Tonight, though, Rick didn't feel in the least like playing the game. He didn't even want to talk, although it was obvious that Deedee was in a chatty mood. He did his best to reply normally but she started to look at him strangely across the table, her smiles changing to frowns. It was a huge relief when somebody else bustled in, sat down next to Rick and said, "All right if I join the two of you?"
The kid was someone Rick had never seen before, although up to this point he had thought he knew every apprentice on board the Vantage. Somebody must have been added at the last moment. The skinny newcomer had a tousled mop of curly light brown hair and a fresh, ruddy complexion, as though he had just come in from a brisk walk in the open air. He grinned at Rick and Deedee, stared down at the plates that were appearing from the server, and said "Deviled dingo dong again, I see."
Rick just stared. It was Deedee who stuck out her hand across the table and said, "Hi. We've never met before. I'm Deedee Mao."
"Tom Garcia." The kid smiled at her and turned expectantly to Rick.
"Rick Luban." Rick held out his hand in turn, and then, with no idea what to say next, added, "How are you doing with your assignment?"
It sounded inane, and felt even more so when Garcia put his head to one side, pursed his lips, and said, "Dunno. I guess if we get to GM-26 in one piece I'm doing all right."
"Huh?" Deedee's face reflected Rick's own confusion.
"Maybe I should have been more informative during the introductions." Tom Garcia waved his arm around him. "You see, it's my job to fly this thing."
"You mean the ship?" asked Deedee. "You're the Vantage's pilot?"
"I'm afraid so. I hope it's not too big a disappointment for you. Actually, I'm one of two. The other is Marlene Kotite, and she's holding the fort right now while I'm here feeding my face."
"But you look younger than I do!"
"So they tell me." Garcia shrugged. "I'm sorry, but what can I do? Wait twenty years, I suppose, and it will take care of itself."
"But the seniority system—" Deedee began, then stopped herself. "I guess everything out in the Belt is so new, there aren't any really senior people."
"That's partly true. More to the point, it's not like the transportation system back on Earth, set in stone. Out here, people who are best at the jobs get them." Garcia shook his head. "I'm sorry, that sounds like I'm boasting. I didn't mean to."
"You have every right to boast. You're in charge of this whole ship!" Deedee's attention was no longer on Rick, and he didn't mind that at all. "Would you mind if I asked you some questions," she went on. "About the ship, I mean."
"Ask away. Only two conditions. First, you've got to give me time to eat. Second, I won't tell you anything that might give you an advantage over the other apprentices on the travel time question that Barney French set all of you."
"No problem. That's completely impossible anyway. Everybody agrees, no one will get an answer." Fortunately all Deedee's attention was on Tom Garcia, otherwise Rick's face might have given him away.
"If the Diabelli Omnivores can fuse any element lighter than neon," she went on, "Why do you use a deuterium/helium-3 mixture? Turkey Gossage told us those are rare materials, hard to obtain in large quantities."
"Quite true. Two reasons. First, all the fusion products except for neutrinos are charged particles, so the Omnivores can direct them all in the same direction by using electromagnetic fields. That gives a very efficient drive. If I need to, I can accelerate the Vantage at a couple of gees. It we fused carbon or oxygen, we'd be down to a fifth of a gee or less. Second, fusing heavier elements requires much higher temperatures, up in the billion degree range. That means more wear and tear on the engines, and much more frequent maintenance. For a working ship, the fraction of time in service is one of the most important variables."
Rick listened to everything that the pilot said, but half his mind was all the time somewhere else. He could not get Alice's strange behavior out of his head. As soon as the meal was over he slipped away, leaving Deedee still fascinated by what Tom Garcia had to tell her.
He was not sure where he would find Alice, but he went wandering aft toward the women's quarters. He received odd looks from half a dozen female apprentices as he went, but at last he located her where he might have expected—in the tiny exercise room, running doggedly on the treadmill. "Alice!"
