Bowl of Heaven

Beth looked at Cliff and gave him her covert rolled-eye look, saying, “I’m a bio type, myself.”

Fred was a trifle intense, or “focused” as the psychers put it. Some found him hard to take, but he had solved a major technical problem in systems tech, which cut him some slack with Cliff. All crew had to have overlapping abilities, but for some like Fred, breadth was their main qualification. Of course, Fred was oblivious to all these nuances. He gestured at the screen. “Hard not to look at it — beauty and importance combined. The Mona Lisa of planets.”

Beth murmured approval and he went on, talking faster. “Even now, I mean — hundreds of bio worlds with atmospheric signatures, but no better’s been seen anywhere.”

Irma Michaelson passed by without her husband in tow, her head turning quickly at Fred’s remark. “You mean the new Forward probe data?”

“Uh, no — ”

“Forward Number Five just checked in,” Irma said. “Still pretty far out, can’t get surface maps or anything. Plenty of clouds, got a smidge view of an ocean. Shows the atmospheric thermo pretty well, I hear. We got the tightbeam relay just in time! We might need to do some atmosphere work to make it comfy.”

Beth asked, “What kind?”

“They say we may need more CO2. Glory’s a tad light on greenhouse gases,” Fred said so fast, he could barely get the words out. “Surface temperatures are more like Canada. The tropics there are like our mid-temperate zones.”

Now that we’ve terraformed Earth back to nearly twencen levels, Cliff thought, here comes another whole world.…

He shook this off and listened to Fred, who was hurtling on bright-eyed with, “Once we learn how to suck carbon out of air really well, we can make a climate that will be better than what we were born into. Maybe better than humans ever had it.”

By this time, he was lecturing to a smaller audience. He gave them a crooked smile, as if to acknowledge this, and walked off into the crowd, which was getting predictably more noisy.

“A lot of anxious energy humming through here,” Beth said.

“An emotional bath,” Cliff said dreamily, and nodded at Earth. “The big issue down there is our ever-smarter machines demanding back wages. What’s retirement look like for a multicapillary DNA sequencer?”

Beth laughed, her eyes dancing. “I got a must-answer from SSC, asking what actor would best portray me in the series about us.”

“At least we won’t have to see it.”

She thumped the screen. “I keep thinking I’ll probably never see white curtains billowing into warm sunlit rooms on a lazy summer afternoon. We haven’t left yet, and already I’m nostalgic.”

“For me, it’ll be surfing.”

“Glory has oceans. A moon, pretty small. Maybe they have waves, too.”

“I didn’t bring my board.”

He saw the Arctic Ocean ice was at least visible, a heartening symptom of a planet slowly backing down from the Hot Age. The big chunk of Antarctica that fell off a century back and caused all the flooding was slowly regrowing, too. The Pacific islands were still gone, though, and might never appear again, worn down by wave action. No surfing there, ever again.

He noticed a phalanx of officers in blue uniforms and gold braid, standing smartly in ranks. Most were from the Oort crew and would not go out on SunSeeker, so were here for formality. The leaner Glory-bound crew stood behind the tall, craggy figure blinking into the spotlight but still quite sure he belonged there.

“Captain Redwing is about to speak,” a deck lieutenant’s voice boomed out over the speakers. They stood at sharp attention beneath the other banner proclaiming,

STAR-CRAVING MAD FAREWELL

Redwing was in full dress uniform with medals blazing, beaming at everyone, face ruddy. Cliff recalled he had divorced the wife who was to go with him, but he had not heard the inside story. Redwing kept his posture at full attention except for head dips to junior officers. He maintained a kindly smile, as if he were pleased the other officers were sharing their nice little thoughts. Still, he was an imposing man in uniform.

“A great exit line,” Cliff whispered, trying to edge inconspicuously toward the door. He cast a long look at Earth on the screen.

“Last night for separate quarters, too,” Beth said. “Would you like to stay over?”

“Wow, yes, ma’am.”

“I believe it’s customary.”

“Customary where?”

“Wherever it’s Saturday night.”

They threaded their way through the crowd, but the feeling still plucked at him. The noise and strumming music, the drinks and snog-fogs and quick darting kisses, faces lined and hopeful and sad, all passing by — but still, somehow, as if he wanted to freeze them in amber.

In an eerie way, this was like a … ghost story. All these support people, likable and irritating and officious and sexy and, soon enough — all dead. Left behind. When he and the other crew awoke in orbit around Glory, more than half of these would be centuries gone. Even with the standard life span of 160 years now, gone to gray dry dust.

It had never struck him this way. Not knowing it, but feeling it. All this greatness, the human prospect — all that would be far behind them when they next awoke.

Cliff smiled a thin pale smile and thought, This is the last time I’ll see Earth. He looked at the swimming majesty of it, sighed with a sense of foreboding, and followed Beth.

PART I WAKE-UP CALL

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

— ANAIS NIN

ONE

Life persists.

He recalled those words, his nervous mantra recited as the soft sleep came closing its grip with chilly fingers —

 — and so he knew he was alive. Awake again. Up from the chill-sleep of many decades.

He was cold. His memory was blurred, but it told him he was on an odyssey no biologist had ever ventured on before, a grand epic. He was going to the stars, yes, and they had given him the stinky sulfur gas, yes, the first creeping chill … and that was … it.

But beyond that flash of memory, all he could think of was the incredible, muscle-shaking chill that spread like a sharp ache through him. He was too numb to shiver. Somewhere a loud rumble rolled up through his body, not heard but felt. The cold … He thought hard and with effort opened his sticky eyes.

Trouble. His gummy eyelids slammed closed against a crisp actinic glare. He must be in the revival clinic. Slowly he pried them open, still numb with cold. He focused with effort, looking for the joyous faces of his fellow colonists.

Not there. Nor was Beth.

Instead, the worried frowns of Mayra and Abduss Wickramsingh made him groggily anxious as they worked