The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel by Frank M. Robinson Page B

thought I was good at maneuvering in free fall but he was much better. He twisted gracefully in space, his feet barely brushing thearch, to slow to a halt a few centimeters away from Outside, his outstretched fingers resting lightly on the thick glass. I drifted up beside him and he put a hand on my shoulder. My skin promptly broke out in bumps again.
    “Do you know why we’re here, Sparrow?”
    He didn’t raise his voice but somehow it filled the bridge. I could sense those in the compartment coming to attention—the Captain was talking as much to them as he was to me.
    “Out there are the Deeps, Sparrow. We’re the first ship sent out from Earth to explorethem, we’re the advance party for civilization. We’ve been entrusted with the most important mission given to any group of human beings—to find life forms other than our own. There’s no event in human history as important to the race as the task of this ship.”
    I shivered on cue. He waited a moment before waving a hand that took in all of Outside.
    “It’s vast beyond imagining, Sparrow—a galaxy teeming with billions of stars and millions of planets and hundreds of thousands of civilizations and untold numbers of creatures that crawl or swim or fly or live out their lives in the muck.”
    There was a note of exaltation in his voice, and I stared at him with awe. His head was silhouetted against the vast field of stars, his face backlit by the faint glow from the plotting globe behind us, his mouth open,his eyes glittering in the semidarkness.
    “Do you ever wonder what we’ll discover, Sparrow?” He didn’t look at me, but his hand squeezed my shoulder so hard it hurt. “Most of those civilizations will be friendly. Some of them won’t. Whatever the case, we’ll be the first to take back word that we’re not alone, that the same God that guides our destinies guides theirs as well.”
    He paused for a long moment, lost in the immensity of Outside. Then he ruffled the hair on the back of my head and his voice dropped to a more personal level.
    “Your name will go down in history, Sparrow. So will mine and that of everybody else on board.”
    He had listed me first and I was almost sick with pride and excitement. If he had asked, I would have given my life for him right then and there. Then he turned away from the port and drifted back to the plotting globe and the soft bubble of light that surrounded it. There was a low murmur in the compartment as the crewmen picked up their duties again.
    “We haven’t found life yet, Sparrow, but we very well may on Aquinas II—we’ve detected radio frequencies in the waterhole range.” He fumbled with his pipe and tamped in some tobacco from a small pouch. “I think this time we’ll find it. We’ll need the help of everybody on board then, especially the younger members of Exploration likeyourself . I may even go in with you on the first Lander.”
    “I’d be honored, sir.”
    I had noticed a slight quiver around his mouth when I had spoken before and now I noticed it again.
    “If not on Aquinas II, it will be soon enough,” he murmured as an afterthought. Then he promoted me to friend and confidant with a quick, self-deprecating smile. “A race whose drive systems have attained one-tenth the speed of light could colonize the galaxy in something like ten million years, Sparrow. We could do it ourselves. In the lifetime of the universe, ten million years is hardly a blink.”
    He concentrated on his pipe for several moments and when he started talking again, I wasn’t sure whether it was tohimself or to me.
    “We’re overdue to start running into the colonies of something else.”
    There was an unmistakable note of worry in his voice and I glanced toward the ports, half expecting to see a telltale streamer of light that would indicate another ship close by, one that was alien and dangerous and a threat to the entire human race. I was acutely aware that we were a picket ship probing the unknown,