"What?" She gradually slowed the pace to zero, and stood there with her chest heaving.
"You ignored me back there. I wondered why. I mean, I didn't do anything."
She glanced across at the door. "Not here. We can't talk here."
"Why not?"
"I'll explain later. Go back to your room."
"But I want to—"
"I'll see you there in fifteen minutes. Now go—this second."
Rick retreated along the corridor to his room. He unfolded his bunk and sat down on it. When Alice arrived at last she closed the door and locked it.
"Rick, we should have talked before I left for dinner. Do you want a job with Vanguard Mining, or would you rather be kicked out and sent back to Earth?"
"That's a dumb question. You know the answer. What does it have to do with you and me?"
"Everything. Vanguard has a very simple operating philosophy: The company comes first. One sure way to fail is to put emotions and personal feelings ahead of the company and your job. There's a very easy way, however, to have the best of both worlds: Do what you like, but don't let it show. Do you have any idea how many people were getting close to each other in the New Mexico training camp, or on CM-2?"
"Jigger and Gina—"
"Did you realize they were partners, until the party on the final night?"
Rick shook his head. He had known, but he didn't want to tell Alice just how he knew.
"I wasn't going to say anything or do anything in the mess hall," he protested. "I was just going to talk to you."
"Yeah, sure. Talk to me. You didn't see your face. You big simpleton." She hugged him close, to take the edge of what she was saying. "Anyone who saw you looking at me would know in a minute how things were between us. You couldn't have made it any clearer if you'd written my name on your forehead."
"I can't help the way I feel."
"Nor can I. But we have to be discreet. We can't afford to moon around looking lovesick. So don't expect me to be anything but cold and distant when we're in public. Getting bounced from the program is one chance neither of us can take."
"What about in private?" Rick wasn't being rejected, but he felt like it.
"That's a different matter." She smiled at him and touched her finger to his lips. "In private, what we do is your business and mine."
Chapter Thirteen
RICK was convinced that no one else would solve the problem of the ship's travel time. It was a shock when at the end of the third day Barney French announced that a total of six people had obtained the right answer.
She did not, however, provide the names. "You know who you are," she said to the assembled group. "This isn't a school. My job isn't to give out prizes."
Which left Rick to stare around and wonder who was so smart. Chick Teazle? Gladys de Witt? Vido? Not Deedee, if what she had told Tom Garcia was the truth. Had a whole group of them cooperated, without telling the rest? Not judging from their expressions. It seemed to him that everyone was staring round at everybody else.
Barney also offered no public comment as to how people had managed on their individual assignments. She simply called them in later, one at a time, asked a few questions and made barbed comments on the answers, and piled on the work load.
"You'll need this, and this, and this," she said calmly to Rick. He didn't argue, but he knew that each item she dropped on him meant four or five hours hard work. It made him wonder why he had been so keen to succeed when he was on CM-2.
He carried his assignments back to his cabin and started the grind. The next couple of days were endless labor, broken only by food, sleep, and stolen hours w
ith Alice. Barney French had dumped on her even harder than Rick. Alice had only just squeaked through the finals on CM-2, and still she was barely making the grade. Rick felt almost guilty at the time they spent together—but he never suggested that they might stop seeing each other. Amid all the work, Alice provided the bright spot in a sea of drudgery".
Halfway point came and went, a few minutes of weightlessness while the Vantage turned end-over-end. Deceleration began. Four and a half more days, and they would be at their destination in the Belt.
Seventy-two hours after turnover Rick, wandering along to the dining area dazed by an excess of studying, found himself sitting opposite Deedee. She stared at him in a sad-eyed and accusing way, but all she said was, "How you doing, Rick?"
"Fine." Did she know? How could she know? He had not spoken a word to anyone, and after the first day he had been careful not even to look at Alice in public.
He pulled out of his trance and made a big effort. "I'm fine," he repeated. "How are you doing?"
