The World At The End Of Time Part 2

"Doesn't he like you?" one of her sons asked.

"Captain Fu Manchu doesn't let himself like grown-ups. He puts up with a lot from you two, though," Marie-Claude told her sons, and then had to explain who Fu Manchu was.

"He was showing us where all the stars and ships and things were," Freddy volunteered. "Viktor said he was going to tell us why messages take so long, but he didn't."

"Oh," Marie-Claude said, "that's easy enough. See, the star flared about five years ago, and the light reached the ship just a week or so ago, that's when they started reviving us. And then-"

"Excuse me," Viktor interrupted. "I have to go home now."

Of course, he didn't, really. His reasons were quite different. He just didn't want Marie-Claude explaining things to him as though he were a child. child.

Not even the hope of an ultimate fleshly reward-well, another kiss, anyway-could make Viktor Sorricaine tend to the Stockbridge boys in all of his free time. True, his main hope was so faint and improbable that he hardly dared admit even to himself, but that wasn't what made him hide from them. The boys caused that all by themselves. They were simply unbearable. Viktor was amazed at the troubles they could get into, and even more amazed at the energy stored up in those small bodies to do it with. No twelve-year-old has ever remembered what he himself was like at five.

So, with the boys at least temporarily in the custody of their mother, Viktor arranged to keep it that way by getting out of sight. After a little thought he headed for the most remote habitable part of the ship, the freezatorium.

"Habitable" was almost too strong a word. The narrow aisles between the frost-clouded crystal coffins were freezing cold. The crystal was a good thermal insulator, but the liquid-gas cold inside each casket had had a hundred years to chill through it. Each casket was rimed with h.o.a.rfrost. The air was deliberately kept dryer than comfort would suggest in that section of the ship-Viktor could feel his throat getting raw as he breathed it-but even those faint residual traces of water vapor had condensed out on the crystal.

Although Viktor had had the forethought to borrow a long-sleeved sweater of his mother's, it wasn't enough. He had no clothes warm enough for that place. As he tiptoed along the corridors he was shivering violently.

He rubbed some of the frost off one of the caskets with the sleeve of the sweater. Inside was a woman alone, dark-skinned, her eyes closed but her mouth open, looking as though she were trying to scream. The card in the holder at the corner of the casket said Accardo, Elisavetta (Agronomist-plant breeder), Accardo, Elisavetta (Agronomist-plant breeder), but Viktor had never seen that woman before, or heard that name. Likely enough she was one of the ones already in the freezer by the time his parents joined the ship. but Viktor had never seen that woman before, or heard that name. Likely enough she was one of the ones already in the freezer by the time his parents joined the ship.

And he wasn't much interested in thinking about her, either. The cold was getting serious. serious. It would be better even to face the Stockbridge boys again than to stay here, he thought. It would be better even to face the Stockbridge boys again than to stay here, he thought.

As he turned to hurry back through the double thermal doors, he heard his name called. "Viktor! What are you doing here, dressed like that? Are you crazy?"

It was Wanda Mei, furred and gauntleted, her old eyes peering out at him over a thick scarf that wound over her head and across the lower part of her face. Viktor greeted her uneasily. He didn't particularly want to see Wanda Mei; he had been making a point of avoiding her, because it gave him an uneasy feeling in his stomach to know that this decrepit human wreck had once been his bouncy playmate. "Well," she said, "as long as you're here you can give me a hand. We'll have to put some more clothes on you, though." And she tugged him down to a bend in the corridor where it widened out to a little workshop. From a locker she pulled out a furred jacket like her own and furred overshoes and a soft, warmly lined helmet that came down over his ears, and then she set him to work.

Her job had been tugging some of the huge crystal caskets out of their wall racks, setting them in place at the workshop. Empty, they weren't heavy, but Viktor's help was welcome. "Why are we doing this?" he asked.

"For the people that are going into the freezer again, of course," she said crossly. "What, are you too weak to help me? I was doing it myself until you came along, an old woman like me." And indeed the work was mostly just awkward. "That one," she said, pointing to one already stacked, "that one was yours, Viktor. For you and your family. How did you like it, all those years you slept there?"

He swallowed, looking at it without joy. "Are we going to be frozen again?"

"Not right away, no, not you; that's why yours is on the bottom. But before long, I think. This one here, this is for the Stockbridges; they go back in about three days, I think."

"In three days?" days?"

She sighed. "It is my hearing that should be weakening, not yours. Can't you understand me? The emergency is over, they say, so the extra people can be corpsicles again." She looked at him, then softened. "Ah, are you worrying?"

"You told me to worry!"

