Marius Viejo pointed out that this failure didn’t actually “doom” them. The power for life support, also derived from antimatter, consumed not even one tenth of one percent of what the drive used. Thus, they could drift through space for more than 25,000 years, barring a new catastrophe or population increase. They were currently traveling at 3,670 kilometers per second, so ’Home would be in the vicinity of Epsilon in less than 900 years, though of course they’d miss by a good fraction of a light-year, and flash by at that same 3,670 kilometers per second, unless they fixed the drive in the interim. But they had forty-some generations to worry about it.

NEW BEGINNINGS

31 January 2099 [9 Edison 293]—It worked! On the seventh try, we torched. Outward bound, as they say, at the dizzying pace of one fifth of a meter per second squared.

The problem was safety. There’s so much potential for disaster built into this powerful a propulsion system that there are automatic-shutdown safeguards built into it at several levels. It took them longer to figure out the safeguards than it had taken to figure out the drive.

One fifth of a meter is about the width of the swelling that’s begun in my abdomen. Nice to have some evidence that this is happening other than the lack of menses and all the fun morning sickness. That seems to be gone now, but who knows. The last time was about a week ago, in zero gee—a little surprise attack, after a week of keeping breakfast down—and the mess wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered from fifteen years ago, on the slowboat to low Earth orbit. There were nine or ten of us puking for a living then, though, and only two toilets.

I did manage to miss Daniel, which is what I was doing in zero gee. But it’s not exactly an aphrodisiac.

The doctor scoped me yesterday and said I should be feeling the baby move in a week or so. I guess I’m looking forward to that. Start charging rent.

So there’s going to be an “impromptu” Torch party tonight. I used to like parties. That was before it meant throwing together food and drink for about eight thousand of my dearest friends.

So there’s more to write, but I better get down to business.

UNTIMELY PLUCKED

2 February 2099 [11 Edison 293]—Halfway through the party I started to have pains, just like mild menstrual cramps at first. Evy and Galina went with me to the Emergency Room, which was a good thing. In the lift the pain got suddenly worse. I started bleeding all over the floor, blood horribly threading through amniotic fluid, and collapsed.

I knew I’d lost the baby, though learned later that under certain conditions they could have transferred it to an ex utero environment. In my case, it had been dead for some hours.

In our case, he had been dead for some hours.