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  “They’ll wake up.”

  “You don’t know that for sure. Their nervous systems are different. You could kill them.”

  “Nah. What are the chances of that? I can take out all eight of these people in a few seconds. I say we do it now.”

  “You’re forgetting, there’s nine people.”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “How can you say that after all the help she’s given us?”

  Strem groaned. “I understand that you like her. I like her myself. But we have a responsibility to our friends, and to Earth. We’ve got to get Excalibur out of here.”

  “Yeah, the Kaulikans might steal our secrets and attack Earth,” he said sarcastically.

  “They might. Not now. Not in the next ten years. But one day, who knows? Why do you think The Patrol hasn't helped them?”

  He hesitated, thrown off balance by the question. “They don't know they’re here.”

  “Don't fool yourself.”

  Strem was making a very interesting point; the truth of it had not occurred to Eric. The Patrol had hundreds of cruisers with which they scouted the borders of The Tachyon Web. From Sammy’s brother, they knew The Patrol had been fully aware of the nova. Given that, The Patrol must have known of Kashi and its people. They must have been watching when the nova’s fury hit the planet.

  They must have watched and done nothing, while all those people died.

  “We don’t even know how to get back to the right air lock,” he said.

  “Sammy?” Strem said.

  (“I’ve tracked you closely. I know exactly where you are in relationship to…what was that?”)

  There had been a sudden burst of static.

  “You tell us,” Strem said.

  (“It’s stopped. It must have been some kind of interference. Probably some equipment near you guys is radiating tachyons.”)

  “We were right on top of their ion drive and we didn’t have interference,” Strem said. “Could they be monitoring our transmissions?”

  “We’re on a supralight band,” Eric said. “They don’t have the technology.”

  “I don’t like this,” Strem said. “Even if they can’t monitor our communications, we’ve got a spaceship stuck to this their hull. Someone is bound to spot it soon. Let's get this over with.” He reached inside his coat. Eric stopped him.

  “This is crazy! We’ll have to get past hundreds before we could get to the air lock.”

  “If we take care of these people right, there’ll be no one to blow the whistle.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t use your gun unless you were forced to.” Eric glanced at Vani, who smiled and waved. “Sammy?” he said desperately.

  (“I'm open to any reasonable alternatives.”)

  (“Just do it,” Cleo said. “Sitting out here waiting for this thing to blow up beneath us is no fun. These people are so laid back. You’ll have no trouble.”)

  “You're outvoted,” Strem said.

  (“No, he’s not!” Jeanie said. “Strem, you can’t blast these people. What have they done to us?”)

  “I won’t hurt them!” Strem repeated, exasperated. “I just want their damn coolant! And I'm not going to ask for it.” He pulled out his gun, checking the charge. He added, “I'm the captain.”

  “You’re the nephew of the owner of a broken-down freighter!” Eric said. “I don’t have to take your orders!” He fought to control his temper. “Look, so Vani doesn't know where else coolant is stored. They must have it all over the ship. Maybe even back at the farms.”

  “I didn't see any there.”

  “We really didn’t look. Doesn’t it make more sense to try to get the stuff in a quiet place closer to the air lock?”

  “You're the one who wanted to go to engineering!”

  “That's before I knew they had alarms hooked up to their valves!”

  “That’s before you had a crush on Green Eyes!”

  Eric stared him in the eye. “Don't push me, Captain.”

  Strem backed down. “We’re getting nowhere,” he growled.

  “We have time,” Eric said, trying to sound reasonable. “Let's explore further. I’m confident we’ll find another source of coolant. We’ll keep our eye on Excalibur's temperature. If the situation gets critical, we’ll return and take our chances.”

  Strem chewed on that for a moment. “Having Excalibur spotted worries me as much as the graviton drive’s head. I want a time limit on this plan. Three hours. If we don’t find the goods by then, we’re coming back here, no matter what Sammy’s thermometer says.”

  “Agreed,” Eric said reluctantly.

  “And we’re splitting up. That way, we can cover twice the ground. I don’t need an escort. All I need to know is how to say ‘boo’ and keep walking.”

  “I think that’s a bad idea.”

  “And I think you’d rather be alone with her.”

  Eric had no smart answer. Strem was right.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They sat alone by a lake in the largely empty Kaulikan garden. The solitude was internal as well as external. Sammy had switched Strem’s communicator to another channel, and Eric was no longer having to endure Strem’s constant flippant remarks. Sammy had also agreed, under protest, to stop monitoring Eric’s every word with Vani. He received his required Kaulikan responses directly from Excalibur’s computers, and Sammy had promised that they were no longer being broadcast over the bridge’s audio. Sammy could still call him, however, whenever he wanted, and vice versa.

  The garden was on the same level as the farms but was located in the forward wheel. Here, again, the Kaulikans had spent their precious space freely, planning wisely for the claustrophobic centuries to come. Though the species of grass, plants, and trees were alien, Eric was surprised at how much he felt as if he were in a forest on Earth; of course, everything was green. One type of tree, however, if it was a tree, had him wondering. They were as tall as Sequoias, but didn’t have bark or leaves, and their branches appeared to be covered with hives. With flowers everywhere, even floating in the clear lake water, he had to wonder if there was a Kaulikan inhabitant he had yet to meet. Where there were hives there were usually insects.

