Survey Ship

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Wow,” Teague muttered, “that’s going to take some getting used to!”

  “The Life-Support stuff looks familiar, anyhow,” Fontana said, and they went toward it. “All new and shiny, anyhow.”

  “Do you suppose we’ll ever get used to it, after that battered old stuff we learned on at the Academy?” Teague asked. “They sure didn’t skimp on shiny new state-of-the-art stuff, did they?”

  Fontana was studying the air-supply mechanisms, “It’s like all new systems; has to be tested and run in, checked out for bugs,” she said, “and I’m not happy with that mixture of inert gases.”

  “You won’t find any bugs in it, any more than in the drives,” Moira said. “I installed most of it myself.” Her voice was defensive, and Fontana shrugged, not willing to pursue the matter.

  “Time will tell, I guess. Look, they have touch-set monitors, and the flow system is backed up there, so that we can monitor oxygen, air, and DeMags in every part of the Ship on this visual tell-tale—”

  Ching peered over her shoulder. “Does that mean you can see into every room and watch what we’re doing?”

  “Hell no,” Teague replied, his hands already moving on the air-system console, “who needs to? But we can use sensors to find out how much air and oxygen there is in any sector; if one of us should be unconscious, we can locate whoever’s missing, or if there’s air-loss anywhere.” He was running his hands over protein synthesizers. “Looks all right, and there’s enough raw material in the converters that with molecular-fusion techniques we can synthesize everything we’re likely to need for the next, I should roughly say, twenty-nine years, after which time we find a sun with something like the chemical composition of our own, and catch ourselves a small asteroid or two for the next eighty or ninety. That’s assuming that we recycle clothing and water, but not figuring in body-waste recycling.”

  “I want to see the drives,” Moira said. “I put them in; but I want to see them in their place in the Ship.”

  Teague smiled at her and touched the console again. “Looks like we have a considerable way to go, to get there; the drive chamber’s at the far end of this walkway—” he pointed, “furthest from the living quarters. Navigation and computer areas are closer.”

  Another of the dizzying gravity-reversals brought them down — or, at least, “down” — to another module, this one spherical, with seats and many controls. “You’ll drive the Ship from here anyway, Moira,” Peake pointed out, indicating the console for manipulation of the light-pressure sails.

  She said, “I want to see the hardware itself. See how it looks in situ.” Nevertheless, she slid gracefully into the contour seat, her hands hovering over, but not touching the console.

  “Where are we going? Which way?”

  Peake realized, with shock, that nobody knew. “I guess it depends on who’s the chief navigator,” he said. “It was my second specialty, so I suppose I’ll be navigator’s assistant.”

  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.”

  “The drives are ready to go,” Moira said. Peake, watching her, thought she touched the controls of the drive mechanism as if they had been the frets of her cello — or the body of a lover. “So when do we leave?”

  “As far as I know,” Peake said, “it’s up to us. When we’re ready, we go — and that’s all there is to it.”

  And the six members of the crew looked at one another, stunned, realizing that after twelve years of rigid structure, that really was all there was to it. No one would give them orders. No one would tell them where to go, or what to do.

  Fontana looked out through the huge window with the blaze of billions of stars, the tiny blinking lights of the control panels reflecting, small and somehow lost, against the hugeness of the unknown Galaxy; as if in answer to the sudden terror of it, Ching touched something that closed them in again, the window opaque,

  so that they were again sealed in the control cabin with only the winking lights and their reflections.

  “There’s no hurry,” Fontana said, and her voice was shaking, so that she clung to a bulkhead. “Let’s go back to the main cabin, and look over our living quarters, and find out who’s going to sleep where. And have something to eat.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  There was a window in the main cabin, but it was one of reasonable proportions, not a wall of glass that opened naked on the empty universe of Chaos; and as they watched, the familiar form of the space station, revolving slowly end-over-end (from their point of view) and trailing its little cone of shadow, came into view, trundled majestically across their window, and disappeared again. Against its known contours, the six could put themselves into human perspective again. . Fontana, trained to self-understanding because of her specialization in psychology, realized that they had all suffered their first attack of a kind of culture shock; the transfer from the orderly and rigid world of the Academy into the knowledge of a universe literally at their feet. Deliberately, searching for another touch of the familiar and banal, she went to the food console, and dialed herself a snack and a cold fruit drink.

