Tau Zero

by Poul Anderson

  Freiwald spoke with an effort. “I shall have to be spared.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?” “I can’t go on any more. It’s that simple. I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Reymont persisted. “What jobs we have aren’t hard, physically. Anyhow, you’re tough. Weightlessness never bothered you. You’re a machine-era boy, a practical chap, a lusty, earthy soul. Not one of those self-appointed delicates who have to be coddled every minute because their tender spirits can’t bear a long voyage.” He sneered. “Or are you one?”

  Freiwald stirred. His unshaven cheeks darkened a trifle. “I am a man,” he said. “Not a robot. Eventually I start thinking.”

  “My friend, do you imagine we would have survived this far if the officers, at any rate, did not spend every waking hour thinking?”

  “I don’t mean your damned measurements, computations, course adjustments, equipment modifications. That’s from nothing but the instinct to stay alive. A lobster trying to climb out of a kettle has as much dignity. I ask myself, why? What are we really doing? What does it mean?”

  “Et tu. Brute,” Reymont muttered.

  Freiwald twisted about until his gaze was straight into the constable’s. “Because you are so callous… Do you know what year this is?”

  “No. Neither do you. The data are too uncertain. And if you wonder what the year would be at Sol, that’s meaningless.”

  “Be quiet! I know the whole simultaneity quacking. We have come something like fifty billion light-years. We are rounding me whole curve of space. If we returned this instant to the Solar System, we would not find anything. Our sun died long ago. It swelled and brightened till Earth was devoured; it became a variable, guttering like a candle in the wind; it sank away to a white dwarf, an ember, an ash. And the other stars followed. Nothing can be left in our galaxy but waning red dwarfs, if that. Otherwise clinkers. The Milky Way has gone out. Everything we knew, everything that made us, is dead. Starting with the human race.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Then it’s become something we could not comprehend. We are ghosts.” Freiwald’s lips trembled. “We hunt on and on, monomaniacs—” Again acceleration thundered through the ship. “There. You heard. “His eyes were white-rimmed, as if with fear. “We passed through another galaxy. Another hundred thousand years. To us, part of a second.”

  “Oh, not quite,” Reymontsaid. “Our tau can’t be that far down, can it? We probably quartered a spiral arm.”

  “Destroying how many worlds? I know the figures. We are not as massive as a star. But our energy — I think we could pierce the heart of a sun and not notice.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “That’s one section of our hell. That we’ve become a menace to— to—”

  “Don’t say it.” Reymont spoke earnestly. “Don’t think it. Because it isn’t true. We’re interacting with dust and gas, nothing else. We do transit many galaxies. They lie comparatively close together in terms of their own size. Within a cluster, the members are about ten diameters apart, often less. Single stars within a galaxy — that’s another situation altogether. Their diameters are such a microscopic fraction of a light-year. In a nuclear region, the most crowded part … well, the separation of two stars is still like the separation of two men, one at either end of a continent. A big continent. Like Asia.”

  Friewald looked away. “There is no more Asia,” he said. “No more anything.”

  “There’s us,” Reymont answered. “We’re alive, we’re real, we have hope. What else do you want? Some grandiose philosophical significance? Forget it. That’s a luxury. Our descendants will invent it, along with tedious epics about our heroism. We have the sweat, tears, blood” — his grinflashed — “in short, the unglamorous bodily excretions. And what’s bad about that? Your trouble is, you think a combination of acrophobia, sensory deprivation, and nervous strain is a metaphysical crisis. Myself, I don’t despise our lobsterish instinct to survive. I’m glad we have one.”

  Freiwald floated motionless.

  Reymont crossed to him and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m not belittling your difficulties,” he said. “It is hard to keep going. Our worst enemy is despair; and it wrestles every one of us to the deck, every now and then.”

  “Not you,” Freiwald said.

  “Oh yes,” Reymont told him. “Me too. I get my feet back, though. So will you. If you’ll only stop feeling worthless because of a disability that is a perfectly normal temporary result of psychic exhaustion — as Jane understands better than you, young fellow — why, the disability will soon go away of itself. Afterward you’ll see the rest of your problems in perspective and start coping once more.”

  “Well—” Freiwald, who had tensed while Reymont spoke, relaxed the barest bit. “Maybe.”

  “I know. Ask the doctor if you don’t believe me. If you want, I’ll have him issue you some psychodrugs to hasten your recovery. My reason is that I do need you, Johann.”

  The muscles beneath Reymont’s palm softened further. He smiled. “However,” he continued, “I’ve got with me the only psychodrug I expect is called for.”

  “What?” Freiwald looked “up.”

  Reymont reached under his tunic and extracted a squeeze bottle with twin drinking tubes. “Here,” he said. “Rank has its privileges. Scotch. The genuine article, not that witch’s brew the Scandinavians think is an imitation. I prescribe a hefty dose for you, and for myself too. I’d enjoy a leisurely talk. Haven’t had any for longer than I can remember.”

  They had been at it an hour, and life was coming back in Freiwald’s manner, when the intercom said with Ingrid Lindgren’s voice: “Is the constable there?”

  “Uh, yes,” Freiwald replied.

  “Sadler told me,” the first officer explained. “Could you come to the bridge, Carl?”

  “Urgent?” Reymont asked.

  “N-n-not really, I guess. The latest observations seem to indicate … further evolutionary changes in space. We may have to modify our cruising plan. I thought you might like to discuss it.”

  “All right.” Reymont shrugged at Freiwald. “Sorry.”

  “Me also.” The other man considered the flask, shook his head sadly, and offered it back.

  “No, you may as well finish it,” Reymont said. “Not alone. Bad, drinking alone. I’ll tell Jane.”

  “Well now.” Freiwald genuinely laughed. “That’s kind of you.”

  Emerging, closing the door behind him, Reymont glanced the length of the corridor. No one else was in sight. He sagged, then, eyes covered, body shaking. After a minute he filled his lungs and started for the bridge.

  Norbert Williams happened to come the other way along the stairs. “Hi,” the chemist greeted.

  “You’re looking cheerier than most,” Reymont remarked.

  “Yeah, I guess I am. Emma and I, we got talking, and we may have hit on a new gimmick to check at a distance whether a planet has our type of life. A plankton-type population, you see, ought to impart certain thermal radiation characteristics to ocean surfaces; and given Doppler effect, making those frequencies something we can properly analyze—”

  “Good. Do work on it. And if you should co-opt others, I’ll be glad.”

  “Sure, we thought of that.”

  “And would you pass the word that wherever she is, Jane Sadler’s dismissed from work for the day? Her boy friend has something to take up with her.”

  Williams’ guffaw followed Reymont through the stairwell.

  But the command deck was empty and still; and in the bridge, Lindgren stood watch alone. Her hands strained around the grips at the base of the viewscope. When she turned about at his entry, he saw that her face was quite without color.

  He closed the door. “What’s wrong?” he said hushedly.

  “You didn’t let on?”

  “No, of course not, when the business had to be fierce. What is it?”

  She tried to speak and could not.

  “Are more people due at t
his meeting?” Reymont asked.

  She shook her head. He went to her, anchored himself with a leg wrapped around a rail and the other foot braced to the deck, and received her in his arms. She held him as tightly as she had done on their single stolen night.

  “No,” she said against his breast. “Elof and … Auguste Boudreau … they told me. Otherwise, just Malcolm and Mohandas know. They asked me to tell … the Old Man. They don’t dare. Don’t know how. I don’t either. How to tell anyone.” Her nails bit through his tunic. “Carl, what shall we do?”

  He ruffled her hair awhile, staring across her head, feeling her heartbeat quick and irregular. Again the ship boomed and leaped; and soon again. The notes that rang through her were noticeably higher pitched than before. The draft from a ventilator blew cold. The metal around seemed to shrink inward.

  “Go on,” he said at last. “Tell me, дlskling.”

  “The universe — the whole universe — it’s dying.”

