape. Since I must now be dead, it makes no further difference to me what you do. But it does make a difference to the future generations, to our children and their children. Continue the voyage! Don’t let this magnificent ship, and our wonderfully brave people, be taken over by the fearful and timid. The stars are ours! We have the opportunity to reach Alpha Centauri and begin a new life there, on a literally new world. Reject anyone who would do otherwise!”

Several of the Council members shifted in their chairs. A few turned to glance at Larry.

“Our people have worked hard and struggled against titanic odds and risked everything they have,” Louis Christopher continued, “to get to Alpha Centauri. We’ve pledged ourselves and mortgaged future generations yet unborn to make a new world for ourselves, far from Earth’s decay and madness. You must continue until you reach that goal.

“Now let me point out another danger. It seems unlikely that the planets of Alpha Centauri will be exactly like Earth. We have, though, the means to adapt our children genetically to live on a different world. Don’t be tempted to go further than Alpha Centauri. I know the construction of this ship, its limits and capabilities. It won’t last long enough to reach another star. Settle on Alpha Centauri; to do otherwise will be to destroy the ship, the voyage, and every one of you.

“It won’t be easy to change your children physically so that they can live on a strange world. But it must be done. It is the only way. Be strong. Be brave. Good luck. And good-bye.”

The screen went dead.

For a long half-minute no one moved or spoke. Then one of the Councilmen coughed nervously, and they all turned in their seats, murmuring to each other. Dan remained standing by his chair, visibly trembling with emotion.

Larry said as gently as he could, “Is that what you call proof of murder?”

“What more proof do you need?” Dan blazed back. “He knew this would happen! He knew someone would try to subvert the whole voyage, push on to another star, get us all killed. He warned us.”

“But how does that prove he was murdered?” one of the women asked.

“Or that Dr. Loring’s accident wasn’t accidental?”

Glowering at them, Dan replied, “We all know that if my father were alive now, he’d be revived and we’d vote him Chairman.”

Larry said nothing.

“And we also know that Dr. Loring was looking for another planet around some other star. If he had found such a planet he’d be blathering it all over the ship. He said nothing, because he couldn’t find another Earthlike world. In fact, he must have found evidence for no planets, or hostile planets... because whoever tried to kill him erased his work from the computer memory so that we’d never know what he’d found.”

Larry pointed toward Dan and shouted out, “Or he might have found a new Earth somewhere, much better for us than the Centaurian planet, and his would-be murderer tried to keep us from finding that out!”

They glared at each other from opposite ends of the table, wordless for a moment.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Adrienne Kaufman said.

Larry took a deep, calming breath. “The truth of the matter is that there’s no evidence of murder, not of anyone at any time. All the deaths and near-deaths that we’ve had can be attributed to accidental causes. And anyone,” he stared right at Dan, “who insists on finding foul play behind every accident on this ship is running the risk of being thought insane.”

Dan stood there, shaking with rage, face flaming. Then he spun around and stamped out of the Council room.

Larry turned to the chief meditech, who was sitting halfway down the table.

“I want him in the infirmary immediately. And I want him checked out even if you have to strap him down. We can’t have a madman running loose aboard this ship!”

Because if he is insane, Larry said to himself, maybe he is a murderer!

8

The cryonics room felt like gray November to Larry.

He had never known Earthly seasons, except through poetry and the videotapes he had watched during his school years. But here in the stark, cold, silent area where the frozen members of the ship’s people slept away the years, he shivered with the incipient chill of winter.

The cryonics sections took up two full levels of the ship. The big compartments, called bays, were filled with row after row of massive covered couches, like the granite sarcophagi of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. But these coffins were for the living, not the dead; and they were made of stainless steel and plastic and honeycombed with tubes that carried liquid helium at 4.2 degrees above absolute zero. Instead of elaborate carved hieroglyphics, the cryogenic couches bore dials and gauges, automatic read-out viewers that showed the condition of the sleeper inside. Alive. Frozen, unmoving, unbreathing, silent and still for year after year. But alive.

Larry had never been frozen. The prospect bothered him somehow. It was too much like death.

