Two days later, looking even more gaunt than usual, the First Hat returned to duty. To Lu-teng, loss of hair was a special affront; hers had been more than waist length, and its absence bared a skull not smoothly rounded like Lisele's or Delarov's, but sloping to a central ridge-and behind that, dropping off at an abrupt angle. Lisele was reminded of pictures she'd seen, of the Easter Island statues.
For what the woman may have felt, there was no reme-
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dy. But while Lu-teng was up and awake, Lisele quietly took care of the extra share of galley chores.
The First Hat wouldn't have had time for them, anyway. Conferring first with the captain and Lisele and Drive Chief Houk, then with the revived Chief Engineer until his own stretch of illness, Mei Lu-teng was much too busy to bother with cooking or the cleansing of utensils.
Darwin Pope constituted a different case. Once he was recovered, and had time for confab with Houk before the latter went to freeze, Lisele explained the need for cooperation on galley matters. Not seeming to pay much heed, he nodded. "Oh, certainly. I'll take my turn and keep things shipshape." And henceforth, he did.
If his altered appearance bothered him, he gave no sign. So far as Lisele could see, he hardly noticed. And possibly for that reason, the man didn't seem changed.
Which wasn't to say that Darwin Pope was any great bundle of cheer. He was pleasant enough, but after talking with Houk and checking the Drive Chiefs figures, then making a few computer runs of his own, he didn't pretend that the news was good.
He and Delarov and Lisele, just the three of them out of freeze now, sat in Control. "Here's what it looks like. We've been losing thrust, and will continue to do so. We can't maintain the decel we'd hoped to manage."
"And what does that indicate?" asked Katmai Delarov. "When we arrive at Goal Star."
"Well, obviously," the man said, "we'll be traveling much faster than we should be."
Leaning forward, Lisele said, "You mean we can't stop?"
For a moment, Darwin Pope frowned. Without eyebrows, the expression lacked force. "If habitable-sized worlds exist in that system, and I'm getting computer indications that one or more might be there, we couldn╒t achieve orbit around one. Insufficient mass, you see, to slow us properly."
As though she were asking if any coffee was left, Delarov said, "We're dead, then, no matter what we do?"
While Pope was considering his answer, Lisele's mind raced. What did she know, that could help? Sling turns didn't lose velocity, they built it. But still-all right! Just a minute. It's a long chance, but listen. We know our course, roughly,
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and which way we'd need to turn, to go toward Earth and the colonies. The shipping routes, and all."
Delarov shook her head. "You know we'd run out of food-long before we could crawl, relatively speaking, to those parts of space. Food, fuel, maybe even recyclable air. So why condemn ourselves to slow starvation?"
"You don't understand yet. If decel isn't going to do us any good, and Mr. Pope says it won't, let's do Turnover and go accel. Take a power sling around Goal Star, to head toward humanspace." Everybody wanted to interrupt, but she didn't let that happen. "We all go into freeze, and leave Tinhead with a timed command to turn off every bit of power drain we don't really need. Which would be-" On her fingers, she checked the needs. "The freeze chambers. Tinhead itself. And a radiating beacon, telling who we are and what our problem is. So that human ships could detect us, and make the intercept."
Nobody looked enthusiastic. She said, "I know it might be a hundred years, even more; I don't like that any more than you do. But it beats just coasting past Goal Star and starving to death." Well, she'd said it the best she could. . . .
"Actually," said Katmai Delarov, "I've heard worse ideas."
Darwin Pope shook his head. "In Goal Star's system we can't achieve orbit with an Earthsized planet. But around the huge one we've detected, or the star itself, we very well could."
Unconvinced, Lisele said, "Say we do that, and then there isn't anything habitable? We'd be stuck; right?"
The man nodded. "That's true, of course. But on the other hand, why don't we wait until we see at closer range what the system has to offer, and then make our decisions?"
"And for the time being," the captain said, "ease back on decel, as much as we can and still be able to snag orbit on the star or its big planet. To conserve our Drive capability."
