Free Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster Page B

weigh a man down with his own insignificance. Pinback and Boiler couldn't stand it for even a little while.
    Even a little while was too long, and too long was—
    Stop that, Doolittle. That's not healthy.
    It was different back on Earth. He could remember liking it then. The universe had seemed a friendly place those nights, a magnificient tapestry of suns and nebulae woven solely as a proper background for the blue-white jewel of Earth as seen from the moon.
    But Earth wasn't over his shoulder here. In their present position it was a distant pinprick of light which only the ship's computer could identify.
    Oh, and Talby, of course. He hid his smile. Just like he claimed to be able to identify suns by sight, the astronomer persisted in claiming he could pick Sol out of the sky. That was impossible, considering all the course changes they had made in the lost, gone years.
    But if asked, Talby would unhesitatingly point to some point in the sky and say, "Sol? There it is. But why do you want to know? It's not a very important star?" And he would return to his solemn study of the surrounding heavens.
    Doolittle didn't really know why being up in the dome for a while bothered him. It shouldn't have. That was one thing he didn't have to lie about—he had shown no symptoms of space fear. Fear of the great open spaces between the stars.
    No, the vastnesses of the galaxy supposedly held no terrors for him. But then, the psychologists who had told him that hadn't spent years floating away from sight of Earth in a tiny metal triangle, years without even a glimpse of their own sun. A journey like this brought home to a man something about space no psychometrician could ever approximate.
    Not that it was complicated. No. Space was big, man was small, and you couldn't dwell on that very long or the bigness would assume its proper proportions and come down on the mind and smash it. But Talby, he reflected, seemed to have licked that problem. He was going to turn some theories around when he got back home, if they could ever pry him out of his precious dome. Talby thrived on the emptiness.
    Doolittle hated him for it.
    Talby had removed his headset and was ripping the protective foil off his breakfast. Wadding up the thin metal into a ball, he tossed it with casual unconcern down the open hatchway. Doolittle followed its path until it had vanished from sight, then he turned his gaze back on the astronomer, who was starting to suck on a tube of concentrated eggs.
    "You know, Talby, you really ought to come down and eat your meals with the rest of us. Or at least come down to sleep. You spend too much time up here."
    At least a thousand times now he had repeated similar statements of identical content to the astronomer. And for the thousandth time Talby, as unperturbed as ever, came back with the same answer—after swallowing a mouthful of food.
    "Why? I like it up here. I don't bother any of you, do I? You should be glad of the extra privacy."
    "We've got plenty of privacy, Talby. We've got a whole ship that's almost empty now in which to hide from each other." He paused, then went on in a different vein. "You used to come down and eat with the rest of us. Doesn't it get lonely being up here so much? I mean, privacy is one thing, Talby, but . . ."
    He trailed off as the astronomer finished his eggs. Finished them quickly, Doolittle thought. In a hurry to get the awkward refueling of his body out of the way. That wasn't natural. Mealtime was one of their few remaining ties to Earthly habits. Talby opened a tube of bread substitute.
    "I don't like going below since Commander Powell died," he said. "I feel too enclosed down there."
    "Yeah," muttered Doolittle helplessly. What could he say to that? "You should spend more time below, though. You know, see more of the ship."
    "Me?" Talby answered, hearing him and yet not hearing him. "What do I want to look at the ship for? I know what the ship looks like. That's not why I came on this mission,