“I wish I knew. I can assure you of one thing, I won’t be working as part of a group.”

Everyone laughed, and Charlene was astonished. Sy had actually made a joke about his own solitary preferences.

“I can tell you my goal,” Sy went on. “The beings performing the stellarforming may seem omnipotent and omniscient so far as we are concerned, but they made it clear that there’s one thing they don’t understand. The Kermel Objects are as much a mystery to them as they are to us. I want to take a closer look at them and see what I can learn.”

“But they’re outside the galaxy,” Eva Packland objected. “Tens of thousands of light-years, and some of them a lot farther than that.”

“So?” Sy shrugged. “Did I say I was in a hurry? I’m willing to travel in T-state, or in cold sleep, or whatever it takes. We don’t even know the best time rate at which to study them — it could require some new state we haven’t discovered yet.”

“But the time it will take — “ Eva paused.

“ — is nothing to worry about, considering how much time we’ve got. Even if we question the motives of the disembodied aliens we met at Urstar, we know from our own work on stellar evolution that a small red dwarf star can sustain fusion processes for a hundred billion years or more. If understanding takes that long, I’m willing to wait.”

“But that’s so far ahead, general expansion will have made the universe unrecognizable — probably incomprehensible. Acceleration may make everywhere inaccessible beyond the local galactic cluster.”

“So the universe may become beyond our comprehension. Do you understand the universe as it is now, Eva? I certainly don’t.”

“You may not be able to survive in what the universe becomes.”

“True. That would be bad, because you know what I really want? I’ll tell you: I want to live forever. But I’m willing to risk death in order to do it. Now, that’s enough talk about me. We all have things to do. Let’s go and do them.” Sy promptly left the control chamber. Other people, following his lead, began to drift out in small groups of three or four. Finally, only Charlene and Emil were left. He leaned back in his chair and said, “What now?”

“I don’t know. You pretended you didn’t know where you were going, just so I wouldn’t feel bad. I appreciate that, but you shouldn’t have done it.” “I didn’t do it. I spent most of last night and this morning trying to find you. Where were you?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere. Wandering around Gulf City.”

“Well, that’s a shame. I wanted to talk to you. You’ve been restless ever since we started back from Urstar. I wanted to ask why.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m out of place among the rest of you. I was never a super-brain or a super-achiever. Just a normal person, with average abilities.” “I don’t see you that way, and I never have. The reason I wanted to find you was to make a proposition.”

He was rubbing his head, shielding the scarred and battered area. Charlene stared at him, afraid she was misunderstanding.

“A proposition? What sort of proposition?”

“I could say, the usual kind, but that’s not true. Look, Charlene, I’m tired of life out in open space. I want to get back to a planet. I know I’m a pretty battered object, and not much of a catch.” He hesitated. “Not a catch at all, you might say, for any rational person. But I wondered if you might be willing to go with me.”

Charlene stared at him and said nothing.

“I mean, as my partner,” Emil went on at last. “Live together. Maybe even start a — “

“Emil, I’m old. I’m at least fifty thousand years older than you are.” “Not really. I’ve thought about that, and I’ve done the calculations. If you allow for all the time you’ve spent in S-space, and in cold sleep, you are still a young woman. In subjective time, you have lived only two years more than I have. We are both easily young enough to start a family.”

“On a planet?”

“It would have to be.”

“That would mean N-space, with time running at normal rates. Even with the best life-extension treatment, we would die in a few centuries.”

“I know. That’s why I was almost afraid to ask. But I’m asking. Will you do it, Charlene? Pick a place, and go there together, and see what happens.” He saw her hesitation, and added, awkwardly, “If you didn’t like it, or couldn’t stand me, you could always leave.” He looked at her, the hand covering his forehead held so low above his eyes that he seemed to be peering out from under its shield. “What do you say?”

“I say — “ Charlene felt as though she could not breathe, and she had to pause for a moment. “Emil, I don’t know — I can’t — I’ll have to think about it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The sun was a fraction redder than Sol, although nothing like the red dwarf stars making their steady takeover of the galaxy. The planet was also a little too far away to be an ideal home for life. Except for a brief period close to summer solstice, frigid air from the poles took the night-time temperatures below the freezing point of water.

And yet — Charlene smiled to herself — to pretend that this was in any sense a “frontier existence,” in the old meaning of the word, was ridiculous. The fusion energy plant in the corner of the kitchen room, an unobtrusive object the size of an old wastepaper basket, would warm the house at any preferred level. It would continue to do that for centuries, without need for adjustment or maintenance.

As for cooking and cleaning and laundry, Charlene could do those herself — if she chose. She rarely did, except for such personal assignments as the decoration of a child’s birthday cake. Normally she instructed the robots and left them to get on with it.

And it wasn’t just the cleaning of the house. Charlene went over to a corner of the nursery, following her nose. No doubt about it, that smell was coming from seven-month-old Sylvia. Sometimes Charlene would do the change herself, but it was getting dark and she wondered what Emil and Damon were doing out there in the cold.

She told one of the robots to change Sylvia, but not to bathe her. Charlene liked to do that herself. Then she slipped into a thermal shield and headed out into the not-quite-dark.

Colchis was already below the horizon, so the faint light refracted by the atmosphere of Leemu was barely enough to see anything. She called. “Emil? Damon?”

“Over here.” They were sitting on a bench down at the end of the garden. Charlene went to them and found they were both staring upward, to where the first stars were appearing.

Damon’s head, with its dense thatch of black curls, was tilted far back (“That’s what I looked like — once,” Emil would say, every day). “Where is it?” Damon was saying.

“You can’t see it until later at night, when Leemu has turned farther on its axis. And then you still can’t see it, without a big telescope, because it’s so far away.”

“But you’ve been there?”

Emil shook his head. “No, I never have. But your mother has. In fact, she was born on Earth.”

“Can I go there, Dad?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Charlene said, “But not tonight. Tonight you have to go inside, and take a bath right now.”

“Mum, that’s not fair. Dad was explaining things to me. About the stars, and where people live, and what they do.”

“That’s very good. But all that will still be there tomorrow. Go on.” Charlene spoke firmly. “In right now, the water will be just right.”

“What about you?”

“We’ll be in in just a second. Don’t worry, from the look of you there’ll be plenty of dirt left for me to worry about when I’m inside.”

“It’s not fair.” But seven-year-old Damon picked up the little crab-apply fruit he had pulled earlier and stomped off into the house.

Charlene sat down in his place, and Emil said, “He wants to go. To the stars. I suppose that it’s inevitable.”

“I know. The more he learns about where we came from, the more he wants to see it all for himself. Sylvia will be the same. But it won’t be for a long time.” Charlene repeated, with great emphasis, “A long time.”