Survey Ship

CHAPTER TWO

The Ship had been constructed in free orbit, free of the limitations of gravity — on Earth it would have weighed so many tons that the fuel costs of lifting and moving would have been multiplied exponentially. The hull had been constructed from metal refined and manufactured within a Lunar Dome, and the machinery assembled and tested there. The Ship had a name; for political reasons — there were still some of those on Earth — she had been called after a little-known general in the Space Service a hundred years ago. But not one of the crew ever called her, or were ever to call her, anything except The Ship. Anyone who needed to refer to this particular Ship, as distinguished from others, would have had to look up the name in an official register, by the year.

The six members of the crew had their first sight of the Ship from the observation deck of the Lunar shuttle. Only Moira and Teague, both of whom had specialized in the drive units and had helped, with the others in their class who had studied space engineering, to assemble her, had ever seen her before. Ching had worked with identical computers, but had never seen this particular one. She picked out the small, spherical computer module. Peake and Ravi had studied deep-space navigation on simulators and mockups. As for Fontana, she had never been in free-fall, except in the training centrifuge, and brief trips in free-fall transit rockets; she spent the trip out trying to conquer her faint queasi-ness.

From space the Ship looked something like a collection of paper sculptures, strung together in a cluster anyhow, without need for the high-speed streamlining of Earth or gravity, and without any kind of linear organization. There would be sufficient gravity to make the crew comfortable and keep them fit — the DeMag gravitators were the only thing which had made deep-space voyages practicable from a human biological standpoint. But gravity could be sharply localized for the crew’s comfort in a given spot or area; there was no need to orient the Ship on any given axis. Inside, the arrangements made sense; but from outside it looked chaotic. Teague thought the Ship looked like a collection of helium balloons which had somehow drifted together — balloons which just happened to be spherical, cubical, octahedral, or conical.

Moira was wondering what it would look like from the outside when the enormous sheets of thin mylar, the light-sails which operated on solar pressure, were spread out around the conglomeration of shapes. Peake thought, sadly, that Jimson had never seen the Ship — then revised that thought. Jimson was probably seeing it right now, or at least, he had seen it this morning from the space station; he had probably had a good look at it from the Lunar Shuttle, too. Jimson had been assigned as an administrative assistant on the space station, and would probably be in charge of it, a few years from now.

I wonder if he feels like Moses, looking from afar at the Promised Land?

Jimson hadn’t spoken to Peake when the announcements were made. Not once.

And then the Shuttle was drawing up alongship, and they were going through the motions of getting into pressure suits — second nature now, after years of drill on it — and decanting through the airlock. Only minutes later, they were in the DeMagged main cabin, watching the airlock close and the Lunar Shuttle pull away, and Peake realized that there was no one to give the order, this time, to get out of pressure suits. So he checked the pressure of the cabin, shrugged, and unfastened his own helmet, hanging it meticulously in the rack.

Six of us, Moira thought, alone with the Ship which has been our goal, our summit, our daydream for the best part of twelve years. Is that al] there is to it? They had all been expecting some more formality than this. But what more could there be? They were the graduates, they had been given the final sink-or-swim test. If they had not been capable of functioning on their own, without further instruction, they would be now among the failures, serving apprenticeships on space stations, satellites, governing the Earth colonies some day — but they were the independent ones. This Ship gave them the freedom of the universe, and they had to prove themselves in it. They would evolve their own procedures, they would make themselves into a crew — or they would not; it was just as simple, and as enormous, as that.

Suddenly she was frightened, and, looking around at her five shipmates, she was sure they were frightened too. ESP? she wondered, and thought; no; just common sense. If we weren’t scared, we wouldn’t be as bright as we have to be, just to have come this far.

“Look,” said Peake, “there is your cello, Moira. And my violin.”

Ching looked at her viola, in its case. These were the only really personal articles they would retain from Earth and the life that was past. She said into the lengthening silence, “Well, here we all are. What do we do first?”

“I was taught,” Teague said dryly, “that the first thing you do on any Ship is to check the Life-Support system, and I imagine that’s my job — I don’t think there’s anyone else here who specialized in Life-Support systems.”

“My second specialty,” Fontana said. “I suppose I’ll be your standby.”

“Well — shall I go and do it?” Teague looked around, then realized there was no one to tell him to do it or not to do it. He said “Right. As I remember from the plan, the main Life-Support system should be through the door there — airlock — sphincter — whatever you call it.” He turned toward it. Peake said, “We might as well all go. We’ll have to learn our way around,” and followed Teague and Fontana. The others came crowding after.

As Teague thrust himself through the dilating sphincter, he experienced a sudden, violent shift of orientation. His feet had been “down”; suddenly he was head-down, his feet somehow “over his head.” Even though he knew instantly what had happened, that he had moved from a DeMag gravitator located toward the floor of the main cabin, into a DeMag field located at the other apex of the corridor he had entered, it took him a moment to get his flailing feet “down.” Peake actually tumbled and fell. Moira did an athlete’s flip and came up standing. And then, to all of them, “down” was where it was, and they looked back at the crazy, somehow disoriented airlock which seemed to be in the “ceiling” of the present room,

“Wow,” Teague muttered, “that’s going to take some getting used to!”

“The Life-Support stuff looks familiar, anyhow,” Fontana said, and they went toward it. “All new and shiny, anyhow.”

“Do you suppose we’ll ever get used to it, after that battered old stuff we learned on at the Academy?” Teague asked. “They sure didn’t skimp on shiny new state-of-the-art stuff, did they?”

