Romantic Ideals
Jeffery D. Kooistra

Reality doesn’t always live up to ideals—but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth having

In all the Universe of a hundred billion times a hundred billion stars, there was but one which shone as a sun upon the Human race.
Until recently, that is.
Chad Merrimack was second mate aboard the spaceship Frisian Sea, one of eight System Patrol cruisers equipped with the Dykstra-Hague hyperdrive. He was staring out at the stars, a common thing for him to do while the ship was sublight, taking her bearings. Soon she would return to hyperspace, and he wanted to watch as the stars did their crazy, rainbow-dazzle dance during the moments of transition.
For him, in all the history of the Universe, this was the greatest time to be alive. Chad had always been a fervent student of romantic ages—the age of sail, the age of steam, the early age of flight. He was living now in such an age—the age of starships.
Chad gazed out the viewport, noticing again the balanced beauty of the twin drive nacelles, engines harnessing incredible energies, though just barely. Engines that could take a fragile construction of Man and hurl it from star to star, port to port, from shore to galactic shore.
His wife owned those engines.
Chad looked down, to the bulge in the lower hull that lay between the roots of the two booms that supported the drive. Debra Anne had loved space even more than he, had fought and scraped and worked her tail off to be the best hypermotor engineer the Academy had ever seen. Right now she was down there, inside that bulge, discussing engineering details and budgets with the captain and the exec. She’d be trying to get what was best for her babies, he was sure.
He wondered if she’d told the captain yet about the other baby she had on the way.
He smiled as he looked at his watch. Ten more minutes to hyperdrive. The sightings would be finished by now. He felt a gentle tremor—the thrusters delicately adjusting the Frisian Sea’s momentum vector, so critical for making the ship emerge later in the proper space-time position. Soon would come the low throbbing, rapidly building to a soft booming of muffled kettledrums, and the sky would twist, the stars jump, their light prisming, and the ship would suddenly shake itself into a groove in the hyperrealm, the kettledrums replaced by a dull, continuous pounding.
He loved it, reveled in the sheer romance of ships that plied the lonely seas between the planetary islands.
One minute to go. Debbie would still be in her meeting. Captain Clarke was a solid commander, but he’d first been commissioned in pre-starflight days, and was sometimes slow on the technical uptake.
Chad watched and waited as the seconds ticked away, anticipating the taste of the sublime he always felt when the engines did their work.
The explosion came as a complete surprise.
Like a flare coming to life, the explosion dazzled him, and ripped away decking from the port engine boom, down near the root. The ship lurched, the jerk knocking him momentarily off his feet. As he stood he noticed the ship’s gravity had fallen to half standard, which meant they were now on emergency standby. Outside he saw fire slicing up the port boom, as if someone with a giant acetylene torch were cutting open the hull from the inside.
Abruptly the fire went out.
“Disaster crew to engineering. Disaster crew to engineering,” came over the PA. “Dr. Skorin, Mr. Merrimack, report to engineering immediately.” As if he wasn’t going to go without an order.
The disaster crew had arrived before he did, were humming and bustling through the engineering decks, racing across catwalks, disappearing into access tubes. Normally opened hatches were solidly shut, red flashing indicators pulsed everywhere.
Dr. Skorin was with Debbie. Chad found them in a corner.
There was really only one vision of his wife that came to mind whenever he thought of her, a memory from a time shortly after they’d met. Skiing in the Rockies, Debbie had proved to be far better than Chad. She loved the hard routes, and would never pass up the chance to take a jump. One time she hit a ramp crooked, was airborne and fighting to hold her line. She was silhouetted against the cobalt sky, her long blonde hair whipping wildly. And as Chad watched her face, while she was in combat against nature and gravity itself, he saw no fear, no terror, nor even worry, but only the most exquisite, pure white delight.
He didn’t see it now.
Debbie was sitting up against the bulkhead, black streaks occluding her face, singes and sweat in her long hair, which had come undone from the severe professional bun of an on-duty engineer. Dr. Skorin was giving her a shot.
“Honey, are you all right? What happened?”
“Chad. I’ll be—” she started, but it disintegrated into coughing.
“She’s going to be fine,” Dr. Skorin said. “She’s a bit roughed up, has a couple of bruised ribs, but she’ll be as good as new.”
“And...?” Chad asked.
‘Yes, the baby should be fine, too. She’s only a month along. There’s no evidence of internal damage.”