"Busy. Working hard. Thinking a lot. About a lot of things."
Their food had not yet appeared, but she stood up and went to another table. Rick felt uncomfortable, though he told himself that he had not certainly not done anything to Deedee. She kept looking at him from where she was sitting at the other table.
He wolfed his food down as fast as he could and returned at once to his cabin. It was late, and Alice had told him that she didn't think she would be able to make it until the next day, but he really wanted to see her and touch her and talk to her.
He was lying on his bunk, supposed to be learning the table of the elements but actually drifting and dreaming, when it happened.
An urgent voice spoke over the general announcement channel. "Emergency. Please return at once to your cabin and secure all movable objects. Lie on your bunk and strap yourself down. In five minutes we will perform a major course change and move to high acceleration. Repeat, this is an emergency."
Rick glanced around the little cabin. The chair was tucked away in the wall. He went across to the terminal, grabbed the picture of his mother, and locked it away in the high cabinet. As the announcement was repeated—this time he recognized Tom Garcia's voice, nothing like as casual as usual—he went back to the bunk, lay down, and secured the straps across his body and legs.
Now what? The terminal came on without his touching it, something he had not realized could be done. Barney French's image appeared on the ceiling above Rick. He realized for the first time that the terminal could also serve as a backlit projector, throwing an image onto the flat plane of the white ceiling.
"To repeat what our pilots told you," Barney said quietly, "we have an emergency situation. Let me assure you that this is not what you apprentices refer to as a 'zinger,' part of a planned test. Since Tom Garcia and Marlene Kotite are otherwise occupied, I have agreed to tell you what we know so far. Fifteen minutes ago we received word from Headquarters of a major accident on one of our advanced mining facilities, Company Mine 31. There are casualties. We don't know yet how many. After the initial message from CM-31 there has been no communication of any kind. Because of the changing geometry of our mines in the Belt, the Vantage happens to have the best location and velocity vector of all our vessels to reach CM-31 in minimum time. We will shortly change direction and go to our maximum acceleration of a little more than two gees. That will be maintained for four and a half hours, after which we will perform turnover and decelerate with equal force for six hours. We anticipate that accommodation changes on board the Vantage will be necessary upon our arrival at CM-31, but I cannot yet inform you of what those might be.
"I know that each of you has experienced much higher accelerations than two gees, but only in physical tests or for the short period of an ascent to orbit. Do not experiment. As soon as our thrust pattern has stabilized, I and others familiar with high-gee shipboard activity will come to each cabin in turn and instruct you on safe operations until we reach CM-31. Meanwhile, remain in your bunks."
The screen went blank. Rick lay back and waited. There had been no sign of the usual sarcasm in Barney French's voice, but also no room for compromise on her face. Anyone who left his bunk, that look said, would be in major trouble. Something terrible must have happened on CM-31, though Rick could not imagine what.
Ten minutes ago he had been brooding over Alice's absence. Now he was glad that she had not been able to come to him. Were other apprentices struggling right now into their clothes, and scrambling back to their own cabins?
The drive turned off. There was the usual moment of disorientation as his stomach came up to meet his throat, and then the giddiness of a rotation and realignment of the ship in inertial space. Before that could become uncomfortable he was pressed back hard into his bunk. Wrinkles in the mattress and blanket that he had never noticed before made their mark on his back.
He had been told not to move from his bunk, but he was free to move within it. A set of controls for the terminal lay on the bunk's right-hand edge, so that if you wanted to you could work the data banks while you were lying in bed. Rick keyed it now, with difficulty, adjusting to the use of fingers that suddenly did not want to lift from keys.
