Survey Ship

CHAPTER TEN

It was Ravi and Moira, in full EVO gear, who approached the building designated the gym through the free-fall corridor, this time slowly, holding to the crawl bar. There was a flaring red light, indicating airlessness and vacuum beyond, and the sphincter had locked automatically, isolating the damaged module. Ravi sealed the first sphincter of the free-fall corridor, so that the corridor could function as an airlock in this emergency, then thrust the tool into the sphincter lock and twisted the lock free. The red light was still blinking.

His pressure-suit audio sounded loud in his own ears.

“Here we go. Let’s see what kind of damage we have.”

Ravi heard in the audio the sharp breath Moira drew, as the door opened; almost a cry, as if the damage were to her own body. A gaping hole flared in one edge; the meteorite or whatever it had been, had impacted them at tremendous velocity, ripped straight through the module, destroying the rowing-machine Teague had been using as if a bomb had struck it, then, deflected, richocheted and gone out, leaving a surprisingly small hole not really very far from the point of entry.

“Well,” he said, trying to make light of it, “looks like we’ve got a leak in the roof, in here.”

Moira giggled; a small, somehow disconsolate sound. Then she noticed that the debris was still lying all over the “floor” of the room, the painted running-track; Ching’s ballet barre had been broken by a flying fragment of the rowing machine, holes gouged in the sanded and varnished surface, mats flung about. But the debris lay on the “floor,” not strewn, drifting, all over the module.

“There’s still gravity in here.”

Ravi said, “That’s right, the DeMags are still on.” He had hoped to find them turned off, damaged by the impact perhaps; then he could have attributed the former DeMag failure to accidental jarring or damage to the control, a hypersensitive control dial.

“Good thing too,” Moira said. “Otherwise we’d have to run an obstacle course through floating debris, or tie everything down, before we could start repairing the damage to the module.”

“Why couldn’t we just have turned it on — oh, that’s right; we couldn’t trust it not to jolt on hard, the way it did the other day, and everything come raining down hard on top of us,” Moira said. “Actually I’m beginning to think the trouble isn’t in the DeMags themselves but in the backup system, the fail-safe.”

“I’m not sure,” Ravi said. “I trust your intuition about machines, certainly. But if that’s so, why the failure in the music room the other day?”

“Well, we’ll have to check it out,” Moira said absently. She was not thinking of Ravi at all, and somehow he felt cold, deserted and lonely. He had known this woman’s body, he loved her and cared about her; yet now, facing desolation and destruction and the awareness of barely-escaped death — for if they had all been in the gym, some of them would certainly have been killed — he knew that he was less important to her than the pieces of Teague’s destroyed rowing-machine, which she was dragging together, trying to lay them out like the broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Moira does not love me, not as Jimson and Peake loved; she does not try to see God in me. I wanted to see her that way, to feel that the love between us was a little echo of the Cosmic Love which I am aching to know. But since the meteor struck, I am nothing to her. Ravi set his teeth, grimly accepting this; Moira was not his property; she had given him sexual access to her, body, and since she had the right to give it, he knew that the ethics to which he had been reared demanded she had also the right to withdraw it, without any reason given, unconditionally. But he hungered for her, physically, and he felt a deeper desolation which, he knew, had nothing to do with lust, its frustration or satisfaction.

“I’d think we might as well put it into the recycier for molecular conversion,” Ravi said. “It’s certainly not worth the trouble of repairing.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be all that much trouble; and we don’t have the kind of machine tools we’d need to duplicate it,” she said. “I’ll have a go at it, later, when there’s time. We’ll need the gravity off in here to go up and repair those holes in the ceiling; let’s secure this for free-fall.”

He helped her rope it up, stowing it carefully so that the broken parts would not drift around in free-fall. The damage assessed, they went to the storage modules for patching material, summoned Teague to help them (Teague being, physically, the heaviest and strongest of the crew) and turned off the free-fall. Over the next two ship’s days they hammered repairs in place, refilled the module with air, tested the seals and sprayed fiberglass paints over the room, finally sanded and refinished the floor. Even the DeMag units tested out perfectly, and when they were finished, Ravi suggested a celebration.

“What are we celebrating?” Moira asked good-naturedly. “Not that it matters; we don’t need an excuse to throw a party. We could celebrate the passing of the orbit of Saturn.”

“Now that sounds like a good idea,” Teague said, “I’m eager to get some good, close shots of the rings—”

“We won’t be going too close,” Ravi told him, “the rings could be as dangerous as the asteroid belt!”

