The Burning Bridge | Page 5

he said. "They were ready enough to
let us go, aye. But they may regret it now--not because we could ever
be any active threat, but because we will be a subversive example, up
there in Earth's sky. Or just because we will be. Mind ye, I know not
for sairtain; but 'tis possible they decided we are safer dead, and this is
to trick us back. 'Twould be characteristic dictatorship behavior."
"Of all the fantastic--" gasped an indignant female voice.
Teresa broke in: "Not as wild as you might think, dear. I have read a
little history, and I don't mean that censored pap which passes for it
nowadays. But there's another possibility, which I think is just as
alarming. That message may be perfectly honest and sincere. But will it
still be true when we get back? Remember how long that will take!
And even if we could return overnight, to an Earth which welcomed us
home, what guarantee would there be that our children, or our
grandchildren, won't suffer the same troubles as us, without the same
chance to break free?"
"Ye vote, then, to carry on?" asked Lochaber.
Pride answered: "Of course."
"Good lass. I, too."

Kivi raised his hand. Coffin recognized him, and the spaceman said: "I
am not sure the crew ought not to have a voice in this also."
"What?" De Smet grew red. He gobbled for a moment before he could
get out: "Do you seriously think you could elect us to settle on that
annex of hell--and then come home to Earth yourselves?"
"As a matter of fact," said Kivi, smiling, "I suspect the crew would
prefer to return at once. I know I would. Seven years may make a
crucial difference."
"If a colony is planted, though," said Coffin, "it might provide the very
inspiration which space travel needs to survive."
"Hm-m-m. Perhaps. I shall have to think about that."
"I hope you realize," said the very young man with ornate sarcasm,
"that every second we sit here arguing takes us one hundred fifty
thousand kilometers farther from home."
"Dinna fash yourself," said Lochaber. "Whatever we do, that girl of
yours will be an auld carline before you reach Earth."
De Smet was still choking at Kivi: "You lousy little ferryman, if you
think you can make pawns of us--"
And Kivi stretched his lips in anger and growled, "If you do not watch
your language, you clodhugger, I will come over there and stuff you
down your own throat."
"Order!" yelled Coffin. "Order!"
Teresa echoed him: "Please ... for all our lives' sake ... don't you know
where we are? You've got a few centimeters of wall between you and
zero! Please, whatever we do, we can't fight or we'll never see any
planet again!"
But she did not say it weeping, or as a beggary. It was almost a
mother's voice--strange, in an unmarried woman--and it quieted the

male snarling more than Coffin's shouts.
The fleet captain said finally: "That will do. You're all too worked up to
think. Debate is adjourned sixteen hours. Discuss the problem with
your shipmates, get some sleep, and report the consensus at the next
meeting."
"Sixteen hours?" yelped someone. "Do you know how much return
time that adds?"
"You heard me," said Coffin. "Anybody who wants to argue may do so
from the brig. Dismissed!"
He snapped off the switch.
Kivi, temper eased, gave him a slow confidential grin. "That
heavy-father act works nearly every time, no?"
Coffin pushed from the table. "I'm going out," he said. His voice
sounded harsh to him, a stranger's. "Carry on."
He had never felt so alone before, not even the night his father died. O
God, who spake unto Moses in the wilderness, reveal now thy will. But
God was silent, and Coffin turned blindly to the only other help he
could think of.
* * * * *
Space armored, he paused a moment in the air lock before continuing.
He had been an astronaut for twenty-five years--for a century if you
added time in the vats--but he could still not look upon naked creation
without fear.
An infinite blackness flashed: stars beyond stars, to the bright
ghost-road of the Milky Way and on out to other galaxies and flocks of
galaxies, until the light which a telescope might now register had been
born before the Earth. Looking from his air-lock cave, past the radio
web and the other ships, Coffin felt himself drown in enormousness,

coldness, and total silence--though he knew that this vacuum burned
and roared with man-destroying energies, roiled like currents of gas and
dust more massive than planets and travailed with the birth of new
suns--and he said to himself the most dreadful of names, I am that I am,
and sweat formed