Other than the noisy life-support system, the ship seems shipshape. In December I spent a couple of weeks in advanced menu planning—we’ve been too conservative in using the luxury stores. We could use more than half of them on the way to Wolf. If we do survive the encounter with the Others, we’ll probably be content with anything on the way back. Morale’s only a problem on the way there.

I talked with Paul about this, but not with the others. The last thing I need in the kitchen is a democracy.

I’m continuing my study of first-contact narratives in human history. Usually less destructive than the Others’ contact with us, though the ultimate result is often extinction, anyhow.

There aren’t really close analogies. Aboriginal societies didn’t send off diplomats to plead peace with their high-tech conquerors. What would have happened if the Maori, on learning where their invaders came from, had taken a war canoe and paddled around the Cape and up the Atlantic and the Thames to parley with Queen Victoria? She’s atypical, actually. Reports of Maori military performance led her to offer them at least symbolic equality in the governance of New Zealand. The Others would probably just have nuked them all. With the wave of a hand.

Of course, we don’t really know anything about their psychology or philosophy, other than the fact that they observed us, judged us, and tried to execute us all, with no discussion. When I was a boy, I watched my father spray a nest of wasps that had grown on the side of our house. You could see in their frantic paroxysms how painful an end that was, and my father laughed at me for crying. Maybe some few of the Others will mourn our necessary extinction.

In a way that I would hesitate to call mystical, life becomes more and more precious as we ply our way toward whatever awaits—and I mean that in the most prosaic sense; I wake up every morning eager for the day, even though I do little other than cook and read and talk. A little music, too little.

I swim almost every day, trying to reserve the pool for the half hour after Carmen swims. I can legitimately show up a few minutes early and look at her.

How do I really feel toward her? We talk about everything but that. If I were closer to her age, I might move toward romance, or at least sex, but I’m almost as old as her father. She brought that up early on, and I have no desire to appear foolish. Besides, I’m married to the only certified nymphomaniac within light-years. Another woman might be too much of a good thing.