Jupiter Project

inside the Can’s bay, or even nearby if you can help it. The backwash can knock a man head over heels a hundred meters away, or snarl mooring lines. So I gently thumbed in the override on the shuttle’s air tanks, switched them over to the pipe system that led to the little maneuvering jets at the rear, and reached for the release button.

“Forgotten anything?” Jenny said lightly.

“Huh?”

“Our mooring lines.”

“Oh.” I felt my face go red. I unbuckled and glided around the four corners of the Roadhog, unhooking the elastic lines. They’re on retrieval coils, so as soon as I let go a line it retracted toward the axis.

I sat back down in the couch. “All cleared. Captain.”

She didn’t say anything. I carefully bled a little air into the pipes and felt a satisfying tug as we got under way. I gave us little bursts of air to maneuver around the cargo hauler overhead and cut in the gyros to keep us from tumbling.

We inched our way across the bay. I got back into the practice of looking in three different directions at once; my neck started to ache. Human beings are built for navigating in two dimensions; our eyes are set in a line parallel to the ground, suitable for chasing wildebeests. Outer space takes some getting used to. Even after you’ve trained your stomach to stop pushing the panic button when you’re in no-g conditions, you have to keep reminding yourself that up and down are just as important as sideways. The adjustment is never perfect, because you’re trying to learn a set of reflexes your body just wasn’t programmed to take. That’s why no-g maneuvering takes a lot of energy—you’re fighting yourself all the way, whether you know it or not. I suppose that’s why kids like me are a little better at no-g work and don’t tire so fast; our reflexes aren’t totally “set” yet.

Berth H was a square-mouthed tube with bright lights lining the inside. I edged the Roadhog into the slot and brought us to a stop nearly perfectly; we couldn’t have been moving faster than a meter per second when we bumped into the buffer pads at the end.

Jenny patted me on the shoulder and bounded away to fasten mooring lines.

I felt good. I had proved that I could still handle a shuttlecraft, despite being out of practice. And most of all, I was out in space again. It had been too long.

That was the high point. The next five hours were something less than gratifying. Jenny took me over the Roadhog inch by inch, making me learn every valve and meter and strut on the contraption. I had forgotten a lot; the rest I hadn’t learned at all.

She made me draw a flowchart for the air pipes, after letting me inspect the Roadhog for five minutes. I thought I’d figured it out. When she handed the clipboard back to me, covered with red marks. I found out that I had gotten everything exactly backwards.

I checked out the works: ring laser gyros, radio, first aid, fuel feeds, hauling collars, repair kit. spare parts, search lights, electrical system, navigation, backup systems, vector integrator—you name it, I had to find it, see if it worked, explain how I would repair it if it didn’t, and relate it to all the other systems it meshed with.

“Do you think you’re familiar with these things now?” Jenny said.

“I’m surprised you don’t have me kiss each one individually,” I said. She grinned at me. I grinned back; a lock of hair had curled down between her eyes—she couldn’t reach it, of course, in a space suit—and I wondered why I hadn’t realized before how pretty she was.

My old romanticism again. The people I respected most were the ones who could do things. Most girls didn’t fit in that category, and I—ambitious Matt Bohles—looked down my nose at them. What good is a girl who is just an ornament?

For some reason I had included Jenny in that group, too. These last few hours had proven me wrong. I was intrigued. Jenny was something special.

“Do you feel ready to take her out?” Jenny said. I blinked; I had been staring at her moodily, thinking, for the last minute.

“The Roadhog is not a her, it’s a him.” I said.

“Ships are always feminine,” she said. “There are female roadhogs, too. So what’s your answer?”

“Alone?”

“Of course not. I’ll be holding your hot little hand all the way.” She looked at her watch. “The round trip should take about thirteen hours. It’s too late to leave today.”

“What’s the trip for?”

“Satellite Fourteen. A circuit component is on the fritz and the Faraday cup doesn’t give reasonable readings.”

I shrugged and then remembered that in a suit the gesture was invisible. “Fine. Tomorrow morning, then, huh?”

Chapter 10

That night we had one of our godawful Socials. The psychers have this theory: As kids approach the teenage years, there’s this natural tendency to clump. Girls in one group over here, and the boys in that gang over there. You can’t get them together in the right kind of social way without an effort, they say. So every month they have a Social and every teenager in the Can has to come. There’s no option. No begging off with a cold, no conflicting job. Nothing will get you off the hook.

I got there as late as I could. Everybody does. Good music was floating out of the corners of the H-deck rec room. A couple of adults were welcoming kids as they came in the door. The adults were basically good people, warm and understanding and always willing to talk to you. Everybody knows they’re part-time “adolescent specialists”—you can look it up in the Can work chart—but that’s okay, because that’s what they’re honestly interested in. It’s no fake. “Good evening. Matt,” Mr. Neugyen murmured to me. “I believe the correct theme for tonight is a quiet, reflective time.” He gestured to the rec room. “We are all saddened by the passing of Ishi. But to reaffirm our—”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, mostly to cut him off.

Dr. Matonin turned to me. “I know it has affected you greatly.” she said.

I scuffed one shoe into the other. “Uh huh.” They were only trying to help, and they were right, but I didn’t want to talk about it. “Uh, I think I’ll get something to drink.” I said, and moved off with a kind of phony smile.

It was just like every other Social. A knot of boys was talking, occasionally letting out a bark of laughter. The girls sat around low toadstool-shaped tables, the kind you can knock a drink off of with your knee if you’re not careful. They looked bored and uncomfortable. Just a few hours earlier we’d all seen them in jumpers or skinsuits or overalls. Now they had on dresses and long floaty skirts. And they’d done something to themselves. I mean, we’d been seeing the same dresses for years, redone to keep up with Earthside styles. But tonight the girls managed to look different—softer and curvier and sexier somehow. I don’t know how they did it.

I went over to the punchbowl and got a cup of the usual yellowish stuff. No alcohol in it, of course. Nothing more exotic, either. I’d never heard of anybody in the Can using any of the mild euphorics, such as cannabis or Lucogen. Those are legal on Earth, but reality-twisting isn’t allowed out here.

“Hey, got one for me?” Jenny said at my elbow.

I handed her my cup. “Oh, I didn’t see you.” I poured myself another.

“Or didn’t try to, ummmm?”

“Aw, come on.”

“Well, I wondered if there was some reason. Do you realize that you never approach a girl at these things?” She sipped her punch, holding it in two hands, and peered over the cup at me.

“Let’s be precise,” I said, “I don’t very often, okay, but not never. I…well, there’s something I don’t like about these things.”

“They’re not the greatest,” she admitted.

“Why can’t we have square dances instead?”

She shrugged. “Dr. Matonin says these are part of the, the socialization program.”