The entire cryonics bay was like death, like winter; cold, lonely, silent. His breath hung in misty clouds before his face, and he felt chilled to the marrow despite the electric jacket he wore over his coveralls. The glareless lights overhead made everything look even flatter, grayer. The softly padded flooring muffled even the sounds of his footsteps.

Dr. Hsai was already there, Larry saw. The oriental psychotech was waiting for him, several rows up ahead. Larry quickened his pace.

“This is a strange place for a meeting,” Dr. Hsai said as Larry came up to him. He seemed more curious than upset.

“I wanted to talk with you privately,” Larry explained. “This is one of the few places aboard ship where we can be sure of no interruptions or eavesdroppers.”

The psychotech’s thin eyebrows arched upward, “Ahh.. .just what was it that you wanted to discuss?” If he felt cold, Hsai wasn’t showing it.

“I understand that you want to release Dan Christopher.”

Hsai bobbed his head once. “There is no excuse for keeping him in the infirmary. He has been there for almost a month now. I have seen him every day. There is no evidence of mental abnormality—nor should we expect to find any, under these circumstances.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Christopher is not suffering from a physically caused abnormality. He is not schizoid, which is the result of molecular imbalances in the nervous system. Nor does he have any brain lesions, nor any other physically connected disease.”

“But...”

Dr. Hsai raised a slim, long-fingered hand. “Please. Allow me to continue. His problems are strictly emotional. Under the controlled conditions of the infirmary, this type of problem doesn’t come to the surface.”

Larry felt himself frowning. “But you can probe his mind ... analyze what he’s saying and thinking... his dreams and tests...”

“Alas,” said Dr. Hsai, “I am only a psychotechnician, not a psychiatrist. Our only psychiatrist died in the epidemic a few years ago, you recall; the other two are here, in cryosleep.”

“But can’t you tell...”

“I can tell you that there is no physical reason for abnormal behavior in Mr. Christopher’s case. His behavior in the infirmary was, at first, very hostile and suspicious. He was angry at being... as he put it, ‘arrested and jailed.’ But he adjusted to the situation within a week or so, and has been behaving very calmly ever since.”

Larry muttered, “And there haven’t been any accidents during the past month, either.”

..Dr. Hsai shrugged. “Either there is nothing wrong with him at all, or...”

“Or?”

“Or he is clever enough to hide his emotions from me, and he’s waiting until he’s released to work out his hostilities.”

“Can someone be... well, can he act normal and still be...”

“Neurotic? Psychotic? Insane?” Dr. Hsai smiled sadly. “Oh, yes. The paranoids, in particular, can behave very normally... until they’re placed in a certain stress situation. Then their psychosis shows up.”

Larry shuddered, only partly from the cold. “What can we do?”

“It’s doing no good to keep him in the infirmary. Frankly, he has every right to be released and resume his duties.”

“But if we do, we run the risk of his going amok ... causing more ‘accidents.’“

Softly, Dr. Hsai said, “My own opinion is that there’s nothing wrong with the young man, except anger and frustration. He feels the loss of his father very deeply; but even more deeply, he feels the loss of his expected position as Chairman and the loss of his chosen girl.”

“In other words, he’s sore as hell at me.”

“Exactly.”

“And he’ll do whatever he can to get Valery back, and get himself elected Chairman.”

“Yes.”

Larry took a deep, cold breath. Looking straight into the psychotech’s dark, calm eyes, he asked, “Do you think he’s capable of committing violent acts? Like murder?”

Hsai shook his head. “Under the proper circumstances, anyone is capable of murder. Even you and I.”

That’s a big help, Larry complained to himself.

“He should be released,” Dr. Hsai repeated. “You can have him watched as carefully as you wish, but there is no good to be accomplished by keeping him in the infirmary.”

“All right,” Larry agreed unhappily. “Let him go.” . Hsai nodded and started walking away, toward the nearest hatch leading back to the warmth of life. He glanced over his shoulder once, looking slightly puzzled that Larry wasn’t coming with him, or at least following him.

But Larry stood rooted to the spot, beside one of the bulky cryosleep couches.

Dan wants Valery, and he wants to be Chairman.

“You knew that,” he said softly to himself. “That’s nothing new.”

