Survey Ship

CHAPTER THREE

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 together 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….

Jimson’s face, white and strained and tearful. You don’t care enough to stay, he had flung at Peake, I knew we wouldn’t both make Ship, but I thought you’d care enough to stay….

But how could he have done that, after twelve years of the finest education in the world, education that he, a black kaffir from one of the kaffirland reserves in South Africa, could never have had on his own continent…. UNEPS had given him this, and now it was his turn to make some return to the only world he knew. Fontana had voiced it; he wanted it out of his power to have second thoughts. Only jimson had not been able to see it that way… there was no music he could ever play again that would not have Jimson’s face tied into every note, gladness and sorrow and love and sex and misery… he turned away toward the window opening on space and the returning space station, and said, “Let’s talk about it some other time. All right?”

“No,” Ching said, “that’s the one thing we can’t do — walk out on this kind of disagreement. Moira’s right, we do need regular musical sessions, and we can’t have them without you, Peake; that would take all the point out of having them. The whole purpose of making music together—”

Peake shrugged and dropped into a chair. The DeMag units were low enough in here that he did not sink into it, but he did not float away either. “Okay. No arguments.”

“That’s not the point—” Moira began.

“Hold it,” Fontana said quietly, “I think this is turning into the first of those once-a-day sessions we agreed to have, and I think we need it out into the open. We start holding back on gripes and grievances, trying to be too polite, and we’ll get explosions. Ching, you said something earlier that made me really angry; you said you’d hoped for Chris or Mei Mei or Fly or, as you put it, somebody with some computer sense; and here’s Peake sulking because he doesn’t have Jimson to play duets with—”

“I am not sulking!” Peake yelled, with such violence that he bobbed up from the surface of his chair in the light gravity.

“I know what Fontana’s driving at,” Moira said, “I think we ought to make it a rule that we don’t talk about anyone — anyone we left behind. They’re dead to us, whatever happens. Let the past go.”

“I refuse to do that,” Ravi said. “We need to remember. We need roots, a sense of our past. We have a right to remember.”

“To remember, yes,” Fontana said, “but not to hurt each other making comparisons with people who aren’t here — people we never had to meet under this kind of strain. People who might, or might not, have turned out more congenial than the ones we have. Look, all six of us are going to be together for a long, long time; close-quarters together, hothouse together, too damn much together; and the one thing we don’t need is to rub elbows with the idealized memories of people who aren’t here!”

“Now listen—” Peake began, but Moira went on:

“No, you listen, I’m not finished. I don’t even mean you, personally. I’m trying to establish a principle, not get personal about anybody, I think every one of us could have picked what they’d consider a perfect crew, and somehow I doubt if any one of us would have picked any one of the others here—”

“What you mean is, you wouldn’t,” Ching said precisely. “Nice to know what you think of us, Moira.”

She brushed that aside too. “I refuse to get into a fight with you, Ching, don’t try to provoke it. I mean, here we are, six of us, none of us consulted about our preferences for the others—”

“They must have taken compatibility into account,” Teague said. “I doubt if they would pick six people they knew couldn’t stand one another!”

Moira shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure they trusted us not to murder each other, took real antipathies into account. But—”

Ching wasn’t so sure. She said in a low voice, “I think they chose people who had demonstrated that they could conform if they had to.”

“But whatever they decided,” Moira said, “we are here. It’s like those arranged marriages they used to have, hundreds of years ago, it’s done and can’t be undone. What God, or the Academy, has joined together, let no man put asunder. The six of us are here, and there are no others, and we’d better work out a way to care about each other; because there’s nobody else for any of us, and we are not going to get any second chances!”

That, Peake thought, was laying it right out on the line, putting into words what they all knew and which he, at least, had never really faced. He set his jaw tight and said, “All right. Agreed.”

“Agreed,” Ching said promptly, adding, “I was out of line.”

Peake said, “I’ll play anything you want me to. But we’d better pick an hour which will work for the day people and the night people both, unless somehow our internal rhythms adjust. Which they might, at this distance — I don’t think anyone really has tested circadian rhythms over long periods of time in zero-gee or alternating gravities. There might be some studies in the computer library, done on the Moon or space station. Meanwhile, I tend to be a day person myself, but I’m not extreme about it one way or the other.”

