“Well — shall I go and do it?” Teague looked around, then realized there was no one to tell him to do it or not to do it. He said “Right. As I remember from the plan, the main Life-Support system should be through the door there — airlock — sphincter — whatever you call it.” He turned toward it. Peake said, “We might as well all go. We’ll have to learn our way around,” and followed Teague and Fontana. The others came crowding after.
As Teague thrust himself through the dilating sphincter, he experienced a sudden, violent shift of orientation. His feet had been “down”; suddenly he was head-down, his feet somehow “over his head.” Even though he knew instantly what had happened, that he had moved from a DeMag gravitator located toward the floor of the main cabin, into a DeMag field located at the other apex of the corridor he had entered, it took him a moment to get his flailing feet “down.” Peake actually tumbled and fell. Moira did an athlete’s flip and came up standing. And then, to all of them, “down” was where it was, and they looked back at the crazy, somehow disoriented airlock which seemed to be in the “ceiling” of the present room,
“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
