“Nevertheless—”

She lifted a finger. “I will not be scolded, Elof. You hear? I’ve borne with that o-ver-com-pensated inferiority complex of yours more’n I should’ve. And a lot else. Thinking maybe the rest of you’d grow up to match that IQ of yours. Enough’s enough. Gather ye roses while ye may.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Sort of.” Wistfully: “You should’ve come along.”

“What for? Why not confess how weary I am of the same faces, the same actions, the same inane conversations? I’m far from unique in that.”

Her voice dropped. “Are you tired of me?”

“Why—” Nilsson’s Kewpie-doll form clambered erect. “What’s the matter, my dear?”

“You haven’t exactly bowled me over with attention, these past months.”

“No? No, perhaps not.” He drummed a dresser top. “I’ve been preoccupied.”

She drew a breath. “I’ll say it straight. I was with Johann tonight.”

“Frewald? The machinist?” Nilsson stood speechless for a humming minute. She waited. Soberness had come upon her. He said at length, with difficulty, watching the tattoo of his fingers: “Well, you have the legal and doubtless the moral right. I am no handsome young animal. I am… was… more proud and happy than I knew how to express when you agreed to be my partner. I let you teach me a number of things I did not understand before. Probably I was not the most adept pupil anyone ever had.”

“Oh, Elof!”

“You are leaving me, aren’t you?”

“We’re in love, he and I.” Her vision blurred. “I thought it’d be easier than this to tell you. I didn’t figure you cared a lot.”

“You wouldn’t consider a discreet— No, discretion isn’t feasible. Besides, you couldn’t bring yourself to it. And I have my own pride.” Nilsson sat down again and reached for his snuffbox. “You had better go. You can remove your things later.”

“That quick?”

“Get out!” he shrieked.

She fled, weeping but on eager feet.

Leonora Christine re-entered populated country. Passing within fifty light-years of a giant new-born sun, she transited the gas envelope that surrounded it. Being ionized, the atoms were seizable with maximum efficiency. Her tau plummeted close to asymptotic zero: and with it, her time rate.

CHAPTER 12

Reymont paused at the entrance to commons. The deck lay empty and quiet. After an initial surge of interest, athletics and other hobbies had become increasingly less popular. Aside from meals, the tendency was for scientists and crew-folk to form minute cliques or retreat altogether into reading, watching taped shows, sleeping as much as possible. He could force them to get a prescribed amount of exercise. But he had not found a way to restore what the months were grinding out of the spirit. He was the more helpless in that respect because his inflexible enforcement of basic rules had made him enemies.

A propos rules— He strode down the corridor to the dream room and opened its door. A light above each of the three boxes within said it was occupied. He fished a master key from his pocket and unlocked the lids, which passed air but not light, one by one. Two he closed again. At the third, he swore. The stretched-out body, the face under the somnohelmet, belonged to Emma Glassgold.