“Where’s the captain?”
“He didn’t make it,” Debbie said, able to speak now. “I was showing Clarke and the exec where Kelly in physics wanted to put some monitors on the port energy conduit. As the energy flux climbed for transition, the captain noticed a rupture...”
She coughed again, and continued. “The old bird saw the trouble before I did. He fairly threw me through the hatch just before it blew. The pressure dropped and the hatch slammed shut.
“I owe the captain my life, Chad. I should be dead now.”
Chad put his arms around her. Dr. Skorin left to attend to other casualties. “No one should be dead now,” he whispered.
After a while Chad noticed that the bustling had settled. He was still tending to Debbie, gently stroking her face when a shadow fell over him.
“Commander Merrimack?” It was Midshipman Akiyama.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Uh...what do you want us to do now, sir?”
Chad looked up. “Why...” he began, only to have the facts of the situation sink in.
“The captain is dead, sir. So is the first. It’s your command now, sir.”
Debbie moved to pick herself up off the floor. Chad helped her to her feet. “Go be captain, Chad,” she said. “I’ll be all right. And I have work to do.” She looked around her engine room and shook her head. “A lot of work.”

“Dr. Skorin, would you fill us in on the casualty list?” Chad said, physically but not emotionally comfortable in the captain’s seat at the conference table. The senior staff was present, his staff now. Debbie was seated to his right. Though cleaned up, the explosion having taken place hours ago, Chad could see the outline of the rib support underneath her uniform. Navigator Rashid was present, technically his first officer, as was Kelly representing the scientist complement, and the doctor.
Skorin said, “Four dead, including the captain and the exec. Five others are what I call the walking wounded, including Chief Merrimack.” He gestured toward Debbie. “That leaves three others in sick bay: Carver, Genali, and Johnson.”
“And their conditions?”
“They’ve had severe radiation exposure, as well as all suffering from more prosaic internal injuries. The long and the short of it is that I can keep them alive for another week, but if we don’t get them to a real hospital at a colony system they’re all going to die.”
“I see. Mr. Rashid, your report please.”
“We’re just over a third of a light-year from Delta Pavonis. We can be there in five days from the moment we get the drive fixed.”
“But how long will it take us to reach Purgatory from the Hague Limit?” Chad asked. When in hyperdrive a starship couldn’t approach a star any closer than its Hague Limit, a distance typically measured in the tens of astronomical units. The laws of hyperphysics would forever forbid faster-than-light travel within that radius.
“It doesn’t matter,” Skorin said. “The Delta Pavonis system has a large mining facility in the local Kuiper Belt. It’s well beyond the system’s Hague Limit. We can come out of hyperdrive practically on top of it.”
“Good. Well, that leaves your report...” he was about to say “hon,” but caught himself. “Chief Merrimack. What shape is the drive in?”
“It’s a mess, but we should be able to fix it. I’d like more time though. But if we’re going to save those three in sick bay, I guess I’ve got less than two days.”
“What exactly happened, Debbie?”
“A field flux guide went bad. It was only a matter of time before something happened, but it was cracked in an unusual place—our last inspection just didn’t catch it. Anyway, when the energy stream increased for transition, the field failed at the point of the bad guide and the conduit started to peel apart like an opening zipper.
“The port drive unit is still intact—didn’t really suffer any damage at all. But it’s unpowered until we get the energy conduit fixed. Right now we’re modifying a mobile remote unit to make the repairs.”
“Why the modifications?” Chad asked.
“It’s hot in there—really high radiation levels. When a stream of meta-stable virtual particles break confinement they turn into the whole subatomic particle zoo. Even with the modifications I don’t know how long the remote will hold up—its circuits will be fried by the time it’s done, though.”
“Could we send a man, uh, someone in wearing a rad suit?”
Debbie looked at him, giving him a sad smile, like she was reading his mind. “A person could work in there for a very short time. But I don’t know if he’d be able to walk out.”
“Wait a minute,” Skorin interrupted. “Why do we need the port engine anyway? Can’t we get back with one?”
It was Kelly who set the doctor straight. “The Frisian Sea doesn’t have two engines, Doctor. It’s a common mistake. The two nacelles each hold one element of a single drive—they’re both needed to make the ship enter hyperspace.”
“He’s right,” Debbie said. “If we don’t get the port unit on line, we aren’t going anywhere.”
