Dreams of the Stars

Garr sighed, looked at his watch, relaxed his grip on the hatch. “I suppose that’s true too. You do keep your word.”

“Okay, then I promise you, I promise you, I’ll back you. I’ll back you in getting rid of Boddy.”

Garr chewed his cheek. “Seriously? You really promise?”

“I really promise.”

“Okay.” Garr set the hatch aside. “Come on back up.”

Acker climbed up, his heart pounding. The ship’s ventilation felt ice cold on his clammy sweat. His hands were shaking.

“Sorry about that,” Garr said. “You understand where I’m coming from.”

Acker didn’t feel like arguing the point right now. He’d made a promise and he would stick with it. Later, perhaps, he might do something about Garr. He wasn’t sure. Clearly Garr wasn’t a true friend—but once again, who else did he have?

As they walked side-by-side back to the engineering office, Garr spoke casually as though nothing had happened. “Now, you don’t need to be in on every single detail of the plan if you don’t want to be. You just get me the materials I need and keep Boddy or Felter from getting wise.”

Acker just kept nodding absently as Garr spoke. Yes, yes, he would go along with it, whatever Garr wanted, just keep Garr happy—any further decisions would come later. Right now he just needed to calm himself down and put his thoughts back in order.

“The hallucinations are just the beginning,” Jameson said.

It was awkward, to say the least, to meet with Jameson after the attempted mutiny. Neither of them spoke about it, and on the far side of the table, Samuels fidgeted. The forced amiability between Boddy and Jameson, and the measured avoidance of the elephant in the room, was more tense than an outright argument would have been. It probably would have been better just to get it all out in the open, Boddy thought, but too late now.

“Only they’re not hallucinations,” Samuels said. “They’re real.”

“How real can they be?” Boddy asked. “They’re preposterous.”

“Not so preposterous,” Jameson said. “They are dreams.”

“Dreams? Well, dreams aren’t real.”

“Of course they are.” Jameson touched an icon on the desktop, and the wall behind him filled with a three-dimensional image of the human brain. “Now, I remind you, I’m a physicist, not a neurologist, but that’s really not the important part.” A touch of another icon highlighted a portion near the brain stem. “Dreams originate here in the amygdala, which is a portion of the brain ruled by emotion.”

“Sure,” Samuels said. “It’s down there in the primordial reptile brain, rather than the cerebral cortex, which is our thinking brain.”

Jameson did not reply; either the comment warranted no acknowledgment or Jameson simply didn’t know whether Samuels was right or wrong. “The point is, during sleep, we display low-voltage, fast brain patterns.”

“I’m sure I’ve read about all this before,” Boddy said. “So what? How does that make dreams real?”

“The critical point is voltage,” Jameson said. “And that is why I say that these dreams come to life is only the beginning of what we’re due to experience.” The three-dimensional image changed again, this time showing a more familiar illustration of the box-shaped Eldorado spinning through space. Below and beside it were tables representing space and time. A graph next to it represented energy. “We are approaching relativistic velocity. We are already making three-quarters the speed of light. That not only means a substantial rate of time dilation, but a substantial increase in mass. Do you follow me?”

Boddy frowned. “Dennis, I think you suggested something along these lines—or were about to, before one of these hall—dreams come to life erased you from the—from the scene. Jameson, you’re saying that the voltage released by our synapses while dreaming is being increased by the kinetic energy of our acceleration.”

“Precisely. Who would have considered such a thing? Yes, Commander Boddy, our very thoughts are being exacerbated by kinetic energy. Since our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, carry the same kinetic energy as the ship itself, they are being increased by the same formula of E=mc2.”

“But why dreams, then? During wakefulness, we don’t dream. Why aren’t our conscious thoughts being transmitted into reality?”

“I can only guess at that.” Jameson shut off the image and leaned forward against the table. “Our conscious thoughts are transmitted to reality by our actions. I think of the things I’m going to say to you, and I voluntarily turn them into action. But our very behavior has been altered, you might have noticed—we are saying and doing things we might not ordinarily say or do.”

