Free Starfarers by Poul Anderson Page A

reached the common room. As yet it was plain, monotone, like most of the interior. Decoration would help occupy the time of voyage. Already it reached spacious, comfortably furnished, equipped for games, recorded entertainment, or live performances. Interference projectors could block sound from those who might want to sit undisturbed. It offered a change from their private cabins.
    At this hour it was generally deserted. People were more actively engaged. As Yu entered she saw Ajit Nathu Sundaram in an armchair.
    He rose and bowed. She returned the courtesy. He was a small man on the verge of middle age, fine-featured, chocolate-colored, the black hair beginning to frost. As usual, he wore merely pajamas and sandals. “Good afternoon, Engineer Yu,” he greeted. His voice was rather high, its English devoid of any regional flavor.
    “Yes, it is afternoon by the clock, is it not?” she responded more or less automatically. “Likewise to you, sir. You look happy.”
    “I have no reason not to be.” He regarded her. She had not hidden every sign of distress. “A few of our friends are less fortunate.”
    She grabbed after conversation. “What were you doing, if I may ask?”
    “Thinking. Not very productively, I fear.”
    She in her turn gazed long at him. “Can anything shake you?” she murmured.
    “Too many things. They should not, true.” He smiled. “Since you are here, apparently at loose ends, would you care for a game of chess?”
    “I—I suspect you notice more than you pretend.”
    “Not really. I am a theorist. Whatever expertise I may have is abstract, in the underlying structure and logic of language,” said humankind’s most famous linguist and semantician. “But perhaps I can put some blood and fire into my chessmen.”
    “Thank you,” she said low. “A game is exactly what I would like.”
    At 1930 hours the crew came to the wardroom from wherever they had been in the wheel. Selim ibn Ali Zeyd encountered Hanny Dayan near the entrance.
    He halted to look her up and down.
“Quelle surprise délicieuse,”
he greeted, politely but with unmistakable appreciation.
    She stopped, too. Her lips quirked upward. A deep blue gown, full-length and low-cut, hugged her figure. The Egyptian pendant was colorful above her breasts and a silver fillet held the red hair. “Thank you,” she said.
    “When the captain requested that henceforward we dress for dinner, I did not expect anything so splendid.”
    “We knew he would.”
    This was to be after acceleration ended, weight became purely centrifugal, and the travelers had moved from the cramped gimballed decks. This gathering would celebrate the completion of settlement in their proper quarters.
    “So I brought a few extra clothes along,” Dayan finished.
    “Greatly to the gain of the gentlemen among us,” Zeyd told her.
    She gave him a glance as frank as his own. “You are quite elegant yourself.”
    The biochemist stood slim and dark, hawk-faced, with sleek black hair and closely trimmed mustache, in well-tailored whites. “How kind of you,” he answered. “Also to wear that ornament. I am an Egyptian, you may recall.”
    “Not yet mummified.”
    “You seem in a merry mood.”
    She grew briefly thoughtful. “I’ve … put regrets behind me, as best I could. Let’s move onward.”
    “An attitude more than sensible. It confers radiance.”
    Wariness edged her tone. “Thank you, Dr. Zeyd.”
    “Since we are to play at formality,” he said, his genialityundiminished, “may I?” He offered her his arm. She smiled back at him and took it. They went into the wardroom and sat down together.
    Savory smells mingled. The nanotechnics of the adjacent galley could provide everybody with his or her choice from the menus of the world. Tonight it was to be a surprise, but individual preferences, religious injunctions, and the like were in the database. Napery rested snowy beneath a gleam of tableware. A servitor rolled about, its arms deftly