Survey Ship

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Thanks.” Teague stripped off the thin fiber suit and thrust it into a disposal chute. He noticed a stray sheet of the music paper he had covered with a scribbled note, lying on the floor; caught it up and started to send it down the chute after the paper suit, but Ching caught his arm.

  “Teague, don’t. Finish it first. I really want to see how it comes out, and I’m sure Peake would, too. He’s enough of a musician—”

  “Enough of a musician not to appreciate anything less than Bach or Mozart,” Teague said, wryly, but he did slide the page into the bin which held his flute, Ravi came in, saw Teague’s nude body, and said, “That makes sense.” He took off his pressure suit, pulling off part of the wrinkled fiber suit under it. As Fontana and Peake and Moira came in through the sphincter, Ravi asked, “Does anyone here seriously object to nudity? We could conserve material for clothing by wearing it only when we’re doing dirty work, or want protection.” “I don’t mind anyone else going naked,” Peake said, “but I like something between my bottom and the seat of the chairs.” He hung his pressure suit and helmet in the rack, went and dialed himself some food from the console.

  “I handle that by putting a towel or something on the seat,” Teague said, taking a small handful of fiber towels from the dispenser at the bottom of the food machine and putting them over the seat. “We recycle the towel material anyhow.”

  “I don’t care who wears what, either,” Moira said, “and personally I prefer to go naked about half the time. As long as one thing is made perfectly clear — that it’s not a sexual invitation. When it is, I’ll make it obvious. If people can distinguish between simple nudity and putting my body up for grabs, I’ll go naked. Just don’t get the wrong idea, anybody.” She stripped off her own crumpled tunic and pants, got herself a plate of food, and sat down to eat.

  Ching felt abashed and embarrassed at her own unwillingness to follow suit, as if she were a spoilsport. I envy Moira’s confidence, she thought. I wish I could do that.

  Fontana said, “Well, I prefer wearing clothes. My skin is sensitive, and I prefer not to shiver with every stray draft. Anyhow, I prefer to keep nudity for private occasions, if nobody minds.”

  Ching thought, well, if Fontana feels that way too, at least I’m. not the only one!

  Ravi’s eyes followed Moira; her pale skin was freckled all along the back, too, and her small breasts hardly more than brown nipples, the body of a girl of twelve. Fontana and even Ching had more sensuous bodies, but he remembered, with a quick stir of sexual memory, how intensely he desired Moira. Damn; and she had made it very clear how she felt about having that associated with simple nudity. Maybe that was the trouble with nudity, that it was hard to refrain from making those associations here, when you were with a woman you had known. In the gym, or even on the Bridge, where they were deliberately doing something else, he might not have betrayed himself but here he knew he would do so.

  Peake watched Teague bringing a tray toward Ching, looking again with appreciation at the heavy layered muscles, the thatch of curling red hair on Teague’s chest and the matching red patch below. He was acutely conscious of his own body, thin, dark, gangling, awkward, bones protruding with almost skeletal impact, Ugly, he thought. It’s not that I’m black. Ravi’s darker than I am and he’s beautiful, he’s one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen, but I’m a damned scarecrow.

  Teague saw the direction of Peake’s gaze, and the interest and admiration in it, and felt suddenly abashed, turning his eyes away. Maybe all this nudity wasn’t such a good idea, maybe I shouldn’t have started it.

  He carried his own tray over toward Peake and sat down at the edge of the long seat. He lowered his voice to where only Peake could hear.

  “Listen,” he said, with some embarrassment, not knowing quite how to phrase it, “I can’t put it quite the way Moira did, but does my running around this way bother you, Peake?”

  “Hell, no,” Peake retorted good-naturedly, “I was just admiring the crop of muscles you’ve got. No matter how hard I train, and I’m pretty husky and perfectly fit, I keep on looking like a famine victim!”