“I guess what we’re celebrating is being well out of range of the asteroid belt without any more damage,” Teague said, “or maybe celebrating whatever music we were playing that kept us out of range of the gym during that off-time!” During the two days past, they had meticulously stopped work only for the shared music session — all of them had an unspoken agreement that this was the one daily structure to their lives that would be violated only in the gravest of emergencies — but they had slept and eaten and done any other work aboard the Ship at odd hours.

“Well, officially,” Moira said, “what we’re celebrating is the re-opening of the gym. I’ll be glad to get some regular exercise at full gravity again.” As she spoke she felt again the twitch of unease, but told herself, sharply, not to go attributing every little neurotic twitch to her ESP. She had checked out the DeMags down to the solid core, this time, and Ching had personally checked every computer tie-in for the DeMags; it had been the first thing she had done, since it held the greatest potential for possible dangers.

“We’ll make the music session today a party, then,” Teague said. “I’ll speak to Fontana about breaking out some kind of special meal and drinks, and Ching told me once that she likes to cook, if it’s a special occasion and not just routine. I’ll ask her about it.”

As he spoke of Ching he smiled, and Moira, watching that smile, felt a sudden flare of jealousy. Teague was handsome, strong; she was certain he could give exciting experiences — but she knew Ching was undergoing the first flood of sexual awareness, centered all for the moment upon Teague. She didn’t wish to spoil that for Ching. Let her have her first affair untouched by any conflict. She’d learn, soon enough, how little it meant.

Strange, and I admired Ching so much because she didn’t feel she had to get involved in this kind of thing, and it turns out she’s just like the rest of us. Does everybody do it, then, try to make up for her — or maybe his — own insufficiencies by drowning self-awareness with sex? Look at Ravi, he’s still following me around with his tongue hanging out… I got so damned tired of that in the Academy, men following me as if I were a bitch in heat, even when I didn’t do a thing to turn them on. Sure, sex is fun, but when there’s work to do, I like to forget about sex and concentrate on what we’re doing.’ And Ravi’s got to learn he doesn’t own me.

But as they turned to leave the gym she caught a glimpse of Ravi’s unhappy eyes, and a twinge of conscience hit her.

I offered myself to Peake, I said; perhaps it might make you feel less alone. But was I really being kind to Peake, or was I simply intrigued, as he said, by the fact that he was one of the few men I hadn’t had? Is that why I want Teague, to satisfy my ego — that I can have any man, even one who’s involved with someone else?

And if I was willing to give myself to Peake to ease his loneliness, why can’t I do the same for Ravi, since it means so much to him and so little to me? She wondered why her pride should be so much more important to her than Ravi’s happiness, and then, mentally, she damned the whole male sex. Really, machinery was more important, it made no claims, played no elaborate ego games, and if it was damaged it could be repaired without any ego involvement. You could handle it as you wished, and it never made any claims on you, or complained of how you treated it.

The remainder of the crew welcomed the suggestion of a celebration; Ching and Fontana readily agreed to be in charge of a special meal after the music session that day. Teague asked permission to stay away until then, claiming that he wanted to photograph the rings of Saturn from the closest possible approach.

As Ching set the controls for cooking the specially asked-for foods, she felt strange, conspicuous. Every control she touched made her acutely aware of the computer tie-ins to Life Support; although she had checked the hardware inside the computer module, as well as the control console on the bridge, where it was tied to Life Support — it had been the first step of a job which she knew, rationally, was likely to take the better part of a year, by which time they would be far, far beyond the Solar System and have reached more than half the speed of light — she still felt insecure. Her own infallibility was shattered beyond repair. Even her body now felt strange to herself, as if she were no longer in undisputed possession of it. And Fontana’s proximity made her uncomfortable, too. All her life she had been aware that camaraderie between women usually came to an end where rivalry over a man began. It had never happened to her before because, during her years in the Academy, she had preserved her withdrawn, sexless lack of awareness, and had never challenged any woman for her male partner. Now, having achieved her first life-goal, being chosen for crew on the Ship, she had violated this rule against one of the women she hoped would be her friend.

One of the first friends she had ever had. She felt miserable, felt as if she could not face Fontana.

Fontana placed cups — regular disposable plastic, but somehow she had managed to program them to come out as cheerful cherry red — around the central table. “There,” she said. “Nothing left but the final warming, which will take about eighty seconds when they come in. Shall we pour ourselves a small dividend to anticipate, Ching, or shall we discipline ourselves to wait for the others?”

