The Burning Bridge | Page 3

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 it, June, if we don't turn about within two months, we'll do better to go on to Rustum. So, voting is out. We could wake a few sleepers, but those already conscious are really as adequate a statistical sample."
Coffin nodded. She spoke for five women on her ship, who stood a year-watch caring for two hundred ninety-five asleep. The one hundred twenty who would not be restimulated for such duty during