informational dispatch #0931
(reply to Houston transmission #5455,5-20-25) 5-21-25
DSV Ringmaster (NASA 447d, l5/1, Houston-Copernicus gcr
baseline)
Jones, Cirocco, miscom
security interlock on code prefix deltadelta begins.
1. Concur your analysis of Themis as interstellar space vehicle
of the generation type. Don't forget we suggested it first.
2. Latest photo follows. Note increased resolution of bright
areas. Still no luck finding docking facilities at hub; will keep
looking.
3. Concur your mid-course scheduled 5122.
4. Request updated tracking as new orbital insertion is
approached, beginning 5125 and continuing until insertion
commences, then upgraded. I don't care if this means shifting in
another computer I don't think our on-board will handle this
volume.
5. Turnaround 5122,0400 UT, after the mid-course burn.
informational ends personal (circulation limited to Ringmaster
mission control commn-tee) begins:
Re the Contact Committee which has been bending my car: 'buzz
off!' I don't care WHO'S on the damn thing. I've been getting
contradictory instructions that sound like they have the force of direct orders. Maybe you don't like my ideas of how to
handle this, maybe you do. The fact is it's going to have to be my
show. Time-lag alone is enough to make that necessary. You gave me
the ship and the responsibility, so *'GET OFF MY BACK!'*
ends
Cirocco hit the encode button, then transmit, and leaned back in
her chair. She rubbed her eyes. A few days ago there had been too
little to do. Now she was snowed under with the status check to
ready Ringmaster for orbital insertion.
Everything was changed, and all by those six tiny points of
light in Gaby's telescope. There seemed little sense in exploring
the other Saturnian moons now. They were committed to an early
rendezvous with Themis.
She called up the schedule of things still to be done, then the
duty roster, saw it had been rearranged again. She was to join
April and Calvin outside. She hurried to the lock.
Her suit was bulky and tight. it murmured at her while the radio
hissed quietly. it smelled comfortably like herself, and like
hospital plastic and fresh oxygen. Ringmaster was an elongated structure consisting of two main
sections joined by a hollow tube three meters in diameter and a
hundred meters long. Structural strength for the tube was provided
by three composite girders on the outside, each of which
transmitted the thrust of one engine to the life system balanced on
top of the tube.
At the far end were the engines and a cluster of detachable fuel
tanks, hidden from sight by the broad plate of the radiation shield
which ringed the central tube like the rat guard on the mooring
line of an ocean-going freighter. The other side of that shield was
an unhealthy place to be.
On the other end of the tube was the life system, consisting of
the science module, the control module, and the carousel.
Control was at the extreme front end, a cone-shaped protuberance
rising from the big coffee can that was SCIMOD. It had the only
windows on the ship, more for tradition than practicality.
The Science Module was almost hidden behind a thicket of
instrumentation. The high-gain antenna rose above it all, perched
on the end of a long stalk and trained on Earth. There were two
radar dishes and five telescopes, including Gaby's 120-centimeter
Newtonian.
Just behind it was the carousel: a fat, white flywheel. It
rotated slowly around the rest of the ship, with four spokes
leading up from the rim.
Strapped to the central stem were other items, including the
hydroponics cylinders and the several components of the lander:
life system, tug engine, two descent stages and the ascent
engine.
The lander had been intended for exploring the Saturn moons, in
particular Iapetus and Rhea. After Titan—which had an atmosphere
and was therefore unsuited for exploration this trip—Iapetus was
the most interesting body in the neighborhood. Until the 1980's, it
had been significantly brighter in one hemisphere, but it had
changed over a twenty-year period until its albedo was nearly
uniform. Two troughs in the graph of luminosity now occurred at
opposite points on its orbit. The lander had been designed to
discover what caused it.
Now that trip had been scrapped in the face of the much more
compelling object called Themis.
Ringmaster resembled another spaceship: the fictional Discovery,
the Jupiter probe from the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It
was not surprising that it should. Both ships had been designed
from similar parameters, though one sailed only on celluloid.