Yes, his mind echoed back. But if he is insane, if he has done all these crazy things — including murder—then it’s because of me. The blame is partly mine. Maybe almost entirely mine. Especially if he’s insane. Then he’s not responsible for his actions. But I am. I am!

“All right, so it’s at least partially your own fault. What can you do about it now?”

He wanted to answer, Nothing. But instead he knew. You can give him what he wants. Let him have the Chairmanship. Let him have Valery.

“You know you can’t do that. Not if you want to stay sane. Not if you want to go on living.”

You can sleep. Right here. Sleep for as long as you want to. Sleep until they’re both dead. Then start a new life.

“Sure. Or maybe never wake up.”

It’s your choice.

With a sudden shock, Larry realized he was standing in front of Dr. Loring’s cryosleep unit. The graphs showed that the old man was still alive, waiting in frozen limbo for a surgical team to be organized for the attempt to save his life.

Give up the Chairmanship? Give up Valery?

“No.”

Then you’ll be pushing Dan even further. He might do something even worse.

Larry was sweating now. Despite the cold, beads of sweat were trickling down his face. “I can’t do it!” he whispered fiercely. “I won’t let him have his way! I won’t!”

It was always noisy in the main cafeteria. Big enough to handle three hundred people at a sitting, the cafeteria doubled as an eating place, an entertainment center, and an auditorium. It was brightly lit, gaily decorated, and bustling with crowds nearly all the time. One entire wall was a long viewscreen that showed constantly changing scenes from Earth, from outside in starry space, or from inside the ship itself.

At the moment Dan entered the cafeteria’s big double doors and stood blinking in the entryway, the long wall screen was showing an ocean beach on Earth: surging powerful breakers rolling up to smash against grim rocks in spectacular sheets of spray. The sky was blue, the sun a golden ball starting to turn red as it neared the horizon. People dotted the tiny slice of beach that lay between the rocks. Farther back, atop the higher rocky cliffs, there were houses.

Dan stood at the entryway and took it all in: the videotaped scene, the noise and brightness of the cafeteria. After a month in the quiet confinement of the infirmary,- it was like coming to life again after being in cryosleep.

People jostled through the entryway past him. Several of them smiled at him, or said some brief words of greeting:

“Good to see you back, Dan.”

“Hi, Dan.”

“Hey, pal, how’re ya doin?”

“Can’t keep a good man down, huh, Dan?”

He grinned at them, nodded, even shook a few hands.

Then he saw her far across the room, sitting by herself, looking tense. She had a tray of food before her, but she wasn’t touching it; Valery was merely looking off into space, waiting.

Dan quickly made his way to the selector wall, punched buttons for the food he wanted, and went to the receiving slot. All the while he kept one eye on Valery’s golden hair. He took his steaming tray straight to her table.

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” he said.

She looked up, wide-eyed, almost startled. “Oh—no, I just got here a few minutes ago.”

He sat down on the other side of the little table. “It was good of you to agree to meet me.”

She seemed wary, almost afraid. “This is a funny place to meet... I mean, it’s so noisy.”

A group of half a dozen teenagers appeared on the stage at the other end of the room and started setting up electronic musical instruments.

Dan grinned. “It’s alive. I like it. Kind of hard on the ears, but it’s fun.”

“You...you look very good,” Valery said.

“You’re scared of me,” he realized. “Why? Do you think I’m crazy, too?”

“Who...”

He took her hand in his. “Come on, Val. I know what Larry thinks. I know he’s the one who kept me locked up for the past month.”

Pulling slowly away from his grip, she answered, “Dan, I don’t want you and Larry to be enemies. You ought to be friends again—”

“I wish we could. I really do. I think I’d even let him keep the Chairmanship, if only I could be sure ...”

He shook his head. “It’d never work. You’re the one I want, Val. If I had you, I’d almost be willing to let the rest of it go.”

“The rest of it?”

“Yep... I had a lot of time to think, you know, sitting there in the infirmary. A lot of time. I understand there haven’t been any accidents since I went in.”

She hesitated, then admitted, “That’s right.”

“You see? He’s been damned smart about it... damned smart.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s trying to make it look like it’s all my fault. Larry’s got half the people on this ship believing that I’m crazy, that I’ve been causing the accidents, that I tried to kill your father.”

