“I never thought of myself as a religious man,” Williams said. It was odd and disturbing to see him humbled. “But this is too much. We’re— well, what are we? Animals. My God— very literally, my God— we can’t go on… having regular bowel movements… while creation happens!”

Beside him, Emma Glassgold looked startled, then determined. Her hand shot aloft. Reymont recognized her.

“Speaking as a believer myself,” she announced, “I must say that that is sheer nonsense. I’m sorry, Norbert, dear, but it is. God made us the way He wanted us to be. There’s nothing shameful about any part of His handiwork. I would like to watch Him fashion new stars, and praise Him, as long as He sees fit that I should.”

“Good for you!” Ingrid Lindgren called.

* * *

“I might add,” Reymont said, “I being a man with no poetry in his soul, and I suspect no soul to keep the poetry in… I might suggest you people look into yourselves and ask what psychological twists make you unwilling to live through the moment when time begins over. Isn’t there, down inside, some identification with— your parents, maybe? You shouldn’t see your parents in bed, therefore you shouldn’t see a new cosmos begotten. Now that doesn’t make sense.” He drew breath. “We can’t deny what’s about to happen is awesome. But so is everything else. Always. I never thought stars were more mysterious, or had more magic, than flowers.”

Others wanted to talk. Eventually everyone did. Their sentences threshed wearily around and around the point. It was not to no purpose. They had to unburden themselves. But by the time they could finally adjourn the meeting, after a unanimous vote to proceed, Reymont and Lindgren were near a collapse of their own.

They did seize a moment’s low-speaking privacy, as the people broke into groups and the ship roared with the hollow noise of her passage. She took both his hands and said: “How I want to be your woman again.”

He stammered in gladness, “Tomorrow? We, we’d have to move personal gear… and explain to our partners… Tomorrow, my Ingrid?”

“No,” she answered. “You didn’t let me finish. All of me wants to, but I can’t.”

Stricken, he asked, “Why?”

“We mustn’t risk it. The emotional balance is too fragile. Anything might let hell loose in any one of us. Elof and Ai-Ling would take it hard that we left— when death is this near.”

“She and he could—” Reymont chopped off in mid-word. “No. He could. She would. But no.”

“You wouldn’t be the man I lie awake nights wishing for, if you could ask that of her. She never let you talk about those hours she gave us, did she?”

“No. How did you guess?”

“I didn’t guess. I know her. And I won’t have her do it again for us, Carl. Once was right. It won us back what we’d built together. Oftener, by stealth, is not any way to treat that thing.” Lindgren’s speech stiffened into practicalities. “Besides, Elof. He needs me. He blames himself, his advice, for letting us run the ship too long— as if any mortal man could have known! If he should learn that I— The desperation, maybe the suicide of a single individual could bring the whole crew down in hysteria.”