But, while the others were discussing the optimum time of an arbitrary day for the shared music session, Peake sat silent, watching the space station go and return in its orbit across their window — they were still in orbit around it.

It had been a flea-brained idea anyhow, the commitment he had made with Jimson. Dimly, he knew they had both been too young for the kind of lifetime commitment they had wanted to make. He had scorned people like Fly and Moira and Chris, whose wholesale sexual experimentation had been close to the promiscuous, but he knew he had gone to an equally dangerous other extreme; he had been so wrapped up in Jimson that he had made too few other friends.

I’m not the only one. There’s Ching, I don’t think she did any experimenting at all, she must be as lonely as I am… or worse. But she’s used to it… it was her choice, and I…. Then he recognized that as self-pity and cut it off.

“You play the viola, don’t you, Ching?”

“Violin, too,” she said, nodding, “but I thought it would be interesting to specialize in an instrument no one else plays very often.”

“There isn’t much solo literature for it.”

“True,” Ching said, “but then, I’m not interested in being a solo performer, and it got me a place in a lot of string quartets. Because I’m a good violist, not a second-rate violinist trying to play the viola.”

Humility, Peake wondered, or a very shrewd assessment of the kind of team-oriented thinking they’d want on the Ship? Had Ching gambled, cleverly, for a place in the most exclusive string quartet of all?

Fontana watched them talking agreeably about Mozart and Beethoven quartets, improvisational jazz sessions, and wondered if this was the final test, one called survival; how they sorted themselves out, no guidelines, no rules. She might be the Ship’s psychologist, but Moira had forestalled the first suggestion she might have made in that capacity — making it a firm rule that the past should not be used as a defense against the present. Peake might have agreed not to talk about Jim-son; but could anyone stop him from brooding? Would he be able to put it aside, would he need help, would she be able to give it if he did?

And it was Peake who broke into a discussion of the technique for synthesizing violin strings by saying, “But now that we’ve settled the important things, like the make-up of our string quartet, can we try discussing a couple of very minor things, like where we are going, and when do we leave? What’s the procedure?”

“I think,” Moira said, “we’ve had all the orders we’re going to get. When we’re ready to go, we just go, and that’s that.”

“Go where?” Ching asked. “Do we plot a course at random?”

“That’s up to you,” Ravi said, “you have the computer library. You know where planets have been found and colonized, you should make the decision about whether we try for a planet in an area where habitable planets have already been found, or whether we head in a new direction, where we’d have a chance at finding new, wholly untouched stars.”

“I can only get that information on the Bridge,” Ching said. “Has everyone had enough to eat?”

As they went back, one by one, through the dizzying shifts in gravity orientation — this time they were prepared for it and no one lost balance — Fontana reflected that already they had exercised the human habit of naming things; the room with consoles and computation equipment had become the Bridge, by analogy with a ship at sea, in spite of the fact that none of them had ever been on a naval ship. Still, she was glad that the vast observation window, with its lenticular view of half the visible universe, was opaqued against the endless stars; there was only a pale reflection of the colored winking lights on the control panels. Ching slid into a seat before the computer; Peake glanced at his chronometer and said to Ravi, “Toss you for day shift.”

Ravi raised his eyebrows. “Why? You clearly prefer day shift; I unquestionably prefer night. Why risk committing each of us to our least favorite time? If we had the same preference, it would make some sense…”

Peake shrugged. “We’ll run on Greenwich Time for ship operations; Mean Solar Time for navigation. It’s 1409 hours; day shift from 0800 to 2000 okay with you?”

“Fine,” said Ravi, and Peake slipped into the seat before the navigation controls. Moira was already in the drive seat. Fontana noticed there were ten seats built into the control-room which they had called the Bridge. She took one of them. Ravi sat where he could see what Peake was doing. Teague was bending over Moira, studying the control drives with interest.

Moira said, “The drives are ready to go; the only question is, where. We have to leave the Solar System in the direction we’re intending to end up — I don’t have to tell you that. Where are we going, Ching?”

Ching stared at the printout on the greenish console before her, navigation co-ordinates of the known colonies; and blindly up at the opaqued star-screen. The whole universe lay before them — and they expected her to make that decision? She said in a low voice, “You’re asking me to play God,” and something in her voice communicated her sense of awe, of immensity, to Ravi. She had always been so aloof, so much in command of herself, that Ravi, too, was shaken.

