rest and recreation — so to speak. And they’re certainly entitled, the way they’ve been working to repair everything.”
“I wish I could do something to help,” Ravi said, “but inside the computer I’d be about as much help as a snowball inside a nuclear reactor. ”
Peake looked at the small, dark man with sympathy. He said, “I know, I hate feeling helpless. I do feel they should have sent a second computer technician; if I had been making the decisions, I’d probably never send a crew smaller than ten. It would make the trip easier on all of us, too. But as things are, we simply have to do what we can in our own fields, and let the others do theirs. At that, I suspect that if Ching picks someone to teach, in order to have a backup computer technician, you’ll probably be the one. You’re a natural mathematician — and on top of that, you’re physically small enough to fit into the computer module. I understand that makes a difference.”
“So Ching said,” Ravi agreed, “and I admit I’d be interested. There was a time, when we started choosing specialties, that I considered computer work. But having started with navigation and astronomy, I felt that meteorology and oceanography would be more useful; two specialties for in space, two for any planet we were surveying.”
“That’s what they usually recommend,” Peake said. “I wish there had been a Navigation first specialist, though. When I think of all the trouble they would have saved if they had added another four people to the crew. Another navigator. Another computer tech. At least. Maybe another medic. Perhaps another engineer.”
“I don’t understand why they didn’t,” Ravi said, “and of course well never know. I’d have been glad to have Mei Mel, or Fly, or even Jimson…”
“It wouldn’t have bothered you, Ravi? To have both of us?”
Ravi shook his head. He said, “No, certainly not. I liked Jimson, though he was a little — well, unpredictable. No more so, certainly, than Moira, though.” And pain moved suddenly in him again. He did not believe that what he felt for Moira was a neurotic obsession. He simply wanted to love her, cherish her, treat her as the other half of himself, to love her as his own soul, the female part of his humanity. She had so completely misunderstood him. He did not want to possess her; if she desired other men she was free to have them, he did not want in any way to narrow her horizons, but only to help her expand them to cosmic limits. And she had rejected this, rejected it entirely. He loved her no less for the rejection; it still seemed to him that in loving Moira he had learned more about love, about the secrets of awareness locked at the heart of life; only now it seemed to him that instead of God’s self being centered somewhere in the great, eternal, infinite vastness of stars out there beyond the window of the Bridge, he was somehow linked to that cosmic pulsing, and that its echo was here within the focus of the Ship, that it was in his comrades here. It was within Moira, within himself, within all of the others, and even Peake’s craggy face seemed infinitely beautiful to him, infinitely worthy of love and even worship. He knew that if he carried this even a little further it would dissolve into sentiment and self-pity, but now he looked at Peake and felt, with an overflow of pure and unsentimental emotion, that he would give his life for him, or for any of them, and that he would not even notice the difference. As long as one of them lived he would continue to survive as part of the cosmic unity he felt flowing among them all. Even the pain and regret he felt because Moira had refused his love was irrelevant; he had somehow moved to a point where pain and pleasure were irrelevant and interchangeable. He would love Moira, he would continue to pour out his love upon her, as upon God, uncaring whether she accepted it, or even knew about it; his mistake had been in telling her about it, the love was no less because she did not return it. Describing the position of the Ship among the stars, entering it formally in the log, he felt somehow that he had described his relationship to God with the numbers.
This new state of mind was so unexpected, so much a strangeness, that he actually stopped a moment to wonder, Am I going insane, is this exultation only insanity’s dangerous leading edge of euphoria? Maybe I should talk to Fontana about it. And yet he was functioning perfectly well, his mathematical calculations were impeccable — for Peake, duplicating his work on the calculator, had validated them to the last decimal place — he was making accurate observations, his body performed exactly as well as he told it to, he was eating normally, digesting his food, and playing music with the others, not going off on some ecstatic trip of his own. His pulse, respiration, color perception, blood pressure, and urine were all normal, or so Peake had pronounced them at the regular three-day medical checkups. He reacted well to normal gravity, to partial gravity and to free-fall. Therefore he assumed he was physically and mentally normal, in an abnormal emotional state.
