Dreams of the Stars
Chapter 11

Again, Acker felt he detected the sound of annoyance. He knew he should just go, but then he’d feel he was doing something wrong if he didn’t reassure himself now. “You sure you don’t mind?”

“What the fuck do I care? Go.”

“You sure?” he pressed. Garr certainly sounded annoyed; he would rather have Garr’s unreserved blessing.

“What’d I just say?” Garr said, annoyance becoming exasperation. “Go.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I guess you can just use the intercom if you need me.”

“Not bloody likely,” Garr said.

Still not exactly a ringing endorsement. “Okay, so that’s where I’ll be. That’s not a problem, is it?”

“What’s a problem is I’m trying to concentrate on nucleotide pairs, which is not my area of expertise, and it’s hard to do that when I’ve got a neurotic, self-obsessed, babbling gadfly hounding me over the intercom over whether or not it’s all right for him to go up to the fucking cupola.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Acker’s face reddened. “Didn’t know you were trying to concentrate. Okay, I’ll be in the cupola if you need me.”

“I won’t but thanks.”

Now, why did Garr have to be so rude about it? Now he’d feel guilty the whole time he was up there. It also angered him; he had a right to go wherever he wanted on this ship. And what did he get for just showing the common courtesy of letting his superior know where he’d be? Why, he got chewed out. Excuse me for living.

He tried to push the conversation out of his mind as he rode the elevator to the central hub. With luck, weightlessness would chase his cares away as it usually did. He felt butterflies as his weight noticeably lightened. A giddiness induced by his own buoyancy chased away his concerns. And soon he would be once again gazing out at the vast, elemental blackness of space, staring at it from the God’s-eye view of relativistic velocity.

Long ago, astronaut Gene Cernan had stood on the Moon, looking back at the Earth, and said that it was “like sitting on God’s front porch.” Well, that quaint view of the Earth from the Moon had nothing on the view from the Eldorado. Here, at the fringes of space and time, using practically all the energy in the universe and having almost infinite mass, why, if this wasn’t what it was like to be God, then God must not live in this universe.

Then, as he climbed into the cupola and beheld what lay before him, he thought God must not live in the universe—for what kind of deity would inhabit a place like this?! Acker’s eyes grew wide, the giddiness of weightlessness mingled with the giddiness of a space explorer viewing the grandness of creation. For he had expected to see infinite blackness, surrounded by a brighter and narrower starbow than this morning.

Well, the starbow was there and it was brighter—but what was that?—that luminosity that seemed spread round the ship almost like a liquid landscape?—a swirling world of glowing wine spread like liquid sunshine, awesome in its solemnity, staggering in its stillness. What was this? Acker stared dumbly at the panorama before him, his knowledge and experience giving out, the events of the past few days proving a mere speck of unscheduled activity compared to this complete collapse of what he thought to be the laws of reality.

For the ship was travelling too fast for light to be visible—all light in the universe had to be scrunched up into the starbow. That was a fact. But this was unquestionably visible light. How could that be? This didn’t look like anything that should exist in the universe; it was more like something out of a fantasy movie. He wondered if this was another hallucination. Perhaps so, but Jameson should know about this.

All thoughts of Garr’s approval of him forgotten, he scrambled down the hub, then impatiently rode the elevator to the inner rim. He assumed Jameson would be in the lab, as usual. He poked his head through the door to the lab, trying to be unobtrusive. Even now, with a potential major scientific discovery to his credit, he didn’t wish to offend. There was Jameson, slowly pacing back and forth, his right hand gesturing as he mumbled to himself.

“Uh, Jameson?” he called softly.

Jameson’s head snapped toward him. “Who’s there?”

“Uh, it’s Acker.”

“What do you want?”

“I think you’d better come up to the cupola. There’s something you ought to see.”

“In the cupola? Nothing should be visible!”

“Exactly. I was just up there—there’s something out there.”