“Let’s wait for the others,” Ching said, then, suddenly, blurted out, “Are you angry with me, Fontana?”

“Angry with you, Ching? Why? Should I be?”

“Because you and Teague — and now—”

Fontana’s first thought was to say an immediate, My goodness, no! Don’t be silly, Ching! But a second’s thought changed that impulse; it would seem to take all too lightly what was all too evidently troubling Ching. She asked, choosing her words carefully, “Do you think I have some reason to be angry with you about that, Ching?”

Ching said, fiddling with the cup and not looking up at her, “Did you know about — about Teague and — and me?”

Once again Fontana wondered at Ching’s naivete; surprising in the self-sufficient, competent Ching. She, and the other four members of the crew, had all had a very good idea what was going on, when Teague had carried Ching out of the main cabin. What else did Ching think they could have thought? But she only said, “Yes, I knew. You weren’t making any special effort to hide it, were you?”

“You really don’t seem angry,” Ching said, surprised, and Fontana shook her head.

“No, I’m really not angry. Teague isn’t my property, and anyhow — well, Moira said it; it’s like one of those old-fashioned arranged marriages, only there are six of us. We are going to spend a long, long time together, all in the same boat and isolated. If any of us starts to feel as if any other is property, we’re in for trouble. I don’t know how much you know about group psychology and social dynamics — I remember you saying you didn’t think of them as very exact sciences, wouldn’t dignify them by the name of sciences or something like that — but it is one of the things people have found out; that in order to tolerate exclusive or monogamous sexual ties, a group has to be above a certain crucial number — I think it’s eighteen or twenty — so that the remaining members will have an even chance at partnerings. We’re too small a group to tolerate monogamy, Ching.”

In some obscure way Ching wondered if Fontana were warning her.

“I’m — well, I’m not used to such things, Fontana. It was the first time I ever — got myself into a relationship like that. So close.”

Fontana, in the calm, rather blank face, saw a sudden heartbreaking innocence and vulnerability. She said, very gently, “Do you care about Teague very much, Ching?”

Ching said, hesitating, “I’m very fond of him. He’s — well, he made it all seem very natural and ordinary, I always thought I’d be frightened, and I wasn’t. I liked being with him, I enjoyed it. I don’t think it was anything like — well, like it was with Peake and Jimson, I don’t think I’m all — all wrapped up in him the way they were in each other. Only I feel very strange, different inside. Not knowing what to expect of myself any more, and I’ve always been so sure. And I don’t think that has anything to do with Teague at all. It has to do with me.”

“Good,” Fontana said softly. “You do understand what I’m saying to you then.”

“Only — Fontana, I’m sorry. I mean, because I did take Teague away from you — if you miss him, I’m sorry—”

Fontana shrugged and laughed. “That doesn’t matter. Teague is old enough to choose for himself, and so am I.”

“Only — it’s what you said. In a group this small there aren’t many choices. It’s not as if there were a lot of men for you to choose from, and you’ve always had someone or other, haven’t you?”

Ching, Fontana thought, could be so forthright it was almost alarming. She said, “Well, it’s a problem; I suppose it will iron itself out. I don’t know what will happen with Ravi and Moira, either. That affair seems to be rather more off than on, these days. Teague might decide he wants you for a while, or that he wants me, or that he wants us both — would that bother you, Ching?”

She shook her head. She said, “I don’t know, I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I told him I wanted to think it over before — before it happened again. I want to be sure how I feel. I don’t think it’s very nice to use a man to give myself confidence.”

But even so, Fontana saw her spontaneous bright smile as Teague came into the main cabin, and almost envied her. She wasn’t jealous about Teague; but she wished she could recapture that first kind of excitement. Maybe, she thought, it only happens once.

And I had mine, a long time ago; why envy Ching her own time of discovery? She’s waited long enough.

It came back to her, later, when the festive meal was only a few scraps on the plates, and she had begun to collect them and put them into the disposer. After a moment Moira joined her, and said, looking at Teague and Ching, snuggled into one chair, “It looks as if we had the kind of situation aboard that they left Jimson behind to prevent.”

“Well, it happens,” Fontana said, “and I think Ching has a right to it. But I doubt if it will last long enough to be a threat to the rest of us. Ching’s very sensible about it.”

“Sensible!” It was a snort, almost a small giggle. “Do you really think that’s important?”

“I think she knows what’s necessary, for all of us,” Fontana said quietly. “For a while I thought it would be you and Ravi.”

“Which wouldn’t suit you at all, would it,” said Moira sharply, “because that wouldn’t leave anyone for you except Peake!”

