by John Barnes
It’s a while before any of us speaks, and we’re all avoiding each other’s eyes.
Wychee notices me staring at her bruised cheek and the little trickle of dried blood under her nose; I can see that some of the hair just above her forehead came out by the roots. She wipes her teary face. “We had a kind of major discussion with Emerald and Derlock,” she says. “Derlock tried to tell us that he and Em only woke up when the thruster fired the first time, and rushed to the cockpit to discover that Glisters had screwed up and the ship’s automatic systems had taken back over. Glisters was yelling about you and Stack being out there, and Emerald and Derlock were yelling that he had gone insane and was trying to kill both of you.
“Then F.B. popped up a screen in the cockpit—neither of them had paid any attention to him, so he just airswam over and did it. He shouted that the record showed that the commander’s password had been used for the override that let them fire the thrusters and lock out Glisters. Not that there was any mystery, but there was the evidence.
“Everyone started pushing and yelling, and punching and kicking each other. Fwuffy decided that Em and Derlock were being very, very naughty—”
“They wuhn’t wetting Gwistas wescue Stack,” Fwuffy says, firmly. Then, suddenly, in the deep voice that doesn’t have the r and l problem, with his face expressionless, he says, “This horton is suffering conflicts in its moral sense because it was forced to harm a human to prevent a greater harm. It must be reassured that it chose the right course of action.”
“Exactly right,” Marioschke says, her arms around his neck. “You were a very, very good horton and we are very pleased with you. You did everything right.” We all loudly agree, emphatically.
Fwuffy shakes himself. “I’m feewing much betta.”
After a pause, Wychee resumes. “Anyway, Fwuffy just grabbed Derlock, tossed him into a locker, and locked him in; then he did the same with Emerald. They’re still in those lockers.” She makes herself look me in the eye. “Could you talk with Stack—?”
“I could until he drifted out of range. The suit-to-suit is very low power. He was still alive when he went out of range, but by now—” I start to cry again, and Wychee and I hang on to each other for a while, unable to do or think of much else.
In the cockpit I find that Glisters has had a real beating; he’s just in process of applying that nasty-tasting nanogunk that fixes your teeth. That would stop any other person in the world from talking, but he sits down and begins to type onto the big screen:
3 loose teeth
2 cracked
Maybe swallowed 2ple pieces?
Derlock kicked me in mouth w/heel
Nanos supposed to reassemble, grow new tooth where needed.
Goop will hold in place till nanos done
“Are you in pain, Glisters?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
Painblocker working
Then he takes some extra time to type:
I have recorded, isolated, and undone everything Derlock did in ship’s computer systems
It will make sure nothing more wakes up
And be evidence for trial.
F.B., floating over by one of the instruction consoles, is even more battered than Glisters; he waves “hi” and I see that the protective nanoplaster completely fills his mouth. “How long before you can talk and eat?” I ask.
He holds up four fingers.
“Four days?”
A nod. He floats forward and squeezes my arm, looking into my eyes; I know that’s about Stack.
Fleeta says, “You said she’d say some words.”
Everyone looks at everyone else.
Glisters types:
Fleeta is right.
She dimples and beams at having been right about something. I’m still bewildered. Glisters types:
Commander officiates at memorial service
We arrested commander
Pilot = next in line = you
You’re the commander, Commander.
Everyone is watching me, silently.
“Let’s go to the tail deck for this.”
We do, and I manage a little memorial service for Stack. If anyone realizes that I’m using a bunch of phrases and ideas from Pop’s old retro-movie-imitation meeds, especially the ones set back in twentieth- or nineteenth-century military, they’re smart enough not to say anything.
I guess I do all right. Everyone cries at the right parts, except Fleeta, of course. Big tears are rolling down Fwuffy’s face. I didn’t know hortons could cry, but then there’s a lot I didn’t know they could do, like stand up to injustice, make a right decision instantly, or save all our lives.
After the service, while we’re standing around, Wychee says, “Susan, officially we should hold another election to elect you our commander.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re the one we’re going to elect. Emerald and Derlock won’t be voting, and you’ll have everyone’s vote—”
“Except mine, I’m voting for Glisters—”
“Okay, you’ll be elected seven to one,” she says.
I feel punched in the gut.
Glisters sees by my expression that I think he’s still counting Stack. He says, “No, considering all the work Fwuffy is doing in the farm sections, Marioschke suggested he should have a vote, and I agree.”
Wychee and F.B. are both nodding vigorously, so it’s already a majority; I know Fleeta will vote yes, too, if we can get her attention and she understands the question.
I look at Fwuffy, who is still wiping his eyes with his trunk; the memorial service was hard on him. “You’re right,” I say. “Let’s be the first outpost of horton equality.”
“It makes me vewy pwoud.”
“I’m proud of you, Fwuffy.” I look around at all of them. “Well, I think Glisters is the real best guy for the job. Doesn’t anyone agree with me?”
No one does, and just like that, I’m commander.
Glisters is now officially the pilot, which makes a little bit of sense, since he’s done more “flying the ship” than anyone else, but after all, most pilots haven’t done much flying in the last hundred years, any more than most chamberlains have made a king’s bed or most pursers carry around a bag of gold coins. So he’ll keep right on being our engineer, but his title will be pilot.