Jameson waved him aside. “You’re seeing things. Let’s just stick to the numbers and ignore what our senses tell us.”

Acker stood frozen, uncertain. He didn’t want to press the point; as a scientist, Jameson probably knew what he was talking about. But Acker was pretty sure this wasn’t another hallucination. “Um, maybe you could at least come and look at it.”

“Look, I’m not going all the way up to the cupola. There’s nothing out there.”

Well, that was most definitely that. Acker hesitated again. He felt most adamantly that Jameson should see the phenomenon, but he wasn’t sure how to get though to him. He didn’t want to create a conflict. “I think you should at least see it before you make up your mind.”

Jameson sighed. “Acker, what the hell were you doing in the cupola anyway?—Never mind. All right, let’s go take a look.”

As they walked side-by-side down the corridor, Acker was nearly overwhelmed by the feeling of irritation from Jameson. He wanted to say something to clear the air, but could think of nothing. As they stood silently in the elevator and weight slowly subsided, he felt beads of perspiration on his forehead, and he felt slightly breathless, so awkward was the silence. The doors slid open, and he let Jameson climb up the access tube first. As he followed Jameson into the central hub, he felt satisfied as he saw that the interior of the hub was illuminated by the strange light coming from the cupola.

“Good lord,” Jameson said to Acker’s immense satisfaction.

They climbed into the cupola, and Acker was delighted and relieved that the apparition was still there. It was as if a whole new universe was out there to replace the one they had left behind. Like an ocean of golden sunlight, as though someone had managed to capture the rays of the sun in a morning dew and spread it around like fairy dust. Even Jameson appeared stunned by the beauty of it.

“What is this?” Jameson whispered.

“It wasn’t here this morning,” Acker said.

“This makes no sense—the color is quite near the middle of the visible spectrum, which is patently impossible given our speed—there’s no apparent motion, even though with the time dilation effects we should be speeding past every object in the universe at a rate that, were it visible, it would streak by us.”

For some awesome moments, they stood side-by-side and stared at the wonders of nature laid bare, at the mysteries of the universe which they had come to explore. How long had it been since the universe had thrown mankind a curve ball, since man’s model of the laws of nature turned out to be wrong?

“There can be only one explanation for this,” Jameson said.

“What is it?” Acker asked.

“I don’t wish to say until I do some math. Excuse me.”

And once again, Acker was left alone in the cupola to gaze in wonderment at a whole new creation. And it was his discovery. He, the lowliest and most despised man on the ship, he, Lawrence Acker, may turn out to have made the pivotal discovery of this mission—and considering where they were in the timeline, perhaps the pivotal discovery of all time.

It was the first time Jameson could recall actually wanting to talk to Samuels. It wasn’t that he doubted his own mathematical extrapolations, but he wanted a fellow scientist to bounce ideas off of—besides, there was the scientific method; his theory must be subjected to rigorous peer review. He had come on this mission in search of scientific discovery; if he was right, he had made the greatest discovery of all time.

Samuels was not in the lab when he got back there. He could hunt for Samuels, or summon him by intercom, but at the moment he wanted to just pace back and forth and mull over his ideas. Then he sat, working through the math, reconfiguring seven dimensions and offsetting them from three—then twisting things around by introducing twenty-eight dimensions. Then he spotted some familiar equations popping out of his lines of numbers—by God, there was the third law of thermodynamics! And there was the good old uncertainty principle, cattycornered to causality itself!

He paced some more, lips mouthing the lecture he would soon give to the whole crew. Why, this meant the universe may neither break up at the end of time nor contract into a Big Crunch—this meant travel backward or forward in time, or between different timelines, was a simple matter of navigation rather than physics!

He had just sat down to work the numbers again when Samuels finally came in. “Oh, what a day,” he groaned.

“Sit down!” Jameson shouted.

Samuels, startled and intimidated, obeyed.

“What happens as you approach the speed of light?” Jameson demanded.