  “Well, you’re an ectomorph,” Teague said, feeling awkward. He moved the tray over his lap, lowering his eyes, and began to eat, wishing he had not brought up the subject. Peake said deliberately, “Let’s get one thing straight, Teague. Sure, I like men. I prefer sex with men. But I don’t go around leching about them, not even when they’re running around in the nude; I got used to that in the gym at the Academy before I was twelve years old. If I reacted all that much to nude males, I’d have gone crazy a long time ago. And there’s one thing you’d better realize. I prefer enthusiastic co-operation in my — shall we say, encounters. Disinterest, or even tolerance, turns me off — way off. And the notion of rape makes me just as sick as it makes any other decent man. Clear?”

  Teague stared at his lap and mumbled, “Yeah, clear.” And suddenly, perversely, he found himself aware of Peake’s slender, dark body, the graceful fingers moving on the spoon. “No offense, Peake?”

  “Not a bit,” Peake said with deliberate cheerfulness, scooping up the last of this rice, and went to put his plate through the disposal.

  Ugly. Ugly as sin. OnJy Jimson ever thought any different, and he’s gone.

  Teague went back to Ching, who was picking at the food he had brought her. “You look tense,” he said gently. “Here, let me rub your neck.” He leaned over her, his firm fingers kneading the tight muscles, feeling her relax, gradually, under his hands. He kept on massaging, transferring the smooth motion down between her thin shoulder blades, and after a bit persuaded her to lie down on the seat, bending over her to knead her back muscles.

  She said drowsily, “I’ll fall asleep if you keep doing that.” She was amazed at herself; once again, her body was betraying her, not this time with sickness, but with a flood of warmth, of lazy, sensuous awareness; she felt that she could lie here forever, with Teague’s hands moving on her body.

  He leaned over and whispered, his warm breath tickling her ear, “I’ve got a better idea.”

  Momentarily Ching went tense under his hands; then, still mesmerized by the caressing movement, she thought, Why not? Her body was very alien somehow, she felt she did not recognize it. She let him scoop her up, half-carry her to the door; he held her as they floated through the free-fall corridor.

  I cannot trust my body, I cannot trust the computer. But I feel I can trust Teague. Why not? And then, defiantly, Why should I be the only woman in the crew who doesn’t know what it is to have sex with a man?

  But in her own cubicle, as he was gently taking off her clothes, a wave of diffidence, of awareness of her own difference, overcame her again.

  “Listen, Teague,” she said shyly, “I’m not sure I — I mean, I’ve never done this before, I’m not sure I’ll — well, know how. Except, you know, sort of theoretically. Do you mind?”

  Teague was overcome with sudden warmth and sympathy. He bent close, kissing her, gently prying open her inexperienced lips. He whispered, “No, Ching, I don’t mind at all.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was Ravi and Moira, in full EVO gear, who approached the building designated the gym through the free-fall corridor, this time slowly, holding to the crawl bar. There was a flaring red light, indicating airlessness and vacuum beyond, and the sphincter had locked automatically, isolating the damaged module. Ravi sealed the first sphincter of the free-fall corridor, so that the corridor could function as an airlock in this emergency, then thrust the tool into the sphincter lock and twisted the lock free. The red light was still blinking.

  His pressure-suit audio sounded loud in his own ears.

  “Here we go. Let’s see what kind of damage we have.”

  Ravi heard in the audio the sharp breath Moira drew, as the door opened; almost a cry, as if the damage were to her own body. A gaping hole flared in one edge; the meteorite or whatever it had been, had impacted them at tremendous velocity, ripped straight throu
gh the module, destroying the rowing-machine Teague had been using as if a bomb had struck it, then, deflected, richocheted and gone out, leaving a surprisingly small hole not really very far from the point of entry.

  “Well,” he said, trying to make light of it, “looks like we’ve got a leak in the roof, in here.”

  Moira giggled; a small, somehow disconsolate sound. Then she noticed that the debris was still lying all over the “floor” of the room, the painted running-track; Ching’s ballet barre had been broken by a flying fragment of the rowing machine, holes gouged in the sanded and varnished surface, mats flung about. But the debris lay on the “floor,” not strewn, drifting, all over the module.