She smiled, then apologized. "If I am frightened, that is my business. I didn't mean to scare you. You've already been frozen once, and survived. Was it so bad?"

"I don't remember," Viktor said truthfully. All he remembered was being given a tiny shot that caused him to fall asleep, with the freezer technicians hovering rea.s.suringly around him; and then waking up again. Whatever had happened in between had happened without his consciousness present to observe.

He worked silently with ancient Wanda Mei for a while, doing as he was told but thinking about Marie-Claude going back into the freezer. A thought had occurred to him. He would, he calculated, be sure to gain at least a few days on her by staying unfrozen longer than she. If only there were some way of prolonging that time- If he could stay thawed and living on the ship until it landed- Why, then he would be almost her own age, even old enough to be taken seriously by her!

That thought, however, still left the problem of her husband unsolved. "h.e.l.l," he said, softly but aloud, and Wanda looked at him.

"You're tired," she said, which wasn't true, "and you're cold-" which certainly was. "Well, we've done enough; thank you for your help, Viktor." And then, back in the warm part of the ship, she thought for a moment and then said: "Do you like books, Viktor? I have some in my room."

"There are plenty of books in the library," he pointed out.

"These are my my books. Kid's books," she amplified. "From when I was your age. I've just kept them. You can borrow them if you want." books. Kid's books," she amplified. "From when I was your age. I've just kept them. You can borrow them if you want."

"Maybe some time," Viktor said vaguely.

She looked cross. "Why not this time? Come on, you haven't seen my room."

Indeed he hadn't. Actually, he didn't much want to now. There wasn't any real reason for that, only the kind of queasy, uneasy feeling that Wanda gave him. It wasn't just that she was old. He'd seen plenty of old people-well, not usually as old as Wanda, of course; but for a twelve-year-old anyone past thirty is pretty much in the same general age cohort anyway. Wanda was different. She was both old and his own age, and seeing her reminded Viktor, in terms he could not ignore, that one day he, too, would have wrinkles and age spots on the backs of his hands and graying hair. She was his future displayed for him, and unwelcome. It shattered his child's confidence that he would remain a child.

He entered Wanda's room diffidently. It smelled terrible. He saw that it wasn't in any way like the one Viktor shared with his parents. It had started out identical, of course-every room on the ship was basically the same standard cubicle, since each one would become a separate landing pod when the colonists arrived at their destination-but over a hundred years she had decorated it and painted it and added bits of furnishings and knickknacks that were her own . . . and it had one bit of furnishing that Viktor had not at all expected and saw with astonished delight.

Wanda Mei had a cat!

The cat's name was Robert, a whole tom who was, Wanda said, nearly twenty years old. "He won't last any longer than I will," she said, sighing as she sat down. The cat stalked toward her, then soared into her lap, but she gave him a quick stroke and handed him generously to Viktor. "You hold him while I find the books," she ordered. Viktor was glad to oblige. The old cat turned around twice in his lap and then allowed his back to be stroked, nuzzling his whiskery cheek contentedly into Viktor's belly.

Viktor was almost sorry when Wanda produced the books. But they were grand. She had Tom Sawyer Tom Sawyer and and Two Little Savages Two Little Savages and and Mistress Masham's Repose Mistress Masham's Repose and a dozen others-worn, dog-eared, the bindings sometimes cracked, but still entirely readable. and a dozen others-worn, dog-eared, the bindings sometimes cracked, but still entirely readable.

Only the catbox smell of the room began to get to him. He stood.

"I have to go now," he announced. She looked surprised but didn't object. "Thank you for the books," he remembered to say, politely. She nodded.

And then, as he reached the door, he asked the question that had been on his mind all along. "Wanda? Why did you do it?"

"Why did I do what?" she demanded crossly.

"Why did you let yourself get old?"

She glared at him. "What impudence, Viktor! And what a question! Everyone gets old, that is what human beings do. You will get old, too!"

"But I'm not old now," he pointed out reasonably.

"You are not even grown-up enough to be courteous!" Then she said, softening, "Well, I told you. I was afraid. I didn't want to die . . . only," she sighed, "it appears that I am going to die before very long anyway. I did want to see the new planet, Viktor. All the planets. Nebo and the one we're going to live on, Enki. What they call Newmanhome. And Ishtar and Nergal-"

"And Marduk and Ninih," he finished for her. Everyone knew the names of the planets in the system they would live in. "Yes. But why don't you-"

"Why don't I get frozen now, after all?" she demanded bitterly. "Because now it's too late, Viktor. What would they do with an old useless woman when we land? What would my husband do?"

Viktor stared at her. He hadn't known she had ever had a husband.