“A pop quiz?” Samuels scratched his beard. “Well, your kinetic energy increases, assumes the properties of mass—“

“What happens to visible light? What happens to the three-dimensional universe?”

“It disappears. Light ahead of us blueshifts into the ultraviolet, light behind us redshifts into the infrared, and we lose all contact with our universe except for X rays and gamma rays.”

“And?”

Samuels looked stumped. “I think you’re losing me here. And what?”

“Time, Samuels, what happens to time?”

“It dilates. Shiptime contracts so that a journey of thousands or millions of years passes in months or days, by our perspective.”

Jameson grinned, excited. “Yes...and why?”

“Why?” Samuels scratched his beard again. “I guess no one really knows. The universe isn’t built so that events occur with any absolute measure of certainty as to when and where they occur. It’s a matter of perspective.”

Jameson laughed. “Ah, yes! The official line, eh? No, really, mathematically, why does it happen? Geometrically?”

Samuels shrugged. “What, the old Einsteinian model? Time is the fourth dimension. As we accelerate through space, we decelerate through time, like changing your trajectory on a graph.”

“Precisely! And how many dimensions are there in our universe?”

“Four. Three of space, one of time.”

Jameson applauded. He laughed again, thrilled at the sheer joy of his discovery, and amused at the look of bafflement on Samuels’ face. Clearly he thought Jameson had gone stark raving mad. “Are you sure?” Jameson demanded. “Are you quite sure there is only one dimension of time?”

Samuels shrugged. “Why should there be more than that? Causality only works in one direction.”

“Bullshit!” Jameson laughed again, ran around the table and gave Samuels a big bear hug. “Oh, no, my good friend, causality works in far more than one direction. Oh, you should take a look at the cupola! What a glorious sight it is! Three dimensions of time, open and visible, as real and solid as the three dimensions of space in our own corner of the cosmic playground!”

“What are you talking about?”

Jameson pulled a thin card from his desk and set it on the tabletop, balancing it carefully on end. “Which way will it fall?”

Samuels nodded, getting the point. “I see—classical physics gives it an equal probability of falling to the left or to the right.”

“Exactly.” He let the card go—and reveled in the wonderment in Samuel’s eyes as it fell both ways! “You see? By classical physics, it must fall both ways. Why, then, under ordinary circumstances, will it fall one way or the other? Because it can only be in one place at a time, and therefore it can only fall one way at a time, correct? One way at a time! But which time? Do you see? A little over that way, now, is another timeline. A little over that way is another. You see?” He paused for breath. On his softscreen he called up a blank graph. Hastily he labeled the lines on the graph by scribbling on the sensitive desktop. The horizontal line he scribbled something that looked like SR|__|VL, but what he meant to say “space,” and the vertical he labeled T for “time.” “You see? Here is our usual trajectory in the normal universe ...” He drew an almost straight line up. “You see? Scarcely any forward motion through space, but great motion through time—but the Eldorado has done this—” And he curved the line until it was nearly horizontal. “We have great momentum through space, but almost none through time! As a result, just as the three dimensions of space have disappeared, now the three dimensions of time have become visible to us! And most importantly, navigable!” He laughed, giddy, overawed. “Don’t you see? Our universe consists of...of two universes—I guess we should call it a—ah—biniverse. Two universes, separated by velocity. Here, now, space has assumed the attributes of time, and time the attributes of space. It will probably take some time—heh, time indeed—to learn the rules of reality here, to learn what we must do to navigate. I see no stars here, no planets, just a sort of softly glowing whirlpool of radiance. What form do events take here? Is last Thursday a little node of light? Or perhaps a line extending infinitely in one direction to represent every possibility that might have occurred that day...Perhaps there are still more discoveries here, hidden in the third dimension of time. This could explain at least some of the things that have been happening to us, like our missing doctor and nurse. For time length, we can assume, is the usual flow of time that we all know—time width might contain all those parallel possibilities. But what is hidden in time depth? Who knows? So much to explore, Samuels, a whole universe!”