Did she feel it, too, that wonderment? he asked himself, and because Ching had always repelled any too-personal approach, Ravi knew he could not ask.

He glanced at the opaqued star-glass, thinking of the crowding immensity of the stars beyond. Unexplored territory. A universe at their feet. Fragments; a scant half dozen colonies out there, millions of billions of stars, and the six of them in their frail little ship, to find a habitable planet in all that wilderness….

He said, and he heard his voice shaking, “I read somewhere, once, that for man to map and explore space was as if a colony of mudfish in a waterhole in the outback of Australia should map the coastline of Australia and every rock in the Greater Barrier Reef.”

Only with the help of God, he thought; mankind aJone could never have done it. And he knew that if he had said it aloud they would all have mocked him; so he was silent.

Teague looked at Ravi, sympathetically. He had gone through this during his first year in the study of astronomy. Facing the indifference of enormous galaxies, the smallness of his own kind against the universe. He said, good-naturedly, “Well, this colony of mudfish has done it. And Ching has the results in the computer. Which way, Ching?”

They were all looking at her now. She said, trying to make her voice matter-of-fact, “I don’t think it’s fair to ask me to make a decision of that size. Not when it affects all of you. I honestly think this is the place for Moira’s consensus decision.”

“You’re the one with the information,” Teague said, “and you were the one who seemed, a while ago, to be in favor of command decisions. What does it matter which way we go? As long as we stay out of black holes, we’re just as likely — speaking from statistic analysis — to find a habitable planet in one direction as in the next.”

Moira exploded. “How can you say that, Teague? Are you saying we can stick a pin in a star-map — or whatever the equivalent would be in the computer — and pick a direction at random?”

“Not at all,” Teague said, “I’m simply pointing out that whatever way we go, we are equally likely, or unlikely, to find a good planet, or not to find one.”

Peake said, “It would seem sensible to go in the direction where we know colonies have already been established, observe the conditions near there, and go on to found neighbor colonies by mapping and surveying the next dozen star-systems or so.”

“That at least gives us a place to start,” Fontana said, “and it would make for an orderly approach.”

“And I’m willing to bet,” Moira said, “that the last fifty or sixty Ships have done exactly that.”

“Why shouldn’t they?” Ching asked. “It seems the logical thing to do.”

“We’ll never know,” Teague said, “because we are Survey Ship one hundred and three. The colonies were founded, as I remember, by year-ships seven, ten, eleven, and nineteen. The crews of those Ships are probably in their thirties or forties by now — I’d have to figure out the time-dilatation equations, and I don’t have them on the tip of my tongue the way Ravi probably does — but we have no news of any later Ships, though ships twenty-four and twenty-five could, theoretically, be reporting any day now. Depending on where they went; and we may or may not ever know that.”

“Which is one reason for heading toward an established colony,” said Peake. “It might be our only chance for any contact with the human race again in our lifetime.”

“You’re talking as if we were going to age at Earth-time,” Teague said. “As we approach light-speed, our age will slow down and for us, biologically speaking, time will virtually stop. Of course we can’t be sure we’ll see them for years, unless we choose to visit one of the established colonies first. But I think we’re expected to find a planet and report it ready for colonization first. Then we can visit already-established colonies, and by that time there will certainly be others.”

Peake thought; even if I could ever come back, jimson would be an old man and I still young. He had known that, intellectually. Now it became suddenly personal, and frightening. And meaningful, with a horrible personal meaning that left him speechless, staring into the console of the navigation instruments.

“I still think it makes sense to explore outward from the known colonies, in an orderly fashion,” Ravi said. “We should stay in contact with the known human settlements; otherwise the chances we’d ever run across one by accident — well, the old needle in a haystack analogy would be very good odds by comparison.”

“But if we find a planet in a wholly new direction,” Moira argued, “then humanity can spread in that many more new directions without being wholly lost. We’d establish a new beachhead in the Galaxy—”

“You’re speaking as if this were a military conquest,” Fontana said.

“Well, it is, in a sense,” Moira said, “us against an empty universe, and we’re going and making new paths for ourselves—”

“As we did in America and Australia?” Ravi asked dryly, “by wiping out the Amerinds and the aborigines?”