"Oh," she said, nodding. "Yes, I was married once. For seven years, while Thurhan was thawed out for his turn at engineering duty. Why do you think my name is Mei now? But we didn't have any children, and he went back into the freezer, when his tour was over, and when he wakes up again what would he want with a wife older than his grandmother? And besides-"

She hesitated, looking at him sadly. "And besides," she finished, "I'm still afraid."

He spent the rest of the day alone, reading. When he got to the refectory for the evening meal almost everyone was there, looking excited. The rumor was now fact. The emergency crews weren't needed anymore, and they were being sent back to cryonic storage.

Most people looked pleased at the word that the emergency was over, but Viktor's mother wasn't looking pleased, and his father looked abashed. All the feelings of the last days came back to Viktor. Something had been kept from him. "What's the matter?" he demanded, alarmed.

"I had to make a decision," Pal Sorricaine said reluctantly. "See, I'm going to stay awake for a while, Viktor. Not long-well, maybe not long; it's too soon to tell. But they need an astronomer-navigator to keep an eye on the flare star, and I guess I'm it."

Viktor pondered, blinking. "You mean my mother and I are going to be frozen, but you're not?"

"It'll be all right, Vik," his mother put in. "For us, anyway. For your father, well-well, perhaps it will only be for a few months. Or a couple of years at the outside-don't you think, Pal?" she appealed, turning to his father.

"I'll do it as soon as I can," he promised. "After all, the flight's got sixteen years to go-I don't want to wind up that much older than you!"

Across the room, Werner Stockbridge was whispering in his wife's ear when he caught sight of Viktor. He detached himself and burrowed through the crowded hall, aiming a friendly slap, or pat, at his son, Billy, on the way. He lowered his head to Viktor's level and said confidentially, "You're just the man I'm looking for, Viktor. Do me a favor?"

"Sure, Mr. Stockbridge," Viktor said at once, though his tone was doubtful.

"Take the kids off our hands for a while, will you? I mean, we're going back in the deep freeze in a little while and-and Marie-Claude and I need a little private time first, if you know what I mean."

Viktor flushed and looked away, because he did know. "Okay, Vik?" Stockbridge persisted. Viktor nodded without looking up. "Give us an hour then, all right? Two would be better-say, two hours, and I'll owe you a favor."

Viktor checked ship's time on the wall clock: 1926 hours. Without very good feelings about it, partly because of the thought of two hours with the Stockbridge kids, mostly because of the thought of what the elder Stockbridges would be doing with those two hours, he led the boys to his own family's room and turned on the teaching machine. "I'm going to show you where we're going," he promised.

Freddy looked startled. "Heaven? You mean because we're going to die? Mrs. Mei said-"

"You're not going to die, die, and it doesn't matter what Mrs. Mei said," Viktor told them sourly. "I mean I'm going to show you the planets. Look," he said as the blue-white one flashed on the screen. "That's where we're going to live." and it doesn't matter what Mrs. Mei said," Viktor told them sourly. "I mean I'm going to show you the planets. Look," he said as the blue-white one flashed on the screen. "That's where we're going to live."

"I know," Billy said, bored. "It's called Newmanhome, but its real name is Enki. It's just like the Earth."

"It isn't just just like the Earth. The days are a little bit shorter, and the year is a like the Earth. The days are a little bit shorter, and the year is a lot lot shorter." shorter."

"Dummy," Billy said scornfully. "How can a year be shorter than a year?"

"It is, though. There are twice as many years there." He tried to explain, and when he had, more or less, succeeded, they were first appalled, then delighted.

"Twice as many birthdays!" Billy caroled.

"Twice as many Christmases!" Christmases!" his brother shouted. "Show us some more planets!" his brother shouted. "Show us some more planets!"

But really they weren't much interested in baked little Nebo, so close to its sun, or the far-out Marduk and Ninih. And when Viktor showed them the glowing coal of Nergal, squat and cherry red, and told them it was a brown dwarf, they rebelled. "It isn't brown," Billy pointed out. "It's red."

"It's called called a brown dwarf. That's its a brown dwarf. That's its name, name, because it's almost a star, but not quite. You see," he lectured, having listened to his father's explanations a few nights earlier, "a because it's almost a star, but not quite. You see," he lectured, having listened to his father's explanations a few nights earlier, "a star star has nuclear energy, like a bomb." has nuclear energy, like a bomb."

"What's a bomb?" Billy asked.

"Like our ship's drive, I mean. A planet planet is just like rock and things. But in between a star and a planet there are these other things. They don't have nuclear energy. They're only hot because they're so big that they're all squeezed together." is just like rock and things. But in between a star and a planet there are these other things. They don't have nuclear energy. They're only hot because they're so big that they're all squeezed together."