She stared at him. “Did you?”

He looked back into her Arctic-blue eyes, sensing all the turmoil, the fear, the pain that lay behind them.

“Have you asked Larry that question?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Valery.”

“But why?” she asked, so softly that he could barely hear her voice over the cafeteria din. “Why would Larry do it?”

“Have you ever thought,” Dan asked slowly, “that if there really is a madman aboard this ship, it’s got to be Larry?”

“No! It couldn’t be!”

“Couldn’t it?”

“Dan—you’re wrong. The accidents... they could be just that: accidents.”‘

“Then why is Larry trying to prove that I’m insane?”

“He’s afraid...”

“Afraid of me.”

The words were gushing out of her now. “Larry’s afraid that if you are sick, you’ll hurt more people, hurt the ship, kill us all.”

“That’s just what he’s doing.”

“No...”

Dan could feel his temper rising, his face getting hot and red. “He’s afraid of me because he knows that I know I didn’t cause any of those accidents. He knows that I can’t rest until I show everyone who did cause the accidents—that killed my father and nearly killed yours. That’s what he’s afraid of!”

Valery’s voice was pleading, “Dan, listen to me. Believe in me. If you keep going this way, one of you—or both of you—are going to be killed! Stop it now. Let it stop.”

He shook his head solemnly. “I can’t, Val.”

“Even if it means my sanity? My life? I can’t stand by and see the two of you tear each other apart.”

“There’s nothing else...”

“Suppose,” she said shakily, tears in her voice, “suppose I tell Larry that I’ve changed my mind... that I want to marry you. Will you stop then?”

He felt suddenly as if he were in the zero gravity hub of the ship, in free fall, dropping, dropping endlessly, spinning over and over again, dizzyingly----He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop it! Stop it stop it stop it.

Looking at her again, so intent, so beautiful, so afraid and lonely, he said, “Val... I don’t want you as a bribe. It wouldn’t work that way. We’d end up hating each other. I... no, it’s got to be Larry or me. We’ve got to settle this between ourselves.”

“You’ll kill each other,” she said, all the energy drained from her voice.

“Maybe.”

“You’ll destroy the ship.”

“That’s what I want to prevent.”

“You—the two of you—you’re going to destroy me.”

And she abruptly got up from the table and ran out of the cafeteria, leaving him sitting there alone.

9

For more than a month, the four gleaming torpedo shapes of the ship’s automated probes had coasted silently through space, toward the major planet of the Alpha Centauri system. The only link between the probes and the ship was a continuous radio signal, of the lowest possible power, in order to conserve the energy of their batteries.

Then, as they neared the two main stars of Alpha Centauri, the solar cells along their outer skins began to convert sunlight into electricity. The radio signals gained in strength. Like sleeping servants, one by one the instruments aboard the probes awakened with the new flow of electrical power and began reporting back to the ship. But now the reports—full and complex—were carried by laser beams.

Some of the instruments took precise measurements of the probes’ positions in space, and their courses as they approached the major planet. This information was studied by men and computer aboard the ship, and minor course corrections were transmitted back to the probes. The probes responded with the correct changes in course, and the men and women aboard the ship congratulated themselves. The computer accepted no congratulations, but took in all data impassively.

The probes successfully skirted past the steep gravity pull of Alpha Centauri B, the smaller orange member of the two main stars, and let the pull of Alpha Centauri A—the yellow, sunlike star—bring them close to the major planet. Then, more course corrections, more microscopic puffs of gas from the tiny attitude jets aboard the probes’ bodies, and they fell into orbit around the planet.

Back on the ship, people celebrated.

Now streams of data began pouring across the near-emptiness of space between the probes and the approaching ship. The data were coded, of course, in the languages that the engineers and computers could translate into meaningful information. Pictures were sent, too, directly over the laser beams that linked the probes with the ship.

Two of the probes released landing capsules. One never made it to the surface, or at least never sent any information back after entering the planet’s high atmosphere. The other touched down on solid ground and began sending pictures and data from the surface of the new world.

