Ravi looked up at him, eyes raised in a quizzical grin. “I thought you’d be first navigator. My second specialty was navigation, too. What do we do — toss a coin for it?”
Peake looked around the spherical chamber. One half of it was an opaqued wall of glass looking out on the universe. The DeMag was turned high enough so that they could sit at their seats, without floating away in free-fall. Before him a multitude of blinking lights, coded yellow, red, green, blue, flashed quietly, and he had the sensation that they were waiting. Moira touched a control, and the glass wall which reflected the blinking lights, suddenly became clear. In spite of the DeMag units giving them an “up” and “down” orientation, they all gasped and clutched at the nearest support; outside was only the vastness of space, white with stars, so thick that there was no sign of constellations. They could have read small print by that light. Against the blaze of stars Peake could still see the faint reflections of blue, red, yellow, green control lights, imposing their own order on the chaos outside.
Ravi was still looking at him expectantly. Ching said, “Which one of you had the highest grades in navigation?”
“Not enough difference to matter, over three years,” Peake said, “and I’m a doctor, not a navigator. Does one of us have to be above the other? I’d rather share navigation on a time basis, not a rank basis — we’re a fairly healthy crew or we wouldn’t be here.”
Ravi shrugged. “Okay; I’ll toss you for day or night watch, if you want to do it that way, or until we see it isn’t working. The one whose shift it is makes any necessary decision. Fair enough?”
“I don’t think that makes much sense,” Ching said. “There has to be one person with the responsibility for decisions — the commander, captain, whatever. I thought chief navigator was usually in that spot. Who’s going to be making major decisions?”
“I don’t think it ought to be who, but how,” Moira said, swinging the seat around to face them. “Consensus decisions, I’d say, for anything major. Small decisions, whoever’s running the special machinery involved.”
Ching said, “I don’t agree. Someone has to decide—”
“I had more than enough of structured decisions in the Academy,” Peake said. “I’m ready to try sharing decisions on a group basis. If that doesn’t work, there’ll be time enough to try something else.”
Ching shook her head. She said, “We could come up against something serious, so serious there wouldn’t be time for a consensus, and there ought to be one person in charge—”
“What’s your specialty, Ching?” Fontana asked with a smile, “group dynamics and sociology?”
Ching said stiffly, “I wouldn’t dignify that by the name of a science at all. I am a computer technician and biochemist, with meteorology and oceanography as planet-based specialties. But as part of this group I do feel I have a vested interest in designating competent leadership for making decisions.”
“There’s a lot of logic to that,” Fontana said, reflecting that it was probably the first time she had agreed with anything Ching said, “but I think we should check out the rest of the Ship before we start arguing about it. It looks as if you will be in charge of the computer, Ching. It’s through there — shall we take a look at it? Though the central computer console seems to be in here, with navigation and drive consoles—”
Ching smiled. She slid into the seat past Moira’s, and it seemed to Fontana that the small, rigid body relaxed slightly as she looked at the main computer console. Then she looked up, with a faint, challenging stance.
“Anyone else?”
Silence. Ching demanded, “Nobody else at all? Isn’t there anyone with even a third or fourth in computer technology?”
Teague said, “Looks like it’s all yours, Ching.”
She looked stricken.
“That doesn’t make sense! I’d hoped for Chris, or Mei Mei, or Fly — somebody with some computer sense — but I can’t believe they sent us out without a single computer technician except me!”
“Obviously,” said Peake, “they decided that with you, they didn’t need anyone else.”
Ching gave him an angry, suspicious glare. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not at all,” Peake said. “Why would they need two computer experts on one ship? You’ll have it all to yourself.”
Ching protested, “But they always have a backup technician—” and she sounded almost frightened. Nevertheless, Fontana thought, as Ching moved and settled deeper into the seat, there was a touch of satisfaction, too.
Ching must know she’s not really liked; maybe it will give her the kind of confidence she needs, to know she’s really indispensable.
“It’s not all that bad,” Moira protested, “the Ship’s drive is a computer, tied into the main one; and I know how to handle that.”
“And for all your comments about psychology and sociology not being exact sciences,” Fontana added, “I know how to get linguistics analysis from a computer— including yours.”
“Not to mention,” Ravi said, “that navigation and astronomy both demand computer access and skill. I don’t think there’s any one of us, Ching, who doesn’t know how to use a computer. Probably that’s why they had only one specialist—”
“But what if there’s trouble? If I’m the only one who knows enough about the hardware—”
Peake said, “You’ll have to choose one of us and teach him, or her, how to take the thing apart in case of emergency. We’re going to have a lot of time with nothing much to do, once we’re out of the Solar System, and before we reach the nearest stars and star-colonies. We’ll be navigating our way out of the Solar System, but at standard acceleration that won’t take more than a few days—”
“Not that long,” Ching said, and began to touch buttons on the console, but Ravi said, “twelve days, four hours, nine minutes, and a few seconds.”
Ching swung her chair around, incredulous. Fontana thought she looked angry. “What do you—”
Peake said, “I’d forgotten. You’re the one they call the human computer, Ravi.”
He shrugged, looking almost as uncomfortable as Ching. “It’s one of the commoner Wild Talents. I’m not the only lightning calculator in the Academy.”
Ching looked at her console, where the same thing was printed out. She said, her face twisting slightly, “I guess if the computer gets out of order we can use you, then, can’t we?”
“Take it easy, Ching,” Moira said, soothingly, but the edge of mockery was clearly perceptible in her voice. “I don’t think Ravi really meant to come between you and your best friend, did you, Ravi?”
“By no means,” Ravi said, ignoring mockery and soothing alike. “Your talents will be needed for anything serious, Ching — that was a purely automatic arithmetical calculation. We must find out where we are going, and when, and how. Do we get orders?”
Peake said, quietly, “I think, when they gave us the Ship, we were given the only orders they were going to give us. All they care about is whether we find them a habitable planet. Ching, you have the resources of the computer, you know where planets have already been discovered and surveyed for colonization. Teague, you and Ravi can find out how far away they are and how to reach them, and Ravi and I, as navigators, can set a course so that Moira can take us there. Fontana and I will, presumably, keep us alive and healthy while we’re en route there. And thank whatever Gods you believe in that there are six of us. Suppose only four of us had qualified, and we had to run a ship that way?”
There was a brief, stunned silence. Moira said, into it, “I want to check the drives, and I suppose Ching wants to look at the computer hardware.”
Ching said, “We can’t all go in there; I’ll survey it from outside. Computers are temperamental things, and too many strange bodies around them can make them do peculiar things. Nobody goes in there except under absolute necessity; and then, wearing anti-electrostatic garments, and special shoes. I’ll be running it from here.”