Starborne

“Now,that’s Shakespeare for sure,” Heinz says.

“Milton,” Elizabeth tells him sweetly. Heinz only shrugs. “Shakespeare is ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us,’” she continues. “Shakespeare is ‘Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!’”

Elizabeth is an inexhaustible reservoir. She is capable of going on indefinitely quoting scraps of verse about angels, and is certainly willing to do so, but Heinz’s improbable little burst of poetic fancy, which Heinz plainly has come to regret almost immediately, has excited everyone in the room and no one cares to listen to her further recitations, because they all have things of their own to say. Paco, unsurprisingly, wants to bury the whole idea beneath a mound of manly contempt, and stolid Huw is having a great deal of trouble grasping the idea of noncorporeal life-forms at all, let alone angels, and Heinz keeps insisting that he was simply reaching for a figure of speech, not making a serious suggestion; but nearly everyone else finds it a striking concept, if a trifle implausible, and those others who have serious reservations about it are too abashed by the general enthusiasm to speak up openly against it. And in any case the term “angels” seems a convenient shorthand for whatever may be out there causing the problem.

Almost everybody is fascinated by the idea and they all want to provide individual embellishments of the general theme, speculating about whether the “angels” are benign or malevolent, whether they are supremely intelligent or mindless, immortal or evanescent, and so on and so on. Giovanna suggests that they could even be responsible for the sinister effects that she and Huw and Marcus had experienced during their visit to Planet A. Why not? Perhaps these space beings, these “angels,” are troubled by humanity’s incursion into interstellar space and are taking steps to thrust it back. But Huw, practical as ever, suggests that they wait to see if the same things happen to those who make the landing on Planet B before coming to any conclusions of that sort.

Where the space beings might live is discussed too, but not with any clarity. It is generally agreed that whether the “angels” live within the tube as proposed by Heinz, or in some sector of realspace just outside it as pictured by Roy, is unimportant to decide at the moment; the basic concept is what needs exploration. And a consensus has definitely emerged in the group this afternoon that the interference Noelle is experiencing is in all likelihood the work of some kind of alien intelligence into whose vicinity they keep moving from time to time. That idea arouses wonder in all, even Huw. Even — however much he tries to conceal the fact — in Paco.

The year-captain, who has not been present for any of this, arrives at the lounge now, and stands perplexed by the entrance for a few moments as the talk of angels and biopsychic transmissions swirls about him.

“What angels?” he asks after a while. “Where?”

They try to explain, two or three talking at once. Heinz is silent, arms folded, looking smug. He has overcome his initial annoyance at the excitement his casual choice of words has caused, and now he likes the idea of having stirred everyone up over so ethereal a theory. Sly worldly Heinz, postulating angels in the nospace tube! He isn’t really serious, at least not about the angel part of it, the year-captain sees. But should any part of his wild idea be taken seriously? The year-captain, when he has heard them out and managed to grasp something of what they are babbling at him, seems to think so. “Angels,” he says, looking pensive and grave. “Well, why shouldn’t that be so? As good a metaphor as any other. It’s certainly worth investigating.”

They turn, all of them, and stare at him. They are all more or less aware of his background in monasticism — in mysticism, even: those years at that odd monkish retreat near the Arctic Circle, that strange interlude in his life between his time as an explorer of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and his enrollment in the crew of the Wotan. He never speaks of that period to anyone on board, nor do any of them really understand why he chose to withdraw from the world at the peak of a great scientific career and enter a monastery, any more than they understand why, much earlier, after training to be a scientist, he chose to go on the stage. He has always been a complete mystery to them, which is one reason they prefer him to remain as their captain. But they are all agreed that he is a serious person, a deep thinker — unlike Paco, say, or Heinz — and if he, the true philosopher of their group, finds something of interest in this “angels” hypothesis, then very likely there must be something in it.

What to do now, though? If they are indeed in the presence of alien beings of extraordinary nature and power, can some way be found of opening a dialog with them?

Innelda suggests asking Hesper to put his scanning devices to work in an attempt to determine their location. Roy proposes an all-out campaign to find them by conventional radio means after the voyagers have emerged from the nospace tube to investigate Planet B. Huw, gamely trying to enter into the spirit of a thing that is basically uncongenial to his pragmatic nature, puts forth the idea that they ought to aim radio transmissions at the things while stillwithin the nospace tube, since if the “angels” are in it with them they might well have the capacity to detect electromagnetic energy as well as thought waves.

Then Heinz says, “There’s one other thing we can try. Regardless of where these creatures actually live, it would seem that their energy-wave, their thought-manifestations, whatever it is, can come inside the tube here with us, since Noelle’s thought-beam is being affected by them. Very well. We should be able to reach them the same way, by mental transmission. Noelle could try to speak directly to them. Ask them who they are, where they live, why they’re suppressing her contact with Earth.”

“Yes!” someone shouts — it is Elliot — and Maria echoes her, and then Jean-Claude. “Of course! Noelle should try! Noelle! Noelle!”

All eyes are on Noelle.

She looks flustered, even a little frightened, but to some degree amenable nonetheless. Softly she says, smiling shyly, “I’ve nevertried to talk with angels before, you know. If that’s what they are. But if you all want me to try—”

“Yes,” the year-captain breaks in, saying the word in a tone of voice that often is better understood aboard the ship as meaning No. “We should definitely consider the project, a little later on. But this isn’t the moment for it, really. We’re coming within range of the solar system of Planet B. We have that to deal with first; we can worry about speaking with angels afterwards.”

An end has been made, then, at least for the time being, to the excitement over Heinz’s angel theory.

Heinz and Roy’s theory, really, though Roy’s crucial role in propounding it has quickly been overshadowed in the general consciousness by Heinz’s quickness with a lively metaphor. Nobody on board is religious in the way that term once had been understood, but the long months of isolation aboard the starship, perhaps, may have conjured a streak of irrationality in some of the voyagers, and of fierce playfulness in others. “Angels” is what everybody now calls the hypothetical alien beings that hypothetically surround the ship. Even hard-core skeptics like Paco and Huw use the term for lack of any better one.

But there will be no immediate attempt at a telepathic foray by Noelle for the purpose of making contact with supposed incorporeal creatures of extraterrestrial origin that may be lurking in their vicinity of nospace or realspace. As the year-captain has pointed out, the impending arrival of the Wotan at Planet B is a matter of higher priority just now.

The year-captain wonders what the Abbot would have said about his suppression of the angel discussion. He thinks about the Abbot’s disapproval whenever he does something that is blatantly manipulative or selfish; and that is certainly what he has done just now, something both manipulativeand selfish, though he hopes he is the only one aboard who fully understands that.

His ostensible reason for derailing the conversation — that they need to concentrate instead on the challenge of Planet B — is legitimate enough. But behind it lies something else entirely, a matter of compassion, of concern for the most delicate member of the ship’s community. He could see, even if none of the others could, the look of fear on Noelle’s face, and he could hear the little quaver in her voice. Suppose these angels, or whatever they are,did exist, and suppose shecould in some fashion open her mind to them, how did anyone know what would become of her? His mind had gone at once to all those Greek myths of women who had wanted to be embraced by this or that god in all his might, and had been granted their wish, and had been consumed unto ashes by the full glory of the deity. They needed to consider, very carefully indeed, all the consequences of a mental union between Noelle and one of these supposed creatures of the void, before shoving her into the attempt.

So the desire to protect Noelle lurks beneath his stated reason for tabling the project. And because — he isn’t sure why — he is reluctant to reveal that underlying desire to the others, he has chosen to hide it behind an acceptable but secondary explanation that would achieve the same goal. That was a manipulative act, he