Between the Strokes of Night

That still left the big question: What to do, when they could neither approach Urstar nor escape from it? Charlene, breathing easy now that the violent and intermittent acceleration was over, gazed at the display of the static external scene. She muttered, “Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion. As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”

She had been talking to herself, but Emil Garville as usual had his eye on her. He moved closer and said sharply, “What was that?”

She smiled at him and shrugged. “Nothing. I’m showing my age, that’s all. Old words — the man who wrote them was dead hundreds of years before the first person flew in space.”

“Flew in Earth-space?”

“Yes, flew in Earth-space. I keep telling you that I’m old, but you don’t seem to want to believe me.”

“You’re only old objectively, not subjectively. Say it again.” Emil listened closely as she recited the words, then nodded. “I don’t know what had happened to them and their ship, but it certainly applies to us. We’re stuck. Unless something changes, we’ll have to go into T-state before we run out of supplies.” “Something has been changing. But not the sort of thing we’re hoping for.” “JN?”

Charlene nodded wearily. “I’ve talked to Sy about what we should do. He thinks we have to declare the Director incompetent to remain in control, and have someone else take over.”

“Take over and do what?” Emil waved a hand around the control room. “I agree that JN is deteriorating fast, and she spends most of the time in her cabin sitting and doing nothing. But if she were her old self, what could she do? Urstar is only a few light-days away, but in terms of our getting there it might as well be on the other side of the galaxy. We’re stuck.”

Sy, as usual, had been listening without comment while he sat busy with his own experiments. Now he said, “We may be stuck, but we’re not going to be on our own much longer. Unless something changes, we’re going to have visitors.” He posted the tiny image on his hand-held unit to the main display. For some reason of his own he had been observing the region around Urstar at the wavelength of the cosmic background radiation. Logic and experience insisted that close to a star there would be nothing to be seen at such wavelengths. The batlike Pipistrelles and the wispy lattice webs of the Gossameres, residents of deep space, were only found light-years away from fierce stellar radiation. Except, apparently, here. On the display, three fuzzy bat shapes were visible, together with a hint of a gauzy rectangle of silvery lines.

“Doppler insists there’s nothing out there,” Sy said. “I’ve tried active radar, and I’m getting zero returns at all wavelengths. But I’ve also been monitoring the increase in apparent size of their outlines. That shows they’re moving at a constant rate. If they keep it up, they’ll reach the Argo this evening.” Charlene tried, unsuccessfully, to see any increase in the size of the shapes on the display. She said, “We can’t run, and we can’t hide. What do we do?” “We inform the Director of the situation.” Emil shook his head at Charlene and Sy’s perplexed expressions. “I know how you feel. But we’re just three people, among a crew of thirty-eight. Until we discuss this with the others, and they all agree — which I’m not sure they will — JN is still the leader of this expedition. We tell her what we know, we give her our best advice, and we listen to what she says. And unless it’s off-the-wall stark staring lunacy, we do what she says. It’s a rule that’s even older than the poetry that Charlene was quoting a few minutes ago: On a ship, you can have only one captain.” * * *

It was an unnerving experience to stare out of the Argo’s observation ports and see nothing there but the ruddy glow of Urstar. And then, moments later, glance across at the displays showing the same region of space at microwave wavelengths, and watch the black bat-shapes creeping steadily closer. Charlene had spoken to no one else about Sy’s discovery, but somehow the word had spread. During the early evening the crew members had wandered one by one into the main control room, to take up their assigned seats. There was very little conversation. Everyone was waiting.