“Not on your life,” said Moira with a shudder.
“Binary is as simple as our normal decimal system, once you get used to it—”
“But I don’t have time to get used to it just now,” Moira said.
Ching nodded. “In any case, we should still be able to get the right answers — assuming that we input everything as a real number, and assuming that the Float subroutine is the only thing malfunctioning — but we still shouldn’t trust the computer until I have a chance to check everything out. And that includes programs already built into the computer as well as the ones we’re putting in ourselves.”
Moira asked soberly, “Is there any possibility that the meteor damage was to the computer module?”
They could all, Fontana thought, see the implications of that. Mathematical computations for the navigation, after all, could be done with the aid of their calculators, checked by Ravi’s talent. But the computer was literally in charge of every other function of the ship. Gravity. Life Support. They were still running on stored food, but soon they would begin molecular synthesis of every mouthful they ate. Teague could see it too; he said wryly, “No chance the life-support computer tie-ins are screwed up? All we need is for the computer to start synthesizing H2SO4 instead of H2O!”
Fontana shuddered. Ching said soberly, “I can’t entirely exclude that possibility. I’ll get inside the module as fast as I can, and check every unit inside it. No, I don’t think there was damage to the computer module; the tests showed the integrity of the module undamaged. But even if it wasn’t holed, we can’t rule out secondary impact shock as a possibility. Or — considering that the first failure of the DeMags was before the impact — the possibility of some defect in programming, or some damage inside to the storage apparatus.” She stood up and stretched nervously. “Crisis over. Just make sure I okay every figure you enter in the computer before you put it in. Ravi, do you know where we are?”
He bit his lip. “I will, before long,” he said, “I’m getting a fix on Jupiter and three of the moons, and triangulating with the Sun; fairly soon I’ll know our exact position relative to where we ought to be. Whether we can get back there without running the gauntlet of the asteroid belt, that’s another thing; we may have made a critical mistake before we crossed the orbit of Mars, and it’s just possible that the whole asteroid belt is between us and the direction we had intended to go. And unless Ching says the computer is back to where we can rely on it absolutely, I don’t think we ought to make any major course corrections. There might be some kind of glitch in the mechanism which regulates the drives, so that we enter into the computer exactly what we want the Ship to do, and how we want to maneuver, and instead the Ship does something else.”
He could see Moira shudder, and she lifted her hands from the sail controls and stared at them curiously, in a helpless way that seemed wholly at odds with everything he knew of Moira.
He said, “I can see now why they wanted a psychic on the crew, Moira. You knew, before we were holed. And you knew the damage was in the gym.”
“But not in time for it to do us any good,” Moira said, tightly. She lowered her eyes and would not look at him.
“I think the first thing for us to do is to deal with the damage in the gym,” Teague said, “and to check out all the Life-Support equipment and verify that it’s working exactly as it should—”
“No,” Peake said steadily. He started shucking his pressure suit. “After this kind of crisis, we’re all drained and blood sugar is dropping, so we get panicky and start imagining all kinds of horror. As you said, we’re working on stored food, so there’s no danger of getting something lethal because the synthesizers aren’t working. I suggest we go and have that dinner we were about to have when the meteor struck us.”
Only Ravi protested. “I don’t want to leave the Bridge until I’m sure we’re safely out of proximity to the asteroid belt—”
“At the rate we’re going, that will be about six minutes,” Peake said shortly, bending to check what he was doing, “and you need food just as much as the rest of us. Anyhow, even if we were out beyond the orbit of Neptune, there would be no way to exclude the possibility of a grain-of-sand type hitting us again. It’s about as unlikely as the sun going nova in the next twenty minutes. Come along and have some dinner, Ravi; sitting there in that chair isn’t going to keep all the little meteors out of our path!”
“You too, Moira,” Ching said, stopping behind her chair. “You’ll think more clearly with some food inside you — and I know I will, too.”
Peake slung his pressure suit over his arm. He said, “All of you. Bring these, and the helmets, back to me— main cabin and store them right where they were. You can see, now, the importance of having them accessible in every module, at every moment!”
As they pushed, one by one, into the free-fall corridor which would take them back to the main cabin where the food console and their musical instruments were stored, Teague bounced up behind Ching. She had taken off the helmet of the pressure suit, and had it tucked under her arm; the heat of the suit made her dark hair cling in wispy little tendrils to the back of her neck. He pried her hands loose from the crawl-bar. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll hold on to you. I won’t let you get hurt. You’ve got to learn not to be afraid of it. Ching. Come on, put your arms around my neck.”
Hesitantly, she complied, feeling his rough cheek against hers. Somehow the feel steadied the lurching sickness inside her. Under ordinary conditions she very much disliked touching anyone, feeling they were all too aware of her difference; she knew how they felt,
that she was not quite human… as if the genetic tinkering had had some monstrous effect on her, freakishness, and if they touched her, the strangeness would somehow rub off; she had learned to keep herself rigidly away. Only, under the multiple shocks of the past hours, Teague’s strength felt warm and comforting, she wanted to cling to him and cry. She wound her arms around him with relief, hiding her face as he pushed off and they flew the length of the corridor, coming up with a soft bump at the far end. Teague pushed her gently through the lock and they were in the familiar gravity of the main cabin. She clambered down from his arms, began to strip off her pressure suit, hanging it in the rack, She felt self-conscious about the way the thin tunic clung, wrinkled and sweaty, to her small breasts.