“OK then, everyone. We have work to do. Mr. Rashid, line our vector up to bring us as close to that Delta Pavonis mining colony as possible. Dr. Skorin, see if there’s any way you can think of to keep those men alive longer than a week. Chief Merrimack—”
Debbie looked at him and saluted, eyes twinkling.
“Very good, Chief. Kelly, see what your people can do to help out in engineering.”

There had been eighty men and women in the crew of the Frisian Sea, but now four were lost, and three others probably would be. And the ship was stuck a large fraction of a light-year away from the nearest colony, with a broken hyperdrive and an inexperienced officer in charge.
Chad had always known in his head what the problems of command would be, what a nightmare the duties could become, but now he was beginning to feel them in his heart, in his bones, in the soreness of his neck muscles as his body refused to ignore his stress, even though he was trying to.
He and Debbie had often made what they’d thought were harmless jokes about Captain Clarke, his old-fashioned ways, how silly it was to have someone from pre-starflight days be the commander of a starship. But now Chad knew why experience was important, what an edge it had given the captain, an edge that Chad didn’t have. And Clarke had saved Debbie’s life. Would I have been able to see the danger? Chad wondered. Would my response have been as swift? And selfless, if it had been someone else’s wife?
Upon entering the sick bay, Dr. Skorin led him to the beds where the three men lay. They were asleep, and from the looks of their injuries, that was certainly a blessing, one bestowed upon them by the doctor.
“You see, Chad,” Skorin said. “We just don’t have the facilities aboard to take care of this much radiation trauma. Too many different organs have to be stimulated to regenerate. These guys are looking at three months in a hospital, but only if we can get them to a hospital.”
“Debbie’s working on it.” Dammit! Why did it have to be like this? If the three had just died, then Debbie could have weeks to effect repairs. If they were healthier, she’d still have more time. But their lives hung in the balance, demanding the best efforts the rest of the crew could give to save them.
What had he been thinking about just—he looked at his watch—ten hours ago? The romance of star flight. How romantic to ply the sea between stars. How romantic to risk your life riding a bomb to touch the stars.
But now there were three men near death in sick bay. Three men that were now his responsibility. And seventy-two others, too.
It didn’t seem so romantic after all.
“Is there anything you can do to give us more time?”
Skorin shrugged. “No. When I told you a week was the max, that’s what I meant. If we get moving now, we’ve got a good chance that they’ll all make it. Otherwise, no.”
Chad left the sick bay, but the burdens of command went with him.
Half-way down the corridor to the control room he was intercepted by Midshipman Akiyama with a report to sign for the disaster crew. Once inside, the bridge crew required an order to allow them to violate regulations and commit the ship to that minimum distance breakout point. Upon taking his seat in the captain’s chair he was immediately called upon to order Kelly to relinquish some lab equipment that Debbie needed to cannibalize for her repairs. He’d had to get loud on the intercom to do that. He knew how it looked—like he was playing favorites.
Having a loved one as a subordinate brought along a host of new worries he hadn’t thought about.
“Course plotted and laid in, Captain,” Rashid said. “Now all we need are some legs to take us along it.”
Later, Chad called Debbie from their cabin.
“Husband to wife, how are the repairs going? Are we going to get done in time to save the men?”
“My dear, I’m not going to tell you anything different than I’d have told Captain Clarke. We have the remote unit modified and it’s making repairs now. But it’s still touch and go. It’s not just a race to finish in thirty-six hours to save the men. It’s a race to finish before the remote gives out. I’m getting all the heavy work done now. Assuming it lasts through that, I’ll have to operate it myself to do the delicate circuitry connections.”
“Why you?”
“Sweetie, I had to redesign some things, take a few shortcuts, to give us a chance to finish this in time at all. I’m the only one that knows how.” He knew she was smiling.
“You’re so good. Want to sleep with the captain tonight?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”

Finally together, worn and frazzled, naked in the dark. Despite the trials of the day, they made love vigorously, desperately, as if there were no tomorrow. Chad was surprised by Debbie’s appetite, like she couldn’t get enough of him, her legs wrapped around him so tight he doubted if he could get away. But of course he didn’t want to.
Later, thoroughly spent, they lay together spoon fashion. Chad thought Debbie was sleeping, heard the soft, rhythmic sighing of her breath. He loved this woman, had loved her from the start.