  He made a noise in his throat. Otherwise he waited.

  At length she was able to pull far enough back from him that they could look into each other’s eyes. She related in a slurred, hurried voice:

  “We’ve come farther man we knew. In space and time. More than a hundred billion years. The astronomers began suspecting it when — I don’t know. I only know what they’ve told me. Everybody’s heard how the galaxies we see are getting dimmer. Old stars fading, new ones not being born. We didn’t think it would affect us. All we were after was one little sun not too different from Sol. There ought to be many left. The galaxies have long lives. But now—

  “The men weren’t sure. The observations are hard to make. But they started to wonder … if we might not have underestimated the distance we’ve gone. They checked Doppler shifts extra carefully. Especially of late, when we seem to pass through more and more galaxies and the gas between them seems to be growing denser.

  “They found that what they observed could not be explained in full by any tau we can possibly have. Another factor had to be involved. The galaxies are crowding together. The gas is being compressed. Space isn’t expanding any longer. It’s reached its limit and is collapsing inward again. Elof says the collapse will go on. And on. To the end.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “Who can tell? Except the figures show we can’t stop. We could, I mean. But by the time we did, nothing would be left … except blackness, burned-out suns, absolute zero, death, death. Nothing.”

  “We don’t want that,” he said stupidly.

  “No. What do we want?” Strange that she was not crying. “I think — Carl, shouldn’t we say good night? All of us, to each other? A last festival, with wine and candlelight. And afterward go to our cabins. You and I to ours. And love, if we can, and say good night. We have morphine for everyone. And oh, Carl, we’re so tired. It will be so good to sleep.”

  Reymont drew her close to him again.

  “Did you ever read Moby Dick?” she whispered. “That’s us. We’ve pursued the White Whale. To the end of time. And now … that question. What is man, that he should outlive his God?”

  Reymont put her from him, gently, and sought the view-scope. Looking forth, he saw, for a moment, a galaxy pass. It must be only some ten thousands of parsecs distant, for he saw it across the dark very large and clear. The form was chaotic. Whatever structure it had once had was disintegrated. It was a dull, vague, redness, deepening at the fringes to the hue of clotted blood.

  It drifted from his sight. The ship went through another, storm-shaken by it, but of that one nothing was visible.

  Reymont hauled himself back to the command deck. Teeth gleamed in his visage. “No!” he said.

  Chapter 20

  From the stage, he and she looked upon their assembled shipmates.

  The gathering was seated, safety-hamessed into chairs whose legs were secured with bond grips to the gymnasium deck. Anything else would have been dangerous. Not that weightlessness prevailed. The past week had seen conditions change so rapidly that those who knew could not have deferred an explanation longer had they wanted to.

  Between the tau which interstellar atoms now had with respect to Leonora Christine; and the compression of lengths in her own measurement because of that tau; and the dwindling radius of the cosmos itself: Her ramjets drove her at a goodly fraction of one gee across the outermost abysses of interclan space. And oftener and oftener came spurts of higher acceleration as she passed through galaxies. They were too fast for the interior fields to compensate. They felt like the buffeting of waves; and each time, the noise that sang in the hull was more shrill and windy.

  Four dozen bodies hurled together could have meant broken bones or worse. But two people, trained and alert, could keep their feet with the aid of a handrail. And it was needful that they do so. In this hour, folk must have before their sight a man and a woman who stood together unbowed.

  Ingrid Lindgren completed her account. “—that is what is happening. We will not be able to stop before the death of the universe.”

  The muteness into which she had spoken seemed to deepen. A few women wept, a few men shaped oaths or prayers, but none was above a sough. In the front row, Captain Telander bent his head and covered his face. The ship lurched in another squall. Sound passed by, throbbing, groaning, whistling.

  Lindgren’s fingers momentarily clasped Reymont’s. “The constable has something to tell you,” she said.