"It's dumb to call them brown when they're red," Freddy said, siding with his brother. "Viktor, have you got a crush on our mother?"

Viktor stopped short, suddenly flushed and angry. "Have I what?" what?" he demanded. he demanded.

"Have you got a crush on her?" Freddy insisted. "Mrs. Mei says boys get crushes on older women and you follow Mom around all the time."

"Now you're being really stupid, if you want to know what's stupid," stupid," Viktor said furiously, gritting his teeth. "Don't ever say anything like that again." Viktor said furiously, gritting his teeth. "Don't ever say anything like that again."

"We won't if you'll play treadmill tag with us," Billy promised, grinning in triumph. "And you have to be It!"

Dinner the next night was a sort of ceremonial affair, a goodbye party for the ones who were going back into the deep freeze. Captain Bu gave a short speech and the chef, Sam Broad-he was really a food chemist, but he was the best cook on the ship, too-had made four big cakes with icing that said Till We Meet Again. Till We Meet Again. Pal Sorricaine was especially attentive to his wife and son that night. He kept one hand in hers all through the meal, so that they both had to eat one-handed, and he told Viktor all sorts of stories about astrophysics. When he got to the point of how the Big Bang had created only hydrogen and helium, so that all the rest of the elements had to be cooked in the cores of stars that then exploded and scattered them around to form new stars and planets the Stockbridge boys crept near to listen. And when he pointed out the logical deduction from that-"So you see, most of your body-all the oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and calcium and everything-all of it was once inside a star"-they said respectively, "Oh, wow!" and "Yuk! But that isn't in the Bible, is it?" Pal Sorricaine was especially attentive to his wife and son that night. He kept one hand in hers all through the meal, so that they both had to eat one-handed, and he told Viktor all sorts of stories about astrophysics. When he got to the point of how the Big Bang had created only hydrogen and helium, so that all the rest of the elements had to be cooked in the cores of stars that then exploded and scattered them around to form new stars and planets the Stockbridge boys crept near to listen. And when he pointed out the logical deduction from that-"So you see, most of your body-all the oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and calcium and everything-all of it was once inside a star"-they said respectively, "Oh, wow!" and "Yuk! But that isn't in the Bible, is it?"

Pal Sorricaine grinned at them. "The Bible's one thing," he told them, in full lecturing swing. "Science is another. Even scientists think about Heaven and h.e.l.l, though. Did you ever hear of a man named Arthur Eddington? Well, he was the first one to figure out what the temperature inside the core of a star had to be in order to cook all those heavier elements out of hydrogen. Only when he published his figures some other scientists told him he was wrong, because it wasn't hot enough to do the job. So Eddington told them to go look for a hotter place."

He looked at the uncomprehending faces expectantly. "It was a kind of way of telling them to go to h.e.l.l," he explained.

"Oh," Billy said, deciding to laugh.

"Dr. Sorricaine?" Freddy said. "h.e.l.l's hot like Wanda says, isn't it? So if we get frozen that can't be h.e.l.l, can it?"

By the time Pal Sorricaine, startled, had rea.s.sured the boy, their parents came to take them away, and Viktor and his parents went to their own cabin. As his father tucked him in Viktor asked. "Dad? Are you really going to do it?"

His father nodded.

"For just a little while?" Viktor persisted.

His father paused before answering. "I can't say that for sure," he said at last, reluctantly. "It depends. Viktor, this is kind of important to me. Any scientist wants to be the one that makes a big contribution. This is my chance. That flare star-well, there's nothing like it in the literature. Oh, they'll see it on Earth-but from long, long away, and we're right here. I want to be the one-well, one of the ones; f.a.n.n.y Mtiga's involved, too-that they name it after. The 'Sorricaine-Mtiga objects.' How does that sound?"

"It sounds okay," Viktor told him. He wasn't content or happy about it, but he heard the tone in his father's voice. "Are you going to tell me a story tonight?"

"Sure am. I know," his father said. "Do you want me to tell you about some of the famous people before me? What they did? What they're remembered for?"

And when Viktor nodded, Pal Sorricaine began to talk about the men and women whose shoulders everyone stood on. About Henrietta Leavitt, the nineteenth-century Boston spinster who spent seventeen years studying Cepheid variables and found the first good way of measuring the size of the universe; of Harlow Shapley, who used her work to make the first nearly recognizable model of our own Galaxy; of Edwin Hubble, champion prizefighter turned astronomer, who found a way to employ supergiant stars in the way that Henrietta Leavitt had used Cepheids, thus extending the scale; of Vesto Slipher, who first linked red shifts with velocity and then with distance; of a dozen other forgotten names.