“Like mutiny,” Boddy blurted.

“Yes. Or mentioning the mutiny in a petty tone of voice during an inappropriate moment. Our thoughts are given unusual substance by their increased energy. This is compensated somewhat by the proportional increase in brain and body mass, but that won’t save us from being overwhelmed by these, what we might call, solid thoughts, any more than the decreased weight of a heavy object on the Moon would save you from being crushed if it fell on you.”

“I think I see. Our subconscious is still at work, even when we’re awake—and so thoughts, whether conscious or subconscious, are becoming real, either through our own actions or through E=mc2.”

“Yes. I expect a part of me was dreaming about a giant rat, and the sheer kinetic energy of that dream was enough to bring it to life, at least briefly.”

Boddy shook his head. “It doesn’t seem possible. Things don’t just appear and disappear. These things, once made real, shouldn’t suddenly be gone.”

“They do when they face the contradiction between observed unreality and observed reality. Our perception of the universe is becoming even more important than it is in everyday life. Quantum indeterminacy is playing a larger role. I observed that the rat was real, and so it was. Samuels found me, I observed him, I observed the reality of a ship that has no spooky caves, a reality in which there’s no such thing as a giant rat, and a momentary quantum fuzziness collapsed. I assume there was a burst of energy at that moment, though what form it would have taken I don’t know.”

“To a large extent we’re just guessing,” Samuels said. “But there’s no doubt that our brains are radiating considerably more energy than they did back on Earth. That’s measured.”

“So you said the hallucinations were just the beginning. What’s next?”

“I think we’re getting feedback from the future,” Samuels said. “Remember I mentioned the temporal feedback loops? As the rate of time dilation increases, the backward flow of electromagnetic radiation has a more and more pronounced clash of frequency with the counterpart radiation moving forward in time. They’re no longer canceling each other out. Time itself is going to become confused. Events that haven’t happened yet will manifest themselves. At the same time, the past could become, for lack of a better word, edited.”

Jameson nodded. “I suspect this has already happened. Our uncertainty about how many people are aboard ship.”

Boddy suddenly felt cold. “I keep thinking there are nine of us.”

“It could very well be that there were. And somehow, either by some quirk of relativistic physics, or by the coincidence that everyone on the ship simultaneously forgot about them, or something altogether different, a feedback loop simply removed them from our history.”

“And it could happen again,” Boddy whispered.

“We don’t know that it did happen,” Samuels pointed out. “It’s just as possible that you’re imagining crew members who don’t exist, and the increased energy of your thoughts is turning a momentary misapprehension into a real memory.”

“A memory which could conceivably, in the near future, bring two additional crew members into existence, by E=mc2,” Jameson said.

“So then we can’t be sure about anything.” Boddy wiped perspiration from his forehead. “What’s our elapsed time? How much time has passed on Earth since our departure?”

“Four hundred twenty-six years, as of this morning,” Jameson said. “The rate is increasing.”

Boddy nodded. “Well, I think it’s time we start giving some serious thought to aborting our mission.”

A startling change came over Jameson’s features. His veneer of amiability faded. His face twisted into a sneer. Even the lighting in the room seemed to change, as though a fierce white light shone upward into his face to highlight the sinister curve of his high cheekbones, the horn-like wisps in his brown-gray hair. He laughed without humor, a low-pitched, resonant cackle. “You must be mad,” he said, seeming to savor every syllable. “Or no—not mad. A coward. How could you even think of aborting our mission after we have come so far?”

“This ship is in trouble,” Boddy said, unnerved by Jameson’s tone but doing his best to project his command presence. “We can begin deceleration, see what effects the loss of kinetic energy does, then plot an acceleration back to Earth.”

