Kane, of course, was oblivious to me. I could have glared at him through a magnifying glass and he wouldn’t have noticed, not if he was working. Back on the Kepler, he had explained in simple terms—or at least as simple as Kane’s explanations ever get—why there should not be any young stars this close to the core, as well as three possible explanations for why there are. He told me all this, in typical Kane fashion, in bed. Postcoital intimacy.
“The stars’ spectra show they’re young, Tirzah. And close—SO-2 comes to within eighty AU’s of Sag A*! It’s wrong—the core is incredibly inhospitable to star formation! Also, these close-in stars have very peculiar orbits.”
“You’re taking it personally,” I observed, smiling.
“Of course I am!” This was said totally without irony. “Those young stars have no business there. The tidal forces of the hole should rip any hot dust clouds to shreds long before any stars could form. And if they formed farther out, say one hundred light-years out, they should have died before they got this close in. These supermassive stars only last a few million years.”
“But there they are.”
“Yes. Why do you still have this lacy thing on? It’s irritating.”
“Because you were so eager that I didn’t have time to get it off.”
“Well, take it off now.”
I did, and he wrapped my body close to his, and went on fretting over star formation in the core.
“There are three theories. One is that a dust cloud ringing the core, about six light-years out, keeps forming stars, which are then blown outwards again by galactic winds, and then drawn in, and repeat. Another theory is that there’s a second, intermediate medium-sized black hole orbiting Sag A* and exerting a counterpull on the stars. But if so, why aren’t we detecting its radio waves? Another idea is that the stars aren’t really young at all, they’re composites of remnants of elderly stars that merged to form a body that only looks bright and young.”
I said, “Which theory do you like?”
“None of them.” And then, in one of those lightning changes he was capable of, he focused all his attention on me. “Are you all right, Tirzah? I know this has got to be a boring voyage for you. Running ship can’t take much of your time, and neither can baby-sitting me.”
I laughed aloud and Kane, having no idea why, frowned slightly. It was such a typically Kane speech. A sudden burst of intense concern, which would prove equally transitory. No mention of Ajit at all, as if only Kane existed for me. And his total ignorance of how often I interceded between him and Ajit, smoothed over tensions between them, spent time calming and centering separately each of these men who were more like the stars outside the ship than either of them were capable of recognizing. Brilliant, heated, intense, inherently unstable.
“I’m fine, Kane. I’m enjoying myself.”
“Well, good,” he said, and I saw that he then forgot me, back to brooding about his theories.
Neither Kane nor Ajit knows that I love Kane. I don’t love Ajit. Whatever calls up love in our hidden hearts, it is unfathomable. Kane arouses in me a happiness, a desire, a completeness that puts a glow on the world because he—difficult, questing, vital—is in it. Ajit, through no fault of his own, does not.
Neither of them will ever know this. I would berate myself if they did. My personal feelings don’t matter here. I am a captain.
“Damn and double damn!” Kane said, admiringly. “Look at that!”
Ajit reacted as if Kane had spoken to him, but of course Kane had not. He was just thinking aloud. I put down my embroidery and went to stand behind them at their terminals.
Ajit said, “Those readings must be wrong. The sensors were damaged after all, either in hypertransit or by radiation.”
Kane didn’t reply; I doubt he’d heard. I said, “What is it?”
It was Ajit who answered. “The mass readings are wrong. They’re showing high mass density for several areas of empty space.”
I said, “Maybe that’s where the new young stars are forming?”
Not even Ajit answered this, which told me it was a stupid statement. It doesn’t matter; I don’t pretend to be a scientist. I merely wanted to keep them talking, to gauge their states of mind.
Ajit said, “It would be remarkable if all equipment had emerged undamaged from the jump into this radiation.”
“Kane?” I said.
“It’s not the equipment,” he muttered. So he had been listening, at least peripherally. “Supersymmetry.”
Ajit immediately objected to this, in terms I didn’t understand. They were off into a discussion I had no chance of following. I let it go on for a while, then even longer, since it sounded the way scientific discussions are supposed to sound: intense but not acrimonious, not personal.
When they wound down a bit, I said, “Did the minicapsule go off to the Kepler? They’re waiting for the prelim data, and the minicap takes days to jump. Did either of you remember to record and send?”
They both looked at me, as if trying to remember who I was and what I was doing there. In that moment, for the first time, they looked alike.
“I remembered,” Ajit said. “The prelim data went off to the Kepler. Kane—” They were off again.
The go games were not a success.
The problem, I could see, was with Ajit. He was a far better player than Kane, both intuitively and through experience. This didn’t bother Kane at all; he thrived on challenge. But his own clear superiority subtly affected Ajit.
“Game won,” he said for the third time in the evening, and at the slight smirk in his voice I looked up from my embroidery.
“Damn and double damn,” Kane said, without rancor. “Set them up again.”
“No, I think I will go celebrate my victories with Tirzah.”
This was Kane’s night, but the two of them had never insisted on precedence. This was because I had never let it come to that; it’s part of my job to give the illusion that I am always available to both, on whatever occasion they wish. Of course, I control, through a hundred subtle signals and without either realizing it, which occasions they happen to wish. Where I make love depends on whom I need to observe. This direct claim by Ajit, connecting me to his go victories, was new.
Kane, of course, didn’t notice. “All right. God, I wish the minicap would come. I want that data!”
Now that the game had released his attention, he was restless again. He rose and paced around the wardroom, which doesn’t admit too much pacing. “I think I’ll go up to the observatory. Anybody coming?”
He had already forgotten that I was leaving with Ajit. I saw Ajit go still. Such a small thing—Ajit was affronted that Kane was not affected by Ajit’s game victory, or by his bearing me off like some earned prize. Another man would have felt a moment of pique and then forgotten it. Ajit was not another man. Neither was Kane. Stable men don’t volunteer for missions like this.
It’s different for me; I was bred to space. The scientists were not.
I put down my embroidery, took Ajit’s hand, and snuggled close to him. Kane, for the moment, was fine. His restless desire for his data wouldn’t do him any harm. It was Ajit I needed to work with.
I was the one who had suggested the go games. Good captains are not supposed to make mistakes like that. It was up to me to set things right.
By the time the minicap arrived, everything was worse.
They would not, either of them, stop the go games. They played obsessively, six or seven times a day, then nine or ten, and finally every waking minute. Ajit continued to win the large majority of the games, but not all of them. Kane focused his formidable intelligence on devising strategies, and he had the advantage of caring but not too much. Yes, he was obsessed, but I could see that once he had something more significant to do, he would leave the go games without a backward glance.