They’d met at the Academy. She was pursuing engineering and hyper-physics studies, and he was traveling the fast track to a command position. Their one overlapping course had been English Literature, and it was there that they discovered a shared love for Shakespeare and Blake. And Kipling—you couldn’t forget Kipling. On their first date they’d sung from Barrack-Room Ballads until they were both hoarse.
He’d told her he’d never met anyone like her. She’d told him that nobody had ever met anyone like him. They’d married after six months, taking their vows before God and family and friends...for richer, for poorer...in sickness and in health...until death...
Chad joined his wife in slumber.
Chad awoke to the beeping of the intercom. He discovered that Debbie was sleeping with her head on his chest and her arms around him, and it took a few moments to disentangle himself and answer the comm.
“Merrimack here. What is it?”
“Uh, Captain, this is Engineer’s Mate Gunderson, sir. Um, is Chief Merrimack there? I need to talk to her.”
“I see. She’s sleeping, Mr. Gunderson. I assume this is urgent?”
“It can’t wait, sir. Sorry.”
“I’ll take it,” Debbie said, awakened by the talk. “What is it, Lars?”
“The remote gave up the ghost, Chief. The heavy work is done, but it’s frozen up now.”
“Dammit! All right. I’ll be right down,” Debbie said. She signed off.
Chad watched her dress in the dim light. He could feel worry trying to break in. He fought it.
She saw his face. “Don’t worry about me, Chad. I’ll probably be able to get it working again. There are a few tricks left I can try.”
“This is strange,” Chad said. “I know I could order you to stay. I even want to.”
“But you won’t,” Debbie said, finishing with the last clasp.
“Because I’m captain now?”
She came to him, kissing him gently on the cheek. “Because you’re you, Chad,” she said, and was gone.
He tried to make himself sleep after she left. He was captain after all, and this was an emergency, and it wouldn’t do to be fatigued at some critical moment. But he couldn’t. The rat of worry was again gnawing at him, forcing his mind to play out scenario after scenario of what could go wrong, and what he’d have to do then, and what else could go wrong after that.
He caught up with Debbie at 600 hours. She was tucked in at the controls of the remote, her brow furrowed in concentration, her eyes locked into the optic field. He came up beside her, inadvertently startling her.
“Stop scaring people!” she snapped.
“Sorry, Debbie.”
They noticed the stares the others in the control room were giving them.
“Oops. Sorry, Captain. You just surprised me.” She gave him a tired smile, then turned back to her work.
“You got it working?”
“Barely. I’m spending half my time fixing the drive and the other half keeping the remote from giving out again. But I’m 80 percent done. You can tell Skorin we should be able to go in another couple of hours.”
“Good work, Chief,” Chad said. Then he leaned down and whispered, “And I love you, too.” He left engineering and went up to the bridge.
Disaster struck again, but quietly this time, with just the soft chiming of the intercom. “Merrimack here,” he answered.
“Chad, you’d better get down here,” Debbie said.
“Did something else go wrong?”
“Yes, the remote gave out again. But we have an idea for what to do about that. I need you to come down here to discuss it.”
A door unlocked and dread came out as he headed back for the engineering deck. So the remote had failed again. That meant the repairs couldn’t be finished in time, and the three in sick bay would die. But Debbie and her crew had worked up a plan, but they needed to talk to him in person about it. Check that—Debbie needed to talk to him.
When he arrived, he was all business. “How far away from being finished were we when the remote quit?” he asked of the semicircle of engineers.
Debbie emerged from the ranks and said, “Twenty-five, thirty minutes. But Chad, I need to talk to you.”
Chad just stared at her, but she didn’t wilt. Finally, he said, “If it’s about...someone...going in to finish the job in person, you can forget it. I won’t order a man to do it.”
“You have a volunteer,” Debbie said. “I just happen to be the only person who can make the repairs anyway.”
“That’s enough, Deb! You’re not going to go in there. The radiation levels will kill you.”
“Not necessarily.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“If I don’t do it those three men will die.”
“They’ll probably die anyway!”
“No, they won’t.” It was Dr. Skorin, just entering engineering.
“Who invited you here?” Chad demanded.
“I asked him to come,” Debbie said. “We need his input.”
“Like hell I do—”
“Chad!” It was Debbie’s turn to be angry. “You’re in command. Act like it!”
That brought him up short. “OK,” he said. He let out a deep sigh. “OK. Let’s get all the cards on the table, though. Chief Merrimack, what do you have in mind?”