Jameson half-stood, leaned halfway across the table, his neck arched forward as though he were trying to inject his words into Boddy. “How could Skedd have even thought of selecting a coward like you as commander for this mission? We came in search of the great mysteries of the Universe, and here they are!”

“A fat lot of good that’ll do us if we can’t even trust our own reality!”

”Okay, let’s all bring this back into perspective,” Samuels said, placing himself between the two of them. “All we’re doing is discussing, not making any decisions.”

“Amen to that,” Jameson snarled. “Our brave leader here is the king of discussion with no decisions, isn’t he?”

“You’re on thin ice, Jameson,” Boddy said. “It’s only because of these strange goings-on that I don’t have you locked in your quarters after what you tried to pull.”

Jameson rose from his heat, his arms held out at his waist like a Western bad guy preparing for a fast draw. “Who is on thin ice? Has it escaped your notice that a majority of the crew was with me? That it was only Felter’s word that stopped us?”

No, that had not escaped Boddy’s notice. Somehow he had to contain this situation before it worsened. “Jameson, we’ll have no more talk of mutiny.”

“I agree. No more talk of mutiny.” With a swish of his cape for a flourish (cape?), Jameson strode from the room.

Boddy looked up at Samuels, who sat back in his seat, trying not to be noticed. “You guys really nailed me to the wall,” Boddy said.

“I guess we did.”

“I’d like the whole crew in the control room in an hour.” Boddy stood, thought of lingering to continue the discussion, decided against it, and left.

* * *

I’m on thin ice?! Jameson stormed down the corridor, fuming. The nerve of that man! If any one person was responsible for this mess, it was Boddy. Whatever spacetime matter-energy phenomena were affecting the ship, Boddy’s lack of initiative was the cause of all the unrest. If they were a crew, united under a common leader, they could analyze the problem and deal with it. Instead, they floundered around, puzzled, unsure of their duties, each strange occurrence on board increasing the confusion and uncertainty, while Boddy simply sat in his quarters waiting for someone else to come up with a solution.

Well, someone had! Jameson had! Relieve Boddy and put Felter in charge! How obvious could it be?

Damn Felter! Why had he refused command? It made no sense.

Jameson pounded on the open door to the navigation room and entered without waiting for acknowledgement. Reichmann was always here this time of day. Actually, this was where Reichmann almost always was. “Reichmann, we need to talk.”

“I doubt we have anything to talk about,” Reichmann said. “Unless you have given up this idea of a mutiny.”

“I’ll let you decide for yourself what needs to be done.” Jameson sat on a stool on the other side of the sextant from Reichmann. Beneath them was a porthole that looked out upon the blackness of space. Visual navigation was impossible now; Jameson wondered what Reichmann hoped to accomplish in here. Well, it didn’t matter. “Boddy wants to abort our mission.”

Reichmann was so astonished he dropped his sighting monocle. “What?”

Jameson nodded. “I explained to him that the phenomena we have been experiencing are connected to the kinetic energy of our electrical synapses at relativistic velocity—”

“Why, of course! At this velocity, our bodies have nearly infinite mass, and so the sheer energy we exert is more than enough to create illusions—or even matter!”

“Yes, fascinating, isn’t it? Except that our fearless leader believes we should now decelerate in order to avoid these events, reverse course and return to Earth.”

Reichmann shook his head. “That cannot be. That is not in the flight plan.”

“Yes, well, Ed Boddy doesn’t seem to care, does he?”

Reichmann picked up his monocle and returned it to its slot next to the sextant. “Surely he does not propose to do this without discussing it with the crew.”

“Well, he does seem to be the king of discussion, doesn’t he? I ask you now to reconsider. We must work together to oust Ed Boddy from command. If Felter doesn’t want command, I’ll take over myself.”

“You?!” Reichmann shook his head, sputtering in German, “Ich fresse einen Besen, wenn ob der Narr will, um unser Einsatz vorzeitig zu beenden,” and left the room. Then he poked his head through the door and said, “I will discuss this with Commander Boddy myself.” As Reichmann left, Jameson heard more German. “Als ob ich Jameson aller Menschen vertrauen, Jameson, die ihm Befehl entlasten will... .”