Larry was hurrying down a corridor on level two, where most of the labs and workshops were. Dr. Polanyi had been excited when he called: the first pictures from the planet were ready to view.

He saw someone heading toward him, from the opposite direction. The door to the data lab was halfway between them. Larry recognized the blazing orange coverall before he could make out Dan’s face.

They had kept apart since Dan’s release from the infirmary. Now they met at Polanyi’s door.

“Hello Dan,” Larry said automatically, as soon as they got close enough so that he didn’t have to shout.

Dan nodded, his face serious. “Hello.”

Larry reached for the finger grip on the lab door, but found Dan’s hand was already there and sliding the door back.

“Polanyi called you, too?” Larry asked.

“He called all the Council members,” Dan replied. “Any objections?”

Larry knew he was glaring at Dan. “No objections—as long as you can spare the time from your regular job.”

Dan gestured for Larry to go through the doorway first. He followed, saying, “The job’s getting done. We finally got all the bugs out of the rebuilt main generator. It’ll go back into service today.”

“That’s fine. Glad to hear it.” But Larry wasn’t smiling.

“Ah, the first two here,” Dr. Polanyi called to them.

He was sitting at a workbench halfway across the big, cluttered room. The data lab was really a makeshift collection of instruments, viewscreens, workbenches, desk, computer terminals, and odd sorts of equipment that Larry couldn’t begin to identify. Half a dozen white-coated technicians were tinkering around one of the bulky, refrigerator-sized computer consoles. A wall-sized viewscreen was set up next to it, on legs that looked much too fragile to support it.

Polanyi fussed around the viewscreen and verbally prodded the technicians. Larry saw that there were a few chairs set up, so he sat on one. Dan joined the technicians, watching what they were doing from over their shoulders. In about ten minutes, most of the other Council members showed up. The older men and women among them took the available chairs. Larry got up and joined the loose semicircle of younger men that formed behind the seats.

The technicians finally scattered to various control desks around the big room, and Polanyi turned to face his audience.

“You recognize, of course, that what we’re going to see will not be holograms,” he said. “There is holographic information in the transmitted data, but we have not deciphered it completely as yet. I thought it would be much more desirable to see what there is to see as quickly as possible, even if it is only a flat, two-dimensional picture.”

Larry nodded and asked, “Are any of the views we’re going to see from the surface?”

“Only the last three,” Polanyi answered. “Data transmission from the surface has been very difficult, for reasons that we have not yet determined. The orbital data is quite good, however.”

Larry suddenly realized that he had lost track of Dan. Turning and looking through the crowd, he spotted him, standing off to one side of the group.

The overhead lights dimmed out, and Larry turned his attention back to the screen. It began to glow. Colors appeared, forms took shape.

It was a still photo, taken from far enough away from the planet to show its entire sphere.

“This is the first photo the probes took,” Polanyi’s voice floated through the darkness. “Probe number one took this one, as you can tell from the numerals down in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.”

The planet was yellowish. Broad expanses of golden yellow, dappled here and there by greenish stretches. Larry found that he couldn’t tell which was land and which was sea. The entire planet was streaked with white clouds, which obscured much of the underlying terrain. But there seemed to be no major cloud formations, such as the huge storm systems he had seen on tapes of Earth.

“Next,” Polanyi’s voice called.

This view was much closer. Mountains showed as wrinkles, like a bedsheet that had been rumpled. The land was yellow, Larry saw. The green stretches weren’t vegetation, they Were water.

For more than an hour they studied the orbital photos. The planet had no major oceans, only a scattering of large seas. There were no ice caps at the poles.

Polanyi kept up a running commentary, explaining what they were seeing, filling in information from the other instruments aboard the probes. It all added up to a disappointing picture.

The planet was actually slightly smaller than Earth, but about the same density. Surface gravity was apparently one third higher than Earth’s.

Somebody said in the darkness, “1.3 g. That means a ninety-kilo man will feel like he’s carrying thirty extra kilos around with him all the time.”

“Like hauling an eight-year-old kid on your back.”

“It certainly will strain the heart,” Larry recognized the last voice as belonging to the chief meditech.

The air had slightly more oxygen in it than Earth normal, but also had dangerously high levels of nitric oxides and sulfur oxides.