COMPANY MINE 31—at last it came—ONE OF THE NEWEST OF VANGUARD MINING'S ASSETS, THE BASE ASTEROID FOR CM-31 HAD AN ORIGINAL FORM CLOSE TO A TRIAXIAL ELLIPSOID WITH SEMI-MAJOR AXES 0.9, 0.7, AND 0.5 KILOMETERS. . . . What was that supposed to mean? Nothing at all, so far as Rick was concerned. He plowed on, word after unfamiliar word. . . . ALTHOUGH SMALL COMPARED WITH OTHER MINES SUCH AS CM-8 AND CM-20, CM-31 IS UNUSUALLY VALUABLE BECAUSE OF ITS HIGH CONTENT OF SIDEROPHILES. . . .
Siderophiles. Rick swore. That term again, the one Barney French had told him to check out—and he hadn't done it.
He could hear sounds from outside his door, but no one came in. He had to be quick. He moved to the word-search data bank, and the definition appeared on the screen.
SIDEROPHILE: LITERALLY, IRON-LOVING. IN MINING OPERATIONS THE TERM REFERS TO A GROUP OF ELEMENTS TIIAT COMMONLY OCCUR IN THE PRESENCE OF IRON AND ARE PREFERENTIALLY REMOVED WITH IRON DURING AN EXTRACTION PROCESS. THE MOST IMPORTANT OF TI IESE FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES ARE NICKEL, IRIDIUM, AND PLATINUM.
So CM-31 was a potential gold mine—or at least, a platinum mine. Rick switched back to his other data file.
. . . CM-31 FORMS A TEST SITE FOR NEW LARGE-SCALE CENTRIFUGE AND ZONE MELTING METHODS. IT IS BEING USED IN PROOF-OF-CONCEPT MODE FOR SUCH MINING TECHNIQUES. . . .
Centrifuge was what they had done to him during the physical tests, spinning him around on the end of a long arm with a balance weight at the other end, faster and faster, until he blacked out. He didn't see how you could put a whole asteroid on the end of anything.
Zone melting made even less sense. It was another phrase that meant nothing. He went again to his online dictionary and this time met with less success. The database defined what he wanted as a method of purifying certain metals, but after that it quickly became gibberish: The zone melting process relies on the fact that many impurities prefer to remain in the liquid phase rather than freeze out into the solid phase. A melted section propagating along an otherwise solid body will collect impurities in the moving melted section. They will be swept along and concentrated at one end."
Rick puzzled out the message, word by painful word, and was as mystified when he finished as when he started. Concentrated at one end. One end of what? An asteroid didn't have ends, the ones he had seen were all irregular roundish lumps.
. . . IN VIEW OF THE HIGH METAL FRACTION OF CM-31, A RECORD 99 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL MASS (ROUGHLY 8 BILLION TONS) CAN BE EXTRACTED. IT WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO CISLUNAR SPACE EMPLOYING A SMALL PART OF THE DROSS AS REACTION MASS FOR LOW-THRUST ION PROPULSION UNITS.
Dross. Rick swore again. What the devil was dross? The trouble with learning was that the more you learned, the more you realized how much you didn't know. Once you started you were on a never-ending treadmill and you couldn't get
off.
The opening door ended his frustration. It was Barney French herself, panting hard. "Luban? Up out of the bunk." She caught sight of the screen display. "Good choice—let's hope you don't need that for a while. Don't rush getting up. Slow is smart, first time you do it."
Not just the best way—the only way. Rick came gingerly to his feet and stood there swaying. Tom Garcia had said two gee, but it felt more like ten.
"You'll get used to it." Barney was reading his mind. "All of you have been spoiled the past couple of months by low-gee environments. This is nothing. Think yourself lucky you didn't sign with Avant Mining and have to live with pulsed fusion. Their high-acceleration mode takes them from two and a half gees to zero and back every few seconds, all day long. You ever try to eat dinner bouncing on a pogo stick?"
She moved to the door without waiting for an answer, and Rick followed her out of the cabin. He paused on the threshold. The passageway, along which he had often zoomed with so little effort, had become a deep vertical well. Handholds and footholds that he had never noticed before were placed every foot along it.
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