“We haven’t found any trace of intelligent life anywhere,” Moira said. “There was none anywhere in the Alpha Centaurus system, and none on any of Wolf 459’s five planets. We may just be alone in the entire Galaxy.”

“I find that approach thoroughly offensive,” Fontana said, “that we have the right to do whatever we please, anywhere, just because we have the technology to come and take over—”

Teague said, ironically, “I thought one of the reasons for getting out into space was to be free of you ecological nuts who want the planet left in perfectly unspoiled primitive conditions!”

“Look, none of this is relevant,” Ching said sharply. “We can debate our various philosophical positions at our leisure, for the next four light-years or so at least! Just now we have to decide in which direction we leave the Solar System!”

“And we asked you to decide that,” Peake said.

“And I told you then, and I tell you again, I will not play God that way! For a decision this big, we need a consensus!”

“You were telling us, a while ago, that we should choose a commander and let the commander make those decisions,” Fontana argued, “and then when we ask you to take that responsibility, you cop out and demand a group consensus!”

Ching felt overwhelmed by the hostility in Fontana’s voice. Somehow she had fell that if she won a place on the final crew she would have proved her right to belong, she would have been accepted. Now she realized that nothing had changed; she was simply alone within the smaller group of hostile strangers, that was all. But still alone.

She said quietly, “I don’t think you understood me, Fontana. Certainly, if you all agree that it is my decision to make, I’ll make it, but I don’t think, at this moment, that I have enough information. Moira, you want to establish a new beachhead for mankind — no, wait, we’ll argue over definitions later — and Ravi, I think, suggested heading for the known colonies and exploring outward from there in an orderly fashion.”

“I agree with Ravi,” Peake said, “somehow I doubt if our Survey Ships have managed to find every habitable planet in that quarter of the Galaxy.”

Fontana said, “There’s good reason for going in that direction. Before the first Survey Ship left, a hundred and five years ago, they surveyed everything they could from Base One on Alpha Centaurus, and decided it was the most promising area to find new planets and probably intelligent life — or conditions favoring it.”

Teague said, diffidently, “Considering that we have a good deal of information about that part of the Galaxy, isn’t it time some crew explored in another direction, and started feeding back information?”

“I don’t think that’s the point of the Survey Ships,” Peake argued. “We were sent to find a habitable planet, not to add to the general sum total of information. The best place to look for new planets is where planets have already been found.”

Moira demanded, “Why should we do just what other ships have done?”

Ching raised her smooth eyebrows. “Why not?”

“We have here,” said Ravi, “the ultimate difference between the pure scientist and the applied scientist; to find new information about the nature of the universe, or to apply that information to use by mankind. Personally, I think the Academy is applied science; we were given orders to find a planet, not find out new things about the universe. Our job is to find a new planet, and I think we owe it to them. After all—” suddenly his voice cracked, “we’ll certainly find out new things, wherever we go. There’s — there’s plenty to find, out — out there.”

Fontana thought, with detachment, he’s scared. After twelve years of supervision in the Academy, we’re all scared to death of being on our own. But we’ve got to get used to it.

Moira, with that eerie responsiveness, almost telepathic, asked, “Isn’t all this delay just a way of trying to cling to some — some lifeline of the familiar? Are we afraid to take off into the unknown?”

“If we are,” said Ching, “I don’t think it will do us any good, not in the long run. For what it’s worth, I agree with Peake and Ravi; the best place to look for a shell is on the beach, and the best place to look for a planet is where it’s been demonstrated that there are many of them.”

Teague said, “Creation doesn’t differ from one quarter of the universe to another. It all came from the Big Bang and if there are planets in one place, there are certain to be planets in any other.”

Ching asked, “Do we have a clear majority, then? Peake, Ravi, Fontana, and I prefer to proceed toward previously established colonies; Moira and Teague vote for a new and unknown direction—”

Teague shook his head. “I was commenting about the nature of the universe, not voting. I’m willing to go along with the majority.”

“As far as that goes, so am I,” Moira said. “My objection was purely philosophical; I don’t approve of majority decisions or majority rule. Historically speaking, democracy is the worst tyranny ever invented by humanity — if we’d left it to majority rule, Peake’s people would still be slaves, we’d all have been brought up praying in school, and there would never have been a space program at all. Majorities always settle for the lowest common denominator and the rule of the uninformed.”

