“That doesn't make sense! I'd hoped for Chris, or Mei Mei, or Fly — somebody with some computer sense — but I can't believe they sent us out without a single computer technician except me!”
“Obviously,” said Peake, “they decided that with you, they didn't need anyone else.”
Ching gave him an angry, suspicious glare. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not at all,” Peake said. “Why would they need two computer experts on one ship? You'll have it all to yourself.”
Ching protested, “But they always have a backup technician — ” and she sounded almost frightened. Nevertheless, Fontana thought, as Ching moved and settled deeper into the seat, there was a touch of satisfaction, too.
Ching must know she's not really liked; maybe it will give her the kind of confidence she needs, to know she's really indispensable.
“It's not all that bad,” Moira protested, “the Ship's drive is a computer, tied into the main one; and I know how to handle that.”
“And for all your comments about psychology and sociology not being exact sciences,” Fontana added, “I know how to get linguistics analysis from a computer— including yours.”
“Not to mention,” Ravi said, “that navigation and astronomy both demand computer access and skill. I don't think there's any one of us, Ching, who doesn't know how to use a computer. Probably that's why they had only one specialist —”
“But what if there's trouble? If I'm the only one who knows enough about the hardware —”
Peake said, “You'll have to choose one of us and
teach him, or her, how to take the thing apart in case of emergency. We're going to have a lot of time with nothing much to do, once we're out of the Solar System, and before we reach the nearest stars and star-colonies. We'll be navigating our way out of the Solar System, but at standard acceleration that won't take more than a few days —”
“Not that long,” Ching said, and began to touch buttons on the console, but Ravi said, “twelve days, four hours, nine minutes, and a few seconds.”
Ching swung her chair around, incredulous. Fontana thought she looked angry. “What do you —”
Peake said, “I'd forgotten. You're the one they call the human computer, Ravi.”
He shrugged, looking almost as uncomfortable as Ching. “It's one of the commoner Wild Talents. I'm not the only lightning calculator in the Academy.”
Ching looked at her console, where the same thing was printed out. She said, her face twisting slightly, “I guess if the computer gets out of order we can use you, then, can't we?”
“Take it easy, Ching,” Moira said, soothingly, but the edge of mockery was clearly perceptible in her voice. “I don't think Ravi really meant to come between you and your best friend, did you, Ravi?”
“By no means,” Ravi said, ignoring mockery and soothing alike. “Your talents will be needed for anything serious, Ching — that was a purely automatic arithmetical calculation. We must find out where we are going, and when, and how. Do we get orders?”
Peake said, quietly, “I think, when they gave us the Ship, we were given the only orders they were going to give us. All they care about is whether we find them a habitable planet. Ching, you have the resources of the computer, you know where planets have already been
discovered and surveyed for colonization. Teague, you and Ravi can find out how far away they are and how to reach them, and Ravi and I, as navigators, can set a course so that Moira can take us there. Fontana and I will, presumably, keep us alive and healthy while we're en route there. And thank whatever Gods you believe in that there are six of us. Suppose only four of us had qualified, and we had to run a ship that way?”
There was a brief, stunned silence. Moira said, into it, “I want to check the drives, and I suppose Ching wants to look at the computer hardware.”
Ching said, “We can't all go in there; I'll survey it from outside. Computers are temperamental things, and too many strange bodies around them can make them do peculiar things. Nobody goes in there except under absolute necessity; and then, wearing anti-electrostatic garments, and special shoes. I'll be running it from here.”
“The drives are ready to go,” Moira said. Peake, watching her, thought she touched the controls of the drive mechanism as if they had been the frets of her cello — or the body of a lover. “So when do we leave?”
“As far as I know,” Peake said, “it's up to us. When we're ready, we go — and that's all there is to it.”
And the six members of the crew looked at one another, stunned, realizing that after twelve years of rigid structure, that really was all there was to it. No one would give them orders. No one would tell them where to go, or what to do.