Samuels gulped. “But are you sure of this? I mean, all you saw was something weird outside the cupola.”

“I don’t know. The math matches up, it makes sense, don’t you think? How else do you account for a whole realm of visible light appearing here and now, when we’ve outraced our entire visible universe? But I need your help, I need your contribution.”

“Okay,” Samuels said, moving to his side of the console. “Let’s get on it. We’ve got some mysteries of the universe to unlock.”

“Do you see?” Jameson said, giving no indication that he even remembered that last time he was in here he had tried to kill Boddy. “Perhaps we never had a doctor and nurse, but in another timeline we did, and as we approach the speed of light, that shadowy timeline begins to intrude on our own.”

“It could be,” Samuels said. “After all, sometimes we remember having a crew of seven, sometimes nine, sometimes twelve. All those things might be true in alternate timelines. But here, there’s no ‘timeline,’ more a time cloud.”

“Exactly,” Jameson said. “Like the electron cloud surrounding an atom. It only resolves itself into individual electrons when showered with photons. Otherwise it’s as though there are no actual electrons, just an ill-defined wave.”

“I get the concept,” Boddy snapped. If only he could concentrate fully on Jameson’s discovery. The science was indeed fascinating. But he could not put far from his mind the fact that this man who was sitting here emoting like a football fan whose team had won the super bowl was the leader of the mutiny, a man who would gladly kill him as soon as look at him. He wished he could immerse himself in the thrill of discovery, but he felt he had to play politics. “This is interesting, and it seems your equations back you up, but we have no solid observational data.”

“Like hell we don’t!” Jameson’s temper flared. Boddy felt he had said the right thing; by refusing to be seduced by Jameson’s scientific glory, he had brought out the mutineer. They were now on a level playing field. “I was in the cupola, Boddy, I saw it.”

“You saw something.” Boddy knew it wasn’t a terribly strong argument. Jameson’s theory did fit the facts, and like any scientific theory, it would have to do until something better came along. Yet scientifically, he had also made a good point. A scientific model had to be rigorously tested, not just by math, but by solid experimentation with repeatable results, results that could be duplicated over and over and over again. “So far, this is a nice mathematical explanation, but we have nothing solid. Now, before you come flapping in here claiming to have solved the mysteries of the universe, I want this thing broken down and analyzed, not just with numbers on the computer, but with solid and repeated observation. Show me experiments that you conduct again and again, always under the same conditions and always with the same outcome.”

“Don’t tell me how to do science!” Jameson bellowed. “I know my field. I fully intend to experiment. But observation is done: visual confirmation of a universe where there should be none. There can be only one explanation for the sighting of visible light when we have outrun all visible light in the universe. Only if we are almost stationary relative to the object in question should we see it—by almost stationary I mean an appreciable fraction slower than the speed of light. The only thing that matches that description is an object whose dimensions are temporal.”

“Experiment,” Boddy said again.

Jameson stiffened, obviously disappointed in his commander’s lukewarm reaction. Boddy almost felt sorry for him; but the memory of that terrifying chase through the ship, and the knowledge that the conspiracy still continued, allayed any sympathetic feelings.

Without another word, Jameson departed. Samuels lingered. “I remind you, Jameson and I are the only real scientists on board. We can’t really do proper peer review or experimentation.”

“You’ll just have to do the best you can,” Boddy said, sorry to be so cold with his old friend, but always remembering that, friend or not, Samuels was part of the mutiny. “Now, unless you’ve dug up some juicy stories to explain Jameson and Garr’s mutinous tendencies, I really have a lot to do.”

“Yeah, well, we all do. –Actually, I’d like to have a look at that cupola myself.”

Curiosity overwhelmed Boddy’s need to maintain his aloofness. “Wait, I’ll come with you.”