Ching’s eyebrows went up again. She said, “Are you going to take the part of the philosophical rebel among us, Moira, always taking the minority position just to prevent any consensus decision?”

Moira’s freckled face flushed bright pink. She said, “I don’t think that’s a fair way of putting it, Ching.”

“No? How would you put it, then?”

Fontana, watching in silence, realized that this was the first head-to-head confrontation any of them had known. The discipline of the Academy, the knowledge that open hostility would not be tolerated, had downplayed this kind of thing since they were kindergarten age. Should she intervene, tactfully, to defuse it; was this her job as the only psychologist on the crew?

Damn it, she thought, no! Not me! And faced the knowledge that, although she had been crammed with knowledge of psychology, she was only seventeen years old, and no more a psychologist than Peake, with all his knowledge of surgery, was a surgeon. At seventeen they had the rudimentary knowledge of their professions, but they didn’t have the experience or knowledge which, alone, could qualify them for their chosen professions.

And there’s no way to yell for help when we find we can’t handle It.’ God, the Academy is ruthless! They know that only young people can survive long enough to do their work at interstellar distances, so they throw us out to sink or swim.’ Is that why so many crews go out and are never heard of again?

Ching still looked angry. She said, “Obviously I’m not going to give any command to take the ship anywhere over your dead body, Moira. What I need to know is whether your objection means, ‘I am unalterably opposed to going in the direction other ships have gone,’ or whether it means, ‘I am opposed to majority rule for philosophical reasons but in this particular case I am willing to work with the majority.’ I would like to say that, speaking from that philosophical position you were talking about, I don’t find majority rule very satisfactory either. Which is why I felt one person ought to have command authority to make last-ditch decisions if a consensus can’t be found.”

Moira’s flush slowly subsided. She said, “In that case, Ching, I withdraw my objections. I admit I’d like to take off in a direction humanity has never gone before. On the other hand, I don’t think they gave us this ship to satisfy our intellectual curiosity about the universe, either. I’ll agree with the others; we go in the direction of known colonies.”

Ching said, “In that case I’ll get information about navigation co-ordinates for the known colonies, and we’ll head for the most recent of them… right, Peake?”

Fontana felt they were all relieved to have avoided a real confrontation. This meant, at the constant rate of acceleration, they would not have to make any more major policy decisions for more than a year, perhaps four or five years just under the speed of light.

And if we can’t figure out a way to make them by then, we’ll deserve everything that happens to us.

Teague grinned shyly. He said, “I don’t have the exact co-ordinates in my head, but it means, I know, that we’ll be heading out past Saturn’s place in orbit. And we’ll get a good close look at it — which I always wanted. Granted the telemetered shots are pretty spectacular; but I always wanted to see it from within a million miles or so.”

Ching said absently, her fingers working on the computer console, “If we head for Colony Five, that will bring us out within two hundred thousand miles of Saturn’s rings. We could make it a little closer, but that would mean altering course to avoid coming within orbital distance of one of the moons—”

“Japetus,” Ravi said absently, looking over Ching’s shoulder.

Teague demanded, “How the hell do you do that, Ravi?”

His dark face flushed. “I’m not sure,” he said, “I never did know how I do it. It just adds up in my head.”

Ching said formally, “The co-ordinates are on the console. You can work out a course, Peake, and then, I suppose, it’s Moira’s business to cut the drives in—”

Peake looked around, hesitantly. “So that’s all there is to it? We simply — go? Just like that? Shouldn’t we — let them know, or something? As a courtesy?”

“Courtesy from whom to whom?” Moira asked. “Face it; they don’t expect to hear from us again until we bring them a habitable planet. They’ve kicked the baby birds right out of the nest.”

It’s all gone, Peake thought. All the life any of us have ever had, until this moment. And Jimson. He touched the button which cleared the huge window, letting the stars blaze into the control cabin.

“Don’t,” Moira said, turning her eyes away, “it makes me dizzy. I think we have to — to get used to it. In stages.”

“We’d better get used to it,” Peake said, savagely, “because it’s all there is. All we’ve got. Any of us. Just what’s out there. And we might as well learn to face it now as later! There’s no sense staying in the womb!”