“We almost finished the repairs with the remote. If I go in wearing a rad suit, I should be able to finish the repairs before—”
“Before the radiation kills you?” Chad asked.
“Incapacitates,” Skorin said. “The chief called me first, Captain. If she can meet her timetable, we can get her out and she shouldn’t be any worse off than the men in sick bay. I think.”
“What are the men’s chances, Doctor?”
“I can’t lie to you, Chad. If we get the engines back on line in the next few hours, they all have a decent chance to live. I almost wish I could tell you otherwise. I know what kind of decision this is for you.”
Chad turned back to his wife. “And you’re convinced the drive can be fixed with only another half hour of work?”
“As fixed as we’re ever going to make it.”
“Fine,” Chad said. “Then these are my orders. I’ll go in and make the remaining repairs.”
No one spoke. Debbie and Dr. Skorin just stared at him. The others in engineering were silent, too, and waiting. Then Debbie went to a storage locker and pulled out a device, returned to her husband and handed it to him.
“Chad, what is this?” she asked.
He turned it over in his hand, felt the knobs, read the lettering by the dials, and finally admitted he didn’t know.
“So you don’t know what it is,” Debbie said. “If I told you it was broken, how long do you think it would take you to fix it?”
“With you telling me what to do? Not that much longer than it would take you, I’d bet.”
“Oh, Chad, my heroic fool! You don’t even know what this device is. It’s a flux leak tracer, a tool. It would take me hours to teach you how to use it, let alone how to fix it. And it’s fairly simple.”
“But—”
“No, Chad. There’s simply no way you can do the repairs. Not in the time we have left.”
In anger, Chad threw the tool against the bulkhead. “Dammit! What am I supposed to do? Debbie...I can’t let you go in there.”
“It isn’t your decision any more, Chad,” Dr. Skorin said, suddenly very stern. “I don’t like this anymore than you do, but I’m a doctor and I’ve got three patients to think about. Your wife has volunteered. She’s the only one who can do this job. And the stakes certainly justify the risk. Remember the regulations—Deb meets all the criteria for this kind of hazardous duty.”
Chad pulled himself together. Sighed. “I do know the regulations.” He turned to his wife. “And if I order the chief engineer not to do it, Dr. Skorin and Mr. Rashid can relieve me of command, and you’ll go anyway.” Debbie nodded, though sadly.
“Fine. But I want a few moments alone with my wife. Regulations don’t forbid me from trying to talk my wife out of something.”

They were back in their cabin. He was sitting on the bed. Debbie was naked with her back to him, reaching into the closet for her personal rad suit. Since she was chief engineer, she had her own tailored suit. Chad hadn’t objected to her putting it on while he talked to her about changing her mind. After all, she’d pointed out, if he lost the argument it would save time.
He took in the smooth curves, the athletic muscles and sinews, allowing his eyes to flow from her neck down to her feet. He noticed the bruises over the ribs. He paused on her legs, remembering them from only hours before.
Her nudity was only making this tougher.
“But Deb, what if you die? I know Skorin says you won’t be any worse off than the other three, but they’re not in good shape. And if you don’t get the drive fixed, then all four of you have had it.”
She had the suit in hand now, was performing the ritual of checking its integrity. “Chad, have some faith. If I didn’t think that I could finish the repairs, I wouldn’t be doing this. There aren’t any comfortable options here.”
As she turned and bent over to pull on the suit, he glanced at the curve of her belly. Maybe he could see the beginnings of a bulge there; maybe he couldn’t. It didn’t matter. “What about the baby?” he asked.
She stopped, frozen at the words, and when she finally looked at him, there were tears in her eyes. “You think I haven’t thought of that?” she said. She resumed pulling on the suit, not trying to cover up the fact that she was crying.
Chad went to her, put his arms around her, and she clutched at him like a child frightened by the thunder. “Sometimes all of the choices are hard ones,” she whispered.
“I don’t want you to do it,” he said.
She pushed herself far enough away so she could look him in the eyes. “Chad, answer me honestly. If our roles were reversed, and it was your choice to leave me behind and do this, would you?”
For a long time he returned her stare, but he didn’t give her an answer.
“That’s what I thought,” she said.

“Now let me be very clear about this,” Dr. Skorin said. “If you stay in there half an hour, you’re going to come out very sick. But if we make it to Delta Pavonis, then you’ll make it, too. Any longer than that, and there are no guarantees.” Debbie simply nodded.
