Starborne

than he is, and utterly ungraceful — but looking foolish is probably what Paco has in mind. He whirls her around through the crowd in a clumsy galumphing not-quite-waltz, holding her tightly at arm’s length with a one-armed grip and joyously waving his wineglass in the other.

The year-captain, who has come late to the party and now stands quietly by himself at the rear of the lounge near the tables where theGo boards are kept, sees Noelle on the opposite side, also alone. He fears for her, slim and frail as she is, and sightless, in this room of increasingly drunken revelers. But she seems to be smiling. Michael and Julia are at her side; Julia is saying something to her, and Noelle nods. Apparently she is asking if Noelle wants something to drink, for a moment later Mike plunges into the melee and fetches a glass of something for her.

There had been a party much like this six months before, on Earth, the eve of their departure. The same people acting foolish, the same ones being shy and withdrawn. They all knew each other so superficially, then, even after the year-long training sessions — names, professional skills, that was about it. No depth, no intimacy. But that was all right. There would be time, plenty of time. Already couples bad begun to form as launch time drew near: Paco and Julia, Huw and Giovanna, Michael and Innelda. None of those relationships was destined to last past the first month of the voyage, but that was all right too. The ship’s crew consisted of twenty-five men, twenty-five women, and the supposition was that they would all pair neatly off and mate and be fruitful and multiply on the new Earth to come, but in all likelihood only about half the group would do that at most, and the others would remain single to the end of their days, or pass through a series of intricate and shifting relationships without reproducing, as most people did on Earth. It would make little difference in the long run. There was a sufficiency of frozen gametes on board with which to people the new world. And one could readily enough contribute one’s own to the pool without actually pairing and mating.

Partying was not a natural state for the year-captain. Aloof and essentially solitary by nature, marked also by his wintry years at the monastery in Lofoten, he made his way through these social events the way he had managed his notable and improbable career as an actor, stepping for the time being into the character of someone who was not at all like himself. He could pretend a certain joviality. And so he drank with the others at the launch party; and so he would drink here tonight.

The launch party, yes. That had called for all his thespian skills. The newly elected year-captain going about the room, grinning, slapping backs, trading quips. Getting through the evening, somehow.

And then the day of the launch. That had needed some getting through too. The grand theatrical event of the century, it was, staged for maximum psychological impact on those who were staying behind. The whole world watching as the chosen fifty, dressed for the occasion in shimmering, absurdly splendiferous ceremonial robes, emerged from their dormitory and solemnly marched toward the shuttle ship like a procession of Homeric heroes boarding the vessel that will take them to Troy.

How he had hated all that pomp, all that pretension! But of course the departure of the first interstellar expedition in the history of the human race was no small event. It needed proper staging. So there they came, ostentatiously strutting toward the waiting hatch, the year-captain leading the way, and Noelle walking unerringly alongside him, and then Huw, Heinz, Giovanna, Julia, Sieglinde, Innelda, Elliot, Chang, Roy, and on and on down to Michael and Marcus and David and Zena to the rear, the fifty voyagers, the whole oddly assorted bunch of them, the short ones and the tall, the burly ones and the slender, the emissaries of the people of Earth to the universe in general.

Aboard the shuttle. Up to the Wotan, waiting for them at its construction site in low orbit. More festivities there. All manner of celebrities, government officials, and such on hand to bid them farewell. Then a change of mood, a new solemnity: the celebrities took their leave. The fifty were alone with their ship. Each to his or her cabin for a private moment of — what? prayer? meditation? contemplation of the unlikeliness of it all? — before the actual moment of departure.

And then all hands to the lounge. The year-captain must make his first formal address:

“I thank you all for the dubious honor you’ve given me. I hope you have no reason to regret your choice. But if you do, keep in mind that a year lasts only twelve months.”

Thin laughter came from the assembled voyagers. He had never been much of a comedian.

A few more words, and then it was time for them to go back to their cabins again. By twos and threes drifting out, pausing by the viewplate in the great corridor to have one last look at the Earth, blue and huge and throbbing with life in the center of the screen. Off to the sides somewhere, the Moon, the Sun. Everything that you take for granted as fixed and permanent.

The sudden awareness coming over them all that the Wotan is their world now, that they are stuck with each other and no one else for all eternity.

Music over the ship’s speakers. Beethoven, was it? Something titanic-sounding, at any rate. Something chosen for its sublime transcendental force too. That added up to Beethoven. “Prepare for launch,” the year-captain announced, over the music. “Shunt minus ten. Nine. Eight.” All the old hokum, the ancient stagy stuff, the stirring drama of takeoff. The whole world was watching, yes. The comfortable, happy people of Earth were sending forth the last of their adventurers, a grand exploit indeed, ridding themselves of fifty lively and troubled people in the fond hope that they would somehow replicate the vigor and drive of the human species on some brave new world safely far away. “Six. Five. Four.”

His counting was meaningless, of course. The actual work of the launch was being done by hidden mechanisms in some other part of the ship. But he knew the role he was supposed to play.

“Shunt,” he said.

Drama in his voice, perhaps, but none in the actuality of the event. There was no special sensation at the moment the stardrive came on, no thrusting, no twisting, nothing that could be felt. But the Earth and Sun disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by an eerie pearly blankness, as the Wotan made its giddy leap into a matter-free tube and began its long journey toward an unknown destination.

Someone is standing beside him now, here at the six-month-anniversary celebration. Elizabeth, it is. She puts a glass of wine in his hand.

“The last of the wine, year-captain. Don’t miss out.” She has obviously already had her share, and then some. “’Drink! For you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink! For you know not why you go, nor where.’” She is quoting something again, he realizes. Her mind is a warehouse of old poems.

“Is that Shakespeare?” he asks.

“TheRubaiyat,” she says. “Do you know it? ‘Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring the winter garment of repentance fling.’” She is very giddy. She rubs up against him, lurching a little, just as he puts the wine to his lips; but he keeps his balance and not a drop is spilled. “’The bird of time,’” she cries, “’has but a little way to fly — and lo! The bird is on the wing.’”

Elizabeth staggers, nearly goes sprawling. Quickly the year-captain slips his arm under hers, pulls her up, steadies her. She presses her thin body eagerly against his; she is murmuring things into his ear, not poetry this time but a flow of explicit obscenities, startling and a little funny coming from this bookish unvoluptuous woman. Her slurred words are not entirely easy to make out against the roaring background of the party, but it is quite clear that she is inviting him to her cabin.

“Come,” he says, as she weaves messily about, trying to get into position for a kiss. He grips her tightly, propelling her forward, and cuts a path across the room to Heinz, who is pouring somebody else’s discarded drink into his glass with the total concentration of an alchemist about to produce gold from lead. “I think she’s had just a little too much,” the year-captain tells him, and smoothly hands Elizabeth over to him.

Just beyond him is Noelle, quiet, alone, an island of serenity in the tumult. The year-captain wonders if she is telling her sister about the party.

Astonishingly, she seems aware that someone is approaching her. She turns to face him as he comes up next to her.

“How are you doing?” he asks her. “Everything all right?”

“Fine. Fine. It’s a wonderful party, isn’t it, year-captain?”

“Marvelous,” he says. He stares shamelessly at her. She seems to have overcome yesterday’s fatigue; she is beautiful again. But her beauty, he decides, is like the beauty of a flawless marble statue in some museum of Greek antiquities. One admires it; one does not necessarily want to embrace it. “It’s hard to believe that six months have