Lindgren closed her hands on emptiness. “What can we do for him?”

“Give him back a part of his strength. You can.” Chi-Yuen raised her eyes. “You see, he loves you.”

Lindgren got up, paced the narrow stretch behind her desk, struck fist into palm. “I’ve assumed obligations,” she said. The words wrenched her gullet.

“I know—”

“Not to smash a man, especially one we need. And not to… be promiscuous again. I have to be an officer, in everything I do. So does Cari.” Raw-voiced: “He’d refuse!”

Chi-Yuen rose likewise. “Can you spare this night?” she asked.

“What? What? No. Impossible, I tell you. Oh, I’ve the time, but impossible all the same. You’d better go.”

“Come with me.” Chi-Yuen took Lindgren by the hand. “What scandal can there be if you visit the two of us in our cabin?”

The big woman stumbled after her. They went up the thrumming stairs to crew level. Chi-Yuen opened her door, led Lindgren through, closed it again. They stood alone amidst the ornaments and souvenirs of a country that died gigayears before, and regarded each other. Lindgren breathed in deep, quick draughts. Red pursued white across her face, down throat and bosom.

“He should be back soon,” Chi-Yuen said. “He doesn’t know. It is my gift to him. One night, at least: to tell him and show him how you never stopped feeling.”

She had separated the beds. Now she lowered the dividing partition. She did not quite forestall her tears.

Lindgren held her close for a moment, kissed her, and finished sealing her off. Then Lindgren waited.

CHAPTER 19

“Please,” Jane Sadler had implored. “Come help him.”

“You can’t?” Reymont asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve tried. And I think I make matters worse. In his present condition. I being a woman.” She flushed. “You savvy?”

“Well, I’m no psychologist,” Reymont said. “However, I’ll see what I can do.”

He left the bower where she had caught him at rest. The dwarfed trees, tumbling vines, moss and blossoms made it a place of healing for him. But he noticed that comparatively few others went into these rooms any longer. Did such things remind them of too much?

Certainly no plans were being made for celebration of the autumnal equinox which impended on the ship’s calendar— or any other holidays, for that matter. The Midsummer festival had been dishearteningly hushed.

In the gymnasium, a zero-gee handball game bounced from corner to corner. They were spacemen who played, though, and doggedly rather than gleefully. Most of the passengers came here for little except their compulsory exercises. They weren’t showing great interest in meals, either: not that Carducci was doing an inspired job nowadays. One or two passersby gave Reymont a listless hail.

Farther down the corridor, a door stood open on a hobby shop. A lathe hummed, a cutting torch glowed blue, in the hands of Kato M’Botu and Yeshu ben-Zvi. Apparently they were making something for the recently resumed Fedoroff-Pereira ecological project, and had been crowded out of the regular facilities on the lower decks.