we will dispatch our own lesser craft as we see fit.'
He cooled further during the time lag.
Bihari didn't seem to notice how she had been disdained. He didn't want to believe that she had noticed and simply didn't care. 'A question, if you please. We have detected activity of yours at a certain satellite of an outer planet. May I inquire what the purpose is?'
'Supply operations,' Ghrul-Captain snapped. He would give her no more. Let the monkeys discover the rest as it happened.
She didn't push the matter. Evidently she had been briefed on kzin ways. Or did she have direct experience? Had she fought in the war? Ghrul-Captain almost hoped so. One prefers an enemy for whom one can feel a trifle of respect. 'I see. If you don't wish to speak further for the time being, shall we close?'
He replied by cutting off transmission.
5
Tyra had more and more enjoyed her voyage, until near the end. Everyone aboard was an interesting person. While not yet ready to do formal interviews, she took pleasure in cultivating their acquaintance, from Captain Worning on down. She had met some of the half-dozen crew before, but not all, and none of the scientists except Jens Lillebro, a physical chemist at the University of Munchen; the rest were from Earth. Not that the distinction was absolute. Anybody serving on an explorer was necessarily a technician of wide-ranging skills and scientific turn of mind. Thus, the work gang who would assemble the hyperwave unit, engineer Reiner Koch and boat pilots-cum-rockjacks Birgit Eisenberg and Josef Brandt, would be much in demand after they rejoined the ship. Tyra heard many good stories and found ample cause for admiration.
She was oftenest in Craig Raden's company. She preferred to believe there was more on both sides than physical attraction. Of course, that played its part. Among other factors, she was the only woman out of the six with whom anything but the mildest flirtation was possible. Biologist Louise Dalmady made a team with her husband, Emil. Stellar astronomer Maria Kivi, middle-aged, kept quiet faith with her husband at home. Planetologist Toyo Takata was young and pretty but, in spite of being as shy as her colleague Verwoort was bluff, made plain that this was her great career opportunity and she wanted no distractions. Matronly mate Lili Deutsch had her own family back on Wunderland and seldom missed a chance to speak of the new grandchild. Pilots Eisenberg and Brandt had for years been a pair in every sense of the word. Once Tyra spied Raden and physicist Ernesto Padilla exchange a wry glance and a rueful grin. Had the first staked his claim on her? Whether or no, he was never offensive, merely fun and fascinating. They played games physical, intellectual, and childish; they listened to music and watched drama and quoted favorite poetry, they explored the ship's wine stock, they joked, they talked.
And talked and talked. He was a magnificent conversationalist, who always made it a two-way thing.
His account of the finding of their destination fascinated her. She knew about spaceborne interferometry- Wunderland had lately embarked on a project to build a set of such instruments and orbit it around Alpha Centauri C-but why had Earth's matchless facilities not identified this situation long ago? He explained in some detail how many other, more obviously exciting ventures were absorbing funds and attention, notably though not exclusively visits to the sites themselves, while the search for additional high-tech civilizations, beyond known space, grew ever more tantalizing. The star they were seeking had of course been catalogued in early times, but nothing further. It appeared completely ordinary, obscure in its remote location. Finally a slight spectral flutter, noticed in the course of a systematic survey of that region, betrayed it.
How had this given data enough to show not only what was happening, but when the climax would come? Raden had a gift for making analytical techniques clear to a non-mathematician. The precision awed her.
'Well, there's a significant probable error,' he admitted. 'We'll be getting there none too soon, possibly a little too late for the actual event. Let's hope not! Sheer luck, making this discovery just when we did. True, it isn't unique, but to have one within our own lifetimes, at an accessible distance-' He laughed. 'We live right, I suppose.'
The last weekly dance of the trip became an especially gleeful occassion. The gym was festooned with homemade decorations. Champagne sparkled on a sideboard. Every woman joined in, with no lack of partners, while music lilted from the speakers. Best for Tyra was when she and Craig were together. She was a good dancer; he was superb.
The hour was late when he saw her to the compartment known as her stateroom. They paused at the door, alone in the passageway. He took both her hands. 'It's been wonderful,' he murmured. 'Throughout.'
'Yes.' She felt the blood in her face and her pulse.
'It needn't end immediately, you know.'
'We have three daycycles left.'
'Once I'd have thought that was three too many. Now it's far too few.' He stepped close and laid arms around her waist. 'Tyra, we do have them. Beginning this nightwatch.'
Not altogether surprised, she slipped free with a motion learned in a dojo and drew back a pace. Though her heart thudded, she was able to look into his eyes and say quite steadily, 'I'm sorry, Craig. I like you very much, but I don't do casual.'
Robert Saxtorph thinks I do, wrenched within her. I had to make him think that, didn't I? After I saw I had no right to ruin his marriage. The kindest way-make it not too hard for him to let go-wasn't it? Wasn't it?
'We don't have to stay casual, Tyra,' Raden said. 'I'm hoping we don't.'
He could be lying. She recalled his reputation. Or he could be sincere… temporarily. Or if he really meant it, or if there was a chance he might come to mean it, still, the gulf between them was interstellar. Not easily or surely bridged. Nevertheless-'Let me think, Craig. We'll have time, also at the star and on the voyage back. We'll stay friends at least. Won't we?'
He nodded. 'At least,' he answered low, with a smile. 'Goodnight, then, dear.' He leaned across, kissed her gently on the lips, and departed.
She stood for a moment staring after him. He knew better than to insist, tumbled through her. A gentleman, as well as everything else. Suppose he had kept trying-
Memory stabbed her again. Perhaps that was why she went to her bunk bewildered.
She slept poorly and awoke feeling on edge. At breakfast in the saloon she ate skimpily, said nothing, and when she was done returned to her room and screened book after book. None could hold her. When she went to the gym, it lay hollow and forlorn. Just the same, a workout followed by a shower was refreshing. She came to lunch with an appetite.
Raden was on hand, chatting easily with others. He gave her a smile as if nothing had happened, and brought her into the conversation. Afterward, however, as they were going out, he came alongside and asked, 'Can we talk a bit?'
'What about?' Her voice sounded ragged in her ears.
He shrugged. 'Anything you like. If I upset you, I'm terribly sorry and want to make amends.'
So he had read her mood in spite of her effort to seem her usual self. 'No, I'm not upset, not offended.' She managed to give him back his smile. 'A compliment, really, and if I couldn't accept, I did appreciate.' How honest was she? She didn't know.
He took her elbow. 'Look, it's early in the watch for a drink, but on that account we should have the wardroom to ourselves. No harm in nursing a beer. Can we sit down and simply talk? I promise not to go importunate on you.'
It wasn't possible to refuse, was it? She liked the idea, didn't she?
Yet she must work to keep from showing her tension. To gaze across the table into his handsomeness reawakened the old pain and whetted it. She'd laid it aside, she'd actually been happy, now she must start over.
Self-pity wasn't in her nature. Resentment took its place. Oh, she had more sense than to blame him. He'd had no way of knowing what a nerve he touched. For that matter, she hadn't known it was still so raw. To rail at dice that fell wrong was idiotic. However, the anger had to strike at something.
