Muzorawa laughed gently. “They had a peace conference. He agreed to stop telling tales about her and she agreed not to decorate him with food anymore.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Grant felt better than he had in days. “And they’re not boiled at me?”
“Why should they be?”
Before Grant could think of a reply, Muzorawa abruptly changed the subject. “Are you enjoying your work?”
Grant’s heart sank again. “That’s not a joking matter.”
“I was not joking.”
Unloading the dishwasher and putting the gleaming glassware in their proper cabinets as he spoke, Grant confessed, “I don’t mind the labor; it’s the
“Ah, yes,” said Muzorawa, shifting slightly on the stool, stretching his legs as if they pained him.
“I’m supposed to be working toward my doctorate in astrophysics,” Grant went on, growing angrier with each word. “How in the name of the Living God can I do that when there isn’t even another blast-dratted astrophysicist on the station?”
Muzorawa nodded solemnly. “Yes, I see. I understand.”
“I could spend my entire four years here without making a nanometer of progress toward my doctorate.”
“That would be a shame.”
“A shame? It’s a tragedy! This is wrecking my whole life!”
“I put in many hours of dog work,” Muzorawa said, “back when I was a grad student in Cairo.”
“You’re Egyptian?” Grant assumed Egyptians were tobacco-hued Arabs, not deeply black Africans.
Muzorawa shook his head. “I am Sudanese. Sudan is south of Egypt, the land that was called Nubia in ancient times.”
“Oh.”
“I received my degrees at the University of Cairo.”
“I see.”
“It’s easier for a black man there than at most European universities.”
“We have laws against racial prejudice in the States.”
Muzorawa grunted. “Yes, I know of your laws. And the realities behind them.”
“The New Morality sees to it that there’s no racial bias in the schools,” Grant said.
“I’m sure.”
“They do!”
With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Muzorawa asked, “Tell me, did you take any undergraduate courses in fluid dynamics?”
Caught off-guard again by another sudden change of subject, Grant answered hesitantly, “Uh, one. You need to know some fluid dynamics to understand how stellar interiors work.”
“Condensed matter.”
Grant nodded. “And degenerate matter.”
Muzorawa nodded back and the two of them quickly slipped into a discussion of fluid dynamics, safe and clean, a subject where mathematics reigned instead of messy, painful human relationships.
Within a few minutes Muzorawa was using one of the chem lab’s computers to show Grant the problems of the planet-girdling Jovian ocean he was working on. Grant understood the basics, and listened avidly as the Sudanese fluid dynamicist explained the details. In the back of his mind he felt warmly grateful that Muzorawa was taking the time to bring some spark of interesting ideas into his dull routine of drudgery.
It ended all too soon. Glancing at the clock display in the lower corner of the computer’s screen, Muzorawa said, “I’m afraid I must go. Wo has called a big meeting with the department heads. Budget proposals.”
Nodding, Grant said, “Thanks for dropping in.”
Muzorawa flashed a dazzling smile. “It was nothing. And stop being a hermit! Join us at dinner.”
“Us?”
“Egon, Tamiko, Ursula…”
“Lane?”
He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Yes, maybe even her. But we’ll keep her on the opposite side of the table from Egon!”
Grant laughed.
“We’ll sit her next to you.”
He was as good as his word.
Apprehensive, uncertain, Grant entered the cafeteria with the first surge of people coming in for dinner. As he slowly made his way along the serving line, pushing his tray and making his selections absentmindedly, he looked around for Muzorawa or Karlstad or any of the others. None of them in sight.
Then he saw O’Hara getting into the line, with Muzorawa’s bearded face a few heads behind her. By the time he had finished loading his tray, Karlstad, Kayla Ukara, and Tamiko Hideshi were also in line.
Feeling awkward, Grant hesitated a moment, then decided that it was foolish to just stand there dithering. Most of the tables were unoccupied as yet, so he picked an empty one big enough for six and sat down facing the line.
Sure enough, O’Hara came straight to him, still limping slightly. Then Muzorawa and the others. They all sat at Grant’s table and said hello as if nothing had happened. Finally Karlstad picked his way deftly through the line and joined them. Muzorawa had saved a seat for him on the opposite side of the table from O’Hara, who had placed herself next to Grant.
Just as Karlstad sat down, the light panels in the ceiling flickered once, twice. They all looked up.
“Uh-oh,” said Hideshi.
“Wait,” Muzorawa replied softly. “I think it’s stabilized…”
The lights suddenly went out altogether, plunging the crowded cafeteria into complete darkness. Grant heard the throng of diners moan, an instinctive collective sob of fear and tension that quickly dissolved into grumbling and muttering. He felt his heart thumping beneath his ribs.
“It’s stabilized, all right.” Karlstad sneered.
“What is it?” Grant asked, breatheless with anxiety. “What’s going on?”
Dim emergency lighting winked on, throwing the cafeteria into pools of faint light and deep shadow.
“Power outage,” Ukara said, almost hissing the words.
“It happens every now and then,” Muzorawa said, calm and reassuring.
We need electrical power to keep the air pumps going, Grant realized, sitting wire-tense in his chair.
“It might be Io’s flux tube expanding,” Karlstad suggested.
“More likely a plasma circuit between Io and the planet,” said Ukara.
“Yes,” Muzorawa agreed. “We probably passed through a plasma cloud and it overloaded our generators.”
“I don’t like this,” Hideshi admitted, her voice trembling.
Grant asked, “Plasma clouds jump from the cloud tops to Io?” His own voice sounded high and shaky.
“Not often,” Muzorawa replied. “But it has been observed from time to time.”
Karlstad muttered, “And we’re just lucky enough to be in the middle of it.”
“How long—”
The lights came back on. Everyone sighed gratefully. The cafeteria echoed with a hundred chattered, relieved conversations.
It took a while for Grant to feel at ease again. Losing electrical power could be fatal. There are backup generators, he reassured himself. And superconducting batteries that can run the life-support systems for days on end. Still, he treasured the bright, glareless light from the ceiling panels.
Everyone seemed to relax.
“Hell, I was looking forward to a candlelight dinner,” someone shouted. People laughed: too loudly, Grant thought.