Fontana looked out through the huge window with the blaze of billions of stars, the tiny blinking lights of the control panels reflecting, small and somehow lost, against the hugeness of the unknown Galaxy; as if in answer to the sudden terror of it, Ching touched something that closed them in again, the window opaque,
so that they were again sealed in the control cabin with only the winking lights and their reflections.
“There's no hurry,” Fontana said, and her voice was shaking, so that she clung to a bulkhead. “Let's go back to the main cabin, and look over our living quarters, and find out who's going to sleep where. And have something to eat.”
There was a window in the main cabin, but it was one of reasonable proportions, not a wall of glass that opened naked on the empty universe of Chaos; and as they watched, the familiar form of the space station, revolving slowly end-over-end (from their point of view) and trailing its little cone of shadow, came into view, trundled majestically across their window, and disappeared again. Against its known contours, the six could put themselves into human perspective again. . Fontana, trained to self-understanding because of her specialization in psychology, realized that they had all suffered their first attack of a kind of culture shock; the transfer from the orderly and rigid world of the Academy into the knowledge of a universe literally at their feet. Deliberately, searching for another touch of the familiar and banal, she went to the food console, and dialed herself a snack and a cold fruit drink.
“They stocked us with three months' supply of ready food; after that, we'll have to start synthesizing proteins and carbohydrate equivalents,” she said. “We might as well enjoy it while we have it. With all these heavy scientific specialties on the crew, I don't suppose there's anyone who can cook?”
“I can,” Ching said, “but I don't want to be stuck to
do it all the time.”
“I think once a day would be enough for anyone to do it,” Moira said. “Surely we can all fix our own breakfasts and lunches — even if we're not all on different schedules. I can cook, too — I'll do it once in a while.”
“So what do we do? Set up a roster?”
Moira said, “I think we'd all get fed up with too much togetherness. Surely one meal a day together would be enough, if not too much?”
Ravi said, “I think we should share as many mealtimes as possible, considering duty rosters. We are the only human contacts any of us is going to have, for a long, long time; I think we should retain a — a base of closeness. To keep in touch. Make ourselves into a family.”
“I'd go stir-crazy,” Ching said. “I'd say, why not let everybody fix their own meals unless they really crave company; have dinner together once in ten days or so.”
Peake was staring at the window, watching the space station come into sight again and slowly roll across their field of vision. Was Jimson there? They were as cut off from one another as if they had been at opposite ends of the universe, separated by a slowly lengthening string which would eventually snap and part them irrevocably. Already it was irrevocable. He felt desperately alone, surrounded by these five strangers. Yet not wholly strangers, either; he had known them all since kindergarten, many of them had been his friends until, in the last two or three years, he had focused all his attention and awareness on Jimson. Could they be his friends again? He said, “I think it would be a good idea to schedule one meal a day together. Not so often that we'd get claustrophobic, not so far apart that we'd get out of touch.”
Teague said diffidently, "I wouldn't mind getting to-
gether once a day. Only I don't think it ought to be a meal. Because if we get together once a day it's going to turn into a — a kind of gripe session; we'll want to get everything off our chests. And I hate to eat while I'm arguing — or vice versa," he added with a grin.
“I think we ought to have a once-a-day conference, whether it's a meal or not,” Ching said. “Call it a gripe session, brainstorming, business meeting, scientific conference, or whatever. But we all ought to get together once a day.”
“Is there any reason we have to keep a standard 24-hour day and night?” Moira asked. “I tend to be a night person, myself, and I'm never really awake before midnight. And I happen to know — because I roomed next door to her for two years — that Ching's awake at the crack of dawn, and is asleep by the time I'm beginning to feel halfway human! Here we could have a round-the-clock schedule not tied in to somebody else's idea of when people ought to wake up and go to sleep!”
Peake said, “Biologically speaking — and speaking as a medical man — I think we need circadian rhythms maintained as long as we can possibly manage it. If there's one thing I've learned about space medicine, it's this: Earth man, homo sapiens, is firmly tied in to the rhythms of his native planet's rotations. Biology is destiny, at least to that extent. We need a 24-hour cycle, give or take a little one way or the other. And while we're on that subject, do all of you girls menstruate?”
