Coming back into the cabins in the main body of the craft, she met Rasa carrying a bewildered goose under her arm. As they had proposed, the bird’s wings were already tied up, because fluff of feather in zero-g really messed with the air filters.
“That’s the last one,” Rasa said cheerfully.
The bird didn’t look impressed.
Rasa went into the cabin that held the cage. She opened the door and pushed the goose in. It honked and flapped about with its feet without finding purchase. Rasa pulled the bird back up straight. The cloth bag attached to a hook on the inside top of the cage. A second hook attached to the bottom of the cage, and the goose could “sit” on a beam that stretched across the cage. The other birds were already in their positions. And one of them had already discovered the cactuses, snaking its neck out of the cage to try to reach the plants. By the look of things, it would cover the distance, too, especially if the plants moved during ship manoeuvres.
“No, no, don’t do that!”
Tina pushed herself into the room, checked that the pots were properly secured to the wall, and tied them down with another strap.
Rasa shut the door to the cage.
But things tended to jiggle in this part of the craft, and because there was no particular direction for them to jiggle in, they jiggled in all directions. That was bad, because they came loose all the time. This was why Tina had wanted to cannibalise some locking mechanisms from the cargo door airlock.
Now they needed to remember to check inside the cabin before opening the door fully. Hopefully the bags to hold their wings made the spread of feathers less, because that first time the geese got loose in the cabin during flight was a nightmare. Especially since the panicked geese kept flying into everything and bouncing off the walls.
All right, so that was done.
Now for the last comfortable shower until they docked at the station and would have gravity again.
Coming down into the gym and greenhouse, she realised that someone was already in the shower cabin.
Was it time for Rex to use it already?
She checked. It was.
Despite not needing assistance to take the harness off and clean the attachment points every day, they’d learned during the trip that it was still a good idea to let other people assist Rex in checking the harness’ attachment points. He couldn’t see them properly himself, and a closed-environment atmosphere was a perfect breeding ground for infections.
So she had taught Finn to help Rex, and later Rasa as well, when observing the level of care with which the girl groomed and washed her geese.
In fact, Rasa had taken to the task quite well.
She and Rex swapped jobs, because Rex would sometimes catch and brush the geese, collecting downy feathers in a bag so that they didn’t go floating about the habitat.
But when Tina came into the gym, Rasa quickly pulled the door to the cubicle shut.
That was strange.
Why would she…?
Damn.
Rex had turned sixteen since leaving Kelso. He might not be a normal teenage boy, but he was definitely a teenage boy, with interests that aligned with teenage boys.
She stared at the closed door, listening for… she didn’t know what. But the only thing she could hear was the hiss of humid air out of the nozzles, and the sound of the pump that circulated the water vapour.
Should she knock and demand the door be left open, like usual? Or should she treat him as the adult he claimed to be and give him privacy?
But was she ready for that particular kind of privacy?
Tina went to the spot where the cactuses no longer stood, picking up a few prickly fronds, while listening for sounds from the bathroom.
She didn’t hear anything unusual, other than the hiss of the humid air out of the nozzles, and occasional talking. Surely she was imagining things.
While she waited, she collected the last tomatoes, pulled out the plants and put them in the recycler, and drifted up to the storage room in the main part of the ship where she placed them with the other food supplies.
When she passed through the cabin, Finn was sitting at the controls of the ship, staring into the distance.
“Going well?” he asked her.
“Almost done,” she said. “We’ll be able to fold everything up after dinner.”
She thought about saying more, or even asking him for advice, but what did he know about teenage boys? More often than not, he acted like one himself.
Tina went back down into the gym, at which time Rex and Rasa came out talking about something that they had to fix.
Tina met Rex’s eyes. His expression was open and honest and, if she was looking for a sign of guilt, she saw none.
Damn.
He had only just turned sixteen. That was no age to…
She’d been sixteen.
And of course she lived on a farm with lots of wide fields. She doubted her parents ever knew what went on in the copse of trees by the dry creek bed. None of it had done any harm to her, even if the boy later turned out to be a dick who went on to serially date almost every girl in the senior class at school.
In this ship, there was, of course, a way to find out what happened at any time in every room. The ship recorded everything on the security cameras for safety reasons. She bet Rex didn’t know this. If she wanted to know what was going on in the bathroom, all she needed to do was play back the recording.
She thought about it, hesitated when she came to the cabin, and then decided it was a cowardly thing to do. She would have to have the talk with Rex at some point very soon. It was something she had never envisaged doing, because she had never thought that any girl would be interested
