Lost in the Cosmos

else.
    T HE C APTAIN: But we’re a year into the flight. Your husband is 123 years old, or dead.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: We can’t be sure.
    T HE C APTAIN: But you signed the sexual access form.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: I lied.
    T HE C APTAIN: Don’t you like me?
    D R. J ANE S MITH: Very much.
    T HE C APTAIN: I like you very much. More than the others.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: I know—though you seem to like them well enough.
    T HE C APTAIN: Good God. You’re jealous.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: Yes.
    T HE C APTAIN: This is the first day of our second six-month watch together. Are we going to do crosswords and Great Books again? I love you.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: I know. Marry me.
    T HE C APTAIN: Marry you! Why? How?
    D R. J ANE S MITH: You’re the captain. The captain of a ship can—
    T HE C APTAIN: The captain of a ship cannot marry himself.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: Who says? You stand there, say the words, then move over here, give the response.
    T HE C APTAIN: What words? I don’t have the book.
    D R. J ANE S MITH: I do.
    T HE C APTAIN: Good Lord. What about the others?
    D R. J ANE S MITH: Don’t tell them.
    So they were married. Dr. Jane Smith conceived and delivered herself of a son. She baptized him, not by pouring, sprinkling, or immersion—what with zero gravity—but with a squirt from the drinking tube.
    The names of the first seven children were Krishna, Vishnu, Indira (out of Kimberly), Anna Freud, Oppie, Irene-Curie (out of Tiffany) and John (out of Dr. Jane Smith).
    The “message” from Barnard’s Star turned out to be a false alarm, a non-message. It was no more than an interference effect from the powerful magnetic fields of the two Barnard planets, producing a complex pulsar transmission in the radio frequencies—much like two metronomes set at different speeds. Thus, where a single pulsar would go tick-tick-tick, this “message” went something like tock-tick-tock-tick-tick-tick-tock, a non-message fiendishly close to a message.
    Barnard’s two planets were dead. They were also without oxygen and water and hence not colonizable.
    More ominous than the bad news from Barnard was the bad news from home. Even as the ramjet approached the speed of light, it should have been overtaken by a few messages from earth. But after five years starship time—ninety years earth time—the messages ceased altogether.
    Nevertheless, the crew took comfort. Any number of technical things could have gone wrong. After the disappointment at Barnard, everyone secretly looked forward to the return voyage after the great swing around the star when they should be running into a regular blizzard of outgoing messages from earth.
    But earth was silent. Even after repeated queries: JPL, do you read? Do you read? Respond on any or all of designated frequencies —and even after five years of allowing for responses: silence.
    Everyone knew what had happened. The Richardson survey, from his The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, had proved all too reliable. The only unknown quantity was the magnitude of the final war. Was it an M10—the end of human life on the planet? an M9? an M5?
    The long voyage home was like a dream. Five more children were born. Carl Jung out of Tiffany, Siddhartha and Chomsky out of Kimberly, Sarah and Mary Ann out of Dr. Jane Smith.
    Other than the begetting, the care and feeding of infants, the education of children and teens, the adults were mostly silent—silent, until, as the starship neared earth, there came the inevitable speculation:
    How bad is it? or was it? Even if it were an M10, 90 percent of the Cesium 137 radiation would have decayed after a hundred years. But the nitrogen in the upper atmosphere would have been oxidized, destroying significant amounts of ozone. The resulting solar ultraviolet effect would last for years. Birds would go blind—blind birds can’t find insects and so they die. Blind bees can’t pollinate plants. Would it be an earth swarming with locusts, seas teeming with blind fish? Even if there were survivors, how many would develop skin cancers? All the light-skinned? How would crops and microorganisms be affected?
    But the favorite, the endless, the obsessive speculation of which they never tired:
    Where will you go? What will you do? What about the children?
    There was only one agreement. After eighteen years of living together in a space the size of a 727 fuselage, they were all thoroughly sick of each other and wanted to go their separate ways. With two exceptions.
    T HE C APTAIN: