by James Wilks
Dinah looked at him and said, “That is not something I want to happen, sir.”
Later that afternoon, Charis sat down at the multi-function table across from her eight-year-old daughter, Gwen. They were in their room, one of the larger cabins on the ship usually reserved for passengers. It was about as wide as it was tall, three meters in each direction, though it was more than twice that deep. Its depth ran perpendicular to the long axis of the ship, allowing for the maximum use of space. Whether the vessel was in atmosphere or in space under thrust, whether the current floor was a floor or a wall, the room retained the same dimensions. As with the majority of the other rooms on the ship, its furniture was clamped to the floor but could be easily moved to correspond to up during atmospheric transition. There was an access door to a restroom on the back wall, and Gwen’s room lay beyond that. Her small bedroom had the benefit of a window.
“Mom, what happened before?” Gwen asked. She was short for her age, and her chin-length brown hair was held back from her face in two pigtails on either side of her head. Her eyes carried some of her father’s sharpness, and were a deep, inquisitive chocolate color, though they sometimes showed a hint of hazel. Her nose and chin were angled and her cheeks rounded, still carrying some baby fat, though she was fairly thin overall. Despite her father’s Korean heritage, her skin was very fair, nearly translucent, and delicate blue veins showed lightly at her temples. She wore simple drab olive cargo pants, but her tee shirt was bright pink and slightly worn, a much loved recent purchase from a second hand clothing shop in Portland, their last port of call. At the moment, her hands rested on top of one another on the cool metal of the table, and her face hovered a few inches above them as she leaned forward, all of her concentration on her mother.
“You mean before when the ship was moving around?” Charis asked, leaning back in her chair and sipping a carbonated beverage.
“Yeah. After we stopped being heavy,” the girl responded, nodding.
“You were such a good girl through that,” Charis said and smiled. “I was very proud of you. Your dad said you were very good. I know that was a long time to sit still and be heavy.”
Gwen perked up, grinning, reveling in the compliment. “I tried really hard to be good. Dad and I told stories together. We told one about a girl who had a monster for a pet, and that monster was hungry and wanted to eat, but the girl didn’t have any food, so the monster ran away and the girl had to chase him in her spaceship, and…”
As the girl paused to take a breath and continue, her mother seized her opportunity and interjected. “You two tell some great stories! But I want to answer your question from before, about what happened with the moving ship.”
Gwen paused a second, her mind refocusing, then said, “Oh, yeah. You may continue.”
Charis couldn’t help but laugh. “Well thank you, my lady,” she said in her best gracious courtier voice. After taking a moment to collect her thoughts, she began. “Well, you know how I told you we’re flying from Earth to Mars?” The girl nodded emphatically. “Well, we saw something valuable on our way, so the captain decided to stop so we could pick it up.”
“Captain Clea?” Gwen’s face glowed with the light of idolization.
The woman leaned forward and smiled, shaking her head a little bit. “Yes, Captain Clea, the one who reads to you. You know we only have one captain on this ship, silly.” She reached across the table to grab the child’s nose, and she buried her face in her hands, giggling. “Anyway, the captain decided to stop to pick it up. We had to stop really fast; that’s why we had to be heavy for so long. Do you remember what I taught you about being heavy and thrust?”
Gwen’s voice took on the aspect of one reciting an important historical document. “The greater the ac-cellery-ation or de-celery-ation, the greater the effects of gravity.”
“Deceleration. Very good. And do you know what that means?”
Gwen screwed up her face and raised her shoulders and hands up in the air in a histrionic shrug.
Charis smiled and rolled her eyes a bit. “It means that the faster we have to start or stop, the heavier you get.”
“I knew that. I knew it all along,” Gwen asserted, looking quite sincere.
“Mmm. So once we stopped, Dinah went out in a UteV to get it. The valuable thing, I mean. It was a satellite.” Gwen blanched a slightly paler shade of pale, but she didn’t say anything. Charis knew her daughter was a little bit afraid of the chief engineer. They had tried to teach her to hide it out of politeness when she encountered the woman, but it had been a struggle. “Unfortunately, another ship wanted the satellite too, and we had to race them to it.”
“They wanted to steal it?”
“Yes they did.”
Gwen processed this, then asked, “Was it theirs?”
“Nope.”
“Was it ours?” The questions were coming fast now.
“Well, it’s ours now. It wasn’t really anybody’s at that point.”
“So it never belonged to anybody before us?”
Charis grappled with the question for a moment. “Well, it belonged to a company who made it once, and they put it up in space around Earth, but then it floated away.”
“It didn’t want to be in space?”
Charis despaired for a moment that her daughter would ever run out of questions, but then reminded herself that apathy, that most constant of teenaged traits, was probably only a few years away. Not for the first time, she resolved to appreciate her daughter’s inquisitiveness while it lasted. “The satellite doesn’t want anything. It’s just some computers and metal. Computers aren’t alive, so they don’t want anything. It was broken, so it drifted away or maybe it got knocked away by another satellite or an asteroid or something. There’s this thing called the ‘green line’ around Earth. It’s an imaginary line that we pretend exists around the planet.”
“I bet you can find that line on your mastrogration charts, right mom?” Gwen interjected, her eyes widening.
“Astrogation, yes I can. Very good!” She beamed. “You actually know what your mommy does for a living.” Gwen’s smile was so wide that nearly all of her teeth showed. “Anyway, anything that drifts past the green line is fair game.” When no look of recognition showed on the small girl’s face, she added, “It belongs to anyone who gets it. Finders keepers.”
“Finders keepers,” Gwen echoed. “And we found it?”
“Yes we did. But not everyone follows those rules. A bad ship called the Doris Day came along and tried to take it from us, even though we were first. So we had to wrestle them for it a little, and that meant we had to move all round.” She shook and rotated her head and shoulders to illustrate her point to her daughter. “They were tough, but we beat ‘em in the end.”
“Cool,” Gwen said, her interest waning. “Who’s Doris Day?”
“You know, baby,” Charis looked at her and shook her head. “I have no idea.”
A little while later, as Charis was reading from her surface and Gwen was lying prone on the floor, reading a book on her own version of the same, the door opened and John walked in. Charis looked up in surprise and said, “Hey. I thought you were in the ReC until dinner?” Once they had gotten under way to Mars again, the captain had given everyone who had been on duty during their confrontation with the Doris Day the afternoon off to wind down. That meant that John had to cover Dinah’s shift in the ReC until the planned family dinner that night.
“I was supposed to be, but Dinah insisted on finishing out her shift once Jabir cleared her for duty. You know how she is.” He closed the door behind him and took off his jacket, securing it to the wall with a fastener strap. He took a beverage from its secured plastic ring in the small refrigeration unit built into the wall and sat down at the table across from his wife. “Besides, I wanted to catch up with you.” Something in his voice told her that the conversation would not be cheery.
Charis glanced over at her daughter. “Gwen, honey, would you mind going
into your room and looking at your book there?”
Gwen looked up, her legs bent at the knee, her feet scissoring back and forth. “Why?”
“Mom and Dad need to have a little time to talk.” When Gwen didn’t move, she stood up and gestured in a herding motion with her hands towards the back of the room and Gwen’s space beyond. “Come on. Just give us a little bit of time and we can watch a video together before dinner, how’s that?” John looked on and smiled.
“Fiiiine,” Gwen grudgingly agreed, standing up and frowning her deepest frown. She stalked towards the door, doing her very best to look as though her mother had just kicked her out of an orphanage and into a blizzard. They heard both the doors to the bathroom and to Gwen’s room close a little too loudly, and then their daughter was safely ensconced and they could speak.
Charis sat down at the table again and, hoping to keep the tone light, said, “What’s on your mind, oh husband o’ mine?”