Cirocco was EVA to remove the last of the solar reflection panels
which wrapped the life system of Ringmaster. The problem in a space
vehicle is usually one of disposing of excess heat, but they were
now far enough from the sun that it paid to soak up what they could
get.
She hooked a safety line around a pipe that went from the
carousel hub to the airlock, and faced one of the last panels. It
was silver, a meter square, made of two sheets of thin foil
sandwiched together. She touched the screwdriver to one corner and
the device clucked as it found the slot. The counterweight rotated.
It gulped the loose screw before it could drift away.
Three more times and the panel floated away from the layer of
anti-meteorite foam beneath. Cirocco held it and turned to face the
sun, conducting her own informal puncture survey. Three tiny,
bright lights marked where the sheet had been hit by grains
of meteoritic dust.
The panel was held rigid by wires along the edges. She bent two
of these in the middle. After the fifth fold it was small enough to
fit in the thigh pocket of her suit. She fastened the flap, then
moved to the next panel.
Time was at a premium. Whenever possible they combined two
chores, so the end of the ship's day found Cirocco reclining on her
bunk while Calvin gave her a weekly physical and Gaby showed her
the latest picture of Themis. The room was crowded.
"It's not a photo.," Gaby was saying. "It's, a computer-
enhanced theoretical image. And it's in infra-red, which seems to
be the best spectrum."
Cirocco raised herself on one elbow, careful not to dislodge any
of Calvin's electrodes. She chewed on the end of the thermometer
until he frowned at her.
The print showed a fat wagon wheel surrounded by broadbased,
bright red triangular areas. There were six red areas on the inside
of the wheel, but they were smaller, and square.
"The big triangles on the outside are the hottest parts," Gaby
said. "I figure they're part of the temperature control system.
They soak up heat from the sun or bleed off the excess."
"Houston already decided that," Cirocco pointed out. She glanced
at the television camera near the ceiling. Ground control was
monitoring them. If they thought of something Cirocco would hear of
it in a few hours, asleep or not.
The wheel analogy was almost literally true, except for the
heating or cooling fins Gaby had indicated. There was a hub in the
center, and it had a hole which could have taken an axle if Themis
had actually been a wagon wheel. Radiating from the hub were six
thick spokes which flared gradually just before joining the outer
portion of the wheel. Between each pair of spokes was one of the
bright, square areas.
"This is what's new," Gaby said. "Those squares are angled.
They're what I originally saw; the six points of light. They're
flat, or they'd scatter a lot more light. As it is they only
reflect light to Earth if they're at just the right angle, and
that's rare."
'What kind of angle?" Cirocco lisped. Calvin took the
thermometer out of her mouth.
"Okay. Light comes in parallel to the axis, from this angle."
She moved an extended finger toward the print. "The mirrors are set
to deflect the light ninety degrees, into the wheel roof." She
touched the paper with her finger, turned the finger, and indicated
an area between two spokes.
"This part of the wheel is hotter than the rest, but not so hot
that it could be soaking up all the heat it gets. It's not
reflecting it or absorbing it, so it's transmitting it. It's
transparent or translucent. it lets most of the light go through
to whatever's underneath. Does that suggest anything to you?"
Cirocco looked up from her careful examination. "What do you
mean?"
"Okay. We know the wheel is hollow. Maybe the spokes are, too.
Anyway, picture the wheel. It's like a car tire, big and fat and
flat on the bottom to give more living space. Centrifugal force
pushes you away from the hub."
"I've got all that," Cirocco said, slightly amused. Gaby could
he so intense when explaining something.
"Right. So when you're standing on the inside of the wheel,
you're either under a spoke, or under a reflector, right?"
"Yeah? Oh, yeah. So—"
"So it's always either daytime or
nighttime at any particular spot. The spokes are rigidly attached,
the reflectors don't move, and neither can the skylights. So it has
to be that way. Permanent day or permanent night. Why do you think
they'd build it that way?"
