George was still sitting at the console on the control deck where Jinjur had left him several hours before. His report was roughed out, but there would need to be a lot more details explained and descriptions refined. His mind was not on the manuscript in front of him. Instead, he was staring at Rocheworld, framed in the viewport window set the curved wall in front of him. The double planet had rotated so both lobes were half-illuminated in the reddish light of Barnard. The light was quite bright, since Rocheworld had just finished its closest approach to the dwarf star in its highly elliptical orbit. Although it was normally not visible, George could now see the narrow neck of atmosphere that bridged the eighty kilometer gap between the rounded points of the two egg-shaped lobes. It was full of clouds, clouds of steam that continued to boil up from the drowned volcanoes on Roche, there to be driven through the atmospheric bridge by the downslope winds from the sun-warmed highlands of Roche to the cool ocean-covered lowlands of Eau. All over the normally dry planet, there were glints of sunlight from lakes and rivers, newly formed during the past day by the three tidally driven interplanetary waterfalls that had occurred during periapsis. Unlike Roche, which had been transformed from a dry, cratered moon to a miniature Earth, complete with storm clouds, Eau still looked the same—an egg-shaped ball of ocean, with the water at the near pole facing Roche pulled up by Roche's gravity into a mountain of water one-hundred-fifty kilometers high with a slope of sixty degrees. The mountain of water looked impossible, but its shape had been predicted two centuries ago by the French mathematician Edouard Roche. Little did Professor Roche know that one day a planet would be named after him—and in one of those quirks of fate, the word "roche" means "rock" in French—a perfect name for the normally rocky planetoid.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, George had been floating . no, not floating, falling . without a parachute . a mile above Roche. He had taken a long look at his life during that long fall, and while he certainly hated to give it up, he had to admit that he had lived about the best life that he could have possibly wished for. Despite this newly discovered but deeply seated sense of peace, George Gudunov had his mind on the future.
Jinjur would be in charge of the next exploration team to Rocheworld. With room for only ten crew members, the away team seemed to suggest itself. Shirley and Carmen would be the engineers and communication experts. Arielle's loosened front tooth was still recovering from the crash landing on Eau, so she would stay here on the Prometheus with Katrina to nurse her. That would leave John to be the medic on the surface. Caroline was the laser communications expert, so she would definitely be needed to set up the flouwen base. There were several people who would be able to pilot the SLAM and the Dragonfly II; George imagined that all those qualified would spend the next few days reminding Jinjur of their qualifications.
George looked again out the port as the shadow of Roche started to move across Eau, darkening the oceans as the six-hour day approached high noon on the outer pole of Roche. Hidden beneath that ocean, almost missed by George and his crew, was the most important discovery of the entire expedition.
Life! thought George. Even now he could hardly believe it. Beautiful, peaceful, friendly, intelligent life, here on the other side of the rainbow. Rainbow? He looked again at the double planet and it almost looked as if Roche, the barren rocky lobe, was somehow changing . . . more colorful? He rubbed this eyes. Definitely time for bed!
Jinjur picked up her breakfast in the galley and took it to her room to eat while she studied the personnel files on her own viewwall. She had lived with these people for over forty years, but one doesn't use daily conversations to discuss one's training and qualifications. She hadn't perused these files since they had left the Earth, except when she had approved George's choices for the first team downside.
Caroline Tanaka, the laser engineer, was an obvious choice. Jinjur had sent Shirley to tell her what they were planning, and to let her know that she would be needed on the surface. Katrina would be staying on the main ship so John could have a turn to go to the surface.
John Kennedy seemed to Jinjur to be a bit shallow, somewhat too glib, but he knew his way around a robotic space vehicle as well as he knew his way around the human body. Jinjur squirmed in her chair as she remembered the way he had handled her last physical exam. Jinjur had been irritated at James for insisting that it was time for her annual exam and had gone into the sick bay with a chip on her shoulder. John had started with a massage, claiming that he couldn't palpitate anything but muscle while she was so tense. Half an hour later, Jinjur was as tense as a blanche mange and John had palpitated every inch of her. Jinjur forced her mind back onto the business at hand.
We'll need another pilot who can handle the heavy booster in the SLAM, and a back up pilot to fly the Dragonfly airplane, Jinjur thought. Thomas St. Thomas was the Chief Pilot for the SLAM and they would want to use his expertise and experience again. Red Vengeance, a geologist and backup rocket lander pilot to Thomas on the first mission, had done a fine job, but there were other backup lander pilots available and Jinjur should give one of them of them a chance at the second mission. She asked James to list the pilots, and order them with biology instead of geology as a second requirement. Much to her surprise Cinnamon topped the list.
This Cinnamon again! You spend forty years barely seeing the chick and suddenly she's popping up every time you turned around. She called up Cinnamon's file.
Cinnamon Byrd was born in Chenik, Alaska as the eldest of five children. Her father, the altruistic scion of a politically prominent Virginia family, was the only doctor within miles. He used a small plane in order to reach many of his patients. In order to help out, Cinnamon got her pilot's license at the age of fourteen and became an emergency medical technician soon after.
