*
The sun grew steadily as the days passed. They were plummeting inward in a steep, S-shaped trajectory, aiming to loop around the sun in the direction opposite to the movement of the planets. On day twenty, they swept through Saturn’s orbit and inward toward Jupiter’s and Mars’s. Not that they would be stopping off, or even able to see those planets, other than as remote telescopic images, since the orbits were merely abstract tracings on the nav-screens and the planets themselves were elsewhere in their great elliptical tracks around the sun. Nevertheless, Bandicut imagined conversations with the outposts on and around those worlds, imagined stopping off to have a beer on Ganymede or Phobos, before continuing his mission . . . imagined Julie at his side . . .
Their velocity extrinsic to the threading environment was quite impressive now, close to a tenth of lightspeed. It would, Charlie acknowledged, make for a pretty good bang when they hit the comet. It gave him greater hope—if not of survival, at least that their collision would be seen.
Life aboard ship grew increasingly quiet. Charlie increased the shipboard gravity by small increments, and Bandicut exercised twice a day in an effort to get back into shape, and wondered why he was bothering. Charlie made periodic, unsuccessful efforts to cheer him up. The quarx seemed unusually distracted. Bandicut wondered if something was bothering him, but didn’t wonder very hard. Bandicut’s own thoughts were growing more and more disjointed as they streaked inward toward a close approach to the sun, and a rendezvous with the comet soon after. He was aware that he was slipping in and out of a semipermanent silence-fugue, and he wondered vaguely, from time to time, why Charlie didn’t do something about it. He wondered if Charlie was just getting tired, or if something else was wrong. But by the time he thought to ask, he had forgotten why he cared.
Neptune Crossing Page 68