"To answer that, we'd need to meet them. Their needs must he
different from ours." She looked back at the picture. She had to
keep reminding herself of the size of the thing. Thirteen hundred
meters in diameter, 4000 around the outer rim. The prospect of
meeting the beings who built such a thing was worrying her more
each day.
"All right. I can wait." Gaby was not that interested in Themis as a spacecraft. To her it was a fascinating problem in
observation.
Cirocco again looked at the picture.
"The hub," she began, then bit her lip. That camera was still
running, and she didn't want to say anything too hastily.
"What about it?"
"Well, it's the only place you could dock with the thing.
The only part that's motionless."
"Not the way it is now. That hole in the middle is pretty big.
The first time you reach anything solid, it's moving at a pretty
good clip. I can calculate—"
"Never mind. It's not important right now. The point is, only at
the very dead center of rotation could you dock with Themis without
a great deal of trouble. I sure wouldn't want to try it."
"So?"
"So there must be a compelling reason why there's no docking
facilities visible there. Something important enough to sacrifice
that location, some reason for leaving a big hole in the
center."
"Engine," Calvin said. Cirocco glanced at him, got a glimpse of
his brown eyes before he turned back to his work.
"That was my thought. A real big fusion ramscoop. The machinery
is in the hub, electromagnetic field generators to funnel the
interstellar hydrogen into the center, where it gets burned."
Gaby shrugged. "Makes sense. But what about docking?"
"Well,
leaving the thing would be easy enough. just drop out a hole in the
bottom and get escape velocity for free, plus some to fool around
with. But there ought to he some sort of dingus that would
telescope out to the center of rotation when the engine isn't
running, to pick up scout ships. The main engine has to be there.
The only other way would be to space engines around the rim. I'd
want three, at least. More would be better."
She turned to face the camera. "Send me what you can about
hydrogen ramscoop engines," she said. "See if you can give me some
idea of what to look for if Themis has one."
"You'll have to take your shirt off," Calvin said.
Cirocco reached up and switched off the camera, leaving the
sound on. Calvin thumped her back and listened to the results while
Cirocco and Gaby continued to study the picture of Themis. They
came up with no new insights until Gaby brought up the matter of
the cables.
"As far as I can tell, they form a circle about midway between
the hub and the rim. They support the top edges of the reflecting
panels, sort of like the rigging on a sailing ship."
"What about these?" Cirocco asked, indicating the area between
two of the spokes. "Any idea what they're for?"
"Nope. There's six of them, and they run midway between the
spokes from the hub to the rim, radially. They pass through the
reflector panels, if that tells you anything."
"Not exactly. But if there's any more of these things, maybe
smaller ones, we should look for them. These cables are about—what
did you say? Three kilometers around?"
"More like five."
"Okay. So one that's just a tiny thing—say about as big around
as Ringmaster—might be invisible to us for a long time, especially
if it's as black as the rest of Themis. Gene's going to be nosing
around there in the SEM. I'd hate for him to hit one."
"I'll get the computer on it," Gaby said. Calvin began packing
his equipment.
"As disgustingly healthy as usual," he said. "You people never
give me a break. If I don't try out that five-million-dollar
hospital how am I going to make them believe they got their money's
worth?"
"You want me to break somebody's arm?" Cirocco suggested.
"Nah. I already did that, back in medical school."
"Broke one, or fixed it?"
Calvin laughed. "Appendix. Now there's something I'd like to
try. You don't hardly get busted appendixes anymore."
"You mean you've never taken out an appendix? What do they teach
you in medical school these days?"
"That if you get the theory right, the fingers will follow.
We're too intellectual to get our hands dirty." He laughed again,
and Cirocco could feel the thin walls of her room shaking.
"I wish I knew when he was serious, " Gaby said.
"You want serious?" Calvin asked. "Here's something you
might never have thought of. Elective surgery. You folks have one
of the best surgeons around—" He paused to allow the rude noises to
die away. "One of the best surgeons there is. Does anyone take
advantage of it? Not hardly. A nose job, now that's going to cost
you seven, eight thousand back home. Here you got it on the Blue
Cross."