“Volcanism,” Polanyi explained, pointing to a photo of the planet’s night side, where a series of brilliant red lights gleamed. “Active volcanoes... many of them. The infrared scans confirm it. The volcanoes are spewing out sulfur oxides and other harmful gases.”

Larry grimaced.

The vegetation was a yellowish green. Chlorophyll was there, identified by the spectral readings from the orbiting probes. But the plant life obviously wasn’t the same as Earth’s greenery.

“What about data from the surface lander?” someone asked.

“Yes, it is coming up next.”

The picture on the viewscreen suddenly changed to show a startling landscape. It was golden: yellowish plants everywhere, some of them thick and tall as trees, with ropy vines hanging from their arms. Yellowish sky, even the clouds had a golden tint to them.

“This photo was taken near local sunset,” Polanyi explained. “I believe that accounts for the peculiar color effect... some of it, at least.”

It was beautiful. Larry gazed at a golden world, with hills and clouds and soft beckoning grass of gold. Something deep inside him, something he had never dreamed was in him, was stirred by this vision. A world, a real world where you could walk out in the open air and look up into a sky that had sunrises and sunsets, climb hills and feel breezes and swim in rivers—

He shuddered suddenly. It was like self-hypnosis. This golden world was a trap. It was deadly. A man couldn’t last five minutes on it, not unless he wore as much protection as he needed to go outside the ship and into space.

The picture changed. Now they were looking off in a different direction. The yellow grass and trees sloped down into a gentle valley. In the distance there were rugged mountains of bare rock, their tops shrouded in clouds.

“There are at least two active volcanoes among those distant mountains,” Dr. Polanyi said. “The clouds themselves are mainly steam from the volcanoes.”

It still looked so beautiful.

The picture changed again. It showed the view from the opposite side of the lander. The hillside swept upward, still covered with golden grass and shrubs. Up near the top of the hill, silhouetted against the bright sky, were four dark shapes.

“They appear to be animals,” Polanyi’s voice said. “From their distance, we have judged their size to be roughly comparable with that of an Earthly sheep.”

It was hard to tell their shape. There seemed to be a head, the suggestion of rounded haunches. No tail was visible. You couldn’t tell how many legs, because their lower halves were hidden in deep grass.

The overhead lights suddenly went on, and the picture on the viewscreen faded.

“That’s everything we have so far,” Dr. Polanyi said.

Larry squinted against the sudden glare. And found himself frowning. Looking around, he realized that he had spent his life in a prison. A jail. A metal and plastic confinement, breathing the same recycled air over and over again, knowing every face, every compartment, every square millimeter of space. Out there was a world. A whole broad, beautiful golden world that no one had set foot on, waiting to be explored, to be lived on.

Waiting to kill us, he reminded himself.

They were all murmuring, muttering, a dozen different conversations buzzing at once.

Then Dan’s voice cut through it all. “So we have our first view of the promised land.”

Larry stepped toward him. “It doesn’t look very promising to me. A man can’t live there.”

“We can’t,” Dan shot back, “but our children could.”

“If you make them capable of breathing sulfur and strong as a man-and-a-third.”

“The geneticists can do whatever needs to be done.”

Larry was about to reply, but caught himself. Instead, he said, “This isn’t the place to debate such an important issue. I’d like to have a formal meeting of the Council tomorrow morning. We’ll have to decide if we want to make this planet our home, or look further.”

Dan said nothing. He merely watched Larry, with a quizzical little smile, playing on his lips.

It was late evening. The corridor lights were dimmed. Larry and Valery had eaten dinner in the Lorings’ quarters, with Val’s mother. Now, after a long walk around level one, they were approaching her quarters again, strolling along the empty corridor, hand in hand.

They came to an observation port and stopped. The port was an oblong of. thick plastiglass. A padded bench ran along the bulkhead alongside it. They sat and for a long, wordless while gazed out at the sky.

The stars were thick as dust. One yellow star stood out brighter than all the rest. Nearby it, almost lost in its glare, peeped a dimmer orange star.

“Tomorrow the Council meets to decide,” Larry said wearily.

“Do you think this is the end of the voyage?” Val asked.

