"What made you decide to quit?" Victoria asked bluntly.
"I thought about what you said, about the arguments between the U.S. government and EarthSpace. I worried."
"As do we all."
"I didn't want divided loyalties." J.D. felt guilty for making two true statements and implying a direct connection between them. For the moment, though, she could not explain to Victoria, to anyone, her real reasons for all her decisions of the last few days.
She stared out the window at the mountain slope, the tree-line a few hundred meters below, the peaks receding to blue in the distance.
"Don't worry," Victoria said, mistaking her distraction.
"The acceleration isn't bad at all."
"I'm sure I'll be fine."
The plane jolted slightly as it released itself from the gate. J.D. gasped and clutched Victoria's hand.
Victoria smiled and let J.D. hold on as the plane slid forward.
Victoria loved riding the spaceplane. She enjoyed the landings, but she liked the takeoffs even better.
The plane accelerated, racing over its magnetic rails, its delta-vee increasing, pressing Victoria against her couch. The plane reached the bottom of the long fast slope and pulsed forward along the magnetic lines of force, driven faster and faster by a great roller coaster with a single unending rise.
The magnetic rail flung the plane off its end and into the air. The acceleration ceased abruptly: heart-fall hit.
"Wow" J.D. said, breathless.
6 vonda N. Mcintyre
"What do you think?"
"That's the first time I ever rode a roller coaster that I liked."
Victoria felt the slight pressure of her body against the seat belts as, in weightlessness, gravity no longer held her against her couch. Beside her, J.D. peered eagerly through the roof window as the blue sky gave way to a deep indigo that gradually faded to starry black.
"It's just beautiful."
"It is, isn't it?"
The spaceplane rotated around its long axis and thfc earth came into view through the roof window. Despite the lack of gravity, the arrangement of the couches made the window feel like "up." Earth appeared to loom above her. Pofher first few trips into space, Victoria had tried to cultivated attitude of nonchalance about the sight of earth spinning slowly before her. Gradually, though, she realized that even the veterans of space travel never lost their awe, never grew hardened. No matter how matter-of-fact they acted about the dangers or the hardships of the early days, they never pretended to have the same cool indifference to earth, vulnerable and without boundaries, whole in their sight, a sphere they could cup in their hands.
Victoria glanced at J.D., who stared up through the window with her mouth slightly open. Her short lank hair stood out from her head as if she were underwater.
"1 never thought . . . I've imagined this, I've seen it in pictures and on film, even on sensory recording. I thought I'd know what it felt like. But it's different, seeing it for real."
"It is," Victoria said. "It's always different, seeing it for real."
The earth fell behind. The spaceplane slid smoothly into an orbit to catch up and dock with the transport to Starfarer.
"What's it like to swim with the orcas?" Victoria said.
"It's like this," J.D. said.
"Like space travel?"
"Uh-huh. Looking at earth from space is the nearest thing I've ever felt to being underwater and suddenly realizing that the light at the limit of your vision is the white patch on an' orca's side. Then when they come closer . . . They're magical. Until now I thought that if I could find the right words,
STARFARERS 7
I'd be able to explain it to everyone. But no one ever found the right words to explain—to me, anyway—how it feels to look at earth from space. Maybe no one can explain either."
"Damn," Victoria said. "I wish we'd had this conversation a couple of days ago."
"Why?"
"Because I'd have stolen your line, when I talked to the premier last night. And I wish I'd thought of saying that to your Mr. Distler, when I testified last year."
"/ didn't vote for him," J.D. said. "Not for senator—1 don't even come from the same state—or when he ran for president. Never mind, I know what you mean."
"That's what I should have told him—that he couldn't understand why we wanted to be here unless he came and saw it for himself." Victoria made herself relax, balancing her body between the contour couch and the seat belts. She sighed. "Probably even that wouldn't have helped."
"The orcas are interested in Starfarer," J.D. said.
"The orcas? The divers, you mean?"
"There's a diver who's interested, yes. But I mean the orcas themselves discussed applying to the expedition."
"Outlandish," Victoria said.
"Why do you say that?" J.D. asked mildly.
"I can't imagine a cetacean on board a starship."
"That's the trouble," J.D. said. "Nobody imagined it when they designed the cylinders- The ecosystem was evolved around salt marshes, but there isn't much Jeep water."
"Would you have proposed transporting an orca to Star-farer if there was deep water?''
"Not one—several. They're social beings,-even more so than us. They get bored and slowly go crazy and die, all alone. They don't like to be confined, either, but they pointed out that when humans used to catch them they lived in much smaller places than the largest bodies of water on Starfarer, for longer than the expedition is planned to last."
"Then you think it's a good idea."
"I think it would be wonderful to have two different kinds of intelligent beings along on the expedition. I love the orcas, though. I love their freedom. They would have been willing to risk it, and I think they could have survived. But I wonder if they would have been happy?"
8 vonda N. Mcintyre
J.D. gazed out at space, at earth, where the oceans dominated. A weather system had just passed over the Pacific Northwest, leaving the area clearly visible.
The clicks and squeals and stutters of the orcas echoed across the inlet. The cold, clear water moved with a gentle, irresistible power, rolling fist-sized stones one against the other on the rocky shore, creating a rumble of counterpoint to the calling of the whales.
J.D. swam. The artificial lung, nestled against her back, absorbed oxygen from the sea and transferred it to her mask.
Kelp waved below. A bright orange nudibranch swam past, propelled by its frilly mantle. At the limit of J.D.'s vision, a salmon flashed silver-blue in the filtered light.
She shivered. Her metabolic enhancer could produce only so much heat. She could have worn a wet suit, but it limited her contact with the sea.
Soon she would have to swim away from the mouth of the inlet and return to shore. She stroked upward and broke the surface of the clear green water. Before her, the inlet opened out into a part of Puget Sound where no one could go without an invitation. Apparently the divers would not invite J.D. into the wilderness today.
The orcas remained out of sight around the headland. She could imagine them playing, oblivious to the cold, their sleek black and white bodies cutting the swells. By morning they would be gone. They could swim a hundred kilometers between one dawn and the next. Orcas never stayed in one place for long.
The sun on her face made the water feel even colder. J.D. turned and swam toward shore. Her cabin stood back among the Douglas firs that grew to the edge of the stony beach.
Just offshore, she stopped at the anchored deck. She teased the artificial lung from her back and tethered it beneath the planks, where it would feed and breathe and rest and pump seawater through itself until she needed it again. She dove from the deck and swam easily home. Without the lung. she no longer felt a part of the sea.