Cirocco drew herself up and gave him an icy glare. "You couldn't
he talking about me, could you?"
Calvin held out a thumb and sighted along it to Cirocco's face,
squinting. "Of course, there's other types of elective surgery. I'm
pretty good at all of them. It was my hobby." He moved his thumb
lower. Cirocco aimed a kick at him and he ducked out the door.
She was smiling when she sat down. Gaby was still there, the
picture tucked under her arm. She perched on the tiny folding stool
beside the cot.
Cirocco raised one eyebrow.
"Was there something else?"
Gaby looked away. She opened her mouth to say something, didn't
manage to make a sound, then slapped her bare thigh with her
palm.
"No, I guess there wasn't." She started to get up, but didn't.
Cirocco looked at her thoughtfully, then reached up and turned the television sound off. "Does that help any?"
Gaby shrugged. "Maybe. I would have asked you to turn it off
anyway, if I could ever have started talking. I guess I figure it's
none of my business."
"But you felt you ought to say something." Cirocco waited.
"Yeah, okay. It's your business how you run this ship. I want you
to know I realize that."
"Go on. I can take criticism."
"You've been sleeping with Bill."
Cirocco laughed quietly. " I don't ever sleep with him. The
bed's too small. But I get the idea."
Cirocco had hoped to put Gaby, at ease, but apparently it hadn't
worked. Gaby stood and paced slowly, even though she could only go
four steps before she reached the wall.
"Captain, sex is no big thing to me." She shrugged. "I don't
hate sex, but I'm not all that crazy about it, either. If I don't
have sex for a day or a year, I don't even notice it. But most
people aren't like that. Especially men."
"I'm not like that, either."
"I know. That's why I wondered how you.... just what your
feelings are toward Bill."
It was Cirocco's turn to pace. It was even less satisfactory to
her, since she was bigger than Gaby and could only take three
steps.
"Gaby, human interactions in confined environments is a
well-researched field. They've tried all-male ships. Even all-female once. They've tried it with all-married crews, and with all
singles. They've had rules forbidding sex, and they've had no rules
at all. None of them worked well People will get on each other's
nerves, and they're going to have sex. That's why I don't tell
anybody what to do in private."
"I'm not trying to say that you—"
"Just a minute. I said all that so you'd know I'm not unaware of
potential problems. I should hear about specific ones."
She waited.
"It's Gene," Gaby said. "I've been making it with both Gene and
Calvin. Like I say, it's no big thing for me. I know Calvin's got
this thing for me. I'm used to that. At home, I'd just cool him
off. Here, I fuck with him to keep him happy. It makes very little
difference to me either way.
"But I'm fucking Gene because he.... he has this.... this
pressure. You know?" She had balled her hands into fists. Now she
opened them and looked to Cirocco for understanding.
"I've had some experience with it, yes." Cirocco kept her voice
even.
"All right, he doesn't satisfy you. He told me that. It bothered
him. That kind of intensity scares me, maybe because I don't
understand it. I've been seeing him to try to ease his
tension."
Cirocco pursed her lips.
"Let me get this straight. Are you asking me to take him off
your hands?"
"No, no, I'm not asking you anything. I told you, I'm just
making you aware of the problem, if you weren't already. What you
do about it is up to you."
Cirocco nodded. "All right. I'm glad you told me. But he's going
to have to live with this. He's stable, well-adjusted, a bit of a
dominating personality, but he's got it well under control or he
wouldn't he here."
Gaby nodded. "Whatever you think best."
"One more thing. It's no part of your duty to keep anyone fully
satisfied. Any burden you feel in that direction is self-assumed."
"I understand that."
"Just so you do. I'd hate to think you thought I expected it of
you. Or that you expected it of me." She searched the other woman's
eyes until Gaby looked away, then reached over and patted her
knee.