He shook his head. “It can’t be. We can’t live on that planet... even though ...”

“Even though?”

“It’s so beautiful!” he said. “I saw the pictures from the surface today. It’s so beautiful. If only we could survive there.”

She asked, “Can’t the geneticists...”

“Sure, they can alter the next generation of children so that they’ll be able to live on the planet. But—the kids would have to be brought up in a separate section of the ship. They’d have to be put under a higher gravity, different atmosphere. The parents would have to wear pressure suits just to visit their own children.”

“Ohhhh...”

“And what about the parents? Do you think people can stay aboard this ship, in this cocoon, this prison, and let their kids go down there to live? It won’t work; the planet’s beautiful, but too different from us. If we try to make it work, it’ll tear everybody apart.”

“Then we have to move on,” Val said.

“Right. But Dan won’t see it that way. He’ll put up a fight.”

“You’ll win.”

He looked at her. “Maybe. I wish I didn’t have to fight him.”

“He thinks the ship won’t be able to go much farther,” Valery said. “He’s afraid we’ll all get killed if we try to find another star, another planet.”

In the dim light, Larry could see that Val wasn’t looking at him, but gazing out at the stars. He reached for her chin and turned her face toward him.

“You’ve seen him several times since he got out of the infirmary, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

He let his hand drop away. “I don’t think I like that. In fact, I know I don’t.”

“Larry,” she said gently, “I’m a free human being. I can do what I want.”

“I know, but—well, I don’t want you to see him.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

He felt miserable, tangled up inside himself. “Of course I trust you, Val, but...”

“No buts, Larry. Either you trust me or you don’t.”

“I trust you.” Sullenly.

“Well you shouldn’t,” she snapped.

“Wha...?”

“Oh Larry—it’s all so mixed up! I don’t want Dan to hurt you. He... he said he’d almost be willing to let you stay Chairman if I’d marry him.”

Larry felt his insides going numb. “And you said?”

“I... I let him think I’d do it, if he’d forget about trying to hurt you.”

He knew how it felt to have liquid helium poured over you: scalding cold. “You let him think that.”

“I did it for you!”

“Thanks. That’s an enormous favor. Now he knows that anytime he crooks his finger, you’ll come running to him. All he has to do is start an argument with me, and he’s got you.”

“No... that isn’t...”

Larry’s hands were clenching into fists. “I must have been out of my mind to believe that you’d prefer me over him. You’ve always wanted him. Now you’ve got the perfect excuse to get him.”

He heard her gasp. “Larry... no... please...” Her voice sounded weak, far away.

“All this time you’ve been letting me think that you loved me... it was only because Dan seemed out of it. But whenever he’s around, you end up going for him.”

“You’ve got it all wrong!”

He stood up. For an instant, staring out at the stars, he felt as if he could fall right through the metal and plastic wall and tumble endlessly into the cold of eternity.

“Wrong?” he asked in a near-whisper. “Do I have it wrong?”

And then she was standing up in front of him, her face suddenly blazing with anger.

“You two are exactly alike!” Val snapped. She didn’t raise her voice, but now there was steel in it, hot steel that threw off sparks. “You think that you can own me. Both of you. Well, I’m not a possession. I’m me, and I’m not going to sit around here like some silly Earth flower while you two big strong men fight over me. From now on, you and Dan both can do without me. I don’t want to see either of you! Do you understand?”

Larry staggered a step backward. “Val...”

“If you and your ex-friend want to battle it out, it will have to be over some other reasons than me. I’m not a prize to be handed over to the winner. You two can knock your heads together... I don’t care anymore! I tried to save you, both of you. I love you both! Can’t you understand that? I love you both, but I’ve always loved you best, Larry. I’m the one who made you go after the Chairmanship... because I’m the one who wanted you. But you’re so intent on flexing your muscles and being jealous—You’re scared of Dan! And you’ll never be able to be happy or free or yourself until you stop being scared of him. And the only way that’s going to happen is for you to kill him... or him to kill you. That’s what you’re both heading for. But I won’t have any part of it! Go ahead and kill yourselves! See if I care!”

And she turned away and ran down the corridor.

Larry was too thunderstruck to go after her. Besides, he knew she was right.