Mark thought: What does he care about the stars? Does he care about their size and brightness and spectral classes?
His lower lip trembled. The captain was just one of the noncompos. Everyone on ship was a noncompos. That’s what they called them back in the Service. Noncompos. All of them. Couldn’t cube fifteen without a computer.
Mark felt very lonely.
He let it go—no use trying to explain—and said, “The stars get so thick here. Like pea soup.”
“All appearance, Mr. Annuncio.” (The captain pronounced the “c” in Mark’s name like an “s” rather than a “is” and the sound grated on Mark’s ear.) “Average distance between stars in the thickest cluster is over a light-year. Plenty of room, eh? Looks thick, though. Grant you that. If the lights were out, they’d shine like a trillion Chisholm points in an oscillating force-field.”
But he didn’t offer to put the lights out and Mark wasn’t going to ask him to.
The captain said, “Sit down, Mr. Annuncio. No use standing, eh? You smoke? Mind if I do? Sorry you couldn’t be here this mornins. Had an excellent view of Lagrange I and II at six space-hours. Red and green. Like traffic lights, eh? Missed you all trip. Space-legs need strengthening, eh?”
He barked out his “eh’s” in a high-pitched voice that Mark found devilishly irritating.
Mark said in a low voice, “I’m all right now.”
The captain seemed to find that unsatisfactory. He puffed at his cigar and stared down at Mark with eyebrows hunched down over his eyes. He said, slowly, “Glad to see you now, anyway. Get acquainted a little. Shake hands. The Triple G’s been on a good many government-chartered cruises. No trouble. Never had trouble. Wouldn’t want trouble. You understand.”
Mark didn’t. He was tired of trying to. His eyes drifted back hungrily to the stars. The pattern had changed a little.
The captain caught his eyes for a moment. He was frowning and his shoulders seemed to tremble at the edge of a shrug. He walked to the control panel, and like a gigantic eyelid, metal slithered across the studded observation port.
Mark jumped up in a fury, shrieking, “What’s the idea? I’m counting them, you fool.”
“Counting—” The captain flushed, but maintained a quality of politeness in his voice. He said, “Sorry! Little matter of business we must discuss.”
He stressed the word “business” lightly.
Mark knew what he meant. “There’s nothing to discuss. I want to see the ship’s log. I called you hours ago to tell you mat. You’re delaying me.”
The captain said, “Suppose you tell me why you want to see it, eh? Never been asked before. Where’s your authority?”
Mark felt astonished. “I can look at anything I want to. I’m in Mnemonic Service.”
The captain puffed strongly at his cigar. (It was a special grade manufactured for use in space and on enclosed space-objects. It had an oxidant included so that atmospheric oxygen was not consumed.)
He said, cautiously, “That so? Never heard of it. What is it?”
Mark said indignantly, “It’s the Mnemonic Service, that’s all. It’s my job to look at anything I want to and to ask anything I want to. And I’ve got the right to do it.”
“Can’t look at the log if I don’t want you to.”
“You’ve got no say in it, you… you noncompos.”
The captain’s coolness evaporated. He threw his cigar down violently and stamped at it, then picked it up and poked it carefully into the ash vent.
“What the Galactic Drift is this?” he demanded. “Who are you, anyway? Security agent? What’s up? Let’s have it straight. Right now.”
“I’ve told you all I have to.”
“Nothing to hide,” said the captain, “but I’ve got rights.”
“Nothing to hide?” squeaked Mark. “Then why is this ship called the Triple G?”
“That’s its name.”
“Go on. No such ship with an Earth registry. I knew that before I got on. I’ve been waiting to ask you.”
The captain blinked. He said, “Official name is George G. Grundy. Triple G is what everyone calls it.”
Mark laughed. “All right, then. And after I see the log book, I want to talk to the crew. I have the right. You ask Dr. Sheffield.”
“The crew too, eh?” the captain seethed. “Let’s talk to Dr. Sheffield, and then let’s keep you in quarters till we land. Sprout!”
He snatched at the intercom box.
The scientific complement of the Triple G were few in number for the job they had to do, and, as individuals, young. Not as young as Mark Annuncio, perhaps, who was in a class by himself, but even the oldest of them, Emmanuel George Cimon—astrophysicist—was not quite thirty-nine. And with his dark, unthinned hair and large, brilliant eyes, he looked still younger. To be sure, the optic brilliance was partly due to the wearing of contact lenses.
Cimon, who was perhaps overconscious of his relative age, and of the fact that he was the titular head of the expedition—a fact most of the others were inclined to ignore—usually affected an undramatic view of the mission. He ran the dotted tape through his fingers, then let it snake silently back into its spool.
“Run of the mill,” he sighed, seating himself in the softest chair in the small passenger’s lounge. “Nothing.”
He looked at the latest color photographs of the Lagrange binary and was impervious to their beauty. Lagrange I, smaller and hotter than Earth’s own sun, was a brilliant green-blue, with a pearly green-yellow corona surrounding it like the gold setting of an emerald. It appeared to be the size of a lentil or of a ball bearing out of a Lenser-ratchet. A short distance away—as distances go on a photograph—was Lagrange II. It appeared twice the size of Lagrange I, due to its position in space. (Actually, it was only four-fifths the diameter of Lagrange I, half its volume and two-thirds its mass.) Its orange-red, toward which the film was less sensitive, comparatively, than was the human retina, seemed dimmer than ever against the glory of its sister sun.
Surrounding both, undrowned by the near-by suns, as the result of the differentially-polarized lens specifically used for the purpose, was the unbelievable brilliance of the Hercules cluster. It was diamond dust, scattered thickly, yellow, white, blue, and red.
“Nothing,” said Cimon.
“Looks good to me,” said the other man in the lounge. He was Groot Knoevenaagle—physician—short, plump, and known to man by no name other than Novee.
He went on to ask, “Where’s Junior?” then bent over Cimon’s shoulder, peering out of slightly myopic eyes.
Cimon looked up and shuddered, “It’s name is not Junior. You can’t see the planet, Troas, if that’s what you mean, in this wilderness of stars. This picture is Scientific Earthman material. It isn’t particularly useful.”
“Oh, Space and back!” Novee was disappointed.
“What difference is it to you, anyway?” demanded Cimon. “Suppose I said one of those dots was Troas—any one of them. You wouldn’t know the difference and what good would it do you?”
“Now wait, Cimon. Don’t be so superior. It’s legitimate sentiment. We’ll be living on Junior for a while. For all we know, we’ll be dying on it.”
“There’s no audience, Novee, no orchestra, no mikes, no trumpets, so why be dramatic. We won’t be dying on it. If we do, it’ll be our own fault, and probably as a result of overeating.” He said it with the peculiar emphasis men of small appetite use when speaking to men of hearty appetite, as though a poor digestion was something that came only of rigid virtue and superior intellect.