"Besides, it'll take care of itself. We're all going to be too
busy to think much about screwing."
informational dispatch #0931
(reply to Houston transmission #5455,5-20-25) 5-21-25
DSV Ringmaster (NASA 447d, l5/1, Houston-Copernicus gcr
baseline)
Jones, Cirocco, miscom
security interlock on code prefix deltadelta begins.
1. Concur your analysis of Themis as interstellar space vehicle
of the generation type. Don't forget we suggested it first.
2. Latest photo follows. Note increased resolution of bright
areas. Still no luck finding docking facilities at hub; will keep
looking.
3. Concur your mid-course scheduled 5122.
4. Request updated tracking as new orbital insertion is
approached, beginning 5125 and continuing until insertion
commences, then upgraded. I don't care if this means shifting in
another computer I don't think our on-board will handle this
volume.
5. Turnaround 5122,0400 UT, after the mid-course burn.
informational ends personal (circulation limited to Ringmaster
mission control commn-tee) begins:
Re the Contact Committee which has been bending my car: 'buzz
off!' I don't care WHO'S on the damn thing. I've been getting
contradictory instructions that sound like they have the force of direct orders. Maybe you don't like my ideas of how to
handle this, maybe you do. The fact is it's going to have to be my
show. Time-lag alone is enough to make that necessary. You gave me
the ship and the responsibility, so *'GET OFF MY BACK!'*
ends
Cirocco hit the encode button, then transmit, and leaned back in
her chair. She rubbed her eyes. A few days ago there had been too
little to do. Now she was snowed under with the status check to
ready Ringmaster for orbital insertion.
Everything was changed, and all by those six tiny points of
light in Gaby's telescope. There seemed little sense in exploring
the other Saturnian moons now. They were committed to an early
rendezvous with Themis.
She called up the schedule of things still to be done, then the
duty roster, saw it had been rearranged again. She was to join
April and Calvin outside. She hurried to the lock.
Her suit was bulky and tight. it murmured at her while the radio
hissed quietly. it smelled comfortably like herself, and like
hospital plastic and fresh oxygen. Ringmaster was an elongated structure consisting of two main
sections joined by a hollow tube three meters in diameter and a
hundred meters long. Structural strength for the tube was provided
by three composite girders on the outside, each of which
transmitted the thrust of one engine to the life system balanced on
top of the tube.
At the far end were the engines and a cluster of detachable fuel
tanks, hidden from sight by the broad plate of the radiation shield
which ringed the central tube like the rat guard on the mooring
line of an ocean-going freighter. The other side of that shield was
an unhealthy place to be.
On the other end of the tube was the life system, consisting of
the science module, the control module, and the carousel.
Control was at the extreme front end, a cone-shaped protuberance
rising from the big coffee can that was SCIMOD. It had the only
windows on the ship, more for tradition than practicality.
The Science Module was almost hidden behind a thicket of
instrumentation. The high-gain antenna rose above it all, perched
on the end of a long stalk and trained on Earth. There were two
radar dishes and five telescopes, including Gaby's 120-centimeter
Newtonian.
Just behind it was the carousel: a fat, white flywheel. It
rotated slowly around the rest of the ship, with four spokes
leading up from the rim.
Strapped to the central stem were other items, including the
hydroponics cylinders and the several components of the lander:
life system, tug engine, two descent stages and the ascent
engine.
The lander had been intended for exploring the Saturn moons, in
particular Iapetus and Rhea. After Titan—which had an atmosphere
and was therefore unsuited for exploration this trip—Iapetus was
the most interesting body in the neighborhood. Until the 1980's, it
had been significantly brighter in one hemisphere, but it had
changed over a twenty-year period until its albedo was nearly
uniform. Two troughs in the graph of luminosity now occurred at
opposite points on its orbit. The lander had been designed to
discover what caused it.
Now that trip had been scrapped in the face of the much more
compelling object called Themis.
Ringmaster resembled another spaceship: the fictional Discovery,
the Jupiter probe from the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It
was not surprising that it should. Both ships had been designed
from similar parameters, though one sailed only on celluloid.