After Jameson’s angry reaction to the proposal of aborting the mission, Boddy expected further incidents, but he could not have been more surprised when Reichmann, of all people, burst into his cabin without knocking.

“Is it true?” he raged, his accent nearly incomprehensible. “Are you really going to abort our mission?”

“Reichmann!”

“Jameson has told me—and I do not know at all if I can trust him—that you have decided to turn around and return to Earth! That is a preposterous idea.”

“Hold it,” Boddy said, rising from his desk. “Calm down, nothing’s decided.”

“Well, I suppose we had better talk about it perhaps?”

“I’m calling the whole crew together to discuss it. I think it’s something we ought to consider.”

“Perhaps no more than consider—do you have a drink perhaps?”

“Sure. Have a seat.”

Reichmann sat on the other side of Boddy’s desk, dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. Boddy walked around the bed and opened a cooler where he kept water, orange vitamin drink, and beer. He decided, under the circumstances, to treat Reichmann to a beer. “Here you go.” Sitting behind his desk, he wondered if he ought to have a drink himself; but no, he needed more than ever to project a command image, and he’d better not risk getting drunk. “There are some strange things going on aboard ship, Reichmann. It’s not that I relish the thought of ending our mission, but it’s possible that if we go any farther, we won’t be able to trust anything we see.”

“Ja, ja, Jameson explained that, it was fascinating, the fact that our brains now carry so much energy that we are literally bringing new matter into existence. It is incredible.”

“Not only incredible, but potentially dangerous. We discussed the possibility that members of this crew could be, and perhaps already have been, edited out of existence by temporal feedback loops from the future.”

“Nein, nein, that would violate causality.”

“Well, Jameson and Samuels don’t think so. They think that our time dilation is causing a discrepancy in the way electromagnetic radiation ripples forward and backward in time, so that those ripples don’t cancel each other out anymore. In fact, I keep thinking there are nine crew members on the ship.”

“Why, there are.”

“Really?” Boddy’s interest was piqued. Had he been right all along? Who were the missing crew members? “I count me, you, Felter, Jameson, Samuels, Garr, and Acker. Seven.”

Reichmann frowned. “Nein ...” he trailed off. “Wait...You...Felter...Garr...Acker...Jameson...Samuels...und me.” He counted on his fingers. “Seven.”

“See what I mean? We can’t be sure how many are on board, hell, I’m not sure what I had for breakfast this morning. I don’t know when I’m going to turn around and start chatting it up with Neil Armstrong or Benjamin Franklin or, hell, Grendel. And think nothing of it until it’s over.”

“I still say that is no reason to abort the mission. We must learn from this. We must simply adjust. There is always a way to determine objective facts—und if there is not, then there are no objective facts, und the uncertainty becomes a part of the model.”

“Quantum indeterminacy again.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I can’t deny you have a point, and if relativistic velocity equals a breakdown of...of observational certainty, then yes, exploring that is a part of our mission. But we all need to discuss this. I want everyone’s input.”

Reichmann huffed. “Well, I suppose that is only fair. This is an intelligent crew—I expect we will reach a consensus that everyone will be happy with.”

“I hope so.” There hasn’t been much consensus on this ship lately. “If that’s all, I really need to be preparing for the meeting.”

Reichmann nodded, stood, spun, and walked out with such deliberate steps that Boddy almost expected him to start goose-stepping. Why almost? The way things had been, why not just turn into a Nazi storm trooper? Why not even find himself in the middle of a concentration camp with a gold star on his breast?

But nothing happened. Reichmann left, softly swung the padded door shut, and left Boddy alone to ponder what he was going to say to his discontented crew.