All that was left was for her to put the helmet on. Unlike a normal space-suit helmet, it was entirely enclosed. Two cameras protruded from the face and connected to the virtual reality type eyepiece inside. But what Debbie would be seeing was genuine reality, and not a game.
She held the helmet in her hands and went to Chad. They paused to look at each other, then she hurriedly gave him a kiss. “You come back to me, you hear?” Chad whispered.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said. “Now you get out of here, my captain. Your place is on the bridge.”
She pulled the helmet over her head, taking a moment to look around and make sure everything was functioning properly. Then she strode purposefully to the hatch and climbed through. One of the engineering crew closed it behind her.
Chad thought it slammed shut with an awfully final sounding clang.

Back on the bridge there was nothing for Chad to do but command.
“Mr. Rashid, stay ready at the helm. I want us in hyperspace the second the chief gives the OK. Three men’s lives depend on it.” And Debbie’s too, he thought. He’d be racing her to the hospital facilities at the colony also.
The whole process was maddening, frustrating. Everything depended on what Debbie did; it was her life on the line, and there was absolutely nothing Chad could do to help her at this moment, but to just wait. “’They also serve who only stand and wait,’” he thought. He didn’t recall where the quote came from, but it sure as hell didn’t seem very heroic at the moment.
His memory returned to those moments before the explosion, to his anticipation of the transition to hyperdrive, of the romance and glory of star flight. Again he was waiting for a transition to hyperdrive, but the cast was different, in darker hues, and now the stakes were immediate and high.
Tense, agitated, and vaguely nauseated, at this moment Chad, Captain Chad Merrimack, also felt foolish. All those books he’d read and enjoyed, Robinson Crusoe, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Lord of the Rings, and Tunnel in the Sky; he’d thought he was prepared for whatever star travel would throw his way. He knew how the common man hero was supposed to behave.
He’d always felt he’d be able to handle a life and death situation with competence and calm.
If it was his own life at stake.
“Engineering, this is the Captain. What’s the status down there?”
“Akiyama here, sir. At last report the chief said she was doing fine. She thinks she’ll have us back on line on schedule.”
“Good,” Chad said. He wanted to talk to her, hear her voice again, convince himself inside that she was OK, but he steeled himself against it. Debbie had work to do; she didn’t have time to soothe the nerves of an overly-protective husband.
So instead, he called Dr. Skorin. “You have everything in place down there, Doctor? The second she comes out of the chamber, you’ll have her under immediate care?”
“Yes, of course, Chad. I’m not going to let anything happen to her. You just be ready to get us moving when she’s done,” Skorin said. Chad thought the doctor sounded a little bit nervous, too.
“Captain?” It was Akiyama.
“Yes?”
“It’s the chief, sir. She wants to talk to you. And the Doctor, too. I’ll have to patch you in from down here.”
“Do so,” Chad said, hoping it wasn’t more trouble.
“Chad, I have a problem here,” Debbie said.
“What kind of problem?” Chad asked simultaneously with Skorin asking, “how much more time will it take?”
“What? One at a time, please,” Debbie said.
“What’s the problem?” Chad repeated.
“The surge shielding mesh is torn up. There’s one section that I can’t power up from the main channel. At least, not in the time we have.”
“Well, what’s the damn thing for?” Skorin asked. “Is it really necessary?”
“It is,” Chad said, trying not to betray the emotion rising inside him. “The surge shielding is needed for only a few seconds until the power stream is flowing smoothly. But without it, the conduit will rip itself to shreds the instant we send the virtual particle stream into it.”
“We do have one option,” Debbie said. “It’s dangerous, though. I can energize the damaged section with my tool power pack. But obviously, I’ll have to stay with it when we activate the drive.”
“What are the chances of it really working, Debbie? The truth,” Chad said.
“It will work, Chad.”
“Just a minute,” Skorin interrupted. “What kind of radiation flux are we talking about now if you stay in there?”
“Worse than we were planning for, Doctor,” Debbie said. “But I’ll survive. I’m tough.”
“Like hell!” Skorin said. “We’re cutting awfully close to the margin as it is—”
“And getting closer every minute we waste arguing about it!” Debbie snapped. Then: “It’s your decision, Chad. You’re the captain.”
The most desperate, romantic, and heroic moments are also the loneliest. “Do what you have to do, Deb.”
