His acceleration couch turned out to contain endless interlocked and interleaved cabinets, compartments, and crannies, which a bony, garrulous redhead, almost short enough to be a midget, took great delight in demonstrating to him. It was a bed, of course; just pull that handle there and a soundproof privacy-bubble—well, almost soundproof—will swing over the whole thing. You can have it opaque or clear with that switch there. And that’s a timer, preadjusted to help you rearrange your sleeping schedule over the ninety-hour trip so that you won’t suffer too hugely from space-lag—though nobody ever follows it on a junket like this, anyway. There’s your reader, though the selections in the file drawer—mark my word—will be monumentally uninspiring. I woulnd’t even look through it, unless you just want a good snicker. (Though I once found one just jammed with twentieth-century science fiction—ever read any? Fascinating stuff!) Swing that half of the sleeping-pad up and you’ll find a place for ablutions; that half, for defecation. And under there—just a second; there you go!—is your luggage.
Which Bron had packed, at Sam’s suggestion, in a small, plastic bag. Sam had said don’t take much; they’d all be pretty informal. But, wandering around the cabin, catching an occasional glimpse into the other luggage compartments when one or another guest was hunting around for some personal effect, he saw that at least three people had brought huge numbers of sacks, packages, bags, practically overflowing their couches. It made him feel slightly apprehensive at first. But as the hours went on, no one seemed about to dress.
He spent a lot of time “down” in the dimly-lit free-fall chamber, looking through the window there at the stars.
“Hey,” Sam called through the trap to him, sometime during the second day out. “Come up here a minute. You have to see this.”
Bron unsnapped the lounge net he’d been floating in, pushed off toward the ladder, pulled up, emerged into the weighted chamber—an odd experience, having your head, then your shoulders, then your arms and chest go all heavy (like getting out of the swimming pool, only very different; he’d compared them a couple of times on this trip, just see)—and came up by the pool.
“Come on, take a look at this.” Sam doffed a drink in one hand, guiding Bron’s shoulder with the other. “Come on.”
By the poolside, at one of the wall tables, sat the bony, little redhead; across from him sat an equally diminutive oriental woman with irregularly-clipped, black hair. Between them was a vlet board. It was only a quarter the size of Lawrence’s. (A small traveling version?) The landscape was simply a laminated 3-D photograph, not Lawrence’s animated holographic surface. The pieces were not carefully carved and painted but merely raised symbols on red and green plastic markers. The astral cube did not have its own stand. But Bron could see, in the deployment of the gods, the detritus of a vicious astral battle that green (the redhead’s side) had evidently won.
Five melds were already down.
The woman threw the dice and, in a rather surprising way (a rather clever one too, Bron thought as soon as the move was completed), managed to bring her Guards in from the right, just as green’s caravan crossed the forge, to pull it out of the influence of the scarlet Magician, substantially multiplied by three reflecting screens.
The redhead tossed the dice, discarded a low Flame, dispersed the screens to the corners of the board in one move (which left Bron, among the game’s half-dozen spectators, frowning) and turned to rearrange a matrix on the astral board. That’s clever! Bron thought. The woman would have to answer it, pulling some of her powers from the Real World, which would leave some of her strongest pieces unprotected.
The edge of the playing board, the table, and the woman’s cheek flickered with reflections off the pool.
Sam nudged Bron and grinned. “I was thinking we might challenge them to a game of doubles, you and me. But I guess they’re a little out of our league.”
The woman won the battle in three moves.
Some time later they did play a game of doubles—and were wiped off the board in twenty minutes. While
Sam was saying, “Well, we may not have won, but I bet we’ve learned something! Lawrence better watch out when we get back, hey Bron?”, Bron, smiling, nodding {her memory deviling him in every flicker on the mosaic ceiling above), retired down into the free-fall chamber, determined never to play that stupid game again, with anyone, on any world, or in between, in or out of any league!
He was going hundreds of millions of kilometers to forget her: he zipped himself into the lounge net and rolled himself up in the idea. The stars drifted by the darkened chamber.
“Do you want to try some of this?”
“Oh, no, I can never eat on these trips ... I have no idea why ...”
“You know I never mind synthetic food as long as they aren’t trying to make it taste like something else—algae or seaweed or something.”
“I think the reason the food is so terrible on these flights is because they expect you to drink yourself to death.”
“Did you ever think of Sam as a drinking man before? Lord, is he putting it away!”
“Well, this is supposed to be a political mission. He’s probably under a great deal of pressure.”
“What are we supposed to do after we get there?”
“Oh, don’t worry. The government takes care of its own—are we decelerating?”
“I think so.”
“Isn’t some light or something supposed to go on down here so that we know to get back upstairs when that happens? I’m surprised this whole cabin just doesn’t fall apart. Nothing seems to be working right!”
“Well, there is a war on.”
Over the ninety hours, Bron was on the edge of, or took part in, or overhead ninety-nine such conversations. He was in the free-fall chamber when the lights did come on. “I think that means we better go upstairs.” Around him, people were unzipping their lounge nets. “We make Earthfall in about an hour.”
“Why didn’t they come on when we were doing those turns out by the Belt?” someone asked.
“I think they only come on when we’re going to accelerate or decelerate over a certain amount.”
“Oh.”
The wall rolled closed across the window for landing (on the screen, descended once more, the two blue numbers still flickered), customary, everyone said, with atmospheric touch-downs.
He was swung from side to side on his couch, bumping and thumping in a way that would really have been unsettling if he hadn’t taken his full compliment of drugs. But world landings were notoriously rough.
There was some not very serious joking about whether or not they were still in the air; or in the ship for that matter, as the trundling began.
Then the window-wall rolled back: no glass behind it now—And some of the company were visibly more relaxed, laughing and talking louder and louder: some, unaccountably, were more subdued (which included Sam); they wandered out into another, green, pastel corridor. (Bron was wondering about the Taj Mahal—but then, this was a political mission.)
“Do we get any scenery on this trip?” someone asked.
“I doubt it. The government doesn’t believe in scenery for moonies.”
“Ah! But which government?”
Over the next few days, though they went to sumptuous restaurants, took long trips in mechanical conveyances through endless, dark tunnels, even went to several symphonic concerts, and spent one afternoon at a museum in which they were apparently the only visitors (the collection was a private one; they had come up from some deep level in an escalator; at night they returned down to their separate, sumptuous rooms by different escalators), Bron had the feeling that they had not really left the Earth space-port complex. They had seen no sky. And, outside concert audiences (their party always had a private box), or other diners (their