  “There’s still gravity in here.”

  Ravi said, “That’s right, the DeMags are still on.” He had hoped to find them turned off, damaged by the impact perhaps; then he could have attributed the former DeMag failure to accidental jarring or damage to the control, a hypersensitive control dial.

  “Good thing too,” Moira said. “Otherwise we’d have to run an obstacle course through floating debris, or tie everything down, before we could start repairing the damage to the module.”

  “Why couldn’t we just have turned it on — oh, that’s right; we couldn’t trust it not to jolt on hard, the way it did the other day, and everything come raining down hard on top of us,” Moira said. “Actually I’m beginning to think the trouble isn’t in the DeMags themselves but in the backup system, the fail-safe.”

  “I’m not sure,” Ravi said. “I trust your intuition about machines, certainly. But if that’s so, why the failure in the music room the other day?”

  “Well, we’ll have to check it out,” Moira said absently. She was not thinking of Ravi at all, and somehow he felt cold, deserted and lonely. He had known this woman’s body, he loved her and cared about her; yet now, facing desolation and destruction and the awareness of barely-escaped death — for if they had all been in the gym, some of them would certainly have been killed — he knew that he was less important to her than the pieces of Teague’s destroyed rowing-machine, which she was dragging together, trying to lay them out like the broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Moira does not love me, not as Jimson and Peake loved; she does not try to see God in me. I wanted to see her that way, to feel that the love between us was a little echo of the Cosmic Love which I am aching to know. But since the meteor struck, I am nothing to her. Ravi set his teeth, grimly accepting this; Moira was not his property; she had given him sexual access to her, body, and since she had the right to give it, he knew that the ethics to which he had been reared demanded she had also the right to withdraw it, without any reason given, unconditionally. But he hungered for her, physically, and he felt a deeper desolation which, he knew, had nothing to do with lust, its frustration or satisfaction.

  “I’d think we might as well put it into the recycier for molecular conversion,” Ravi said. “It’s certainly not worth the trouble of repairing.”

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be all that much trouble; and we don’t have the kind of machine tools we’d need to duplicate it,” she said. “I’ll have a go at it, later, when there’s time. We’ll need the gravity off in here to go up and repair those holes in the ceiling; let’s secure this for free-fall.”

  He helped her rope it up, stowing it carefully so that the broken parts would not drift around in free-fall. The damage assessed, they went to the storage modules for patching material, summoned Teague to help them (Teague being, physically, the heaviest and strongest of the crew) and turned off the free-fall. Over the next two ship’s days they hammered repairs in place, refilled the module with air, tested the seals and sprayed fiberglass paints over the room, finally sanded and refinished the floor. Even the DeMag units tested out perfectly, and when they were finished, Ravi suggested a celebration.

  “What are we celebrating?” Moira asked good-naturedly. “Not that it matters; we don’t need an excuse to throw a party. We could celebrate the passing of the orbit of Saturn.”

  “Now that sounds like a good idea,” Teague said, “I’m eager to get some good, close shots of the rings—”

  “We won’t be going too close,” Ravi told him, “the rings could be as dangerous as the asteroid belt!”

  “I guess what we’re celebrating is being well out of range of the asteroid belt without any more damage,” Teague said, “or maybe celebrating whatever music we were playing that kept us out of range of the gym during that off-time!” During the two days past, they had meticulously stopped work only for the shared music session — all of them had an unspoken agreement that this was the one daily structure to their lives that would be violated only in the gravest of emergencies — but they had slept and eaten and done any other work aboard the Ship at odd hours.

  “Well, officially,” Moira said, “what we’re celebrating is the re-opening of the gym. I’ll be glad to get some regular exercise at full gravity again.” As she spoke she felt again the twitch of unease, but told herself, sharply, not to go attributing every little neurotic twitch to her ESP. She had checked out the DeMags down to the solid core, this time, and Ching had personally checked every computer tie-in for the DeMags; it had been the first thing she had done, since it held the greatest potential for possible dangers.