As they climbed the rarely traveled tubes to the cupola, Boddy recalled how strange the atmosphere aboard the ship had been. He wondered about the hallucinations; he had grown so accustomed to calling them that that it was hard to remember that they had not been hallucinations at all, but manifestations of the mind brought to life by the sheer volume of mental energy they carried. But was that the only factor? Had some of the hallucinations—or, indeed, part of all of them—been ghosts from alternate timelines? Or was there really a difference? Was it possible that time itself was inextricably intertwined with energy?

Of course it was...for it was energy itself that had brought them to this point. Gravity imparted energy to objects, and gravity twisted time. Infinite energy and infinite gravity both had the effect of breaking space itself up into quantum foam. Why, the Big Bang itself, a singularity not at all unlike a black hole, had created the entire universe in a great wash of energy. It was kinetic energy that moved objects through space; surely kinetic or some equivalent energy moved objects though time. He wondered; a man sitting still on Earth carried very little kinetic energy; but if Jameson was right, such a man was traveling nearly the equivalent of the speed of light with respect to this universe of time. So what was the equivalent of kinetic energy that moved him so fast?

He wondered if there were temporal beings who might set off from this universe in a ship like the Eldorado, bound for the edge of their own universe, who would be astounded to discover the mysterious universe of galaxies, stars, and planets that lay on the other side of relativity.

They found Acker in the cupola, arms and legs spread against the sides of the support structure in order to anchor himself.

“Acker?” Boddy said. “What are you doing here?”

Acker spun around, setting himself into an awkward tumble away from the cupola.

“Easy, there,” Samuels said, grabbing Acker’s collar to steady him, almost sending himself into wild gyrations with him.

“Well, Garr didn’t mind my coming up here,” Acker said.

“Okay,” Boddy said. He grabbed an overhead handlebar and pushed himself into the cupola so that he could take in the sight. His mind reeled at what he saw. The most imaginative, wild and wondrous immersions hadn’t the scope or the beauty of what he now saw. No human mind could have conceived of it, because its very proportions defied human consciousness. Parts of the glowing panorama were hard for him to see, so drastically did they distort the three-dimensional framework to which the human mind was accustomed. He could see clearly the whirlpool of light that surrounded the Eldorado. He could see more vaguely its more obscure dimension that extended...how to express it...that way—or more thatthis way. He saw little nodes of light in what seemed to be the nearest parts, some of which seemed to be floating globules, some of which were more stretched out. He knew there were objects in the universe—largely theoretical—called cosmic strings, remnants of the Big Bang, infinitely long yet one-dimensional lines of pure gravity, like a black hole stretched out into a long spaghetti, and as he looked on some of the intricate threading before him, he wondered if this universe was made of something like that.

“Can I have a look?” Samuels said.

Boddy moved aside, allowing Samuels to anchor himself in the cupola as Acker had done. Samuels whistled. “Wow, look at that. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re looking at more than three dimensions here. Could be as many as seven or eight. Geometrically, our universe works with ten directions, even though we never observe more than three, plus one dimension of time. Brane theory adds an eleventh dimension that wraps around the tiny one-dimensional strings that resonate and form the illusion of quarks—but I guess we’ll have to re-examine all those models in light of this discovery.”

Boddy wondered how Samuels could continue to prattle away when faced with such an awesome visual vista, such a visible demonstration of the universe’s deepest secrets that reduced all mankind’s scientific knowledge to nothing more than childish babble. How absurd this quaint little mutiny now seemed; a rabble of insignificant humans, konking one another’s heads together against the backdrop of Everything without bothering even to look at it. Did it really matter who was in charge? Did it really matter that the things happening aboard ship were strange? Why, of course they were strange! Look at where they were! Look at when they were! If they didn’t want strange, they shouldn’t have had the audacity to take on the ultimate limits of creation.