When Boddy arrived in the control room, he was irritated to find Felter at the command desk. The others were gathered round him. Boddy wondered for a moment if Felter had changed his mind and was taking over after all.

But as soon as he spotted Boddy, he rose and gave a theatrical bow as he gestured at the command chair. For all his talk about obeying the chain of command, the derision in Felter’s demeanor couldn’t have been more obvious if he had decided to take over.

Boddy sat in his chair, looked over the expectant faces for a moment, and began.

“Gentlemen, we’re experiencing unexpected effects of relativistic travel. Some of you, perhaps most of you, already know this. The faster we go, the more kinetic energy we carry. The unexpected by-product of this is that our brains, our very thoughts, are carrying more kinetic energy—infinitely more—than they do under normal circumstances. Enough energy, literally, to create matter with a thought. We’ve already seen instances of this, and the situation is going to get worse. Furthermore, unanticipated time dilation effects may be causing changes in time; we can’t predict the outcome—but some of us have some reason to believe that the past has already been changed. If we continue on our present course, we can’t know what the outcome will be. For sure, we’ll have no way of distinguishing objective reality.

“For this reason, I would like to propose terminating any further acceleration, brake, turn around and return to Earth with what we’ve found. I realize that by the time we get back, two or three thousand years will have passed, but to me that seems more palatable than the alternative.

“But this is all of our mission. You all worked hard to be here. I’m not going to call it off on my own whim. We all have to decide, and I will abide by a majority vote.”

Boddy was not finished, but Felter, typically, had to jump in. “Well, your concerns are valid, of course, but I think so monumental a decision can’t be made intelligently until we’re all familiar with all the facts; for example, exactly what we can expect as we continue our acceleration, and how sure are we of the causes of these things.”

Yes, I was just about to say that. “Jameson, Samuels, please give the details.”

Jameson stepped forward. The big softscreen before Boddy, which usually displayed a series of graphic representations of ship status reports, switched to the same image of the human brain which Boddy had seen before, and Jameson proceeded essentially to recap word-for-word what he had said before.

As Jameson spoke, Boddy watched the reactions of the others, searching for a pattern in their faces. Mostly they nodded, trying to follow, though Reichmann stood rigidly, eyes on the floor. Perhaps he was sensing that the tide of opinion was in favor of the abort.

Jameson turned the presentation over to Samuels, who proceeded to describe what might happen the closer their acceleration brought them to the speed of light.

When Samuels had finished, Felter permitted no pregnant pause. “Well, it certainly would be unnerving if we found that reality was no longer observable, but at the same time, that’s exactly the kind of thing we might have expected.”

“Why?” Garr asked.

“Well, consider that travel near the speed of light is similar to entry into a black hole,” Felter said, seeming to Boddy to relish the spotlight. “In both cases, the universe red shifts, though in the case of a black hole it’s gravitational lensing rather than outracing the light waves ...”

Good God, this is a crew of astronauts specially trained for a relativistic journey, I think we’re all familiar with the principle!

“...and we find ourselves similarly in a state that cannot be observed by the rest of the universe. At nearly infinite mass, we use up virtually all the energy in the universe, and that much energy ultimately has the same effect as infinite gravity—the breakup of spacetime into quantum foam, in which wave functions no longer collapse, and every probability is equal.”

“Indeed,” Reichmann said.

“In that respect, reality is no longer observable by traditional methods, but in fact, we find that every possibility becomes observable.”

One of Felter’s mannerisms that really pissed Boddy off was his show-offy way of speaking in big sentences. More annoying than that, he saw that Felter now commanded everyone’s attention.

“Imagine a world in which Julius Caesar was never assassinated. Imagine a world in which the Soviet Union won the race to the Moon. Or in which a giant comet didn’t strike the Earth and wipe out the dinosaurs. All those what-if scenarios, pure fantasy up to now, become real and accessible. Far more than a relativistic starship circumnavigating the universe, we could become a time ship, a dimension ship, flitting at will through the universes, exploring every possibility that may have occurred...and beyond.