Maybe abnormality is in the mind of the Beholder?
Even the feeling that I partake of God does not give me any delusions of omnipotence. I personally am a very small and helpless part; but I perceive myself as a very real part, partaking in the Whole. I do not feel dwarfed by the immensity of Space, but enlarged; I am part of the Whole, and the Whole is part of me.
And this religious consciousness does not make me less sane, but saner, if functioning is any criterion of sanity.
He even felt hungry, and said so.
“It’s dinner time fairly soon,” Peake said, yawning, Twenty minutes standard, more or less. Teague said he was going to begin synthesizing carbohydrate, fairly soon, I’ll probably miss having normal rice and wheat grains, won’t you?”
“I doubt if I’ll be able to tell the difference,” Ravi admitted. “Where I’m concerned, a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate, and the shape doesn’t matter. I never could understand the tribes who starved to death rather than eat wheat when rice was their preferred staple, or eat rice when wheat was scarce or unavailable.”
Peake’s smile was wry. “Maybe that’s why we survived instead of dying, man. I survived one famine year when I was about five, and as I remember, I ate anything I could cram into my mouth without worrying what it was. ! still get the nightmare about that, sometimes. Hungry, and no food anywhere. Then I remember being tested for the Academy, and at first all it meant to me was, never hungry no more. That’s what my uncle said to me when he took me there… hey, look, we’re not supposed to talk about the past, are we?”
“I don’t think it does any of us any harm,” Ravi said gently. “Come on, Peake, we’re finished here. Let’s go down to the main cabin…”
He broke off, for the intercom had leaped into sudden life.
“Peake, Peake,” it said, “Peake, Peake, anybody, anybody down here — Peake, Fontana, somebody, come quick, there’s been an accident, oh, come help, somebody—”
“Teague!” It was like an expletive; Peake was out of his seat within seconds. Ravi said urgently into the intercom, “Teague, where are you? Are you hurt?”
“In the gym. Damn DeMags…”
Peake cut him off. “I’m on my way. Ravi, go back to the main cabin and get my medical kit — I’ll go straight there, I could save some time—”
But in the entry to the free-fall corridor outside the gym he bumped into Fontana, and she had his medical bag in her hand, “I heard Teague on the intercom and I knew you’d need this,” she said. “Hurry, Peake!”
He pushed through the sphincter lock ahead of her: took in Teague, kneeling over Ghing; noted the limp dangle of one hand, dismissed it to fumble quickly for a pulse in Ching’s limp wrist. Yes, it was there, feeble but definite. There was a small blue bruise on her temple, bloodless.
“Fontana,” Peake said tersely, “you fix up Teague’s wrist, or hand, while I find out what’s wrong with Ching. Teague, tell me what happened? Did the gravity go off?” In his mind was a clear memory of the time when he had nearly crashed into a wall while running; luck and superb co-ordination had saved him at least a concussion, perhaps a skull fracture. Ching had not been so lucky.
“The gravity was off,” Teague said. “It went on.” He was sobbing, covering his face with his good hand. “She wanted to learn to handle herself in free-fall, I talked her into it, oh, God, it’s my fault — I promised I wouldn’t let her fall, I promised I wouldn’t let her get hurt, she trusted me, oh. she trusted me and I let her fall —”
He was clearly hysterical; Fontana snapped, “Shut up and let me get this wrist bandaged! You can’t do any good by blubbering!” She chose the word deliberately, and it shut him up with a gasp.
“Now try and tell us coherently,” she said, “exactly what happened.”
Teague took a deep breath; cried out in sharp pain as Fontana manipulated his wrist.
“Broken finger here,” she said to Peake, “fourth finger, left hand. Probably need a splint. Possible damaged tendons or ligaments. Those damned, infernal DeMags!” She set her mouth tightly, and continued manipulating Teague’s hand. “Wriggle that ringer. Here, does that hurt? Good, that’s all right. What did you do, come down hard