  He trod forward. Sunken and reddened, he eyes appeared to regard them in such ferocity that Chi-Yuen herself dared make no gesture. His tunic was wolf-gray, and besides his badge he wore his automatic pistol, the ultimate emblem. He said, quietly though with none of the first officer’s compassion:

  “I know you think this is the end. We’ve tried, and failed, and you should be left alone to make your peace with yourselves or your God. Well, I don’t say you shouldn’t do that. I have no firm idea what is going to become of us. I don’t believe anyone can predict any more. Nature is turning too alien for that. In honesty, I agree that our chances look poor.

  “But I don’t think they are zero, either. And by this I don’t mean that we can survive in a dead universe. That’s the obvious thing to attempt. Slow down till our time rate isn’t extremely different from outside, while continuing to move fast enough that we can collect hydrogen for fuel. Then spend what years remain in our bodies aboard this ship, never glancing out into the dark around us, never thinking about the fate of the child who’ll soon be born.

  “Maybe that’s physically possible, if the thermodynamics of a collapsing space doesn’t play tricks on us. I don’t imagine that it’s psychologically possible, however. Your expressions show you agree with me. Correct?

  “What can we do?

  “I think we have a duty — to the race that begot us, to the children we might yet bring forth ourselves — a duty to keep trying, right to the finish.

  “For most of you, that won’t involve more than continuing to live, continuing to stay sane. I’m well aware that that could be as hard a task as human beings ever undertook. The crew and the scientists who have relevant specialties will, in addition, have to carry on the work of the ship and of preparing for what’s to come. It will be difficult.

  “So make your peace. Interior peace. That’s the only kind which ever existed anyway. The exterior fight goes on. I propose we wage it with no thought of surrender.”

  Abruptly his words rang loud: “I propose we go on to the next cycle of me cosmos.”

  That snatched them to attention. Above a collective gasp and inarticulate cries, a few stridencies could be made out: “—No! Lunacy!” — “Great!” — “Impossible!” — “Blasphemy!” Reymont drew his gun and fired. The shot shocked them into quiet.

  He grinned. “Blank cartridge,” he said. “Better than a gavel. Naturally, I discussed this beforehand with the officers and the astronomical experts. The officers, at least, agree the gamble is worth taking, if only because we haven’t much to lose.
But equally naturally, we want general accord. Let’s discuss this in regular fashion. Captain Telander, will you preside?”

  “No,” said the master faintly. “You. Please.”

  “Very well. Comments … ah, probably our senior physicist should begin.”

  Ben-Zvi declared, in an almost indignant voice: “The universe took between one and two hundred billion years to complete its expansion. It won’t collapse in less time. Do you seriously believe we can acquire a tau that lets us outlive the cycle?”

  “I seriously believe we should try,” Reymont answered. The ship trembled and belled. “We gained a few per cent right there, in that galactic cluster. As matter gets more dense, we accelerate faster. Space itself is being pulled into a tighter and tighter curve. We couldn’t circumnavigate the universe before, because it didn’t last that long, in me form we knew it. But we should be able to circle the shrinking universe repeatedly. That’s the opinion of Professor Chidambaran. Would you like to explain, Mohandas?”

  “If you wish,” the cosmologist said. “Time as well as space must be taken into reckoning. The characteristics of the whole continuum will change quite radically. Conservative assumptions lead me to the conclusion that, in effect, our present exponential decrease of the tau factor with respect to ship’s time, should itself increase to a higher order.” He paused. “At a rough estimate, I would say that the time we experience under those circumstances, from now to the ultimate collapse, will be three months.”

  Into the hush that followed another rustle of stupefaction, he added: “Nevertheless, as I told the officers when they asked me to make this calculation, I do not see how we can survive. Our present observations vindicate the empirical proofs that Elof Nilsson found, these many eons ago in the Solar System, that the universe does indeed oscillate. It will be reborn. But first all matter and energy must be collected in a monobloc of the highest possible density and temperature. We might pass through a star at our current velocity and not be harmed. We can scarcely pass through the primordial nucleon. My personal suggestion is that we cultivate serenity.” He folded his hands in his lap.