  The architects had not forgotten the sky: a light – probably blue – canopy whose near horizons curved up rather than down. Perhaps the designers had even managed to manufacture the illusion of rain clouds. But because the wall plates were still tilted edge on, the stars were visible, and illusions were all they could be. The rays of the nova cast long shadows across the woods.

  Eric had not yet found any coolant. Ninety minutes had elapsed since he had fought with Strem. He would have to start searching again, in a minute…

  “You are different, Eric, than anyone I know,” Vani said.

  “How so?” he asked.

  They were sitting cross-legged on a boulder that seemed to be a hundred percent genuine rock. Vani leaned over and plucked what resembled a lotus from the lake, playing with the petals. “Your face is unlike any I have ever seen.”

  “Is that good or bad?” he asked.

  In reply her left hand made a beautiful series of swirls.

  “My eyes,” he said, “are still not working as they should. Please use words instead of fingers.”

  “Your face has many thoughts in it that I do not understand.” She looked him over. “Even your clothes are different.”

  “You're different,” he said, “from any girl I know.”

  Vani laughed, not noticing his seriousness. “My study period starts soon,” she said suddenly.

  “Do you have to go?”

  Breaking the discipline had apparently never occurred to her. “It is nice to sit here in the garden.”

  “Tell me,” he said, “what you do each day?”

  “But you know.”

  He shook his head. “My world is structured differently than yours.”

  “I live in society’s sector. We are all on the second rotation so we all get up at
the same time. Recently, it seems, we have been getting up earlier and earlier, though I know that has not been so. But I have been tired.”

  Society’s sector sounded like a dorm to Eric. He nodded for her to continue.

  “Then we do our exercise.”

  “What kind?”

  “The usual.” She paused, dumbstruck. “Do you not do your exercise?”

  “Occasionally,” he replied.

  She laughed. “But I know you eat. I saw you do that. And that is what I do next. Then I start on my shift. I mainly take care of the Silama. I make sure the impurities are removed before irrigation.”

  Silama must be a word that had no English equivalent or else the computer would have given him an approximation, Eric thought. He asked if she liked her job.

  “I do it.” She did not understand the question.

  “Is there something else you would rather do?”

  “It is pleasant to watch the fruits grow and to know I was able to help them. I would not like to work where Durgi does, in the yeast factory. It is noisy there.” She smiled. “Like engineering.”

  “What are you going to do when you get older?” he asked.

  His probing was a surefire way of emphasizing their separate origins. But it wasn’t that his curiosity was getting the better of him, he realized. He wanted to tell her where he was from.

  “I will treat the Silama,” she answered hesitantly. “Unless I am transferred.” She paused. “Sometimes I wish that...”

  He had to prod her to complete the thought. She tossed her flower into the air. The gravity, half that of the rim of the wheel, brought it down gently into the water.

  “I wish that things were as they once were on Kashi. Not like when we were there, but as they were long ago, when our people used to walk outside beneath the sun. I always wanted to be in a real forest, in the mountains, and look out and see far away. Do you ever dream of those days, Eric?”

  In answer, he described to her his last backpacking trip when he had gone to the Himalayas, camped out on a glacier, scaled a sheer cliff without a graviton pack, and enjoyed a glorious view of the sunset from the top of Mt Everest. He was not trying to add to her confusion, rather, he simply wanted to share the experience. And she seemed to understand, though she could not possibly have known what he was talking about.

  “Those are some of the strange thoughts I see in your face. When you go to these places, are you always alone?”

  He had in fact been alone on the trip. He nodded, and then asked about her friends.

  “All those in my society are friendly.”

  “Are any of them special to you?” he asked.

  “Durgi and I spent many of our breaks together. I was unhappy when she was transferred. But we knew this would happen on her twenty-second cycle. Other than she, I don’t really have any special friends.”

  “Does everyone get transferred on their twenty-second cycle?”

  This question struck her funnier than any of his others. “Not always, not if their mate works in the same sector. Surely it must be the same on your world?”

  So they got married when they were twenty-two, and their relationships were monogamous. This was quite a change from the way things were back home these days. Sammy had said Kashi revolved around its sun in less than three hundred days; therefore, their cycles were probably less than an Earth year.

  “How many cycles are you?” he asked.

  “Twenty-one.” She stared at him a moment, then reached for another flower. “You look more than twenty-two.”

  He nodded. He probably was.

  She brushed the flower against her cheek. “Who are you coupled to?”

  “No one.”

  “You were unable to choose?”

  “In a way.”

  “But did not the Council select someone for you?”

  “No.”

  “But when you do not choose, the Council always selects. It is the law.”

  He did not want to lie to her. “My world is different than yours,” was all he could think of to say.