“Why do you assume we have to pair off that way?” Fontana asked.

“No. Seriously, Fontana. What are we going to do about Peake?”

“What makes you think it’s up to us to do anything at all about him?” Fontana asked. “He’s a grown man, and quite old enough to make his own choices in life. Why do you think we have to do anything?”

“Damn it,” Moira shouted so loud that the heads in the room turned to look at them all, “when will you stop answering every question I ask you with another question?”

Fontana said sharply, “When you stop acting as if it was my business to give you answers!”

“You’re the psychologist, aren’t you?”

Slowly, Fontana shook her head. She said in a low voice, “I’m not anything, Moira, just what the rest of you are. A crew member on the Ship, brainwashed like all the rest of us, to think that making Ship was the end of all our problems. And when I made it, I find out that it’s just the beginning of a whole new set of problems! The Academy just threw us out, half-trained, our minds crammed with facts and no real experience. We’ve already seen that Ching hasn’t got all the answers for the computer. Peake’s not a doctor, he’s a very well-trained medical student. I’m not a psychologist, I’ve graduated in courses in psychology. You’re not an engineer — though you had the experience of assembling the drives in space; you and Teague have had more experience than all the rest of us put together. They throw us out, half trained, to sink or swim, and the odds against any of the Ships surviving are enormous — but just think what’s happened to Earth since the first colony was established! They can have their success, it’s worth everything to train us and give us these Ships, even if one in ten of us get through — and they can afford not to care about the other nine!”

She stopped herself, forcibly, fighting waves of recurrent horror. They had been used. All of them! Used, their lives forfeit, since they were five years old. Never told how enormous the odds were against their survival. Yes. The laboratory guinea pig thinks he is petted, pampered, cared for, because he is important in himself. But he is important only to the ones who are using him in their experiment.’

We are all of us just guinea pigs, and probably we are ail going to die. And nobody even cares.’ They put a new crop of guinea pigs aboard Survey Ship 103, and threw us out to Jive or die.’

And I can’t even throw this out at the others, because they don’t know it yet, they haven’t realized…. Moira thinks it’s important how our group dynamics work for survival. Who sleeps with whom. We could all collapse into anarchy, nihilism, kill one another — we’ll die anyhow!

“What’s the matter, Fontana?” Peake asked, corning up and taking the stacked armful of disposable plates from her. “You look awfully tired. Here, let me take those for you.”

She Wanted to scream at Peake, don’t be so nice to me, don’t you know we’re all going to die, that they threw us all out to die? We survived the meteor by pure damn dumb luck…. why should I think we’ll be one of the ten who lives instead?

But before Peake’s dark, ugly, kindly face she could not speak the words. She said, “Thank you, Peake, I — I guess I am tired.”

“Let me get you a glass of wine,” Moira said, and turned to dial the controls. Fontana, controlling herself by a rigid effort, curled up in a soft chair beside Moira.

“Look,” Moira said, “I wasn’t trying to intrude on Peake’s private life. But you can’t tell me you haven’t thought of it. They sent out three men and three women, only one of the men is inaccessible, which means two men for three women, and nobody for Peake. That doesn’t seem to make sense, if they choose the crews as carefully as they say they do—”

Haven’t you figured it out yet, Moira, that they don’t care, that it’s completely random? There are all kinds of theories about what kind of crew mix will survive, they can afford to try them all. For a moment she was so confused by the words in her mind she wondered if she had actually spoken them aloud, But Moira was still waiting for her answer. Into the silence Moira said, with unusual shyness, “I — I offered — he turned me down flat. He’s all right. For now, anyhow. But it’s going to be years, Fontana…”

Assuming we live so long. Fontana was growing used to two sets of conversations: what she wanted to say and dared not say, what she really said. Sighing, she said the correct thing.

“Moira, my dear, there is nothing either of us can do about Peake; it’s his problem, to face in his own way. Sooner or later, either he will face how he feels about women, and decide to experiment with one of us; or he will persuade one of the men to experiment with him; or he will make a conscious decision to remain celibate and let the rest of us do what we like. And in any case it is his decision. The voyage is only a few days old. We have to give him time. At present it’s much more important to you to decide how you feel about Ravi, than to worry about Peake and his problems — or Ching and Teague and theirs.”

Moira’s smile was just a flicker. “I’d swap my problems for Ching’s, right now, but I don’t know if she’d care to trade. I’m glad she’s enjoying herself, anyhow. I wish I were.”