“No. No. What a fine house you have, Clissa. Warm. Real. You and Manuel must be very happy here.” He eyed her slender form. “It’s such a good place for having children too. The beach— the sun— the trees—”
An android brought two mirror-bright chairs, expanding and socketing them with a swift deft twinkle of his hands. Another turned on the waterfall on the inland side of the house. A third lit an aroma spike, and the odor of cloves and cinnamon unfolded in the courtyard. A fourth offered Krug a tray of milky-looking sweets. He shook his head. He remained standing. So did Clissa. She looked uncomfortable.
She said, “We’re still newlyweds, you know. We can wait awhile for children.”
“Two years, isn’t it, you’ve been married? A long honeymoon!”
“Well—”
“At least get your certificate. You could start thinking about children. I mean, it’s time you— time I— a grandchild—”
She held forth the tray of sweets. Her face was pale; her eyes were like opals in a frosty mask. He shook his head again.
He said, “The androids do all the work of raising a kid, anyhow. And if you don’t want to get yourself stretched, you could have it ectogenetically, so—”
“Please?” she said softly. “We’ve talked about this before. I’m so tired today.”
“I’m sorry.” He cursed himself for pushing her too hard. His old mistake; subtlety was not his chief skill. “You’re feeling all right?”
“Just fatigue,” she said, not convincing him. She seemed to make an effort to show more energy. She gestured, and one of her betas began to assemble a stack of glittering metal hoops that rotated mysteriously about some hidden axis; a new sculpture, Krug thought. A second android adjusted the walls, and he and Clissa were bathed in a cone of warm amber light. Music trembled in the air, coming from a cloud of tiny glittering speakers that floated, fine as dust, into the courtyard. Clissa said, too loudly, “How is your tower going?”
“Beautiful. Beautiful. You should see it.”
“Perhaps I’ll come, next week. If it isn’t too cold there. Are you up to 500 meters yet?”
“Past it. Rising all the time. Only not fast enough. I ache to see if finished, Clissa. To be able to use it. I’m so full of impatiences I’m sick of them.”
“You do look a little strained today,” she said. “Flushed, excited. You ought to slow down, sometimes.”
“Me? Slow? Why? Am I too old?” He realized he was barking at her. He said more temperately, “Look, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I better leave now. I don’t mean to be a bother to you. I just felt like a little visit.”Pleep pleep. Boom. “You tell Manuel it was nothing special, yes? To say hello. When did I see him, anyway? Two weeks, three? Not since right after he came out of that shunt-room business. A man can visit his son sometimes.” He reached out impulsively, drew her to him, hugged her lightly. He felt like a bear hugging a forest sprite. Her skin was cold through that misty wrap. She was all bones. He could snap her in half with a quick yank. What did she weigh, fifty kilos? Less? A child’s body. Maybe she couldn’t even have children. Krug found himself trying to imagine Manuel in bed with her, and pushed the thought away, appalled. He kissed her chilly cheek. “You take care,” he said. “So will I. We both take care, get lots of rest. You say hello to Manuel for me.”
He rushed to the transmat. Where to next? Krug felt feverish. His cheeks were flaming. He was adrift, floating on the broad bosom of the sea. Coordinates tumbled across his mind; frantic, he seized one set, fed it to the machine.Pleep. Pleep. Pleep. The scaly hiss of amplified star-noise nibbled at his brain. 2-5-1, 2-3-1, 2-1. Hello? Hello? The theta force devoured him.
It brought him forth inside an immense musty cavern.
There was a roof, dozens of dim kilometers overhead. There were walls, metallic, reflective, yellow-brown, curving toward some distant place of union. Harsh lights glared and flickered. Sharp-edged shadows stained the air. Construction noises sounded: crash, thunk, ping, bavoom. The place was full of busy androids. They clustered close to him, glistening with awe, nudging, whispering: “Krug … Krug … Krug…” Why do androids always look at me that way? He scowled at them. He knew that perspiration was bursting from every pore. His legs were unsteady. Ask Spaulding for a coolpilclass="underline" but Spaulding was elsewhere. Krug was jumping solo today.
An alpha loomed before him. “We were not led to anticipate the pleasure of this visit, Mr. Krug.”
“A whim. Simply passing through, looking in. Pardon me — your name—?”
“Romulus Fusion, sir.”
“How big a work-force here, Alpha Fusion?”
“Seven hundred betas, sir, and nine thousand gammas. The alpha staff is quite small; we rely on sensors for most supervisory functions. Shall I show you around? Would you like to see the lunar runabouts? The Jupiter modules? The starship, perhaps?”
The starship. The starship. Krug comprehended. He was in Denver, at Krug Enterprises’ main North American vehicle-assembly center. In this spacious catacomb many types of transportation devices were manufactured, covering all needs that the transmat could not meet: ocean-crawlers, sliders for surface travel, stratospheric gliders, heavy-duty power-haulers, immersion modules for use on high-pressure worlds, ion-drive systemships for short-hop spacing, interstellar probes, gravity boxes, skydivers, minirailers, sunscoops. Here, too, for the past seven years, a picked technical staff had been building the prototype of the first manned stargoing vessel. Lately, since the commencement of the tower, the starship had become a stepchild among Krug’s projects.
“The starship,” Krug said. “Yes. Please. Let’s see it.”
Aisles of betas opened for him as Romulus Fusion ushered him toward a small teardrop-shaped slider. With the alpha at the controls they slipped noiselessly along the floor of the plant, past racks of half-finished vehicles of every description, and came at length to a ramp leading to yet a lower level of this subterranean workshop. Down they went. The slider halted. They got out.
“This,” said Romulus Fusion.
Krug beheld a curious vehicle a hundred meters long, with flaring vanes running from its needle-sharp nose to its squat, aggressive-looking tail. The dark red hull seemed to have been fashioned from conglomerated rubble; its texture was rough and knobby. No vision accesses were in evidence. The mass-ejectors were conventional in form, rectangular slots opening along the rear.
Romulus Fusion said, “It will be ready for flight-testing in three months. We estimate an acceleration capability of a constant 2.4 g, which of course will bring the vessel rapidly to a velocity not far short of that of light. Will you go inside?”
Krug nodded. Within, the ship seemed comfortable and not very unusual; he saw a control center, a recreation area, a power compartment, and other features that would have been standard on any contemporary systemgoing ship. “It can accommodate a crew of eight,” the alpha told him. “In flight, an automatic deflector field surrounds the ship to ward off all oncoming free-floating particles, which of course could be enormously destructive at such velocities. The ship is totally self-programming; it needs no supervision. These are the personnel containers.” Romulus Fusion indicated four double rows of black glass-faced freezer units, each two and a half meters long and a meter wide, mounted against a wall. “They employ conventional life-suspension technology,” he said. “The ship’s control system, at a signal from the crew or from a ground station, will automatically begin pumping the high-density coolant fluid into the containers, lowering the body temperature of personnel to the desired degree. They will then make the journey submerged in cold fluid, serving the double purpose of slowing life-processes and insulating the crew against the effects of steady acceleration. Reversal of the life-suspension is just as simple. A maximum deepsleep period of forty years is planned; in the event of longer voyages, the crew will be awakened at forty-year intervals, put through an exercise program similar to that used in the training of new androids, and restored to the containers after a brief waking interval. In this way a voyage of virtually infinite length can be managed by the same crew.”