Cirocco was EVA to remove the last of the solar reflection panels
which wrapped the life system of Ringmaster. The problem in a space
vehicle is usually one of disposing of excess heat, but they were
now far enough from the sun that it paid to soak up what they could
get.
She hooked a safety line around a pipe that went from the
carousel hub to the airlock, and faced one of the last panels. It
was silver, a meter square, made of two sheets of thin foil
sandwiched together. She touched the screwdriver to one corner and
the device clucked as it found the slot. The counterweight rotated.
It gulped the loose screw before it could drift away.
Three more times and the panel floated away from the layer of
anti-meteorite foam beneath. Cirocco held it and turned to face the
sun, conducting her own informal puncture survey. Three tiny,
bright lights marked where the sheet had been hit by grains
of meteoritic dust.
The panel was held rigid by wires along the edges. She bent two
of these in the middle. After the fifth fold it was small enough to
fit in the thigh pocket of her suit. She fastened the flap, then
moved to the next panel.
Time was at a premium. Whenever possible they combined two
chores, so the end of the ship's day found Cirocco reclining on her
bunk while Calvin gave her a weekly physical and Gaby showed her
the latest picture of Themis. The room was crowded.
"It's not a photo.," Gaby was saying. "It's, a computer-
enhanced theoretical image. And it's in infra-red, which seems to
be the best spectrum."
Cirocco raised herself on one elbow, careful not to dislodge any
of Calvin's electrodes. She chewed on the end of the thermometer
until he frowned at her.
The print showed a fat wagon wheel surrounded by broadbased,
bright red triangular areas. There were six red areas on the inside
of the wheel, but they were smaller, and square.
"The big triangles on the outside are the hottest parts," Gaby
said. "I figure they're part of the temperature control system.
They soak up heat from the sun or bleed off the excess."
"Houston already decided that," Cirocco pointed out. She glanced
at the television camera near the ceiling. Ground control was
monitoring them. If they thought of something Cirocco would hear of
it in a few hours, asleep or not.
The wheel analogy was almost literally true, except for the
heating or cooling fins Gaby had indicated. There was a hub in the
center, and it had a hole which could have taken an axle if Themis
had actually been a wagon wheel. Radiating from the hub were six
thick spokes which flared gradually just before joining the outer
portion of the wheel. Between each pair of spokes was one of the
bright, square areas.
"This is what's new," Gaby said. "Those squares are angled.
They're what I originally saw; the six points of light. They're
flat, or they'd scatter a lot more light. As it is they only
reflect light to Earth if they're at just the right angle, and
that's rare."
'What kind of angle?" Cirocco lisped. Calvin took the
thermometer out of her mouth.
"Okay. Light comes in parallel to the axis, from this angle."
She moved an extended finger toward the print. "The mirrors are set
to deflect the light ninety degrees, into the wheel roof." She
touched the paper with her finger, turned the finger, and indicated
an area between two spokes.
"This part of the wheel is hotter than the rest, but not so hot
that it could be soaking up all the heat it gets. It's not
reflecting it or absorbing it, so it's transmitting it. It's
transparent or translucent. it lets most of the light go through
to whatever's underneath. Does that suggest anything to you?"
Cirocco looked up from her careful examination. "What do you
mean?"
"Okay. We know the wheel is hollow. Maybe the spokes are, too.
Anyway, picture the wheel. It's like a car tire, big and fat and
flat on the bottom to give more living space. Centrifugal force
pushes you away from the hub."
"I've got all that," Cirocco said, slightly amused. Gaby could
he so intense when explaining something.
"Right. So when you're standing on the inside of the wheel,
you're either under a spoke, or under a reflector, right?"
"Yeah? Oh, yeah. So—"
"So it's always either daytime or
nighttime at any particular spot. The spokes are rigidly attached,
the reflectors don't move, and neither can the skylights. So it has
to be that way. Permanent day or permanent night. Why do you think
they'd build it that way?"