Fontana was studying the air-supply mechanisms, “It’s like all new systems; has to be tested and run in, checked out for bugs,” she said, “and I’m not happy with that mixture of inert gases.”

“You won’t find any bugs in it, any more than in the drives,” Moira said. “I installed most of it myself.” Her voice was defensive, and Fontana shrugged, not willing to pursue the matter.

“Time will tell, I guess. Look, they have touch-set monitors, and the flow system is backed up there, so that we can monitor oxygen, air, and DeMags in every part of the Ship on this visual tell-tale—”

Ching peered over her shoulder. “Does that mean you can see into every room and watch what we’re doing?”

“Hell no,” Teague replied, his hands already moving on the air-system console, “who needs to? But we can use sensors to find out how much air and oxygen there is in any sector; if one of us should be unconscious, we can locate whoever’s missing, or if there’s air-loss anywhere.” He was running his hands over protein synthesizers. “Looks all right, and there’s enough raw material in the converters that with molecular-fusion techniques we can synthesize everything we’re likely to need for the next, I should roughly say, twenty-nine years, after which time we find a sun with something like the chemical composition of our own, and catch ourselves a small asteroid or two for the next eighty or ninety. That’s assuming that we recycle clothing and water, but not figuring in body-waste recycling.”

“I want to see the drives,” Moira said. “I put them in; but I want to see them in their place in the Ship.”

Teague smiled at her and touched the console again. “Looks like we have a considerable way to go, to get there; the drive chamber’s at the far end of this walkway—” he pointed, “furthest from the living quarters. Navigation and computer areas are closer.”

Another of the dizzying gravity-reversals brought them down — or, at least, “down” — to another module, this one spherical, with seats and many controls. “You’ll drive the Ship from here anyway, Moira,” Peake pointed out, indicating the console for manipulation of the light-pressure sails.

She said, “I want to see the hardware itself. See how it looks in situ.” Nevertheless, she slid gracefully into the contour seat, her hands hovering over, but not touching the console.

“Where are we going? Which way?”

Peake realized, with shock, that nobody knew. “I guess it depends on who’s the chief navigator,” he said. “It was my second specialty, so I suppose I’ll be navigator’s assistant.”

Ravi looked up at him, eyes raised in a quizzical grin. “I thought you’d be first navigator. My second specialty was navigation, too. What do we do — toss a coin for it?”

Peake looked around the spherical chamber. One half of it was an opaqued wall of glass looking out on the universe. The DeMag was turned high enough so that they could sit at their seats, without floating away in free-fall. Before him a multitude of blinking lights, coded yellow, red, green, blue, flashed quietly, and he had the sensation that they were waiting. Moira touched a control, and the glass wall which reflected the blinking lights, suddenly became clear. In spite of the DeMag units giving them an “up” and “down” orientation, they all gasped and clutched at the nearest support; outside was only the vastness of space, white with stars, so thick that there was no sign of constellations. They could have read small print by that light. Against the blaze of stars Peake could still see the faint reflections of blue, red, yellow, green control lights, imposing their own order on the chaos outside.

Ravi was still looking at him expectantly. Ching said, “Which one of you had the highest grades in navigation?”

“Not enough difference to matter, over three years,” Peake said, “and I’m a doctor, not a navigator. Does one of us have to be above the other? I’d rather share navigation on a time basis, not a rank basis — we’re a fairly healthy crew or we wouldn’t be here.”

Ravi shrugged. “Okay; I’ll toss you for day or night watch, if you want to do it that way, or until we see it isn’t working. The one whose shift it is makes any necessary decision. Fair enough?”

“I don’t think that makes much sense,” Ching said. “There has to be one person with the responsibility for decisions — the commander, captain, whatever. I thought chief navigator was usually in that spot. Who’s going to be making major decisions?”

“I don’t think it ought to be who, but how,” Moira said, swinging the seat around to face them. “Consensus decisions, I’d say, for anything major. Small decisions, whoever’s running the special machinery involved.”

Ching said, “I don’t agree. Someone has to decide—”

“I had more than enough of structured decisions in the Academy,” Peake said. “I’m ready to try sharing decisions on a group basis. If that doesn’t work, there’ll be time enough to try something else.”

Ching shook her head. She said, “We could come up against something serious, so serious there wouldn’t be time for a consensus, and there ought to be one person in charge—”

“What’s your specialty, Ching?” Fontana asked with a smile, “group dynamics and sociology?”

Ching said stiffly, “I wouldn’t dignify that by the name of a science at all. I am a computer technician and biochemist, with meteorology and oceanography as planet-based specialties. But as part of this group I do feel I have a vested interest in designating competent leadership for making decisions.”

“There’s a lot of logic to that,” Fontana said, reflecting that it was probably the first time she had agreed with anything Ching said, “but I think we should check out the rest of the Ship before we start arguing about it. It looks as if you will be in charge of the computer, Ching. It’s through there — shall we take a look at it? Though the central computer console seems to be in here, with navigation and drive consoles—”

Ching smiled. She slid into the seat past Moira’s, and it seemed to Fontana that the small, rigid body relaxed slightly as she looked at the main computer console. Then she looked up, with a faint, challenging stance.

“Anyone else?”

Silence. Ching demanded, “Nobody else at all? Isn’t there anyone with even a third or fourth in computer technology?”

Teague said, “Looks like it’s all yours, Ching.”

She looked stricken.

“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.”