  “They stocked us with three months’ supply of ready food; after that, we’ll have to start synthesizing proteins and carbohydrate equivalents,” she said. “We might as well enjoy it while we have it. With all these heavy scientific specialties on the crew, I don’t suppose there’s anyone who can cook?”

  “I can,” Ching said, “but I don’t want to be stuck to do it all the time.”

  “I think once a day would be enough for anyone to do it,” Moira said. “Surely we can all fix our own breakfasts and lunches — even if we’re not all on different schedules. I can cook, too — I’ll do it once in a while.”

  “So what do we do? Set up a roster?”

  Moira said, “I think we’d all get fed up with too much togetherness. Surely one meal a day together would be enough, if not too much?”

  Ravi said, “I think we should share as many mealtimes as possible, considering duty rosters. We are the only human contacts any of us is going to have, for a long, long time; I think we should retain a — a base of closeness. To keep in touch. Make ourselves into a family.”

  “I’d go stir-crazy,” Ching said. “I’d say, why not let everybody fix their own meals unless they really crave company; have dinner together once in ten days or so.”

  Peake was staring at the window, watching the space station come into sight again and slowly roll across their field of vision. Was Jimson there? They were as cut off from one another as if they had been at opposite ends of the universe, separated by a slowly lengthening string which would eventually snap and part them irrevocably. Already it was irrevocable. He felt desperately alone, surrounded by these five strangers. Yet not wholly strangers, either; he had known them all since kindergarten, many of them had been his friends until, in the last two or three years, he had focused all his attention and awareness on Jimson. Could they be his friends again? He said, “I think it would be a good idea to schedule one meal a day together. Not so often that we’d get claustrophobic, not so far apart that we’d get out of touch.”

  Teague said diffidently, “I wouldn’t mind getting together once a day. Only I don’t think it ought to be a meal. Because if we get together once a day it’s going to turn into a — a kind of gripe session; we’ll want to get everything off our chests. And I hate to eat while I’m arguing — or vice versa,” he added with a grin.

  “I think we ought to have a once-a-day conference, whether it’s a meal or not,” Ching said. “Call it a gripe session, brainstorming, business meeting, scientific conference, or whatever. But we all ought to get together once a day.”

  “Is there any reason we have to keep a standard 24-hour day and night?” Moira asked. “I tend to be a night person, myself, and I’m never really awake before midnight. And I happen to know — because I roomed next door to her for two years — that Ching’s awake at the crack of dawn, and is asleep by the time I’m beginning to feel halfway human! Here we could have a round-the-clock schedule not tied in to somebody else’s idea of when peo
ple ought to wake up and go to sleep!”

  Peake said, “Biologically speaking — and speaking as a medical man — I think we need circadian rhythms maintained as long as we can possibly manage it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about space medicine, it’s this: Earth man, homo sapiens, is firmly tied in to the rhythms of his native planet’s rotations. Biology is destiny, at least to that extent. We need a 24-hour cycle, give or take a little one way or the other. And while we’re on that subject, do all of you girls menstruate?”

  “If you think that makes any difference—” Moira began angrily, but Fontana interrupted. “Hold on, Moira; the question is purely for practical reasons. Free-fall— and we can hardly keep the whole ship De-Magged to one gravity all the time — does peculiar things to hormones, both male and female.”

  “That’s right,” Peake said, “and I was thinking we could work out a duty roster which would allow any woman who’s menstruating to work inside the De-magged areas for comfort. The question is medical, not sexist.”

  Fontana shrugged. “It’s academic for me,” she said. “I opted for hysterectomy when they offered it to all of us at fifteen. I knew that after a year in deep space there was a fifty-fifty chance I’d be sterile anyhow, so it seemed a lot of trouble for the next thirty years, for nothing. And it seemed a good idea to put it out of my power to have any second thoughts on the subject. I chose once and for all.”

  “I didn’t,” Moira said. “After reading up on both sides of the question, I decided I’d prefer having natural to synthetic hormones. But I’m not asking for special treatment.”

  Ching smiled, a little grimly. “I wasn’t given the option. I knew if I didn’t make Ship, they’d want my genes. But I don’t want special treatment; I think if any of us had severe menstrual problems, they’d take that into account before sending us into zero-gee work. I’ve always been boringly normal; if I have trouble, I might ask for a day off now and then, but I doubt I will. Let’s leave it until the problem arises.” She moved to the console, dialed herself a helping of some squishy semi-solid; Moira wondered if it was mashed potatoes or soft ice cream.