It was the first good view of the sky I had had since we had left Earth and the night was clear. I stood there, dazzled and a little drunk from it.
Then I started trying to pick out constellations.
It was not hard; eleven light-years is just down the street for most stars. The Dipper was overhead, looking a little more battered than it does from Earth but perfectly recognizable. Orion blazed near the horizon ahead of me but Procyon had moved over a long way and Sirius was not even in sight—skidded below the skyline, probably, for Sirius is even closer to the Earth than is Tau Ceti and our position would shift him right across the sky. I tried to do a spherical triangle backwards in my head to figure where to look for Sirius and got dizzy and gave up.
Then I tried to find Sol. I knew where he would be, in Boötes, between Arcturus and Virgo—but I had to find Bootes, before I could look for Father Sol.
Boötes was behind me, as close to the skyline as Orion was on the other side. Arcturus had shifted a little and spoiled the club shape of Bootes but there was no doubt in my mind.
There it was! A yellow-white star, the color of Capella, but dimmer, about second magnitude, which was right, both position and magnitude. Besides, it had to be the Sun, because there hadn't been any star that bright in that location when Pat and I were studying for our astrogation merit badge. It was the Sun.
I stared at it, in a thoughtful melancholy, warm rather than sad. I wondered what Pat was doing? Walking the baby, maybe. Or maybe not; I couldn't remember what the Greenwich ought to be. There he was, thirty years old and a couple of kids, the best part of his life behind him... and here I was, just old enough to be finishing my sophomore year in college if I were home.
No, I wouldn't be; I'd be Pat's age.
But I wasn't thirty.
I cheered up and decided that I had the best break after all, even if it had seemed not so good at first. I sighed and walled around a bit, not worrying, for not even one of those lizard brutes could get close to our night defenses without bringing thunder and lightning down around his ears. If he had ears. Percy's pen was not far in that rear direction; he heard me and came to his fence, so I walked up and scratched his snout. "Nice place, eh, boy?" I was thinking that when the Elsie did get home—and I no longer believed Uncle Steve's dire predictions—when I did get back, I would still be in my early twenties, just a good age to emigrate. And Connie looked like a fine place to come back to.
Percy answered with a snuffling grunt which I interpreted to mean: "You didn't bring me anything to eat? A fine way to treat a pal!" Percy and I were old friends; aboard ship I fed him, along with his brothers and the hamsters and the rats.
"Percy, you're a pig."
He did not argue but continued to snuffle into my empty hand. I was thinking that eleven light-years wasn't far; it was about right. The stars were still familiar.
Presently Percy got tired of it and so did I, so I wiped my hand on my pants and went back to bed.
XIII IRRELEVANT RELATIONS
Beyond Beta Hydri: I ought to bring this up to date, or else throw it away. I hardly ever have time to write now, since we are so short handed. Whatever it was we picked up on Constance—or, possibly, caught from improperly fumigated stores—has left us with more than enough to do, especially in my department. There are only six left now to handle all the traffic, Unc, myself, Mei-Ling, Anna, Gloria, and Sam. Dusty lived through it but he is out of touch, apparently permanently. His brother had no kids for a secondary team and they just slipped apart on the last peak and never matched in again.
I am dependent on my great-niece Kathleen and on Molly, her mother. Pat and I can still talk, but only with their help; if we try it alone, it's like trying to make yourself understood in a machine shop. You know the other fellow is saying something but the more you strain the less you hear. Pat is fifty-four, now that we have peaked on this leg; we just don't have anything in common. Since Maude's death he isn't interested in anything but business—and I am not interested in that.
Unc is the only one who doesn't feel his original telepartner slipping away. Celestine is forty-two now; they are coming together instead of separating. I still call her "Sugar Pie," just to hear her chuckle. It is hard to realize that she is twice my age; she ought to have braids and a missing front tooth.
All in all, we lost thirty-two people in the Plague. I had it and got well. Doe Devereaux didn't get well and neither did Prudence nor Rupe. We have to fill in and act as if the others had never been with us. Mei-Ling's baby died and for a while we thought we were going to lose Mei-Ling, but now she takes her watch and does her work and even laughs.
I guess the one we all miss the most is Mama O'Toole.
What else of importance has happened? Well, what can happen in a ship? Nothing. Beta Hydri was a washout. Not only nothing resembling an Earth-type planet, but no oceans
—no water oceans, I mean; it was a choice for fuel between ammonia and methane, and the Chief Engineer and the Captain had long worried conferences before they settled for ammonia. Theoretically the Elsie will burn anything; give her mass-converter something to chew on and the old "e equals mc2" gets to work; the torch spits the mass out as radiation at the speed of light and neutrons at almost the speed of light. But while the converter does not care, all of the torch's auxiliary equipment is built to handle fluid, preferably water.
We had a choice between ammonia, already liquid, and an outer planet that was mostly ice, but ice not much warmer than absolute zero. So they crossed their fingers, put her down in an ocean of ammonia, and filled up the old girl's tanks. The planet we named Inferno and then called it nastier names. We had to sit there four days at two gravities and it was cold, even with the ship's air heaters going full blast.
The Beta Hydri system is one I am not going back to; creatures with other metabolisms can have it and welcome. The only one who was pleased was Harry Gates, because the planetary arrangements followed Bode's Law. I wouldn't care if they had been in Vee formation.
The only other thing that sticks in my mind was (of all things!) political trouble. Our last peak started just as that war broke out between the Afro-European Federation and Estados Unidos de Sud. It shouldn't have meant anything to us—it did not, to most of us, or at least we kept our sympathies to ourselves. But Mr. Roch, our Chief Engineer, is from the Federation and his first assistant was born in Buenos Aires. When Buenos Aires got it, probably including some of Mr. Regato's relatives, he blamed his boss personally. Silly, but what can you expect?
After that, the Captain gave orders that he would check Earthside news before it was printed and he reminded us of the special restrictions on communicators in re security of communications. I think I would have been bright enough to submit that dispatch to the Captain before printing it, but I can't be sure. We'd had always had free press in the Elsie.
The only thing that got us out of that mess was that we peaked right after. When we came out of peak, fourteen years had passed and the latest political line-up had Argentina friends with her former enemies and on the outs with the rest of South America. After a while Mr. Roch and Mr. Regato were back playing chess together, just as if the Captain had never had to restrict them to keep them from each other's throats.
Everything that happens back on Earth is a little unreal to me, even though we continue to get the news when we are not at peak. You get your mind adjusted to a new situation; the Elsie goes through a peak... years have passed and everything has changed. They are calling the Planetary League the "United System" now and they say that the new constitution makes war impossible.