There was a roaring in Crispin Tyler’s ears. The room shifted abruptly out of focus and slid slowly back. “This is... it’s—”
“You have every right in the world to refuse, of course. It’s a three-year trip each way. Add six months of investigation time. It will take you four years over retirement age. It’s, frankly, a hell of a lot to ask a man. You can say no, and I won’t blame you. But I do think I have the right to tell you that the eventual future of this great enterprise depends on your answer.”
“I might not pass the—”
“Physical tests? When you took your semi-annual physical four months ago I instructed them to give you the additional space tests. You came through with flying colors. You’re in good shape, Tyler. Naturally we will arrange a very ample tax-free bonus and pay you the usual double salary for all space time. It ought to add up to a very respectable estate for your children.”
“If I could think it over, Mr. McGuire, and then—”
“Believe me, there’s nothing I would like better than to give you time to think this all over. But I’m afraid I’ll have to have your answer right now. I have taken the liberty, and forgive me if I offend you, of discussing this matter with Mrs. Tyler. Charming woman. Charming. She was upset, of course. You’re a very lucky man, Crispin. She could not, of course, leave two children of seventeen and nineteen alone, and six and a half years would be too long a time to delay the balance of their education. She wept a bit, Crispin. And she told me she would leave the decision up to you without trying to influence you in one way or the other.”
Crispin Tyler felt as though the world were falling away beneath him. He held tightly to the arms of the chair. “Over six years,” he said thickly. “Never been off Earth.”
“A great adventure!” McGuire said. “God, how I envy you!”
“When would—”
“I have taken — the liberty of booking passage for you on the Starbelle leaving Moonport a week from tomorrow, and another ticket on the shuttle which will get you there two hours before takeoff. You will be allowed two hundred Earth pounds of personal effects, reading material, that sort of thing. But I believe you’ll find the Starbelle extremely well-equipped as far as amusement is concerned.” McGuire looked at him with an odd expression, chuckled, and said, “I’m certain you’ll have a most enjoyable voyage.”
“Well, it looks like—”
Valentine McGuire came quickly around his desk, shook hands, propelled Crispin toward the office door. “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, old man, personally and for the sake of this great corporation. You’ll never regret it. Every step is being taken to assure your... eh... happiness.”
Crispin Tyler found himself sitting in his own office with very little idea of how he had got there. He was very faintly nauseated and his heart thudded with uncomfortable force.
“I won’t go,” he said softly. It was the last protest he made.
The situation was not disagreeable — to sit at the head of the table and be the subject of family conversation, the object of quick, surprised little glances from Janie, Cliff and Florence.
“I just can’t believe it. I can’t!” Florence said. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Now, now,” he said. “Someone has to go. When I get back the kids will be on their own. We’ll have the rest of our lives, doing all the things we’ve always wanted to do.”
Florence used a corner of her napkin to blot up the tears, and she smiled bravely. She collected the dishes from the main course and pushed them into the disposal chute, opened the neighboring cabinet and took out the dessert which had just arrived.
“Gosh!” Cliff said softly. “Two hundred thirty light years. Say, they got everything on those long cruise ships! Three-way video, tournaments, parties, hostesses, hobby shops, gyms—”
“You sound like you want to go along,” Crispin said, smiling.
“Would I? Man!”
“I know you,” Janie said. “You’d like it for a week and then you’d want to get off.”
“Anything I don’t like, it’s a smart-aleck girl.”
“Children!” Florence snapped. “At least make your father’s last week here as pleasant as possible.”
Crispin had half hoped that they would all spend the evening together. But Cliff was needed on the school Kell-ball team and Janie had accepted, a week before, a dance invitation that she couldn’t break, and Florence had to go later to a committee meeting of the League of Women Voters.
After the children had gone Florence came to him in the library as he was standing in front of the heat screen and embraced him. Crispin realized that he should appreciate it and enjoy it, but there was something about the abundance of her upper arms and her bosom, her lilac perfume and the warmth of her that made him feel smothered. He endured it patiently, repressing the instinct to fight his way out into the open.
“I shall miss you, Crispin,” she whispered.
“Um. And I’ll miss you, of course.”
“But believe me, Crispin, you will have a good voyage. I know you will. I promise it.”
“How can you promise that?” he asked.
She laughed coyly. “Never you mind, now, Mister Man. I just know you will.”
He spent the evening rearranging the stamp collection, finishing up little odds and ends of mounting that he had been putting off for some time. In the middle of the night he had a series of dreams about falling. Each one woke him up, and each one left him bathed in sweat. Florence’s door was ajar and he could hear, faintly, the soft wet rattle of her breathing. Janie came home late. Her escort laughed in the lower hall. Crispin realized that by the time he returned she could be married and have children. In fact, it was a distinct probability.
He was alone and afraid in the night.
Very alone.
As always.
The elevator lifted slowly up the shining flank of the shuttle. He lost them for a moment and then saw them again, apart from the others. Three small dwindling figures. Their mouths were saying, “Good-by! Good-by! Good-by!” Their arms waved. In a pagan culture the dead were placed on barges, and they floated away down the river. Or was it out on the tide? No matter.
Three dots below. Wife and seed of the womb. Guaranteed immortality. Warm flesh waving and wet mouths saying, “Good-by! Good-by, Crispin Tyler. Good-by, husband and father and provider and soft mild little man who was a part of our lives and his suits never fitted right and he wasn’t good at games and he always seemed just a little oddly out of focus to us and for some mysterious things he did each day they paid him astonishingly well. Good-by.”
Crispin Tyler spent his first week on the Starbelle in a suspension that was like that half-breath between life and death. He lay on his soft bed in the small, neat cabin and ate what was sent to him. He stared straight up to where he knew the rounded snout of the Starbelle thrust through the supercooled nothingness. There was no sound in his cabin. When he held his fingertips against the metallic wall he could sense the faintest vibration. There was no other clue to movement. Below him were other living areas, adjusted to gravitational and atmospheric conditions of various non-human passengers.
At the end of the week he arose, dressed carefully, and, with a little tremor of excitement, went to join the other passengers. It was like that first day at boarding school, the first day working for Intersystem, the first day of marriage.
He visited the pool where the artificial sunlight browned the girls and young men, the two theaters, the game rooms, the village street on the third level. He sat at a sidewalk cafe and watched the couples stroll by, arm in arm.