And now he was waiting again, waiting for the word from his chief engineer (it helped if he thought about her that way) that she was ready. They’d have to act fast—the power pack on the tool unit wouldn’t keep the surge shielding energized for long. Chad thought about the raw energy that would course up the conduit, the fury of tamed hellfire that would roil and churn so close, ever so close to his wife. There would only be seconds in which to throw the ship into hyperdrive—
“Now, Chad!”
“Now, Mr. Rashid!” Get us the hell out of here!

Purgatory was a planet larger than Earth by two thousand kilometers in radius, and .12 gees in gravity. It had two polar oceans and one big, volcanic continent that wrapped three-quarters of the way around, like a wide belt cinched on the equator. On any given day dozens of volcanoes might be erupting within the interior of the land mass. The oceans would slosh between the land and the huge ice caps clamped onto the poles.
Along the coasts was where the people lived, primarily in dwellings fabricated from the local rock, surrounded by the cactuslike native flora which was Purgatory’s predominant native life form.
There wasn’t much to recommend Purgatory to the casual star traveler, except that it was an oxygen/nitrogen world where one could walk outside at dusk without a suit and enjoy the sunsets.
And, oh, what sunsets.
The constant volcanic dust gave Purgatory the most spectacular, beautiful, awe inspiring and romantic sunsets in all of explored space. Every evening, fire and rainbows hung like a tapestry in the sky, while the sun set the wave crests afire.
The shores of Purgatory were a land caught between heaven and hell.
This would be a great place to share with someone you love, Chad thought as he walked along that shore.
The Frisian Sea had arrived at Purgatory three days before, after spending two weeks out in the Kuiper Belt waiting for the men to get well enough to make the trip to the better hospital facilities on the planet. Chad had given the crew shore leave as his last order as captain, and the ship was awaiting her new skipper in orbit.
Debbie hadn’t made it.
It was Chad who had donned the rad suit to go in and bring her body out. He didn’t know if she’d lied to him or if she’d just misjudged the radiation levels she’d be subject to when the ship went into drive, but she died very shortly after the transition. He’d found her curled up, looking almost comfortable.
A little note had been fastened to her suit. She must have taken it with her when she entered the chamber, attached it once inside so that if she didn’t make it...
The words were from a Kipling poem: If you can fill the unforgiving minute...That was all. But with that she’d said all that needed saying. “Good-bye,” “I’m sorry,” “I love you,” and “I’ll wait for you on the other side,” all in one.
Chad stood staring out at the roiling waves. He picked up one of the primitive shells scattered about the shore, and tossed it halfheartedly into the surf. He put his hands in his pockets and gazed at the horizon as the wind tousled his hair.
Dr. Skorin found him that way a short time later.
“Hello, Chad,” he greeted him.
“Hello, Doctor.”
“So what’s next?”
“Captain Mulder should arrive in a few weeks to take command of the Frisian Sea. I’ve been placed on leave until I get back to Earth. I won’t be going back in our ship.”
The two watched the waves in silence then, until Dr. Skorin said, “I didn’t know it would turn out this way, Chad. If I’d thought she had anything other than an excellent chance to survive, I never would have let her go. I’m sorry.”
Chad sighed, a deep, heavy sigh. Still with his eyes fixed on the water, he said, “She didn’t want you to know, Doctor. She didn’t want either of us to know.”
“But why? That’s what I don’t get. No one was asking her to give up her life. Volunteering for fatally risky duty isn’t even allowed unless there’s a war on.”
“She was a romantic, Doctor. What she did was selfless, honorable, in the finest tradition of what it means to be a good human being—”
“That’s just it. She was a good person—we could use a few more like her around here. But now she’s dead, and your baby’s dead, and you’re out here miserable!”
Chad gave Skorin an ironic smile. “Did you come out here to cheer me up, Doctor?”
Skorin caught himself, briefly shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m just angry, mostly at myself.”
“I was angry, too,” Chad confessed.
“But three men are alive now who would have been dead.”
“It’s not a matter of numbers.” 
“No. But it is a matter of heart. I was angry, sure. But then I thought about what I would have done, and I would have done the same. I loved her because she was a romantic. Like me. Would I have loved her as much if she hadn’t been the sort to sacrifice herself this way?
“Would I have loved her at all?” The sun sank gently into the water, taking its fire with it, until only a bow of orange and red remained.
“If you’re so comfortable with what she did, what are you standing out here for?” Skorin asked.
“Because it hurts, Doctor. It hurts!”