“Well, first, are you okay? I mean, I know I asked you earlier, but it’s been a few hours now, and that was a really tense situation. Are you okay?” John’s brow wrinkled with concern as he looked at her.
She sighed deeply before answering, not in frustration, but to center herself. “Yes, I’m okay. It doesn’t feel quite real, you know? That’s not the first time we’ve been through something like that. Not the second either, I guess. But I feel all right.” She laughed a bit. “It was really tense for a bit there. I thought they were really going to kill Dinah.” She sighed again. “Thank you for your concern. Really, I appreciate it.”
John nodded, his lips pursed a bit. He had shaved that morning, and though his beard growth was starting to show on his cheeks, not one of the short dark hairs on his head was astray. Just as handsome, Charis thought, as on the day they met. She worried sometimes that the extra few kilograms she had put on when she carried Gwen, the lines that had formed on her face, from age, the pressures of her job, or the joys of motherhood she knew not which, would trouble him. He seemed to her not to age at all, but he had never shown any indication of looking elsewhere or being any less attracted to her. Just as good a man, she thought, as on the day they met.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course.” He let a few seconds of silence pass, and then added, “How much danger do you think we were in?”
Realization dawned on her. “Ah. This again.”
“Look,” he continued hastily, “I’m not saying that we should talk about getting off the ship again. We talked about all that and we decided to stay. I just… I don’t know. I just wanted to see how you felt.”
A slightly sardonic look crossed her face. “About?”
He leaned forward in his chair and his voice gained an edge. “About raising a child on a ship that people shoot missiles at.”
“No one shot any missiles at us.” His face ably communicated his thought: come on. “I mean it. No one shot at us. They shot at Dinah.”
“And Dinah is not part of ‘us’ now?” he pressed.
“Well, she wasn’t on the ship at the time. And they didn’t really shoot at her.”
“They didn’t shoot a missile at her.” The tone in his voice ably communicated that he and she both knew that wasn’t true.
“Well, not a real missile. It wasn’t armed. They never intended to really hurt her.”
“Do you know that for sure? How do you know that the missile didn’t just malfunction?”
“I was in the cockpit. I heard what Vey said. He was just trying to scare us. It was very clear that he meant it to be a warning.” She kept her voice at the same volume, but it was difficult to keep it from building in intensity as they argued.
“Or it malfunctioned and he played it off that way. You can’t trust what that man says.” He tried and failed not to sound scolding as he said it.
“Of course I can’t trust him, but do you know what the chances are of a warhead not detonating on impact? It’s like…” she searched her memory for the data, “ten thousand to one.”
“Are those odds you’d gamble our lives on?” He pointed towards the door. “Would you gamble Gwen’s life on those odds?”
“Of course not,” she replied instantly. “But first, that’s not the same thing. Secondly, the chances of us crashing on takeoff or landing are greater than that.”
He looked at her incredulously. “This is supposed to help your argument?”
“No.” She sighed and paused, re-centering herself. “All I’m saying is, we all take risks. If we were in some office job and suburban house on Earth, there’d be a chance of danger every time we put Gwen in the car, or let her play soccer, or… I don’t know, try out for cheerleading!” Against her best efforts, her voice had risen nearly to a shout.
John regarded her gravely for a second, and then a smile spread on his face. She looked at him darkly. “I hope you’re not laughing at me.”
He chuckled briefly. “No…” he grinned, “I was just picturing Gwen in a cheerleader uniform standing at the top of a pyramid of girls shouting Gimme an A!” He gesticulated with his arms as he delivered her mock lines. Charis’ anger broke, and she began to smile as well.
“What’s that spell?” she added, her voice rising. “Astrogation!”
