Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead, there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it; he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.