yours. I have scanned the records of everyone aboard ship and come up with a potential donor.”
“
“One should be sufficient, if he is willing to give us some of his blood. From a comparatively small amount we can synthesize the immunoglobulin you require.”
Her pulse speeding, Deirdre asked, “And is he willing?”
“We will find out shortly. I have asked him to join us here.”
At that, Deirdre heard a single sharp rap on the door behind her.
“Enter,” cried Dr. Pohan.
She turned in her chair as the door slid open.
Dorn.
Back in the main lounge, Andy Corvus chewed thoughtfully on his salad.
She made contact with Baby, he was saying to himself, I’m sure of it. She couldn’t just make up the impressions she told me about. The dolphins have language! They can actually communicate abstract ideas to one another!
But who’s going to believe it, without solid evidence to back up her word? I’d be laughed out of the business—or worse, accused of fraud.
Got to make Deirdre’s sensory impressions visible, recordable. Got to get her brain wave patterns into some form of reproducible data retrieval program.
But how?
INFIRMARY
Dorn took one step into Dr. Pohan’s compact little office, saw Deirdre sitting before the doctor’s desk, and froze into immobility.
“Come in, come in,” Dr. Pohan urged him, gesturing to the only other chair in the room, beside Deirdre’s.
He settled slowly, almost suspiciously, into the chair. It creaked beneath his weight.
Dorn said, “Your message said you required a blood sample from me.”
“Require is too strong a word,” said the doctor amiably, unconsciously brushing his curling mustache with one finger. “We request a blood sample. Request.”
“We?”
“Ms. Ambrose has a medical condition that can be alleviated with a donation of your blood, sir.”
Dorn turned his head toward Deirdre. “I’ll give you as much blood as you need, of course.”
“Why, thank you,” she said.
“A few cubic centimeters should do nicely,” said the doctor. “A few cc’s will be more than enough, I’m sure.”
Dorn nodded. Deirdre felt enormously grateful.
Katherine Westfall was on
Captain Guerra had invited her to the bridge and was showing it off to her with the glowing enthusiasm of a proud father.
She thought the bridge seemed surprisingly small, considering the size of the ship. The place seemed to vibrate subtly with the background thrum of electrical power. And it felt too warm, as if overly crowded. Yet only four officers were on duty, in addition to the captain. A cluster of display screens showed various sections of the ship’s interior; she could see passengers walking along passageways, crew personnel working at machinery she could not fathom. The multiple views reminded Katherine of the segmented eye of an insect. There was even a view of the empty beds of the infirmary, and Dr. Pohan’s office, with the wrinkled little leprechaun sitting at his desk.
On the opposite bulkhead a single broad screen showed a telescopic view of Jupiter’s slightly flattened disk.
“We’re getting closer every hour,” the captain said grandly. “You can see the planet’s oblateness clearly.”
“It looks much paler than I had expected,” Katherine said, remembering the pictures she had seen of vibrant bands of deeply colored clouds, swirls and eddies of storm systems the size of Earth and bigger.
The captain muttered something about false-color imagery.
The bridge had only half a dozen crew stations arranged in a shallow semicircle around the captain’s command chair, and two of the curved, instrument-studded stations were unoccupied, at that. Standing beside Westfall, Guerra pointed out consoles for navigation, propulsion, life support, and communications. Uniformed officers, two of them women, sat at each console.
“And these other two?” she asked, pointing to the empty consoles.
“Backup stations,” said Captain Guerra. “We don’t need to man them unless there’s some sort of emergency.”
“Indeed?”
“As a matter of fact,” the captain said, patting one hand on the arm of his command chair, “I could run the ship from my chair here, all by myself alone. The systems are so highly automated that I could do away with the crew altogether and she would still run perfectly well.”
Westfall made herself appear impressed. But she couldn’t resist asking, “Then why do you carry the crew along with you, Captain?”
Guerra’s bearded face looked surprised at her question, then nettled. But almost instantly he broke into an accommodating grin. “You’re joking, of course.”
“Perhaps,” Westfall said, permitting herself a slight smile. “But if I were heading the corporation that owns this vessel I’d want to know why I had to pay for crew members who aren’t needed.”
Obviously struggling to maintain his pleasant expression, the captain replied, “They are
Westfall nodded.
“And two—well, frankly, it’s for the passengers. Our psychology consultants tell us that the passengers would be afraid to travel on a completely automated ship.”
“I see. It’s public relations, then.”
Guerra’s genuine smile returned. “Exactly! Public relations.” He paused, then added, “Besides, some of the passengers enjoy having dinner with a good-looking young ship’s officer. Eh?”
With a knowing arch of her brow, Westfall said, “I prefer older men, myself. Men of experience.”
The captain absolutely glowed. For a moment Katherine thought he was going to wink at her.
Instead, he asked, “In that case, would you join me for dinner this evening in my quarters?”
“Why not?” Westfall replied, thinking how predictable the captain was, how easy it was to get this man to do her bidding.
Once back in her own suite she immediately went to the desk in her sitting room and played Dr. Pohan’s message. The gnomish little doctor’s image looked very serious, almost grave, on the desktop screen.
“I met with Ms. Ambrose and the cyborg this morning. He has agreed to donate blood. He didn’t even ask what the reason was. All I had to do was tell him that Ms. Ambrose had a medical problem and he agreed without