"To answer that, we'd need to meet them. Their needs must he
different from ours." She looked back at the picture. She had to
keep reminding herself of the size of the thing. Thirteen hundred
meters in diameter, 4000 around the outer rim. The prospect of
meeting the beings who built such a thing was worrying her more
each day.
"All right. I can wait." Gaby was not that interested in Themis as a spacecraft. To her it was a fascinating problem in
observation.
Cirocco again looked at the picture.
"The hub," she began, then bit her lip. That camera was still
running, and she didn't want to say anything too hastily.
"What about it?"
"Well, it's the only place you could dock with the thing.
The only part that's motionless."
"Not the way it is now. That hole in the middle is pretty big.
The first time you reach anything solid, it's moving at a pretty
good clip. I can calculate—"
"Never mind. It's not important right now. The point is, only at
the very dead center of rotation could you dock with Themis without
a great deal of trouble. I sure wouldn't want to try it."
"So?"
"So there must be a compelling reason why there's no docking
facilities visible there. Something important enough to sacrifice
that location, some reason for leaving a big hole in the
center."
"Engine," Calvin said. Cirocco glanced at him, got a glimpse of
his brown eyes before he turned back to his work.
"That was my thought. A real big fusion ramscoop. The machinery
is in the hub, electromagnetic field generators to funnel the
interstellar hydrogen into the center, where it gets burned."
Gaby shrugged. "Makes sense. But what about docking?"
"Well,
leaving the thing would be easy enough. just drop out a hole in the
bottom and get escape velocity for free, plus some to fool around
with. But there ought to he some sort of dingus that would
telescope out to the center of rotation when the engine isn't
running, to pick up scout ships. The main engine has to be there.
The only other way would be to space engines around the rim. I'd
want three, at least. More would be better."
She turned to face the camera. "Send me what you can about
hydrogen ramscoop engines," she said. "See if you can give me some
idea of what to look for if Themis has one."
"You'll have to take your shirt off," Calvin said.
Cirocco reached up and switched off the camera, leaving the
sound on. Calvin thumped her back and listened to the results while
Cirocco and Gaby continued to study the picture of Themis. They
came up with no new insights until Gaby brought up the matter of
the cables.
"As far as I can tell, they form a circle about midway between
the hub and the rim. They support the top edges of the reflecting
panels, sort of like the rigging on a sailing ship."
"What about these?" Cirocco asked, indicating the area between
two of the spokes. "Any idea what they're for?"
"Nope. There's six of them, and they run midway between the
spokes from the hub to the rim, radially. They pass through the
reflector panels, if that tells you anything."
"Not exactly. But if there's any more of these things, maybe
smaller ones, we should look for them. These cables are about—what
did you say? Three kilometers around?"
"More like five."
"Okay. So one that's just a tiny thing—say about as big around
as Ringmaster—might be invisible to us for a long time, especially
if it's as black as the rest of Themis. Gene's going to be nosing
around there in the SEM. I'd hate for him to hit one."
"I'll get the computer on it," Gaby said. Calvin began packing
his equipment.
"As disgustingly healthy as usual," he said. "You people never
give me a break. If I don't try out that five-million-dollar
hospital how am I going to make them believe they got their money's
worth?"
"You want me to break somebody's arm?" Cirocco suggested.
"Nah. I already did that, back in medical school."
"Broke one, or fixed it?"
Calvin laughed. "Appendix. Now there's something I'd like to
try. You don't hardly get busted appendixes anymore."
"You mean you've never taken out an appendix? What do they teach
you in medical school these days?"
"That if you get the theory right, the fingers will follow.
We're too intellectual to get our hands dirty." He laughed again,
and Cirocco could feel the thin walls of her room shaking.
"I wish I knew when he was serious, " Gaby said.
"You want serious?" Calvin asked. "Here's something you
might never have thought of. Elective surgery. You folks have one
of the best surgeons around—" He paused to allow the rude noises to
die away. "One of the best surgeons there is. Does anyone take
advantage of it? Not hardly. A nose job, now that's going to cost
you seven, eight thousand back home. Here you got it on the Blue
Cross."
