Ching raised her straight brows, ironically. “Thank you, my dear. Coming from you, I’m sure that’s intended for a compliment!”
They laughed together. Ching found herself wondering why, suddenly, Moira treated her as one of them. Was it, simply, that she had felt different, before this — and that Moira had been reacting to her, Ching’s, perceived difference, instead of any real difference? Did the fact that she was a G-N really make as much difference as she had always believed? If she had felt more like one of them, would they have treated her that way?
Had her isolation been, somehow, of her own making?
“I promised to meet Teague in the gym,” Ching said, moving past her, and Moira, suddenly frightened, caught at her arm to detain her. But what was she going to say? It was not as clear as a psychic warning, just a faint, strange unease. She tried to make a joke of it.
“You should always keep a man waiting, just a little. Never let them be sure of you.”
Ching laughed gently. “Is that the way you treat Ravi? I’d rather make Teague happy than unhappy, Moira.”
“Yes, I suppose you would,” said Moira, with a strange bitterness. But again she touched Ching’s arm, as if to hold her back.
“Ching — be careful.”
“I will,” Ching promised, startled, and, seeing the troubled look in Moire’s green eyes, sensed that the other girl was distressed; though she didn’t know why. She hugged Moira, gently, and kissed her cheek. She had never felt close enough to either of the other women to do this before.
“I will, Moira. Don’t worry,” she promised, and went. Moira stood looking after her for a little while, frowning, wishing she could identify the angry unease she telt. That damned gym, she thought with sudden violence, I wish the meteor had carried it right away off the Ship! Is any of us ever going to feel safe there again? Here I am dithering for no reason!
Ravi found her in the main cabin, idly leafing through some music.
“Are you going to the Bridge?”
“In a minute,” she said absently. “It’s time to make the routine sail-trim.” She drew a deep breath. She enjoyed manipulating the sails to optimum light-pressure; since the meteor damage and the varying DeMag failures, and the terrifying failure of the computer, she felt a definite pleasure in something like the sails, which did exactly what she wanted them to do, exactly as she wanted them.
When I was in primary division they called me manipulative. I suppose, when you come right down to it, I am.
“The sails can wait a minute.” said Ravi firmly. “I have to talk to you, Moira. Why are you avoiding me?”
“Don’t be silly, my dear,” Moira laughed, “I see you all the time, just as I do all the rest of us.”
“You know what I mean.” He took her hand lightly in his; she started to pull it away, then sighed and let it lie in his; but so limp and passive that he knew she was simply avoiding an argument. Pulling her hand away would have been less offensive.
“Why have you changed, Moira?” he asked, “We were happy for a few days, and then — then you turned me right off. Don’t you care at all about me?”
She said, irritably, “Oh, Ravi, don’t. I’m your friend, and we agreed to keep it that way. I’m not ready for any kind of emotional, romantic relationship — I don’t think I ever will be. Most people believe as I do, that romance is a kind of mental aberration. We’ve got sex and we’ve got friendship, and if that’s not enough for you — well, I’m sorry, but I won’t be pressured into something I don’t want. If you’re horny, go and sleep with Fontana — now that Teague’s all wrapped up in Ching, she’s probably lonely and hard up for a man in her bed.”
Ravi said quietly, “How can you be so cynical, Moira? Don’t you even know how much I care about you?”
“I know,” she said languidly, “and nothing has ever bored me so much in my life.”
Ravi recoiled as if she had struck him. But he resolved to make one further effort. Surely, if she understood, she would be less unkind.
“Moira, I don’t know how to say this. Ever since — since before we left Earth, I’ve been looking — looking for something. Please don’t think I am foolish — it’s a kind of,” he hesitated, “a spiritual search, a longing for something greater than humanity, and I, I think I’ve found it. It’s what Peake and Jimson were groping toward, trying to find a kind of completion in each other. A fulfilment. I, I, I—” he was stammering in his urgency to communicate something of what he felt, “I’m trying to find the Cosmic, the universe, God if you like, and I am trying to find it, to worship God in you, Moira — do you see what I’m trying to say?”
Moira stared at him, appalled, bored, angry, half tempted to puncture him with a flippant obscenity. Instead she said, in a flat hard voice, “I can only imagine that you are going insane, Ravi. Maybe you’ve been staring out the window too much. You’d better keep your eyes on the Navigation instruments, or it won’t take a computer failure to send us to nowhere. I never heard such rubbish in my life.”
Ravi drew a sharp, shaking breath, wounded, and for a moment she hoped he would fling something insulting at her, give her a chance to justify her words. Instead he kept on looking at her, and finally said, almost inaudibly, “I suppose I can’t expect you to feel any other way. But I love you, Moira. Try and remember that.” He stood up and went out of the cabin.
In the gym, Teague knelt and set the gravity to one-half of normal. “Does this bother you?” he asked.
“N-no,” Ching said, “As long as there’s enough to know whether I’m right-side-up or upside-down.” Was that what he had meant by fighting to stay in control?
“Here, try the springboard,” he said “Spring up in the air and somersault; and let me catch you in midair. I won’t let you fall, I promise you.”
Hesitantly, Ching sprang up from the board, letting her narrow body spin free in a double somersault in midair; felt Teague’s arms clasp around her and they spun the length of the gym in a single soaring leap.
After a few more maneuvers, feeling that Ching seemed somehow less frightened, Teague went back to the controls.
“All the way off, this time?”
She looked at him, scared and yet exhilarated, given confidence by his own ease in midair. Then she nodded, laughing a little, breathless. “I don’t think I could be afraid of anything when you were with me, Teague.”
With a decisive movement, Teague turned the controls all the way to OFF, felt himself float upward and made a bound to catch Ching as she drifted free. She laughed again, clasping him in her arms, letting him soar with her the full length of the gym, giving herself over to the strange, empty, falling sensation.
“You’re right, Teague, it is fun when you don’t try to fight it!” She slid from his arms, soaring free, spinning dizzily around the room, her laughter still high and breathless as she leaped toward the ceiling, flew downward. He bounded after her as she took off like a swallow, arms folded, soaring.
Teague felt the sudden, hard jolt, put out a hand to save himself; came down on one wrist, feeling agony tearing through the tendons as the wrist let go; clasped it, with a cry of pain, fighting to recover his balance; the movement ripped lightnings of renewed pain through his arm as he ran, but too late. Ching fell like a stone, striking head-first, and lay still.
Peake was on the Bridge with a silent, sullen Ravi, doing the painstaking work of triangulation from four points of reference to work out the Ship’s precise position; a necessary, daily ordeal until they could absolutely trust the computers again.
“I hope Ching gets that finished before we leave the Solar System,” Ravi muttered.
“There’s no way she could do that. Not if she worked round the clock,” Peake said, “and she’s been virtually doing that; she stops for meals and a two-hour exercise period and the daily music session, and the rest of the time she’s been wedged inside the computer module, where for all I know she’s tearing the infernal thing to pieces! She estimated another ten days when I asked her, and that’s assuming she can keep up that murderous routine without her health or morale suffering.”
“She’s not in the computer now, is she?”
Peake shook his head. “I think she’s probably sleeping; she and Fontana were sorting some music, some fairly archaic duets they wanted to try singing. Or she and Teague may have gone off to their cabins for a bit of
