The Burning Bridge | Page 3

cancel this trip, and go straight back, we may not arrive too late. We
may still find a few expeditions to new stars being organized, and get
on their rosters."

Coffin tautened. Again he was unsure why he felt an emotion: now,
anger. "I shall permit no disloyalty to the purpose for which we are
engaged," he clipped.
"Oh, come off it," said Kivi. "Be rational. I don't know your reason for
undertaking this wretched cruise. You had rank enough to turn down
the assignment; no one else did. But you still want to explore as badly
as I. If Earth didn't care about us, they would not have bothered to
invite us back. Let us seize the opportunity while it lasts." He
intercepted a reply by glancing at the wall chrono. "Time for our
conference." He flicked the intership switch.
* * * * *
A panel came to life, dividing into fourteen sections, one for each
accompanying vessel. One or two faces peered from each. The craft
which bore only supplies and sleeping crewmen were represented by
their captains. Those which had colonists also revealed a civilian
spokesman.
Coffin studied every small image in turn. The spacemen he knew, they
all belonged to the Society and even those born long after him had
much in common. There was a necessary minimum discipline of mind
and body, and the underlying dream for which all else had been traded:
new horizons under new suns. Not that spacemen indulged in such
poetics; they had too much work to do.
The colonists were something else. Coffin shared things with
them--predominantly North American background, scientific habit of
thought, distrust of all governments. But few Constitutionalists had any
religion; those who did were Romish, Jewish, Buddhist, or otherwise
alien to him. All were tainted with the self-indulgence of this era: they
had written into their covenant that only physical necessity could
justify moralizing legislation, and that free speech was limited only by
personal libel. Coffin thought sometimes he would be glad to see the
last of them.
"Are you all prepared?" he began. "Very well, let's get down to

business. It's unfortunate the Com officer gossiped so loosely. He
stirred up a hornet's nest." Coffin saw that few understood the idiom.
"He made discontent which threatens this whole project, and which we
must now deal with."
Coenrad de Smet, colonist aboard the Scout, smiled in an irritating way
he had. "You would simply have concealed the fact?" he asked.
"It would have made matters easier," said Coffin stiffly.
"In other words," said de Smet, "you know better what we might want
than we do ourselves. That, sir, is the kind of arrogance we hoped to
escape. No man has the right to suppress any information bearing on
public affairs."
A low voice, with a touch of laughter, said through a hood: "And you
accuse Captain Coffin of preaching!"
The New Englander's eyes were drawn to her. Not that he could see
through the shapeless gown and mask, such as hid all the waking
women; but he had met Teresa Zeleny on Earth. Hearing her now was
somehow like remembering Indian summer on a wooded hilltop, a
century ago.
An involuntary smile quirked his lips. "Thank you," he said. "Do you,
Mr. de Smet, know what the sleeping colonists might want? Have you
any right to decide for them? And yet we can't wake them, even the
adults, to vote. There simply isn't room; if nothing else, the air
regenerators couldn't supply that much oxygen. That's why I felt it best
to tell no one, until we were actually at Rustum. Then those who
wished could return with the fleet, I suppose."
"We could rouse them a few at a time, let them vote, and put them back
to sleep," suggested Teresa Zeleny.
"It would take weeks," said Coffin. "You, of all people, should know
metabolism isn't lightly stopped, or easily restored."

"If you could see my face," she said, again with a chuckle, "I would
grimace amen. I'm so sick of tending inert human flesh that ... well, I'm
glad they're only women and girls, because if I also had to massage and
inject men I'd take a vow of chastity!"
Coffin blushed, cursed himself for blushing, and hoped she couldn't see
it over the telecircuit. He noticed Kivi grin.
* * * * *
Kivi provided the merciful interruption. "Your few-at-a-time proposal
is pointless anyhow," he said. "In the course of those weeks, we would
pass the critical date."
"What's that?" asked a young girl's voice.
"You don't know?" said Coffin, surprised.
"Let it pass for now," broke in Teresa. Once again, as several times
before, Coffin admired her decisiveness. She cut through nonsense with
a man's speed and a woman's practicality. "Take our word for