Norbert Williams happened to come the other way along the stairs. “Hi,” the chemist greeted.

“You’re looking cheerier than most,” Reymont remarked.

“Yeah, I guess I am. Emma and I, we got talking, and we may have hit on a new gimmick to check at a distance whether a planet has our type of life. A plankton-type population, you see, ought to impart certain thermal radiation characteristics to ocean surfaces; and given Doppler effect, making those frequencies something we can properly analyze—”

“Good. Do work on it. And if you should co-opt others, I’ll be glad.”

“Sure, we thought of that.”

“And would you pass the word that wherever she is, Jane Sadler’s dismissed from work for the day? Her boy friend has something to take up with her.”

Williams’ guffaw followed Reymont through the stairwell.

But the command deck was empty and still; and in the bridge, Lindgren stood watch alone. Her hands strained around the grips at the base of the viewscope. When she turned about at his entry, he saw that her face was quite without color.

He closed the door. “What’s wrong?” he said hushedly.

“You didn’t let on?”

“No, of course not, when the business had to be fierce. What is it?”

She tried to speak and could not.

“Are more people due at this meeting?” Reymont asked.

She shook her head. He went to her, anchored himself with a leg wrapped around a rail and the other foot braced to the deck, and received her in his arms. She held him as tightly as she had done on their single stolen night.

“No,” she said against his breast. “Elof and… Auguste Boudreau… they told me. Otherwise, just Malcolm and Mohandas know. They asked me to tell… the Old Man. They don’t dare. Don’t know how. I don’t either. How to tell anyone.” Her nails bit through his tunic. “Carl, what shall we do?”

He ruffled her hair awhile, staring across her head, feeling her heartbeat quick and irregular. Again the ship boomed and leaped; and soon again. The notes that rang through her were noticeably higher pitched than before. The draft from a ventilator blew cold. The metal around seemed to shrink inward.

“Go on,” he said at last. “Tell me, älskling.”

“The universe— the whole universe— it’s dying.”

He made a noise in his throat. Otherwise he waited.

At length she was able to pull far enough back from him that they could look into each other’s eyes. She related in a slurred, hurried voice:

“We’ve come farther man we knew. In space and time. More than a hundred billion years. The astronomers began suspecting it when— I don’t know. I only know what they’ve told me. Everybody’s heard how the galaxies we see are getting dimmer. Old stars fading, new ones not being born. We didn’t think it would affect us. All we were after was one little sun not too different from Sol. There ought to be many left. The galaxies have long lives. But now—