Wychee will be the steward, but her title will be engineer. “At least,” I point out, “if something breaks, it will be because the engineer is actually a cook, and if there’s ever anything wrong with the food, we can say it was cooked by an engineer.”
Wychee razzes, then winces because it hurts her face. Emerald punched her hard enough to crack a cheekbone, and the nanos are at work on it right now; I wonder how that’s going to feel, a week or so of having her face ache from where her best friend hit her.
I set new watches—Glisters with Fleeta, because he can run the ship by himself anyway; me with Marioschke, because so can I and that way she can study or do her farm work; and Wychee with F.B. because they’re who’s left, and if they’re not perfect on everything in ship’s ops just yet, Wychee will be soon enough, and F.B. will be eventually, no matter how much time or effort it takes him. Fwuffy was geneered not to need much sleep—he had to accomodate a five-year-old’s whims—so he’ll part-time on everyone’s watch as needed.
Wychee and F.B. volunteer to take the first new watch; I think that’s because Wychee doesn’t want to deal with Emerald right away, which is where I’m going next. Glisters and I huddle to work out what we should do.
“First thing, though, I’m going to miss having our watch together,” I tell Glisters. “I wish I could have more time with my best friend.”
“Nye cess job you gib tuh nigh.” His words sound like they’re coming through a mass of raw steak.
“Show me on your wristcomp.”
He keys, and a flat mechanical voice says, “Nicest job you gave out tonight.”
“What job?” I ask.
“Yeah. So now you’re happy, too. It occurs to me that everyone on board is happy with their new job except the commander.”
“Not Emerald and Derlock. Their new job equal-sign ‘prisoner.’”
“That’s why you’re my best friend; you can always think of something to cheer me up. Here’s what I’ve got in mind—”
I think he’s disappointed that I’m not executing Derlock for murder; maybe I didn’t realize how much Stack’s friendship meant to a lonely guy like Glisters. Or maybe it’s just that engineer/techie solve-it-once-and-for-all instinct coming through. Grudgingly, though, he agrees to do things my way.
May 25, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 153 million kilometers from the sun, 118 million kilometers from Mars, 30 million kilometers from Earth.
“You people have no vision,” Derlock says, coming out of the storage locker that Fwuffy stuffed him into. “Emerald was the only one with any vision at all and she—”
“We’re giving you ten minutes on the toilet,” I say, “with Glisters standing over you with a length of pipe. If there’s any sound of struggle, Fwuffy will come in to back him up. And no matter what Glisters tells me happened in there, I’ll believe him, so you probably don’t want to antagonize him.
“After your time on the toilet, you get a bag of food, which Wychee has graciously prepared for you, a pump flask of water, and an empty flour container she’s donating to be your chamber pot, which has sort of a spout you can use; if you aren’t careful about keeping that closed, and end up spending your time in the locker with floating blobs of piss, well, that’ll be your own fault, won’t it? At each change of watches we’ll let you out and feed you; that’s when you can use the toilet, wash out your chamber pot, and refill your water. Every third watch or so you can take a shower, under supervision. We’re giving Emerald the same deal, so hurry up in the bathroom because she’s going next.”
“We need to discuss—”
“No, we don’t. Your ten minutes started forty seconds ago. If you use it up trying to argue, it will entertain me a lot when we put you back in the locker still needing to go.”
Sullenly, he lets us conduct him to the bathroom; he emerges with two minutes left in his time, accepts the food, water, and chamber pot, and lets us lock him back in.
Emerald comes out screaming; it’s not very coherent but apparently we are all very bad, we prevented her from saving Stack and being a hero, and despite our sabotage, she is going to be more famous than all of us. So there. I watch her crap; she cries the whole time.
As we airswim back, I say, “If you cooperate for a while, maybe we could talk about some kind of parole.”
She shrugs. “It’s your ship now.”
Afterward, neither Glisters nor I can sleep yet, so we join Wychee in the cockpit. “Glisters,” I say, “I could do the research myself, but I know you’ll do it ten times as fast as I can, and understand it better.”
His wristcomp voice says, “Ask ampersand I get answer. Maybe right one.”
“Well, first of all, what are our options for getting somebody to come out and rescue us? The antenna’s gone, and the thrusters probably changed our course. Can the cap still get anyone all the way down to Mars, alive?”
He plays around on the keys, and eventually he puts up a picture on the main screen. It’s not a very attractive one.
Notes for the Interested, #14
Recalculating after the accident
Mars, Virgo, and the cap will all be moving in orbits around the sun. The problem is to figure out the best time and place to launch the cap from Virgo so that it leaves Virgo’s orbit and goes into an orbit of its own which crosses Mars’s orbit at a time when Mars will be there. The cap is limited by its engines and fuel tanks in how fast it can take off (about 4 hours of 10% g of acceleration), and by its recycling system for how long the crew inside will have air to breathe (67 days for a crew of 2).
