“I never see much of you these days,” the Captain said after they were aloft. “Running the Valhalla seems to take twenty-four hours a day.”
“I know how it is,” Alan said.
After a while Captain Donnell said, “I see you’re still reading that Cavour book.” He chuckled. “Still haven’t given up the idea of finding the hyperdrive, have you?”
“You know I haven’t, Dad. I’m sure Cavour really did work it out, before he disappeared. If we could only discover his notebook, or even a letter or something that could get us back on the trail—”
“It’s been thirteen hundred years since Cavour disappeared, Alan. If nothing of his has turned up in all that time, it’s not likely ever to show. But I hope you keep at it, anyway.” He banked the copter and cut the jets; the rotors took over and gently lowered the craft to the distant landing field.
Alan looked down and out at the heap of buildings becoming visible below. The crazy quilt of outdated, clumsy old buildings that was the local Starmen’s Enclave.
He felt a twinge of surprise at his father’s words. The Captain had never shown any serious interest in the possibility of faster-than-light travel before. He had always regarded the whole idea as sheer fantasy.
“I don’t get it, Dad. Why do you hope I keep at it? If I ever find what I’m looking for, it’s going to mean the end of Starman life as you know it. Travel between planets will be instantaneous. There—there won’t be this business of making jumps and getting separated from everyone you used to know.”
“You’re right. I’ve just begun thinking seriously about this business of hyperdrive. There wouldn’t be any Contraction effect. Think of the changes it would mean in Starman society! No more—no more permanent separations if someone decides to leave his ship for a while.”
Alan understood what his father meant. Suddenly he saw the reason for Captain Donnell’s abrupt growth of interest in the development of a hyperdrive.
It’s Steve that’s on his mind, Alan thought. If we had had a hyperspace drive and Steve had done what he did, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d still be my age.
Now the Valhalla was about to journey to Procyon. Another twenty years would pass before it got back, and Steve would be almost fifty by then.
That’s what’s on his mind, Alan thought. He lost Steve forever—but he doesn’t want any more Steves to happen. The Contraction took one of his sons away. And now he wants the hyperdrive as much as I do.
Alan glanced at the stiff, erect figure of his father as they clambered out of the copter and headed at a fast clip toward the Administration Building of the Enclave. He wondered just how much pain and anguish his father was keeping hidden back of that brisk, efficient exterior.
I’ll get the Cavour drive someday , Alan thought suddenly. And I’ll be getting it for him as well as me.
The bizarre buildings of the Enclave loomed up before him. Behind them, just visible in the purplish twilight haze, were the tips of the shining towers of the Earther city outside. Somewhere out there, probably, was Steve.
I’ll find him too, Alan thought firmly.
Most of the Valhalla’s people had already been assigned rooms in the quarantine section of one of the Enclave buildings when Alan and his father arrived.
The bored-looking desk clerk—a withered-looking oldster who was probably a retired Starman—gave Alan his room number. It turned out to be a small, squarish room furnished with an immense old pneumochair long since deflated, a cot, and a washstand. The wall was a dull green, with gaping cracks in the faded paint, and cut heavily with a penknife into one wall was the inscription, BILL DANSERT SLEPT HERE, June 28 2683 in sturdy block letters.
Alan wondered how many other starmen had occupied the room before and after Bill Dansert. He wondered whether perhaps Bill Dansert himself were still alive somewhere between the stars, twelve centuries after he had left his name in the wall.
He dropped himself into the pneumochair, feeling the soggy squish of the deflated cushion, and loosened the jacket of his uniform.
“It’s not luxurious,” he told Rat. “But at least it’s a room. It’s a place to stay.”
The medics started coming around that evening, checking to see that none of the newly-arrived starmen had happened to bring back any strange disease that might cause trouble. It was slow work—and the Valhalla people were told that it would take at least until the following morning before the quarantine could be lifted.
“Just a precautionary measure,” said the medic apologetically as he entered Alan’s room clad in a space helmet. “We really learned our lesson when that shipload from Altair came in bearing a plague.”
The medic produced a small camera and focused it on Alan. He pressed a button; a droning sort of hum came from the machine. Alan felt a curious glow of warmth.
“Just a routine check,” the medic apologized again. He flipped a lever in the back of the camera. Abruptly the droning stopped and a tape unravelled out of the side of the machine. The medic studied it.
“Any trouble?” Alan asked anxiously.
“Looks okay to me. But you might get that cavity in your upper right wisdom tooth taken care of. Otherwise you seem in good shape.”
He rolled up the tape. “Don’t you starmen ever get time for a fluorine treatment? Some of you have the worst teeth I’ve ever seen.”
“We haven’t had a chance for fluorination yet. Our ship was built before they started fluorinating the water supplies, and somehow we never find time to take the treatment while we’re on Earth. But is that all that’s wrong with me?”
“All that I can spot just by examining the diagnostic tape. We’ll have to wait for the full lab report to come through before I can pass you out of quarantine, of course.” Then he noticed Rat perched in the corner. “How about that? I’ll have to examine it, too.”
“I’m not an it,” Rat remarked with icy dignity. “I’m an intelligent extra-terrestrial entity, native of Bellatrix VII. And I’m not carrying any particular diseases that would interest you.”
“A talking rat!” The medic was amazed. “Next thing we’ll have sentient amebas!” He aimed the camera at Rat. “I suppose I’ll have to record you as a member of the crew,” he said, as the camera began to hum.
After the medic had gone, Alan tried to freshen up at the washstand, having suddenly recalled that a dance was on tap for this evening.
As he wearily went through the motions of scrubbing his face clean, it occurred to him that he had not even bothered to speak to one of the seven or eight Crew girls he had considered inviting.
He sensed a curious disturbed feeling growing inside him. He felt depressed. Was this, he wondered, what Steve had gone through? The wish to get out of this tin can of a ship and really see the universe?
“Tell me, Rat. If you were me—”
“If I were you I’d get dressed for that dance,” Rat said sharply. “If you’ve got a date, that is.”
“That’s just the point. I don’t have a date. I mean, I didn’t bother to make one. I know all those girls so well. Why bother?”
“So you’re not going to the dance?”
“Nope.”
Rat clambered up the arm of the pneumochair and swivelled his head upward till his glittering little eyes met Alan’s. “You’re not planning to go over the hill the way Steve did, are you? I can spot the symptoms. You look restless and fidgety the way your brother did.”
After a moment of silence Alan shook his head. “No. I couldn’t do that, Rat. Steve was the wild kind. I’d never be able just to get up and go, the way he did. But I’ve got to do something. I know what he meant. He said the walls of the ship were pressing in on him. Holding him back.”