The World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl

perhaps it will only be for a few months. Or a couple of years at the outside—don’t you think, Pal?” she appealed, turning to his father.
    “I’ll do it as soon as I can,” he promised. “After all, the flight’s got sixteen years to go—I don’t want to wind up that much older than you!”
    Across the room, Werner Stockbridge was whispering in his wife’s ear when he caught sight of Viktor. He detached himself and burrowed through the crowded hall, aiming a friendly slap, or pat, at his son, Billy, on the way. He lowered his head to Viktor’s level and said confidentially, “You’re just the man I’m looking for, Viktor. Do me a favor?”
    “Sure, Mr. Stockbridge,” Viktor said at once, though his tone was doubtful.
    “Take the kids off our hands for a while, will you? I mean, we’re going back in the deep freeze in a little while and—and Marie-Claude and I need a little private time first, if you know what I mean.”
    Viktor flushed and looked away, because he did know. “Okay, Vik?” Stockbridge persisted. Viktor nodded without looking up. “Give us an hour then, all right? Two would be better—say, two hours, and I’ll owe you a favor.”
    Viktor checked ship’s time on the wall clock: 1926 hours. Without very good feelings about it, partly because of the thought of two hours with the Stockbridge kids, mostly because of the thought of what the elder Stockbridges would be doing with those two hours, he led the boys to his own family’s room and turned on the teaching machine. “I’m going to show you where we’re going,” he promised.
    Freddy looked startled. “Heaven? You mean because we’re going to die? Mrs. Mei said—”
    “You’re not going to die, and it doesn’t matter what Mrs. Mei said,” Viktor told them sourly. “I mean I’m going to show you the planets. Look,” he said as the blue-white one flashed on the screen. “That’s where we’re going to live.”
    “I know,” Billy said, bored. “It’s called Newmanhome, but its real name is Enki. It’s just like the Earth.”
    “It isn’t just like the Earth. The days are a little bit shorter, and the year is a lot shorter.”
    “Dummy,” Billy said scornfully. “How can a year be shorter than a year?”
    “It is, though. There are twice as many years there.” He tried to explain, and when he had, more or less, succeeded, they were first appalled, then delighted.
    “Twice as many birthdays!” Billy caroled.
    “Twice as many Christmases!” his brother shouted. “Show us some more planets!”
    But really they weren’t much interested in baked little Nebo, so close to its sun, or the far-out Marduk and Ninih. And when Viktor showed them the glowing coal of Nergal, squat and cherry red, and told them it was a brown dwarf, they rebelled. “It isn’t brown,” Billy pointed out. “It’s red.”
    “It’s called a brown dwarf. That’s its name, because it’s almost a star, but not quite. You see,” he lectured, having listened to his father’s explanations a few nights earlier, “a star has nuclear energy, like a bomb.”
    “What’s a bomb?” Billy asked.
    “Like our ship’s drive, I mean. A planet is just like rock and things. But in between a star and a planet there are these other things. They don’t have nuclear energy. They’re only hot because they’re so big that they’re all squeezed together.”
    “It’s dumb to call them brown when they’re red,” Freddy said, siding with his brother. “Viktor, have you got a crush on our mother?”
    Viktor stopped short, suddenly flushed and angry. “Have I what?” he demanded.
    “Have you got a crush on her?” Freddy insisted. “Mrs. Mei says boys get crushes on older women and you follow Mom around all the time.”
    “Now you’re being really stupid, if you want to know what’s stupid,” Viktor said furiously, gritting his teeth. “Don’t ever say anything like that again.”
    “We won’t if you’ll play treadmill tag with