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

sang them when he showed up for breakfast or when they passed him in the corridors. As we got closer to the Aquinas system, Crow became more preoccupied and troubled. When I was with him, there were long stretches of silence when he seemed about to tell me something, then changed his mind and drew back. One time period after we had seen a training play, he waited until the corridor was deserted, then tugged me into an empty compartment. He closed the shadow screen and pressed his hand over the palm terminal to activate the falsie.
    A moment later, we were standing in a cave with a warm fire at our backs and a night sky blazing with stars beyond the cavern’s mouth. Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted and small animals rustled in the brush. I shivered when a wolf howled in the forest below.
    “I come here when I want to be alone,” Crow said quietly. “I like to look at the stars and think.”
    He sat on the rocky floor of the cave and I sat beside him, shifting my cling-titesslightly and pressing my knees to my chin so my bum was actually in contact with the metal deck. I should have kept silent and given him a chance to talk but for some reason I had started to think about Reduction. I couldn’t shake the image of the black sheet draped over the storage chamber that heldJudah .
    “Where do we go when we die, Crow?”
    It was a child’s question and I felt embarrassed the moment I asked it.
    “Where do we go?” Crow repeated, surprised.“To Reduction, of course.”
    “After that.”
    He shrugged. “Back to the Great Egg, I suppose—it’s where all life eventually goes.”
    Sitting in the darkness next to Crow was the closest I had been to another human being since Pipit had held me after one of my nightmares. For just a moment, I let myself be carried away by my emotions.
    “Do you ever get lonely, Crow?”
    I wasn’t thinking of Crow, of course—I was thinking of myself and Snipe.
    “No, I don’t get lonely,” he said finally. “I suppose some people do. Some people will always be lonely, they were born that way.”
    He didn’t add “poor bastards” but I supposed he was thinking it and I wondered if it included me. He shifted uneasily in the darkness.
    “Sparrow?”
    “What?”
    He hesitated a moment, then changed his mind and said, “Forget it.”
    I should have encouraged Crow to tell me what was bothering him, but perception usually comes with age and I was too young.
    “Do you think we’ll ever meet them?” My mind had drifted once again and I was searching for exhaust trails among the stars.
    “Meet who?”
    “ Tybalt’saliens.”
    Curtly: “No, I don’t think so.”
    “You don’t really believe they’re out there, do you?”
    Crow didn’t answer but stood up and pushed over to the glowing palm terminal. The night sky and the cave faded. “We’ve got a shift coming up, Sparrow.” He didn’t look at me but grabbed a bulkhead ring and kicked out through the shadow screen.
    I finally sensed his disappointment and suddenly wondered what he had wanted to talk about. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
    ****
    For a week, the rumor was that after Aquinas II there would be a major change in the Astron’s course. I hadn’t paid much attention, on the ground that it would affect my life not at all. But one time period, after her early lecture, Ophelia asked me to drop by for a meal, suggesting that I needed help to catch up. I worried about it enough so that when I did drop by, I had no appetite at all. She wasn’t alone and I couldn’t decide at first whether to be relieved or disappointed. My imagination supplied motives for both her original concern for me and the hostility to which it had gradually changed. Crow nodded when I drifted in; he didn’t look very friendly. Loon had been quietly playing his harmonica and now stopped and secured it in his waistcloth. Corin , the chief computerman , was present but seemed so nervous and upset I wondered why he was there. Snipe