Yet Samuels droned on. “Boy, oh, boy, I can’t wait to break down the spectrum. Betcha we’ll see some things we don’t expect. It seems to be pretty uniformly lit—I wonder what the light source is—I’ve got to measure the visual magnitude of the various details. I wonder how to navigate it. Man, we’re carrying so much kinetic energy, I wonder, a nudge to starboard could zap us into a parallel universe—maybe. Something to try. But I guess we’d better know what we’re doing first. Wow! Look at that! That’s definitely an apparent magnitude minus twenty at least.”

“I’m going to the control center,” Boddy said over Samuels’ continuing rambling.

Neither he nor Samuels noticed where Acker went.

Acker was in his quarters. So unimportant was he to the others, they had nary observed his presence. So he simply wasn’t there. He was alone in his quarters, alone and forgotten. He remembered being in the cupola, remembered seeing the vista of the new universe, but that had been a while ago. What had happened in the meantime? He wasn’t sure, except that Garr would probably be angry with him for being away from engineering for so long. Well, let him be angry. He’d be angry anyway. Perhaps he was wrong to continue to cater to the wishes of Lester Garr. Why the blind obedience? Why the baby-like need for Garr’s approval? Because he was Acker’s superior? So what? Boddy was Garr’s superior, and that obviously meant nothing. Maybe it was time for Acker to shed his ties to Garr and the rest of them. If they had no need for him, why should he have any need for them?

Garr would kill Boddy, then he would either kill Jameson or Jameson would kill him. But neither would expect this hidden moray eel suddenly to strike. Acker would kill the victor and assume command. Then they would have to notice him!

“Acker?” Garr’s voice grumbled over the intercom.

His tone flat and unfriendly, Acker answered, “Yeah?”

“Where the hell are you? I need you.”

Acker did not protest, but nor did he assume his usual, high-pitched, simpering persona. He simply matched Garr’s unfriendly tone and said, “On my way.”

Oh, yes, they’d all be surprised. They had no idea what he was capable of. He’d show them.

“This is the most humiliating report I have ever had to make, but I feel there is no longer any choice.” Beads of sweat dotted Reichmann’s forehead. He kept licking his lips. He turned his clenched hands round and round compulsively. He had danced around the subject for five minutes already.

“Go on,” Boddy said. “Anything you say is confidential.”

Reichmann cleared his throat. “I feel like a hypocrite coming to you about this, especially since our get-together last night was my idea and I wanted to ease the tension, but...I simply cannot abide...” He cleared his throat again. “Felter has been... ehm...sexually abusing me.”

Boddy’s breath caught in his throat. His forehead felt hot. His vision tunneled. Cold rage boiled within him. “Go on,” he said in a low, controlled tone.

Reichmann cleared his throat again. “I mean, nothing like...like ...” –the word “rape” barely squeaked from Reichmann’s throat. “Just a number of unwelcome advances. I have asked him to stop—even warned him that I would report it to you. He apologized, I thought it was over. But he has not stopped.”

“I see.” If ever there were a situation Boddy never expected to face, this was it. Even the mutiny paled by comparison, because at least that was something he could understand. At least the mutineers had compiled a list of legitimate reasons and had, at least at first, tried to go through channels. But this...had anything like this ever happened during a space mission before? Astronauts were always presumed to be super stable—no, not presumed. Confirmed. Confirmed by one psychological test after another. Confirmed by intense, rigorous training under the most taxing circumstances. What was that old expression? “The Right Stuff.”

But then, no astronaut before had hurtled close to the speed of light, had his very thoughts translated into reality, had his subconscious demons magnified like something out of a science fiction story. Boddy recalled another old expression, this one from science fiction: “Monsters from the id.”

What was he to do about Felter? He couldn’t lock him up. And ordering him to stop would likely do no more good than Reichmann asking him to stop. Felter was uncontrollable, a wildcard. Worse, he was Boddy’s only ally. Never before in his astronaut career had Boddy had to deal with a man so impossible to control. Felter was a fine astronaut, but he wasn’t a team player. Yes, that was really the issue, and it was a damning condemnation of any astronaut. Had those words been spoken in the Deke’s office before departure, Felter would have been grounded. Yet could Boddy really wish Felter wasn’t here? Samuels’ revelations had rendered the situation more complicated than Boddy liked to deal with. A space crew was supposed to be a model of machine-like efficiency, yet the crew of the Eldorado, whether from the peculiarities of their relativistic flight or their innate character flaws, was behaving more like the undisciplined crew of some old-time sailing ship. In the vastness of the universe, such things were relative. The undisciplined crew of a sailing ship or the supertrained crew of a relativistic starship, humans were humans, with the same genetic code, the same drives, the same psychologies, the same flaws.

“Let me make something perfectly clear,” Boddy said. “You do not have to deal with that crap. You are within your rights to fight that sonofabitch, punch him if you need to. You’ll not be disciplined in any way, that’s a promise. Meantime, I’ll arrange the daily assignments so that the two of you never have to work together alone. And I’ll talk to him if you want me to.”

“Ehm—frankly I would rather you did not. This is humiliating enough without him knowing I am a tattle-tale.”

Boddy laughed. “Don’t worry about that, Reichmann. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll keep this between us. Frankly I’ve had just about enough of Joe Felter. Thank you for reporting this. That kind of bullshit is unacceptable and I don’t give a damn if he’s the second-in-command or not. You don’t have to take it.” At a loss for words, he could do no more than shake his head and puff.

Hand trembling, Reichmann wiped the side of one eye. “Thank you—I feel better having gotten this off of my chest. I assure you I will not take advantage of your understanding.”

“I’d never think you would.”

“Well...thank you. I suppose I had better get back to work.” Head bowed, hands in pockets, Reichmann left the room. Boddy watched him go, embarrassed for him and moved by his courage to report it. He wanted desperately to save Reichmann the trouble of punching Felter. Damn Elmore Skedd for putting Joe Felter on this ship! What have we gotten ourselves into?

Boddy leaned back in his seat, grabbed a glass of water from the desk, and slugged it down. He couldn’t recall whether or not he’d had a glass of water there before, but such simplistic cause-and-effect concerns were becoming irrelevant now. Things were as they were, the past was no longer a constant. He was growing used to that.

He stood, straightened his jumpsuit, and marched out of his cabin and around the curving hull to the control center. As distasteful as the thought was, Boddy knew he had to talk to Felter. He needed an ally, and if Felter was to be that ally, he couldn’t avoid him. After all, he was the commander; what kind of commander hides from a member of his crew? As he entered the control center and spied Felter sitting back in the command chair, feet up on the desk, Boddy had second thoughts. The casual arrogance of the man! But, if Samuels was right, Felter was Boddy’s only true ally.

“Felter,” Boddy said, striding toward him.

Felter, leaning back, hands clasped behind his head, nodded acknowledgement.

“Feet off the desk,” Boddy said.

Felter chuckled, but didn’t move.

“I said, feet off the desk.”

“Where’d everybody go?” Felter asked. “The only person to show up in the control center all day has been Reichmann.”

“It’s been a busy day. Feet off the desk.”

“So what’s been going on? Reichmann was concerned about more attempts at a mutiny, but I think I put him in his place.” Another arrogant chuckle.

“Well, I think Reichmann has some legitimate concerns.” Boddy leaned over and swiped Felter’s feet off the desk. His balance thrown off and his hands locked behind his head, Felter nearly tumbled to the floor. He grabbed the console to his right and stopped himself from falling. “Hey, watch it, asshole!”

“What did you say?” Boddy asked in a low, grave tone.

Felter grinned. “Just kidding, just kidding. So seriously, you think these bozos will make another go of it?”

“I’ve got reason to think so, yes. Move.”

Felter didn’t move.

“Out of my seat, Felter.”

Felter ignored him completely, even stretched out a little more and yawned.