“Imagine worlds where dungeons and dragons, or magic and fairies and unicorns, are not merely the domain of novels written by drug addicts, but real and solid places that operate by laws not known to our reality. If the human brain can imagine it, it’s real, it must be, somewhere out there in the multiverse.”

“Fanciful talk,” Jameson said.

Well, what do you know, Boddy thought. It’s about time.

“But we have no proof that these things really exist—and even if they do, our ship is capable of only two things—acceleration and deceleration.”

“And attitude control,” Acker supplied helpfully.

Garr looked as though he might actually swat Acker across the back of the head, but he restrained himself.

“We have no capability to plot a course through quantum foam to these parallel universes,” Jameson went on, “nor the energy to navigate them. Even if these possibilities could be located, they would be couched in spacetime defects too small to be measured, let alone traversed.”

“That is true,” Reichmann said.

Boddy was surprised that his avowed enemy Jameson, and Reichmann, the biggest champion of continuing the mission, were arguing Felter’s points. He enjoyed feeling the wave of the crew’s support—especially against the arrogant Felter.

“What you are talking about is essentially travel by wormhole, und you should know as well as any of us that is pure fantasy at this stage of our technological development.”

“Well, it is possible,” Garr said. “We don’t have the equipment on the ship to pull it off, but it seems pretty certain that there’s dark energy in the universe, antimatter, and hence a form of exotic matter that would have the properties necessary to thread a wormhole mouth and hold it open so that matter could traverse it.”

“Matter the size of the Eldorado?” Jameson said. “Even matter the size of a hydrogen atom would collapse the wormhole. It would be so unstable, it would be like trying to drive a car through a soap bubble.”

“I’m only saying it’s possible in theory, not necessarily practical,” Garr said peevishly.

“We’re getting off the point,” Boddy said. “The point is, do we continue the mission or abort? We know the promise, we know the perils. We know this crew’s behavior is becoming erratic, we know that we’ve been encountering strange phenomena, though at least now we know their cause.”

“And knowing their cause arms us in dealing with them,” Felter said. “Also, we’re aware that our behavior is being triggered by an exacerbation in the amount of energy radiated by our brains. We could compare it to our inhibitions are being suppressed by an overload of serotonin. We can deal with that too, now that we know the cause.”

“We don’t know as much as you pretend we do,” Boddy said through gritted teeth. “We’re heading into a situation we did not anticipate—and at least three of us agree that there might be two crew members missing and forgotten. Felter, have you considered that you yourself might suddenly be edited out of history?”

“I can think of no scientific way that that could happen. More likely our brains are being influenced to think that there were crew members on board who aren’t. After all, the mission profile only lists we seven.”

“The fact that you can think of no scientific way that that could happen doesn’t amount to a hill of beans,” Boddy said, unable to keep a condescending venom out of the word “you.” “Why don’t we ask the scientists? What do you say, Jameson, Samuels?”

“All we have is the vague notion of unequal electromagnetic ripples forward and backward in time,” Samuels said. “This is all so new, we’re still adjusting to what we’ve learned so far—ninety percent of which is conjecture.”

“That is true,” Jameson said. “Our only objective, measureable evidence is the increased electrical output from our brains.”

“And increased hormonal responses too,” Samuels said. “We assume that’s a direct result, though really we should turn that over to Dr. Gr—“ He stopped, frowning.

Boddy suddenly felt sick. Almost a name, almost a lost identity, a lost person, removed from the state of things. Dr. Gr— It was on the tip of his tongue, and he lost it. But the room had fallen utterly silent. Clearly the rest of the men were similarly troubled.

“Well, everyone,” Boddy finally said in a low tone of voice. “Does it occur to anyone as strange that we have no physician on board?”

Even Felter had no response to that.

“Even stranger—we do have a medical module. Who mans it? Who here knows how to use all of its equipment? Anyone?”

