It lasted only for a few minutes. Then they were free. The acceleration stopped. The railgun had flung the capsule off its tip, and now they were simply thrown free into the sky, weightless. The only external force acting on the railgun launch capsule now was the dwindling friction of the outside air; that pressed Rafiel's body against the restraining straps at first, but then it, too, was gone.
'Congratulations, dear Rafiel,' said Alegretta, smiling. 'You're in space.'
Once they had transshipped to a spacecraft it was eight days to Mars-orbit, where Hakluyt hung waiting for them. There were a few little sleeping cabins in the ship, in addition to the multi-bunk compartments. The cabins were expensive, but that was not a consideration for Rafiel, who was well aware that he had far more money than he would ever live to spend. So he and Alegretta and the cats had their own private space, just the four of them - or five, if you counted the little cluster of cells that was busily dividing in the white cat's belly, getting ready to become a person.
Their transport was a steady-thrust spacecraft, accelerating at a sizeable fraction of a gee all the way to turnaround, and decelerating from then on. It was possible to move around the ship quite easily. It was also pointless, because there was nothing much to do. There was no dining room, no cabaret, no swimming pool on the aft deck, no gym to work out in. The servers brought meals to the passengers where they were. Most of the passengers spent their time viewing vid programmes, old and new, on their personal screens. Or sleeping. In the private cabin Rafiel and Alegretta had several other options, one of which was talking; but even they slept a lot.
More than a lot.
When, at their destination, they were docking with the habitat shuttlecraft Rafiel, puzzled, counted back and realized that he had only slept twice on the trip. They had to have been good long sleeps - two or three full twenty-four- hour days at a time; and that was when he realized that Alegretta had doped him to make him rest as much as possible.
13
On board the Hakluyt, Alegretta disappears as soon as Rafiel is settled in. She can't wait to see what damage her deputy may have done to her precious engines. This leaves Rafiel free to explore the habitat. There's no thrust on Hakluyt's engines yet, just the slow roll of the habitat to distinguish up from down. That's a bit of a problem for everybody. All habitats spin slowly so that centrifugal force will supply some kind of gravity. But when Hakluyt starts to move they'll stop the spin because they won't need it any more. The 'down' the spin has provided them - radially outward from the central axis of the cylindrical habitat - will be replaced by a rearward 'down', toward the thruster engines in the stem. Consequently, every last piece of furnishing will have to be rearranged as walls become floors and floors walls. Rafiel is having a lot of trouble with his orientation. Besides the fact that half the fittings have already been relocated, the light- gee pull is strange to him. Because he has spent so little time in low-gee environments he instinctively holds on to things as he walks, though really the feeling isn't much different from being on, say, the Moon. (But Rafiel hasn't been even there for nearly half a century.) Once he gets used to these things, though, he's fascinated. Everything so busy/ Everyone in such a hurry/ The whole ship's complement has turned out to finish loading, even small children - Rafiel is fascinated to see how many children there are. Young and old, they can't wait to start on their long interstellar journey - and aren't very patient with people (even very famous people) who happen to get in their way.
By the time Rafiel had been three days on Hakluyt he was beginning to get used to the fact that he didn't see much of Alegretta. Not when she was awake, at least. When she was awake all she seemed to have time for was to check on his vital signs and peer into her computer screen when she'd stuck sensors to his chest and make sure he was taking his spansules. Then she was off again, looking harried.
They did sleep together, of course, or at least they slept in the same bed. Not necessarily at the same times. Once or twice Rafiel came back to their tiny compartment and found her curled up there, out cold. When she felt him crawl in beside her she reached out to him. He was never quite certain she was awake even when they made love - awake enough to respond to him, certainly, and for a few pleased mumbles when they were through, but nothing that was actually articulate speech.
It was almost good enough, anyway, just to know that she was nearby. Not quite; but still it was fascinating to explore the ship, dodging the busy work teams, trying to be helpful when he could, to stay out of the way, at least, when he couldn't. The ship was full of marvels, not least the people who crewed it (busy, serious, plainly dressed and so purposeful). A special wonder was the vast central space that was a sort of sky as the habitat rotated (but what purpose would it serve when they were under way?). The greatest wonder of all was Hakluyt itself. It was going to go where no human had ever, ever, gone before.
Everything about the ship delighted and astonished. Rafiel discovered that the couch in their room became a bed when they wanted it to, and if they didn't want either it disappeared entirely into a wall. There was a keypad in the room that controlled air, heat, lights, clock, messages - might run all of Hakluyt, Rafiel was amused to think, if he only knew what buttons to push. Or if all the things worked.
The fact was, they didn't all work. When Rafiel tried to get a news broadcast from Earth the screen produced a children's cartoon, and when he tried to correct it the whole screen dissolved into the snow of static. The water taps - hot, cold, potable - all ran merely cold.
When he woke to find exhausted Alegretta trying to creep silently into their bed, he said, making a joke, 'I hope the navigation system works better than the rest of this stuff.'
She took him seriously. Tm sorry,' she said, weary, covetously eyeing the bed. 'It's the powerplant. It wasn't originally designed to drive a ship, only to supply power for domestic needs. Oh, it has plenty of power. But they located the thing midships instead of at the stern, and we had to brace everything against the drive thrust. That means relocating the water reservoirs - don't drink the water, by the way, dear; if you're thirsty, go to one of the kitchens - and- Well, hell,' she finished remorsefully. 'I should have been here.'
Which added fuel to the growing guilt in Rafiel. He took a chance. 'I want to help,' he said.
'How?' she asked immediately - woundingly, just as he had feared she would.
He flinched, but said, 'They're loading more supplies - fresh wing-bean seeds this morning, I hear. At least I can help shift cargo!' 'You can not,' she said in sudden alarm. 'That's much too strenuous! I don't want you dying on me!' Then, relenting, she thought for a moment. 'All right. I'll talk to Borretta, he's loadmaster. He'll find something for you - but now, please, let me come to bed.'
Borretta did find something for him. Rafiel became a children's care-giver in one of the ship's nurseries, relieving for active duty the ten-year-old who had previously been charged with supervising the zero-to-three-year-olds.