Between the Strokes of Night

“He’s right, you know,” Emil said. “We are taking an awful lot on faith.” “Not true.” Sy considered for a moment, then went on, “I have made not one decision or taken a single action that depends in any way on an assumption as to the benign nature of alien intentions. Judith Niles was removed, and her body used, independent of anything I might have thought or wished. I did nothing to increase the speed of this ship to its present value. Nor could I have done so, even if I wished to. I merely point out that if the aliens had wanted to destroy us, they could have done it very easily. Simply allowing the Argo to continue on its course toward the intense fields around Urstar would have accomplished that. Why would they save us then, in order to destroy us now?”

Emil had shoulders as wide as a door, and now he shrugged them. “You would be the first to tell us not to make assumptions about alien motives.” “I would. I do. I don’t know how aliens think. All I am asking is a certain consistency to their behavior. Admit that, and you will conclude that if they did not stand by and permit us to destroy ourselves then, they will not permit it now. In any case, we will know soon enough if I am right. In three S-days, we will either be stationary at Gulf City and ready to dock the Argo there; or we will be racing past at so close to the speed of light that Gulf City will come and go before we know it.”

Sy left, heading in the same direction as Dan Korwin. Charlene doubted that his objective was continued polite conversation. Sy didn’t allow his feelings to show, but there was no doubt about Korwin’s intense dislike for him. She glanced at Emil. He rubbed his cratered skull and said, “Just three more days, dear. We waited long enough to get to Urstar. I guess we can stand to wait a little longer to see what happens when we get home.”

Maybe he could. Charlene couldn’t. What was apparently true for everyone else on the Argo was not true for her. She could not get over the loss of Judith Niles. She had never really liked the Director, in the usual meaning of that word, but her respect for JN had been enormous. To see her gone, so suddenly and finally, the dominant force on the Argo — and before that on Gulf City, and long before that on and around Earth — was too much. JN had been changed in a moment, from the living, breathing legend who embodied human endurance and determination, to a dried husk of dead tissue. The body was in cold storage, pending a full autopsy by medical and state-change specialists back on Gulf City. That was almost worse than if she had disappeared entirely.

It was all too much for Charlene. No matter what JN might have become in a new incarnation, her vanishing from this one was a break with eighty millennia of work together. No one else on board shared that long history, but to Charlene the separation came as a gigantic shock.

Emil was eager for her company, and he wanted to discuss with her everything that had happened since their progress toward Urstar had been abruptly terminated. But for Charlene, even Emil’s easy company and conversation were too much to take. She fled forward to where the state-change tanks were housed, and placed herself in cold sleep pending the ship’s arrival at Gulf City. As the cold blue mist swirled about her, she was filled with a sense of old loss and new foreboding.

* * *

Progress. There had been progress. The return from cold sleep, once a procedure that left the subject shaky and uncertain, had become quick and easy. Charlene opened her eyes in what felt like the middle of a continued thought, and saw Emil staring down at her.

“Did I? — “ she began.

“You did. We’re at Gulf City, and it’s not at all the way we expected. Can you walk?”

“Of course I can.”

“Then let’s go.” He lifted her effortlessly from the tank and led the way out of the tank room and out of the ship.

The Argo was sitting in one of Gulf City’s monster docking stations. Charlene and Emil were in N-space, not S-space. She knew that at once, not because they were moving in a field that was a substantial fraction of a gee, but because the robots around them trundled along slowly enough to be visible at all times. “Where are the others?” she asked, meaning the others of the Argo’s crew. Emil misunderstood the question. “I wish I could tell you,” he said. “All we know at the moment is that the whole place seems to be deserted. Abandoned.” Charlene stared at the busy robots. “But there are scores of these, all over the place.”

“I meant empty of people. We’re scattering through Gulf City, looking for humans, but so far no one has reported finding any. We’re also checking the data banks, to learn what happened here. Come on.”