Astonished eyes met his. No one replied.

“Perhaps someone should have assigned us a doctor and a nurse for medical emergencies, eh? Or did they? Have Dr. Grwhatever and his nurse simply been wiped out of existence? Removed from history? Good friends of ours, colleagues, simply gone? Written out of the book of our mission?”

He paused, allowing each man to digest the implications. Two members of the crew—still nameless, still faceless, but a doctor and a nurse. Who had they been? With whom had they been friends? What experiences had they all shared together? If gone now, wiped from existence, had they ever existed at all?

“Who’s next?” Boddy asked. “Me? Felter? How about you, Acker? Would you like it if one day you simply didn’t exist, never existed, and none of us were any the wiser?”

Acker’s expression of sheer terror answered that question.

“Well, what’ll it be? Face that or turn back? Who has the courage to face the dissolution of the past? Who is willing to lose history? Who is willing to enter a world in which we are unsure of everything, even our own selves?” He spun in his chair, typed briefly on his touchscreen, then spun around again. “I’ve sent ballots to each of your personal accounts. There are two simple choices—‘abort’ or ‘continue.’ Have your replies in my inbox by start of shift tomorrow.”

It had been a hectic night; worry kept Boddy up most of the night. When he did sleep, his dreams stayed where they belonged: in his head. At least, as far as he could tell. But he didn’t know when something would come up; perhaps that very awareness kept the hallucinations at bay.

But the following morning he arrived in the control room early, glad to find it empty. Usually Felter preceded him; it was hard enough to deal with Felter first thing any morning, but he would rather see the results of the vote before having to deal with Felter.

He thunked down in his chair, put his coffee in its shallow holder, and accessed his account.

Yep, they were all there.

Felter: “continue.”

Jameson: “continue.”

Samuels: “abort.”

Reichmann: “continue.”

Garr: “continue.”

Acker: “abort.”

And himself, of course, abort. Three aborts, four continues.

Very well, he would keep his word. The mission would continue.

Jameson first took note of the odd requisitions when he himself delivered a DNA sequencing pen to the engineering office. It was eerie enough to enter the abandoned medical module, wondering who the absent doctor and nurse had been, but the question of why Garr would need a DNA sequencing pen ate at him until he could no longer resist.

Garr was hunched over his desk, tapping a laser pointer obsessively as he read something incomprehensible on his softscreen. Acker was nowhere to be seen.

Jameson walked quietly up behind Garr. He stood there for some time, making sure Garr wasn’t aware of his presence, before finally saying, “That’s interesting reading material.”

Garr jumped, minimized the screen, and said, “What the bleedin’ hell are you doing sneaking up on me like that?”

“I brought your strange requisition.” Jameson set the little device on the desk. “A DNA sequencing pen. Don’t tell me our engines have become biogenetic.”

Garr snatched the device and slipped it into his top drawer. “Maybe they have.” He slammed the drawer shut, withdrew a key from his pocket, and made a show of locking the drawer. “Thank you, Jameson.”

“You’re welcome.” Jameson walked around the desk and sat on the end of it. He picked up a paperweight in the shape of someone’s head—a Roman emperor, presumably. “Interesting work you’re doing nowadays.”

“Yes, and I’m very busy with it. Why don’t you let me get to it?”

“A DNA sequencing pen, a nanosig tracer, a whole shopping list of nanotubes and osmotic pumps and field coils, why, you must really be up to something big.”

Losing his patience, Garr leaned back in his seat, crossed his arms, and looked up at Jameson. “I’m an engineer. Maybe I just like to tinker.”

“Maybe so.” Jameson shut the door to the office and returned to his perch on Garr’s desk. “You’re up to something, and I suspect it has something to do with Boddy. After all, you were one of my vocal supporters when we tried to persuade Felter to take over.”

Garr snorted. “Some persuasion.”

“Yeah. One might almost think we ought to bypass Felter and put someone else in command.”