The time during which a launch can get onto a trajectory that reaches a specified point at a specified time is called the window. The computer finds the window by calculating, for each future position of Virgo and Mars, what the flight time for the cap would be (if it can get there at all). Glisters is having the computer search, down to the minute, for the departure times in the future during which the travel time is the shortest, because having 67 days of air and having to be in the cap for 64 days means that if any little thing goes wrong—a very small leak, or accidentally deflecting into orbit rather than down to the surface, which might require a few days to correct—then the crew will suffocate.
Obviously they can’t do anything to change Mars’s orbit, they have already used up most of their reaction mass changing Virgo’s orbit before this, and the cap has a very limited ability to change its orbit. With such a small menu of possibilities, it is not surprising that the window turns out to be very “narrow”—it doesn’t last long, and it is only “open” for a very short time.
Wychee holds her hands up, smiling. “Threaten me with math and I’ll agree to anything. I trust you both to figure out what will work best, though I suppose I’ll have to learn to understand it myself in case anything happens to you. But what I am getting out of this right now is that this is the place for the hook, in the meed, where Susan’s father would lean forward, slap his desk, and say, ‘Dammit, just gimme the bottom line here!’”
“Sheeyeffinit!” I’m laughing ultra hard. “Why didn’t you tell me you could imitate him like that? That’s a real old style he uses for twentieth-century stuff—uh, Asner Irate, that’s what it’s called. He’s used it when he’s played Sheridan Whiteside and Walter Burns. We’ve got to make it back now, it would be too terrible if he never saw that.”
Glisters, seeing a chance to explain something technical, ignores us and plunges like an otter into a fish hatch. “Bottom line: Best minimum trip time for the cap we can do is 64 days, with a 40-minute window for departure. Maximum of two passengers because they’ll be pushing the limits of recycling their air by day 67.”
“When is that window?” I ask.
“32 days from now.”
“And how fast does that get us rescued?”
“The two people on the cap should be within hailing range of Mars at…” He types and looks at the screen. “20 days from Mars or 44 days after they leave us. So the Space Patrol is going to know 76 days from now, or 19 days before we’re at our closest to Mars, and if they take off the minute they get the message, they could probably catch us in five or six months.”
“Five or six months?”
“They’re starting behind us and at an angle, and they travel in a solar orbit the same as us, so they can only be at a slightly higher speed. Ever hear the expression, ‘A stern chase is a long chase’?”
“Ever hear the expression ‘This blows’?”
“Unfortunately both expressions apply. By the time they catch us it will be faster to take us to Earth—only about eight months compared to ten for Mars. That’s the kind of thing that happens when everything moves in orbits.”
Unfortunately Crazy Science Girl knows more than enough to know he’s right. I wish I could tell her to shut up.
He holds up his hands, as if trying to placate us. “I hope I can build a submillimeter-wave antenna with supplies on board here. It will probably take a long difficult while. I doubt we’ll have it working by the time we’ll need to launch the cap, so my suggestion is we try both.”
“If your antenna works—”
“If we have a working antenna anytime in the next month, Gagarin will be able to come out from Mars and meet us, and we’ll probably all be arriving on Mars right on schedule. But honestly, Susan, chances are I can’t. I’ll get going on it and work hard, but I’m not exactly brilliant.”
“You’re good enough to fool us,” I point out. “All right. We’ll figure out which two people can go down in the cap, and start training them, and you’ll get to work on the antenna as soon as you’
ve had some rest.”
We have a bad moment in the bunk room when we box up Stack’s stuff to put away, but we manage. Glisters, with the third watch, takes a sleeping pill and passes out in the bunk above me; I try to sleep, but I don’t even really doze before F.B. comes in to wake me, and I have to go to the cockpit and relieve Wychee. There are a couple thuds and a swallowed scream while she’s letting Emerald have her break from the locker. My investigation goes as far as asking Wychee, “Are you okay?” and getting back, “I’m great.”
May 28, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 155 million kilometers from the sun, 113 million kilometers from Mars, 31 million kilometers from Earth.
A few days later, on my way to relieve Glisters, I’m passing by the storage lockers where we’re holding Emerald and Derlock. I hear soft thumps; when I stop and listen, it’s groups of between one and five thumps, separated by a breath or so, and after a long chain of them from Derlock’s locker, there’s a long reply from Emerald’s.
I quietly push off the floor and airswim out. In the cockpit, I find Glisters is poring over an advanced tutorial on submillimeter-wave communication.
“Hey, Glisters, did you ever happen to see a meed my dad made, way back, one of those revival things he was so popular in, called White Heat?”
“No, why?”
“Well, in it, there were these two prisoners sitting next to each other in cells, who communicated by tap code. And guess what I heard in the storage lockers in the corridor coming here?”
“Taps?”
“More like thumps. And you know a guy like Derlock might just be acquainted with tap code, either through his sleazy dad or through his sleazy interests. And it only takes about one minute to explain how it works out loud. So if he took a chance just once, and explained, and none of us heard him doing it—anyway, these thoughts occurred to me, because after listening a bit, either they’re using tap code, or they’re amusing each other with the world’s slowest drum riffs. So when we do the potty break this time, I think we need to move Emerald, maybe to a container in the Pressurized Cargo Section. It’ll take more time to tend them, but I think we have to.”