Cirocco drew herself up and gave him an icy glare. "You couldn't
he talking about me, could you?"
Calvin held out a thumb and sighted along it to Cirocco's face,
squinting. "Of course, there's other types of elective surgery. I'm
pretty good at all of them. It was my hobby." He moved his thumb
lower. Cirocco aimed a kick at him and he ducked out the door.
She was smiling when she sat down. Gaby was still there, the
picture tucked under her arm. She perched on the tiny folding stool
beside the cot.
Cirocco raised one eyebrow.
"Was there something else?"
Gaby looked away. She opened her mouth to say something, didn't
manage to make a sound, then slapped her bare thigh with her
palm.
"No, I guess there wasn't." She started to get up, but didn't.
Cirocco looked at her thoughtfully, then reached up and turned the television sound off. "Does that help any?"
Gaby shrugged. "Maybe. I would have asked you to turn it off
anyway, if I could ever have started talking. I guess I figure it's
none of my business."
"But you felt you ought to say something." Cirocco waited.
"Yeah, okay. It's your business how you run this ship. I want you
to know I realize that."
"Go on. I can take criticism."
"You've been sleeping with Bill."
Cirocco laughed quietly. " I don't ever sleep with him. The
bed's too small. But I get the idea."
Cirocco had hoped to put Gaby, at ease, but apparently it hadn't
worked. Gaby stood and paced slowly, even though she could only go
four steps before she reached the wall.
"Captain, sex is no big thing to me." She shrugged. "I don't
hate sex, but I'm not all that crazy about it, either. If I don't
have sex for a day or a year, I don't even notice it. But most
people aren't like that. Especially men."
"I'm not like that, either."
"I know. That's why I wondered how you.... just what your
feelings are toward Bill."
It was Cirocco's turn to pace. It was even less satisfactory to
her, since she was bigger than Gaby and could only take three
steps.
"Gaby, human interactions in confined environments is a
well-researched field. They've tried all-male ships. Even all-female once. They've tried it with all-married crews, and with all
singles. They've had rules forbidding sex, and they've had no rules
at all. None of them worked well People will get on each other's
nerves, and they're going to have sex. That's why I don't tell
anybody what to do in private."
"I'm not trying to say that you—"
"Just a minute. I said all that so you'd know I'm not unaware of
potential problems. I should hear about specific ones."
She waited.
"It's Gene," Gaby said. "I've been making it with both Gene and
Calvin. Like I say, it's no big thing for me. I know Calvin's got
this thing for me. I'm used to that. At home, I'd just cool him
off. Here, I fuck with him to keep him happy. It makes very little
difference to me either way.
"But I'm fucking Gene because he.... he has this.... this
pressure. You know?" She had balled her hands into fists. Now she
opened them and looked to Cirocco for understanding.
"I've had some experience with it, yes." Cirocco kept her voice
even.
"All right, he doesn't satisfy you. He told me that. It bothered
him. That kind of intensity scares me, maybe because I don't
understand it. I've been seeing him to try to ease his
tension."
Cirocco pursed her lips.
"Let me get this straight. Are you asking me to take him off
your hands?"
"No, no, I'm not asking you anything. I told you, I'm just
making you aware of the problem, if you weren't already. What you
do about it is up to you."
Cirocco nodded. "All right. I'm glad you told me. But he's going
to have to live with this. He's stable, well-adjusted, a bit of a
dominating personality, but he's got it well under control or he
wouldn't he here."
Gaby nodded. "Whatever you think best."
"One more thing. It's no part of your duty to keep anyone fully
satisfied. Any burden you feel in that direction is self-assumed."
"I understand that."
"Just so you do. I'd hate to think you thought I expected it of
you. Or that you expected it of me." She searched the other woman's
eyes until Gaby looked away, then reached over and patted her
knee.
"Besides, it'll take care of itself. We're all going to be too
busy to think much about screwing."