They both grinned at the thought and at each other for a moment, and the tension between them dropped several levels. It became easier to remember that they loved each other, that they were partners and not adversaries. Finally, John assumed a more serious face and his voice found an air of contrition. “Look, you’re right, I know. Things could happen to her, to us, anywhere. Some occupations are more dangerous than others, but of course there are no guarantees. I just worry that we’re screwing up our kid.”
Charis opened her mouth to reply, but John stopped her with a raised palm. “I know, I know, everybody screws up their kids. Your parents did. Mine certainly did. And we turned out all right. I just worry. There are no other parents here to talk with, to get advice from. No kids to play with. And space is dangerous; not as dangerous as it was fifty years ago, but it’s still dangerous.”
Charis nodded sagely, happy that the argument had taken on the quest for common ground. “It is.” She raised her finger to make a point. “Don has kids, you know,” she hastened to finish her sentence before he could object, “but they’re not on this ship. They’re grown, they weren’t raised on a ship, and it’s awkward to ask your boss for advice on how to change diapers.” He nodded as she made his points for him. “All true.”
“I’m not saying we should get off. Staples is the best boss I’ve ever had, and the best captain you’ve ever had, and while I can be an engineer on any planet, a navigator pretty much has to be on a ship. I guess I just needed to talk through this, say that I was scared for us and for Gwen, and maybe say,” he raised his hands in the gesture of a shrug, “maybe we keep our options open. Maybe we can find a home on a big transport liner someday, something that has other kids, something with a school where we don’t have to beg our friends to tutor our daughter because we’re both math nerds. You know,” and he risked, smiling, “something that people don’t shoot missiles at.”
“Okay. We can keep our options open. Who knows, right? Maybe this job will just make us rich and we’ll retire. Buy our own island.”
“Well, it’s sure been great so far.”
Bethany Miller moved between the rows of leafy plants, a waifish shade easily lost in the misty humidity of the starboard hydroponics bay. Her tiny, coffee-colored hands reached out as she walked to brush a leaf here or caress a stalk there. The majority of the plants were grown in nutrient rich water contained in pots and jars of various sizes, depending on the needs of their roots. Excepting where the plant emerged from them, the containers themselves were covered as well as possible with plastic wrap to stop the solution from escaping when the ship was not under the effects of gravity. Even so, the room remained humid, and it made Bethany’s usually straight dark hair curl at the ends. The containers were suspended in the ai
r by metal dowels that allowed the containers to rotate, much like the plastic players in a foosball table. Weights at the bottoms of the jars kept the plants upright.
Like most of the living units, the hydroponics bays were long rectangular rooms running perpendicular to the long axis of the ship. They were also located along the dorsal hull, which allowed panels to be opened so that sunlight could be admitted to the rooms when the ship was in atmosphere. The panels were open now, but as Gringolet was headed away from the core of the system, the sun was mostly behind them, and only a few diffused rays made their way into the room. Bethany had turned on the UV lamps when she entered the room to supplement the natural light, and now she made her use of her afternoon off to check on the condition of her plants.
They weren’t her plants, of course. A hydroponics bay was not necessary for a ship of Gringolet’s size, but there were a number of advantages to having one. The plants helped recycle the air that the crew was constantly polluting with carbon dioxide. The rooms provided a therapeutic and peaceful space for the crew, though Bethany spent more time in the bays than the rest of the crew combined. The biggest advantage the bay provided, however, was also Bethany’s main reason for being here now. She walked over to the tomato plants on their hinged trellises, looking for the ripest of the fruits, and touched each gently before selecting three to pluck and contribute to tonight’s family dinner. She slid them into the canvas satchel slung over her shoulder.
She heard the door to the bay open and instinctively ducked behind the tomato plant to hide.
“Bethany?” She heard a woman’s voice call: Dinah’s. The chief engineer held a certain fascination for the petite pilot. She looked up to the older woman, marveling at her confidence, her abilities, her character, and her occasional demonstrations of whip-crack wit, and yet Bethany was intimidated by her in equal parts and avoided direct contact with her whenever possible.