Garr chuckled. “I suppose you think you’re the man for the job.”

Jameson shrugged. “Why not? I’m the chief scientist, I’m a math whiz. Who better?”

“Maybe the one who gets Boddy out of our hair.” Garr maximized his screen again. “Or maybe you’ll want to fight me for it.”

Jameson pretended to understand the engineering formulas on the screen. Oh, the math was child’s play, but without knowing what the variables represented, it was like reading a novel with all the nouns removed. “Oh? So, assuming this little plan of yours works, do you plan on simply doing away with everyone who stands in your way?”

“Well, let’s put it another way. You’re a smart man. You really want to fight me for it?”

This conversation was not going where Jameson had wished. He didn’t like the adversarial tone. “I think the important thing is to remove Boddy. You and I agree on that. If we disagree on who should take his place, that should be resolved later.”

“I’m not making this mission up as we go. Boddy’s been doing that and look where it’s got us. I’ve got it worked out. I’ll take over—Felter won’t be behind me, so he won’t agree to be my second, so I’ll give Acker that job.”

“You’re sort of whittling away the number of people capable of carrying out our mission.”

“Hardly. If we’ve had a mysterious doctor and nurse phase out of existence, I think we’ve already lost the two most vital crew members. Major maneuvers are complete, acceleration is largely automatic. Life support emergencies are Acker’s specialty. I’d like you to be on my side, because we’ll need a scientist researching what’s going on—but we’ve got Samuels, who’s just as qualified as you. As for the rest—we needed Felter’s position in order to oust Boddy legally, but Felter’s whole job on the mission is through. Reichmann is useless mass, always was. He’s only here because this mission was his dream.”

Jameson laughed. “You talk about useless mass—you’re going to make Acker your second? I think you’re just looking for a slobbering yes man.”

“Oh, you want to be second?”

“Leave that alone for now.” Jameson rubbed his temples. Garr seemed determined to turn this into a fight. “Look, as I said, the details we can work out later. You want to fight me for it? Fine. I can cook up some insidious weapons of superscience that can battle your engineering machines of horror. We’ll have a glorious science fiction battle at the end of the universe. But for now, know that I am your ally in getting rid of Boddy. If you have a plan, I’ll help you with it.”

Garr laughed—a condescending, insincere bark, a high-pitched lolling sound that grated Jameson’s ears. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To know the ins and outs of my plan. Thanks, but I’ve got it all under control.”

“Fine.” No point trying to talk to Garr anymore. Jameson felt an uncharacteristic pity for Acker; it must be hard for someone as insecure and needy as Acker to deal with someone as cold and cruel and manipulative as Garr. Oh, it would be nice to get rid of Ed Boddy, but Garr was certainly not an acceptable replacement. Well, fine; Jameson would fight him for it.

As he left the engineering deck, he walked past Reichmann, who never seemed to have anything to do but wander the halls.

“Jameson,” Reichmann said.

Not in the mood to talk, Jameson nodded, mumbled, “Reichmann,” in the way one uses another’s name as a greeting, and hurried on.

“I would like to talk to you.”

Jameson stopped, clenched his teeth, and said without turning around, “I’m very busy. Perhaps I can find time to stop by your quarters after shift.”

“Nein, I would like to talk to you right now.”

No talking to Garr, no escape from talking to Reichmann. How strange it was that, by comparison, he now craved the company of Samuels. “What is it, Reichmann?”

“I am not blind, you know. I can see that Garr is up to something. Und clearly you are part of it.”

“We got our way, we voted to continue the mission and Boddy accepted that.”

“Yes, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the attempt to take over the ship. I am talking about all these supplies for Garr. I am talking about you conferring with him with the door closed.”

Jameson frowned. “How did you know about that?”

“It is a small ship. I saw you go in there. I saw you close the door.”

If Reichmann knows, perhaps Boddy does too... “Look, we were discussing an electronics issue.”