  This time the line did not satisfy her; she fidgeted on the boulder. He glanced down at his opant jacket. He did not have to let the cat out of the bag but maybe he could show its tail. He removed the coat and pressed the hidden on-switch beneath the collar. The jacket began to glow. She stared, amazed, hesitating to put it on until he reassured her that it was safe. As he was considerably bigger than she and since she couldn’t put her injured arm through the right sleeve, the fit was loose, but good enough to allow the coat’s sensors to get a grip on her emotions. Were his motives entirely pure? he wondered. She was unaware that the opant could give him a Peeping Tom’s insight into her feelings, maybe even her feelings about him. But he was spared a dose of guilt when he realized the green contacts made it impossible to assess the jacket’s shades of color; he could only see variation in the brightness of the light.

  “This is pretty,” she said, excited. “How is it that the colors move?”

  “They move with your feelings,” he said. “Think of what makes you happy.”

  “Landing on Lira.”

  Lira must be their destination. “Okay, pretend you’re there,” he said.

  Eric suddenly saw the light begin to change, though he was not sure in which direction.

  “Now the jacket is blue. It works as you say. But how? We have no clothes like this on our world.”

  Blue must be happiness for Kaulikans, and not yellow, like it was for Earth people, he thought.

  Vani was impressed. “One day, I must visit your world. It must be very different.”

  That would be nice, he thought, feeling sad that he must continue to deceive her. She continued to marvel at the beauty of the jacket. He asked if it was hurting her arm.

  “No.”

  “How did you break it?”

  The opant light changed, getting dimmer, less uniform. Bad question. “I fell off a ladder in the farm. A few days ago.” Her voice lowered. “It was dawn, and I was looking at the sun and it was bright, so bright…and I fell.” She forced a smile. “Now I am like you, I do not do my exercise.”

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Not now.” She touched her injured arm. “But I have not slept much since then. I guess it does hurt.”

  It was not her arm that was keeping her awake. It was the damn nova, and what it had done. “The jacket is yours,” he said. “Keep it.”

  “But I cannot. It was issued to you.”

  “I’ve got thousands of them.”

  “You are so different. Why is it your world wanted you to visit ours?”

  “They didn't. We just came,” he said.

  “But how? Why?”

  “I can't say.”

  “Did one of the Council send you?”

  “No.”

  A peculiar expression crossed Vani’s face. “Are you in the Guard?”

  That sounded ominous, though it would have been foolish to assume the Kaulikans had no security personnel. He shook his head and told her he didn’t know much about the Guard, hoping she might tell him what she knew.

  “I have never met any of them myself, not that I know of, and I have never heard First Councillor Rak speak of them. But Durgi once said she knew a man who was a member of the Guard. She only spoke to him a few times and was not sure exactly what he did, other than that he helped ensure the safety of the worlds.”

  Eric had no trouble imagining what a member of the Guard did. Watching over delicate facilities such as engineering had to be at the top of their list. He’d better tell Strem about this – soon.

  “If you are not in the Guard, what do you do in your world?” she asked.

  “I study.”

  “What do you study?”

  “How people would be different if they came from other stars,” he said, “and how they would be the same.”

  Vani nodded. “Our program is concentrating on similar material. We study about the stars; how they are formed
; how far away they are.” She held up the arm of the opant, marveling at the flowing colors. “We study why it is that nothing can ever go faster than light.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “Anything can go anywhere in no time if it knows how.”

  “But the tapes say…”

  “Never mind what the tapes say,” he interrupted.

  Vani was not one to argue. “Sometimes, I have also thought that way.”

  She turned, pointing toward the far forward wall and the tilted panels, into space. Directly out from the nose of the ship’s central shaft, a bright star shone against a dark galactic dust cloud. “Sometimes, I watch Lira before I fall asleep, and it does not look so far away.”

  He suspected, given the Kaulikans’ technology, that they would know if Lira had orbiting planets, but that they wouldn’t know if the planets were inhabitable or not. If only he had the coolant, a few pounds of cheap chemicals, he could go there and be back in less than an hour with a full report. But even then, would news of a lush world be of any help? It would be a world she would never know...

  With each passing minute, he was moving closer to telling her the truth. He came to his senses when he imagined what Strem and the others would do to him if he did tell. And he was afraid that Vani would think he was crazy.

  “I believe,” Eric said, “we could reach Lira in the blink of eye.”

  She laughed at his wishful thinking. “And the top of a mountain?”

  He nodded and said, “Wherever we wanted to go.”

  She bopped him on the head with her flower. “I like you, Eric.”

  “And I like you, Vani,” he said in English, not giving her the translation automatically supplied by his implant. He took her flower, fitted it in her hair by her ear, and smiled; she knew what he meant.

  The chimes he had heard earlier at the farm returned. The wall panels began to fold down. With the light of the nova cut off, the garden settled into a gentle twilight, the sky emitting but a faint glow.

  Vani stood and offered her good hand. Her skin was much softer than his, warmer, and he waited nervously for her to comment on the roughness of his touch. She said nothing. She was leading him along a stony path toward a waterfall that poured out the side of the tall hived trees. The land was curving upwards toward an artificial heaven it would never reach, while outside the black windows the real universe waited. The smell of honey was almost intoxicating. And Vani liked him. How silly it sounded to travel uncountable miles into the unknown and to have as his greatest discovery someone who cared about him. He laughed at the thought.