She wondered what her family would say. They would not object. Her dad might make one of his offhand remarks, so dry that J.D. often found herself laughing before she realized what was funny, so offbeat she could not imagine what it would be.
The shadows of the Douglas firs lengthened across the beach and pierced the water with their tips. The breeze freshened. J.D. felt cold again, as if she had never really been warm.
STARFARERS 15
She had to give herself time before deciding. So many factors came into the mix. The opportunity of joining a group of beings that she loved, of telling their story, had to be balanced against the possibility—indeed the probability—that academic colleagues would no longer take seriously the work of a researcher who had, in the old- fashioned phrase, gone native.
And she had to face the legal question of making the change.
Perhaps a few years ago it would not have mattered. It was possible that even now, no one would notice. But if they did, the current fashion of despising science and technology would cause her a great deal of trouble. And that did worry her.
So did Zev's uncharacteristic reluctance to tell her why she would have to make her choice so quickly.
The sun set. Darkness crept into the cabin.
Needing the familiarity of simple actions, J.D. put her teacup in the sink, puttered around straightening up the cabin, and, for the first time all day, asked her web link for mail and messages and the day's report.
It reported.
Victoria's invitation to join the alien contact team suddenly made her life even more complicated.
Victoria watched J.D. as she gazed back at earth. She was glad the contact specialist had agreed to join the expedition on such short notice, after Nakamura quit.
It must have been hard on her, Victoria thought, to be turned down and then invited again. It takes a lot of guts to put aside hurt feelings.
Nevertheless, she wished she knew all the reasons J.D. had changed her mind about staying with the divers. Victoria felt certain that she did not yet have the whole story.
'J.D. ?'
J.D. continued to stare out the window for a moment.
When she turned to Victoria, her expression was wistful,
lonely.
'Time to board the transport.'
In low earth orbit, the spaceplane docked with the EarthSpace transport, an ungainly-looking but efficient craft, one of the trucks that ferried cargo and passengers from low
16 Vonda N. Mcintyre
earth orbit to the O'Neil! colonies and the labs, to lunar orbit, and to Starfarer.
As Victoria helped J.D. negotiate the zero-g path from the plane to the transport, she glanced over the passengers sharing the journey. The spaceplane, which should have been full with a waiting list, was half-empty. These days, too few people traveled out to Starfarer. Far too many traveled away, recalled by their governments, or, like Nakamura, giving up in despair.
While the plane resembled a regular jetliner, with well-maintained upholstery and paint, the transport looked more like a tramp freighter. Its workings hung out in plain sight, exposed, growing shabby with age and use.
'Quite a difference,' J.D. said, glancing around. She held the net bags stuffed with her and Victoria's personal allowances. Her possessions were drab next to the bright colors and textures that showed through the mesh of Victoria's bag.
'There's one new transport,' Victoria said. Towing J.D. by one hand, she pushed off down a corridor. 'They always schedule it so it's the one that picks up the VIPs on their junkets. I never have figured that out. if we let them see the old equipment, we might gel enough money to keep it properly maintained.'
'Can I try this myself?' J.D. said.
'Sure.' Victoria took the two mesh bags, 'Remember
that even though you haven't got any weight, you still have
mass and momentum.'
J.D- planted her feet, kicked, and headed for the far wall too fast and too hard. Victoria winced and pushed off after her, but somehow J.D. managed to turn in midair, catch herself on her toes against the bulkhead, and bounce back, awkward but safe. Victoria used her arms and legs as springs to give all her momentum to the metal surface. She floated beside J.D., who hung upside down nearby, laughing. Her hair, short and limply dry from exposure, flew around her head.
'Even better than diving,' she said. 'And you don't need
half as much force to get you where you're going. I'll leam to compensate. I thought maybe I'd let my hair grow, but I think I'll keep it short.'
They found their closet-sized cubicles, where they could rest during the trip to the starship.
STARFARERS 17
'One of Satoshi's department members says the transport reminds him of his college days,' Victoria said. 'He used to travel cross-country in a bus. But I think of the transport as the China Clipper. Crossing space like a prop plane crossing the Pacific.' The transport was less luxurious but safer, not as unbearably romantic.
'The middle of the Pacific is scarier,' J.D. said.
The transport freed itself from the spaceplane with a low clang and a vibration that trembled through the ship. J.D. started, then flushed with excitement when the gentle acceleration provided microgravity.
'We're really on our way, aren't we?'
'We really are,' Victoria said.
Starfarer lay in the far distance, barely visible to the naked eye. Charge-coupled binoculars brought the ship into view, its dual cylinders spinning, the mirrors lined with light, the sailhouse an eerie glow floating among the cables, and beyond h all a silver line that soon would unfold into a tremendous solar sail.
Each house in the campus cylinder of Starfarer lay underground, partly hidden by a low hill, daylit by one whole wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. In the house where Victoria lived, her partner Satoshi Lono trudged into the main room, looking for coffee, anticipating its smell. Grass mats rustled under his bare feet. He yawned. He had stayed late at a lab meeting, with no solution in sight to the problem of one of his graduate students. Fox could not apply for a permanent position on the expedition because her twenty-first birthday fell six months after the starship's departure.
When the meeting ended, knowing he would not be able to sleep, he had spent several more hours on the web, analyzing map complexes- When he finally slept, he dreamed those maps. Bright images of stacks of contour descriptions still filled his mind.
He stopped.
A weird piece of equipment stood in the middle of the main room. The AS that cleaned the house circled the contraption, like a cat stalking a gigantic insect. The AS rolled forward, its antenna outstretched. It backed off and circled again.
19
20 Vonaa N. Mcintyre
The piece of equipment, complicated in form but primitive
in design, consisted of twisted glass tubes fastened together and supported by a metal rack. The feet of the rack dug into one of Satoshi's better grass mats.
The AS, hovering, tapped the glass tubes again.
'It's all right,' Satoshi said- 'Look at it and remember it and leave it alone.' The AS hesitated, assimilated the information. then rotated and rolled away. When the partnership first got it, it had had the same reaction to, and the same instructions about, the shins Stephen Thomas stored on the floor. Satoshi wondered how Stephen Thomas so often contrived to leave things lying around that the cleaner could not figure out what to do with. Satoshi liked living in a 'neat environment. It irritated him to be put in the position of having the urge to pick up after one of his partners.
'It's too early for this,' Satoshi muttered. Deciding to assimilate his own advice, he deloured around the mess in the middle of the main room and stopped in the kitchen nook, wondering what had happened to his coffee.