Then his father got to names Viktor had heard of. Albert Einstein? Oh, of course! Everybody knew about Albert Einstein. He was the-wait a minute-wasn't it relativity he discovered? And something about e e equals equals m c m c squared? Right, Pal Sorricaine told him, hiding a smile, and that was the key to understanding why stars are hot-and to making atomic bombs and power plants, yes, and ultimately to designing the kind of matter-antimatter drive that was shoving squared? Right, Pal Sorricaine told him, hiding a smile, and that was the key to understanding why stars are hot-and to making atomic bombs and power plants, yes, and ultimately to designing the kind of matter-antimatter drive that was shoving New Mayflower New Mayflower on its way. And why the speed of light is always thirty million centimeters a second, no matter how fast the star-or s.p.a.ceship-that emitted the light was going. on its way. And why the speed of light is always thirty million centimeters a second, no matter how fast the star-or s.p.a.ceship-that emitted the light was going. New Mayflower New Mayflower might have been going a million centimeters a second, but that didn't mean that the light, or the radio waves, that went ahead of it to carry its picture and messages were traveling at 31 million cps; no, it was always the same. might have been going a million centimeters a second, but that didn't mean that the light, or the radio waves, that went ahead of it to carry its picture and messages were traveling at 31 million cps; no, it was always the same. c c never changed, and there was nothing anyone could do that would ever change that. never changed, and there was nothing anyone could do that would ever change that.

About then Viktor's mother came in with a gla.s.s of milk and a pill. "Why do I have to take a pill?" he asked.

"Just take it," she said quietly, affectionately. It occurred to Viktor that it might have something to do with getting ready to be frozen again, so he did as told and kissed her back when she bent to his face.

Then his father went on to the English Quaker, Arthur Eddington, the man who had figured out the connection between physics-stuff that people studied in laboratories on Earth-and the stars, the things that interested astronomers. You might even say, Pal Sorricaine told his son, that Eddington invented the science of astrophysics. Then there were Ernst Mach and Bishop Berkeley, and the geometers Gauss and Bolyai and Riemann and Lobachevski, and Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian priest; and Baade, Hoyle, Gamow, Bethe, d.i.c.ke, Wilson, Penzias, Hawking . . .

Long before he finished his recital Viktor was asleep.

He slept very soundly. He almost woke, half woke, to find he was being carried somewhere; and almost realized where he was being carried. But the pill had done its work, and he never opened his eyes . . . for sixteen more years.

When Viktor Sorricaine woke up again he was still twelve (or, you might say, very nearly a hundred and fifty), and the first feeling that flooded through him as he gazed up at the face of his father was joy, purest joy, for he had beaten the odds one more time.

The second feeling was not as good. The Pal Sorricaine who beamed down on him was graying and much thinner than the one who had stood by as he went to sleep. "You didn't get frozen at all," Viktor said to his father, accusingly, and his father looked surprised.

"Well, no, Viktor," he said. "I couldn't. We had to watch that star, and-well, anyway, we're all together again, aren't we? And we're there! We're landing! The first parties have already dropped down to the surface, and we'll be going as soon as our chutes are ready!"

"I see," Viktor said, not actually seeing. And then he remembered something. "I have to give Wanda's books back."

His father looked startled, then saddened. Before he even spoke Viktor understood that Wanda wasn't going to want them back, because she wasn't alive anymore. A chill ran through him, but he didn't really have time to think about it. The ship was incredibly noisy now. Not just the chattering of two or three hundred people, the ones already revived, the ones working to revive more, and the ones checking them over and getting them ready for the drop, but loud sounds of crashing and crunching and battering of metal to metal. The interior of the ship was being gutted, as it had been designed to be; the interior cubicles were being wrenched loose from their neighbors, since each one would be a capsule in which eight or ten human beings, or several tons of parts, machines, supplies, or other cargo would drop to the surface of the new planet. Viktor caught a glimpse of a surveillance camera, keeping an eye on crews outside the ship. He could see that the immense stretches of the light sail were deployed in a different way now. It was not one single vast expanse of film anymore, it was a dozen smaller segments, long narrow strips like the sails of a windmill, stiffened by the dynamics of rotation around the main body of the ship. That, he knew, was for greater efficiency in the orbit-insertion maneuver; but that phase was over. Now the sails were being furled and stowed, to shape into the four hundred parachutes that would slow the fall of the paradrop capsules that would carry everything useful on New Mayflower New Mayflower to the ground. to the ground.