“If you think that makes any difference —” Moira began angrily, but Fontana interrupted. “Hold on, Moira; the question is purely for practical reasons. Free-fall— and we can hardly keep the whole ship De-Magged to one gravity all the time — does peculiar things to hormones, both male and female.”
“That's right,” Peake said, “and I was thinking we
could work out a duty roster which would allow any woman who's menstruating to work inside the De-magged areas for comfort. The question is medical, not sexist.”
Fontana shrugged. “It's academic for me,” she said. “I opted for hysterectomy when they offered it to all of us at fifteen. I knew that after a year in deep space there was a fifty-fifty chance I'd be sterile anyhow, so it seemed a lot of trouble for the next thirty years, for nothing. And it seemed a good idea to put it out of my power to have any second thoughts on the subject. I chose once and for all.”
“I didn't,” Moira said. “After reading up on both sides of the question, I decided I'd prefer having natural to synthetic hormones. But I'm not asking for special treatment.”
Ching smiled, a little grimly. “I wasn't given the option. I knew if I didn't make Ship, they'd want my genes. But I don't want special treatment; I think if any of us had severe menstrual problems, they'd take that into account before sending us into zero-gee work. I've always been boringly normal; if I have trouble, I might ask for a day off now and then, but I doubt I will. Let's leave it until the problem arises.” She moved to the console, dialed herself a helping of some squishy semi-solid; Moira wondered if it was mashed potatoes or soft ice cream.
Teague said, “The cabins are in a circle in the next module; they're numbered one to six. Why not just take them in alphabetical order — Ching, Fontana, Moira, Peake, Ravi, and me in that order?”
Fontana giggled, biting into her ham sandwich — she supposed it was synthetic protein, but it tasted like a ham sandwich, so she decided to think of it as one. "That still separates women from men, three on a side!
Purely by the accidents of the alphabet!"
“I don't expect we'll be spending all that much time in the sleeping quarters,” Moira said, “they make the cubicles at the Academy seem like auditoriums. One sleeping net and one shower with toilet per private cabin, and that's it.”
“Wearing disposable clothing, that's about all we need,” Ching said. “I notice they've each got separate DeMag units, though —”
“That's so you can read, study, or write without the books and papers floating away,” Peake said, “and sleep at full gravity. And if you want to practice in private, your instrument will stay put... I assume you all know the mechanics of a violin depend on gravity, so you can get friction against the strings. The gym is set for one-half to two gravities, for physical training. I assume I don't have to warn you to work out at full gravity at least half the time, so your muscles won't atrophy.”
“And speaking of music,” Moira said, “I'd like to know if we have a complete string quartet. I play cello, and I know you play viola, Ching, because I've played with you. Ravi, you play the violin, don't you?”
“Only the way we all do. I haven't touched one since I was fourteen; I play the drums. Jazz drums, steel drums, and the Indian table. And somehow I think all I have here on the Ship is a small set of tabla — weight problem.”
“Teague, you play —”
“Flute, wooden recorder, and several woodwinds. I could probably manage second violin sometimes. Peake's the best violinist we have on board.”
Moira said, “I guess that makes you our concertmas-ter, then, Peake —”
He looked away and a spasm of pain crossed his face.
That last day in the music room, his violin tucked under his chin, Jimson's piano delicately interlocking with his mind. ... He said thickly, “Look, let's leave it, I'm not going to feel much like playing for a while. Do you mind?”
“Yes, I do,” Moira said, setting her chin. “You know as well as I do why we were taught the violin, and required to specialize in music — so we'd all have some recreation in common. I think having a regular music session once a day is even more important than having Teague's gripe session, or meals together.”
Peake stared at the floor. He said, “Look—” again, and couldn't go on. Why was he here with all these people he didn't really know and didn't want to know, and the only person he had ever cared about, or ever would care about, the other half of himself, at the other end of a slowly lengthening separation which would space out intolerably, in distance and time, until he and Jimson were at opposite ends of a vast and lengthening nowhere. . . .