Emil shook his head. “The beings who met us at Urstar said not. You yourself just quoted what they did say: Time consumes flesh.”

“True. But I’ll also quote something else they said: they don’t know everything, and the universe contains many unsolved mysteries. The aliens at Urstar know more than humans — at least, they know more than humans did at the time we left Gulf City. Suppose there are other states, and other forms of life extension, possible for our species but not for theirs? Also, exploration of human physical potentials is just one form of research. Some of the free-space colonies may be devoted to social experiments, or pure physics research, or fields of science totally new to us.”

Charlene had never seen Sy so talkative. She asked, “So some humans have returned to the planets, and are living in normal space. And others have established free-space colonies, to explore we don’t know what. Where does that leave us? We travelled all the way to Urstar and all the way back — but there’s no one here to know or care what we found out.”

“We’ll send messages to all the colonies, free-space or planetary, telling what we’ve learned. Whether they care or not — well, that’s another matter.” Sy looked all around the chamber. “I want to make one point clear to everyone. We went to Urstar as a united group, with one main purpose, and Judith Niles was our undisputed leader. When she left us, we had no leader. Many of you cast me in that role, and maybe for a while I served in it. But it’s not something I like doing, and it’s not something I’m well-suited to carry out. So far as I am concerned, we are thirty-seven individuals, each of us free to pursue his or her own goals. I’m not going to set anyone else’s agenda. At the moment I’m not even sure of my own. What I am sure is that I need some time to myself, to consider my options. I recommend that each of you do the same. I’ll be here at the same time tomorrow. If anyone is interested, I’ll tell you my intentions and listen to yours.”

A couple of people started to speak, either to make comments or to ask questions. Sy waved them away and hurried out of the chamber. Behind him he left a stunned and troubled group.

Or not a group at all. Charlene, gazing around her, saw confusion on every face. The voyage to Urstar had become history. The great expedition, designed by Judith Niles to include matched and complementary skills, was no more. All that was left was a motley assortment of individuals.

What would happen to them now — to her now? That, to Charlene, remained the unanswerable question.

Twenty-four hours did nothing to lessen Charlene’s misgivings. Unable to sleep or relax, she roamed the deserted corridors. Gulf City had become Ghost City, populated only by the arrays of silent and motionless robots, awaiting commands that never came. The space docks were the same, filled with ships ready and waiting to take nonexistent passengers and crews to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

Charlene saw devices, familiar and unfamiliar, in a thousand deserted chambers. None of them interested her. She realized that her pleasures — all her pleasures — came from living things, people and animals. She had joined the Institute not because she cared about sleep research, but because it had offered her a chance to work with the nervous marmots and the great, gentle Kodiak bears.

It was a mixed blessing when the time came to return to the central chamber and meet with the others. She knew she had little to say to them, but she craved human company.

They drifted in, in ones and twos. Emil came in with Eva Packland, but he moved at once to sit next to Charlene.

“Where have you been? I looked everywhere — even back on board the Argo.” “Wandering about. Thinking.” If you could call it that.

But Sy’s arrival cut off further conversation. He looked as tired as Charlene felt, and he at once slumped down in a chair at the side of the room. Even if he didn’t want to be a leader, many of the others still treated him that way. They all stared at him expectantly. He glared back at them.

“What are you all looking at me for? Don’t any of you have anything better to do?”

“Yes.” It was Dan Korwin, as belligerent as Sy. He was the center of a group of five people, two men and three women. “I knew what I wanted to do ages ago, before we arrived at Gulf City. Hell, I knew it even when we were stuck close to Urstar. We” — his nod took in his companions — “have never been satisfied with the line of talk we were given by the aliens there. We’re going to load one of the research vessels with special equipment, and we’re going back. I want to know how anything could stop a ship that’s going at a fair fraction of light-speed dead in its tracks. What happened to inertia as an invariant property of matter?”

If Korwin was hoping to start an argument with Sy, it didn’t work. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Sy nodded. “I’d be as interested in hearing the answer to that as you are. Good luck. Anyone else?”

“Yes.” Eva Packland spoke diffidently. “One of the free-space colonies is building special instruments to observe the universe at the greatest distances and earliest times. There’s a message in the files, posted recently, saying they could use a few well-qualified researchers. Libby and Gretchen and I already sent a message back to them, saying we’ll soon be on our way. They need to know what we were told about the logic the beings we encountered presented in favor of stellarforming. The colony we’re going to is five hundred and sixty light-years from here, but they’re doing all their work in S-space. In terms of S-time we’ll be with them pretty quickly, so they’ll still be able to use our help when we get there.”

There was a silence, then Gus Eldridge said, “Well, that makes me feel a good deal better. I thought we were going a long way, Chang and Rolf and me, but you make us look like stay-at-homes. We plan to head for Tellus Prime, where the focus is on the Pipistrelles and the Gossameres. We figure that the records the Argo made when we were marooned near Urstar might come in useful. We don’t understand what we saw, but maybe the people on Tellus will have ideas.” He glanced across at Eva. “Tellus is only ninety-seven light-years, hardly like travelling at all after what we’ve been through getting to Urstar and back.” A feeling was growing around the chamber, not exactly of excitement but of resolve to seek new challenges. People piped up, in twos and threes, choosing from a growing number of projects all around the spiral arm. Some were intrigued by the information offered by the Judith Niles’ embodiment, that no world where intelligence might develop would see its primary star changed. Checking such a statement would be a long and difficult job, calling for a cooperative effort among hundreds of groups in widely scattered locations. The biologists in the party wanted to see what life forms might thrive on planets circling red dwarf stars. If that was the future of the galaxy, better know what it looked like. Others wanted to be near a star when the change to a red dwarf first began. Techniques to predict when and where that would happen needed to be developed. Finally, almost everyone had spoken. Gretchen Waltz, standing close to Charlene, turned to her smiling and said, “What about you, Charlene? You haven’t said a word.”

“I know.” Charlene felt her face turning red. “This probably sounds stupid, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Well, no hurry.” Gretchen switched to Emil. “How about you?”

He shrugged his great shoulders and shook his head, with its bald and cratered dome. “I’m the same as Charlene. Give me a few more days, and I’ll know where I want to go and what I want to do.”

Charlene felt a surge of gratitude. He did know his own plans, she felt sure he did — but he was saying he didn’t, so she wouldn’t feel like the odd exception. Emil went farther, turning deliberately away from Gretchen toward Sy and saying, “You’ve asked everybody else, but you’ve been very coy about your own intentions. What will you be doing?”