Angrily, she dismissed the thought. I’m tired and sick and I think I have a touch of gravity sickness and I’m making up nightmares and calling it ESP! Because there had been times when her erratic wild talent had played her false, giving her a warning of trouble which never happened, especially when there was something she particularly wanted not to do.
Ching, accustomed from early childhood to rely on computer-set certainties, nodded at Moira’s words. She said, “Actually, we’re just along for the ride. The computers run the ship.”
“Actually, I was thinking that myself,” Teague said. “It seems that you and Moira are doing all the real work of the ship, and it might make more sense to put the four of us others into suspended animation. When we reached a planet, you could wake us up, we’d still be young and stronger than we would otherwise, and we could do the survey work on that planet…”
“I don’t know about you,” Moira said, “but I don’t think I’d care to make a voyage of nine point something years to the T-5 cluster without more company than Ching. No offense intended, Ching, but it’s a known psychological fact — Fontana, I’m right, aren’t I? — that any two people alone together will drive each other crazy and murder each other.”
Fontana chuckled. She said, “It has been known to happen. It’s true; that’s why the minimal crew for a Survey Ship has to be at least four people, and six is better. That gives everybody some privacy, and somebody new to talk to now and then. Even as it is, we’re likely to get bored with each other’s company.”
Although Ching knew that Moira’s words were not personally intended, she still felt somehow wounded. But at least, she thought, they know that I — and the computer — have set the major work of the Ship. Peake plotted the co-ordinates and the course, but it was the computer which gave it to him. The computer and I. Very precisely, intending to wound a little, she said, “I don’t know about you, Moira, I can well understand that you might need a certain amount of diversion on a long voyage, but I think it would be interesting to experiment with a Survey Ship staffed by one human and one computer. I would gladly have volunteered for such a voyage. I’m not afraid of my own company, and I don’t need to hide from it. With this computer — “ and only Moira saw, and understood, the affectionate touch of her fingers on the console, “—I don’t really think I would need anyone else on the voyage. After all, I went through the Academy as a loner, and I’m used to it.”
Ravi looked at the immensity beyond the window and said, “We are all alone, fundamentally, with the universe—” but he said it so softly that no one else heard.
Moira stood up and went to Ching. She said, very gently, “But you weren’t alone, and I think if you were really alone, with the computer, you’d go crazy. I know I would.”
“I know you would, too,” Ching said, stiff against the friendly arm Moira slid around her waist, and Moira sighed and let her go. It was, after all, impossible to be friendly with Ching. She had tried it before, and been rebuffed in the same way, and here she was, stuck with her for the indefinite future.
Ching, her face tightly barriered, was thinking, Oh, yes, Moira, being nice to the class freak, the way she’d be so nice to a cripple or a blind person. Well, I’m damned if I want her pitying me! She said, “Well, the question’s academic anyhow. It makes more sense to figure out who’s going to cook dinner. Teague, didn’t you say there was fresh food storage for a period of months? Why don’t we celebrate our takeoff with a steak dinner, or the nearest equivalent we can find in the food machines? I’ll volunteer to cook tonight, but after this we take turns.”
Once again, the dizzying shifts in direction as they moved from the strongly oriented gravity of the “bridge” to the Life-Support central area — which was fairly circular — and once again Peake stumbled as the direction of “down” abruptly reversed itself.
Moira, flipping herself over in the low gravity, catching Ravi and spinning with him on a common center in the almost-gravity-free corridor between two modules, thought, I guess the gravity-sickness was psychological. When I don’t have to look out that damned window at the whole universe, I seem to have my space-orientation just fine! Holding tight to Ravi’s hand, they cartwheeled the length of the zero-gravity corridor. Ching was clinging tightly to the crawl-bar, inching like a fly along the wall. Peake pushed his legs against one end and took off, shooting along the corridor and colliding with Ravi and Moira; the three of them ended in a laughing tangle of arms and legs. Teague and Fontana, clinging to each other and making “swimming” motions, joined in the laughter.
“I should remind you all,” Peake said, “that the exercise area — that’s the conical module we didn’t get to, next to the sleeping quarters — is arranged with DeMag units that can be cut down to zero or up to full gravity. We have to work out at full gravity to keep our muscles in good shape—” Teague groaned, but Peake ignored him and went on, “but we can experiment with free-fall acrobatics if we want to, too.”
“Look at Ching,” Moira squeaked. “Let go, Ching, you can’t get hurt, there’s nowhere to fall to!”
Ching was clinging dizzily to the crawl-bar still. She said, “I think I’ll wait to get my orientation. If it’s quite all right with you, Moira?” she added meticulously.
Fontana’s voice was sharp. “Let her alone, Moira, we all have to adjust at our own rate, and you’ve been in free-fall before; she hasn’t.”
Moira, holding to Ravi, felt his body against hers, looked with pleasure at the contrast of his coffee-colored hands against her own pallid ones. She twisted a little and their lips met; she felt his kiss with a shock of recognition, a familiar thing among all the new strangenesses. They floated together, their lips just touching, entangled, her hair floating around him, streaming, intermingled with his own dark curls. She fancied Ching’s look down at them both was one of disapproval, and defiantly prolonged the kiss.
Peake pushed through the sphincter into the next module, which was the main cabin they had first entered. He went to the food machine, Ching joining him there a moment later.
Ching said, “They didn’t lose any time, did they — Moira and Ravi?”
Peake shrugged. He said, “Does it matter that much?” The sight of the two, intertwined and kissing, lost in each other, roused painful memories. Every scrap of his being longed for Jimson; even during the excitement of pulling away from the Space Station, he had had to keep remembering, I can’t share it with him, is he watching me go, I’ll never be able to share it with him again. Was Jimson suffering like this, too, at the other end of that lengthening string which separated them? Part of him wanted Jimson to share even this suffering, part of him quailed at the thought of Jimson, tender, sweet, vulnerable, undergoing this monstrous pain that seemed to eat him up inside.
Alone, and I will be alone all the rest of my life. There is no one here for me. Both Ravi and Teague are obviously heterosexual, and as for the women…. I don’t want them, they don’t want me… alone. Always alone, a lifetime alone….
Ching, standing beside him at the console, thought that he looked lost; it was so strange to see Peake without the fair-haired Jimson trailing him.
I know what it is to be alone. I went through twelve years of it. But he at least has known what it is like to be loved and wanted, she thought disconsolately. I never will.
She said, “Do you suppose we could manage a steak dinner out of the console, Peake?”
“Can’t hurt to try,” he said, “it may not actually be steak, but it will probably be too good an imitation for me to tell the difference.”
“We might have a little more trouble with the fried potatoes and onion rings,” she said, smiling. “And I suspect fresh salads are always going to be beyond our reach. Oh, well, Vitamin C is Vitamin C, I suppose.”