“Poor man.” Chi-Yuen looked closely at Reymont. “Lindgren is his surrogate for those?”

He nodded. “I’m the traditional top sergeant. Hard, harsh, demanding, overbearing, inconsiderate, brutal. Not so bad as to start a petition for my removal. But enough to irritate, to be disliked, although respected. That’s good for the troops. It’s healthier to be mad at me than to dwell on personal woes… as you, my love, have been doing.

“Lindgren smooths things out. As first officer, she sustains my power. But she overrules me from time to time. She exercises her rank to bend regulations in favor of mercy. Therefore she adds benignity to the attributes of Ultimate Authority.”

Reymont frowned. “The system’s carried us this far,” he finished. “It’s beginning to fail. We’ll have to add a new factor.”

Chi-Yuen went on gazing at him until he shifted uncomfortably on the mattress. At last she asked, “Did you plan this with Ingrid?”

“Eh? Oh no. Her role demands she not be a Machiavelli type who’d play a part deliberately.”

“You understand her so well… from past acquaintance?”

“Yes.” He reddened. “What of it? These days we keep it purely formal. For obvious reasons.”

“I think you find ways to continue rebuffing her, Charles.”

“M-m-m… blast it, leave me alone. What I’m trying to do is help you get back some real wish to live.”

“So that I, in turn, can help you keep going?”

“Well, uh, yes. I’m no superman. It’s been too long since anybody lent me a shoulder to cry on.”

“Are you saying that because you mean it, or because it serves your purpose?” Chi-Yuen tossed back her locks. “Never mind. Don’t answer. We will do what we can for each other. Afterward, if we survive— We will settle that when we have survived.”

His dark, scarred features softened. “You are for a fact regaining your balance,” he said. “Excellent.”

She laughed. Her arms went about his neck. “Come here, you.”

CHAPTER 13

The speed of light can be approached, but no body possessing rest mass can quite attain it. Smaller and smaller grew the increments of velocity by which Leonora Christine neared that impossible ultimate. Thus it might have seemed that the universe which her crew observed could not be distorted further. Aberration could, at most, displace a star 45°; Doppler effect might infinitely redden the photons from astern but only double the frequencies from ahead.

However, there was no limit on inverse tau, and that was the measure of changes in perceived space and experienced time. Accordingly, there was no limit to optical changes either; and the cosmos fore and aft could shrink toward a zero thickness wherein all the galaxies were crowded.

Thus, as she made her great swing half around the Milky Way and turned for a plunge through its heart, the ship’s periscope revealed a weird demesne. The nearer stars streamed past ever faster, until at last the eye saw them marching across the field of view: because by that time, years went by outside while minutes ticked away within. The sky was no longer black; it was a shimmering purple, which deepened and brightened as interior months went by: because the interaction of force fields and interstellar medium— eventually, interstellar magnetism— was releasing quanta. The farther stars were coalescing into two globes, fiery blue ahead, deep crimson aft. But gradually those globes contracted toward points and dimmed: because well-nigh the whole of their radiation had been shifted out of the visible spectrum, toward gamma rays and radio waves.