Lisele couldn't argue with that logic, so she didn't.
Time passed. Unlike deWayne Houk, Darwin Pope was easy to get along with; he and Delarov and Lisele settled into an easy routine that still kept good check on things they needed to know. Goal Star neared, and Tinhead confirmed its earlier guess that the system harbored Earthsized worlds. Two, as it happened, but only one of those orbited in the zone that allowed water to be liquid. The ship's light-amplifying
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circuits showed atmosphere around that planet. But whether it was enough and not too much, or breathable, Tinhead could not yet determine.
"If we can get ourselves there," Delarov said, "it's possible that we might have a chance."
Privately, Lisele thought she'd rather ride March Hare in freeze, into Earthspace, and take her chances on rescue.
For the first month after her hair fell out, Lisele knew it was too soon for a comeback and didn╒t expect one. As the second month passed and nothing showed, she began to worry: maybe this thing was permanent, after all. Discouraged, she stopped checking in the mirror when she got up from sleep.
But one "morning," while brushing her teeth before that mirror, on her reflected scalp she saw faint darkness. Looking closer she found a few hair tips showing, sparse and scattered. Then she noticed more dark dots, and realized these were new growth that was close to surfacing but hadn't quite made it yet. Still awfully scanty-but now she remembered that follicles had their individual cycles, and certainly wouldn't all have been at the same stage when the radiation hit.
So it would take some waiting. But eventually she would look more like herself again.
Well ahead of her time to relieve the skipper on watch, Lisele went up to Control, to see if Delarov was showing any similar progress.
She was, and a little better. But the funny part: until Lisele told her, the captain hadn't even noticed!
By a certain amount of fine-tuning, plus disconnecting the power drain of the inoperative Hoyfarul FTL circuits, Darwin Pope stabilized March Hare's Drive. "Houk should have thought of that," he grumbled, "but his oversight hasn't cost us anything of more than marginal importance. We're leveled off at roughly forty-two percent of redline capability, and quicker action might have got us forty-seven. Which still wouldn't have slowed us sufficiently to orbit an Earth-class world, at Goal Star."
Parts of his explanation went over Lisele's head, so she asked questions. All right; the FTL gear itself was undamaged, but the deteriorated Nielson Cube couldn't muster enough power to fire it up.
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Lisele felt herself scowling in concentration, and forced those muscles to relax. "Is the Cube down for keeps?" Because she knew, vaguely, that at least once Tregare had traded a sick Cube for a rebuilt one.
"As far as we're concerned, yes. Groundside I could fix it, but we can't get there. Even aboard it might be done, if we had a replacement power supply to keep the ship running. But we don't."
Well, that was a stopper-or was it? "Hey-just a minute! What if-why don't we-how about the scout's Cube? I know it's smaller, but shutting down all the drain we don't really need-"
Pope looked first startled and then interested, but after moments he shook his head. "I like your thinking, Moray, but the idea isn╒t physically possible."
She wouldn't quit without an explanation, so he gave one. "If it were a simple matter of changing to a new Cube, a job of only a few hours, we wouldn't even need to go to scout's power. The ship's accumulators could handle our minimum emergency load. But troubleshooting and repairs, in place ..." He shook his head. "No telling how long that might take. Weeks? Months? We could run out of power totally."
And no, the scout's Cube couldn't be installed in Hare, because of the differing sizes: "I'm a fair machinist, but all those adapters? Again, the situation simply doesn't give us enough time."
Glaring, although Pope certainly wasn't to blame for her frustration, Lisele stood. "Galley break time. Sit in for me?" At his nod, she added, "Anything you'd like me to bring up for you?"
He smiled. "At this point, and the hell with regs for the moment, I could use a beer. If you can locate a cold one."
She could, and did. Then she asked questions about putting ships into orbit. Except for the math part, such maneuvers didn't seem to be Darwin Pope's specialty. So she'd have to ask the skipper.