  “We’ll make the music session today a party, then,” Teague said. “I’ll speak to Fontana about breaking out some kind of special meal and drinks, and Ching told me once that she likes to cook, if it’s a special occasion and not just routine. I’ll ask her about it.”

  As he spoke of Ching he smiled, and Moira, watching that smile, felt a sudden flare of jealousy. Teague was handsome, strong; she was certain he could give exciting experiences — but she knew Ching was undergoing the first flood of sexual awareness, centered all for the moment upon Teague. She didn’t wish to spoil that for Ching. Let her have her first affair untouched by any conflict. She’d learn, soon enough, how little it meant.

  Strange, and I admired Ching so much because she didn’t feel she had to get involved in this kind of thing, and it turns out she’s just like the rest of us. Does everybody do it, then, try to make up for her — or maybe his — own insufficiencies by drowning self-awareness with sex? Look at Ravi, he’s still following me around with his tongue hanging out… I got so damned tired of that in the Academy, men following me as if I were a bitch in heat, even when I didn’t do a thing to turn them on. Sure, sex is fun, but when there’s work to do, I like to forget about sex and concentrate on what we’re doing.’ And Ravi’s got to learn he doesn’t own me.

  But as they turned to leave the gym she caught a glimpse of Ravi’s unhappy eyes, and a twinge of conscience hit her.

  I offered myself to Peake, I said; perhaps it might make you feel less alone. But was I really being kind to Peake, or was I simply intrigued, as he said, by the fact that he was one of the few men I hadn’t had? Is that why I want Teague, to satisfy my ego — that I can have any man, even one who’s involved with someone else?

  And if I was willing to give myself to Peake to ease his loneliness, why can’t I do the same for Ravi, since it means so much to him and so little to me? She wondered why her pride should be so much more important to her than Ravi’s happiness, and then, mentally, she damned the whole male sex. Really, machinery was more important, it made no claims, played no elaborate ego games, and if it was damaged it could be repaired without any ego involvement. You could handle it as you wished, and it never made any claims on you, or complained of how you treated it.

  The remainder of the crew welcomed the suggestion of a celebration; Ching and Fontana readily agreed to be in charge of a special meal after the music session that day. Teague asked permission to stay away until then, claiming that he wanted to photograph the rings of Saturn from the closest possible approach.

  As Ching set the controls for cooking the specially asked-for foods, she felt strange, conspicuous. Every control she touched made her acutely aware of t
he computer tie-ins to Life Support; although she had checked the hardware inside the computer module, as well as the control console on the bridge, where it was tied to Life Support — it had been the first step of a job which she knew, rationally, was likely to take the better part of a year, by which time they would be far, far beyond the Solar System and have reached more than half the speed of light — she still felt insecure. Her own infallibility was shattered beyond repair. Even her body now felt strange to herself, as if she were no longer in undisputed possession of it. And Fontana’s proximity made her uncomfortable, too. All her life she had been aware that camaraderie between women usually came to an end where rivalry over a man began. It had never happened to her before because, during her years in the Academy, she had preserved her withdrawn, sexless lack of awareness, and had never challenged any woman for her male partner. Now, having achieved her first life-goal, being chosen for crew on the Ship, she had violated this rule against one of the women she hoped would be her friend.

  One of the first friends she had ever had. She felt miserable, felt as if she could not face Fontana.

  Fontana placed cups — regular disposable plastic, but somehow she had managed to program them to come out as cheerful cherry red — around the central table. “There,” she said. “Nothing left but the final warming, which will take about eighty seconds when they come in. Shall we pour ourselves a small dividend to anticipate, Ching, or shall we discipline ourselves to wait for the others?”

  “Let’s wait for the others,” Ching said, then, suddenly, blurted out, “Are you angry with me, Fontana?”

  “Angry with you, Ching? Why? Should I be?”

  “Because you and Teague — and now—”