After the 2015 Cook Inlet oil spill ruined the state's economy and decimated the wildlife, Cinnamon decided to go to college to study ichthyology and fish farming. She had hoped to find a way to help revitalize the coastline. After getting her degree at the University of Alaska, she transferred to Goddard Station to do post-graduate work, and it was there that she met Nels. Cinnamon turned out to be the best lab assistant that the temperamental genius had ever had. She named the price for her devoted assistance and Nels managed it within six months. He developed a fast-growing rugged bacteria, that could absorb and break down the spilled crude that had lingered on the beaches for years, killing wild life all the way up the food chain. The single-celled organism was the redemption for that man-soiled region, and it went on to save many other polluted areas. Cinnamon joined Nels permanently and followed him even to the stars.
Then Jinjur noticed an anomaly. "James? This figure for the girl's IQ. Is that correct?"
"Yes, Jinjur, that is correct. Her IQ is measured at one hundred twenty. That is toward the top of the normal range. It only looks low when compared with the rest of the crew."
"But how did she get chosen to come with us to Bernard? Sure, she has some useful skills, but with all the thousands of people clamoring to go to the stars, we could have found someone better than average!"
"Nels insisted that she come. Since Nels was so clearly the best choice of the levibiologists, the committee decided to accept his preferred assistant. They did insist, that although she is an accomplished light plane pilot, she first demonstrate a capability of piloting the Dragonfly class heavy aeroplanes and the landing rockets, but as you see, she passed all the tests given by the experts on the Greater National Aeronautics and Space Agency evaluation committee."
"God save us from GNASA committees! What is she? His wife or something?"
"Not that I have observed. They do seem to work well together however. Nels is not a very communicative person, but while there is never much conversation in the hydroponics lab, Nels and Cinnamon get all the work done smoothly."
"I suppose that Nels' IQ more than makes up the difference. Two hundred plus? Wow. I guess God more than compensated him for his lack of legs. Ironic that he went into genetic research."
"Nels' deformity was caused by chemicals his mother was accidentally exposed to during her pregnancy. It had nothing to do with genetics," said the computer gravely.
"Umm, yes. I suppose Cinnamon would actually be rather a good choice for this particular mission. Pilot, medic, biologist specializing in fish, and she is one of the crew no matter how she found her way on board. Besides, I'd much rather risk her than Nels. I'll pencil her in.
"Now for a pilot to replace Arielle, I suppose it's only fair that I give Tony a chance. He certainly is qualified, and I know he was unhappy about being left behind last time." Jinjur considered the small, handsome, pilot. Long ago she had chosen Anthony "Tony" Roma as the model in a recruiting poster for the Space Marines and that poster had doubled female recruitment for the year. But Tony himself did not trade on his dark good looks; he was a conscientious worker and a very private man.
"Even through this isn't primarily a planetology mission, we'll need some geoscientists ." Jinjur kept at it throughout the morning, muttering quietly under her breath in her cabin.
Caroline Tanaka went over the check list on her videoboard again. She and James were giving the Prometheus-to-Sol laser transmitter its annual checkout. It checked out perfectly, despite its age. It didn't really surprise her, for she had designed it. Pushing her long black hair out of her way, the petite engineer found herself wishing something would check out low just so she'd have something to do.
Shirley pulled her long body into the engineering room on the top deck. "I thought I'd find you here. I've got news."
"Hey, Shirley! I hardly got to say more than hi last night. Welcome home." Caroline put her videoboard down.
"Jinjur sent me to talk to you about our going back to Eau to visit further with the flouwen. She wants you to build a specialized communications base for us to take down to leave with the flouwen. The console should be usable by the flouwen, which means it needs to operate under water. The transmitter and antenna should allow them to communicate with Prometheus, and later, after Prometheus leaves Rocheworld and goes on to explore the moons of Gargantua, directly to Earth."
"Wow! That's some challenge," Caroline replied. Instantly her mind went to work on the project. They'd need a reliable, long-lived power supply; one that would survive in the ammonia-rich atmosphere and not pollute the area. It would be decades before the follow-up mission would be back to do maintenance and it would take many watts of laser power to punch a signal over the six lightyears from Barnard to Sol. Diagrams began flipping through her head. They could start with the second backup spare for the Prometheus-to-Sol laser transmitter. It had the laser power and autotracking telescope that would be needed to reach Earth. But they'd still need a power supply, some interface boxes, and a whole new input console .
"Jinjur will have Carmen, Cinnamon, and John work on an input console designed for the flouwen; you and I are to work on the power supply and the transmitting unit . Hello? Hello! Earth to Caroline—" Shirley was waving her hand in front of Caroline's face.
Caroline came back to herself with a start. "I've got to go to the surface to make sure its installed properly," she stated bluntly.
Shirley laughed. "Of course you're going. We're both going. I figure we have fifteen days to configure and partially assemble the communicator setup."
Tony looked closely at the frightened girl standing before him. Tall and thin, with a boyish figure, the only sign of her native American heritage was her reddish-brown coloring and the two long black braids set low on her head, covering her ears. Cinnamon was doing her best to apologize for her existence.
"Jinjur just wouldn't listen when I tried to tell her that I'm not up to piloting the SLAM II. She told me that I had better use my spare time to get a little practice in. She said that I should ask you to coach me on the simulator. But I'll understand if you have too much else to do—maybe you could tell her that you'd rather have a back-up pilot that you knew was competent ."
Tony thought. He really didn't have any sailcraft piloting chores to do, now that they were just maintaining position near Rocheworld. He had decided that he needed to put in some time at the heavy rocket simulator himself, and it just occurred to him that the best way to relearn the proper techniques is to coach some one else.
"No," he said. "No matter who goes, they will need to refresh their memory on the simulator. We all lost a lot of experience during our time on No-Die. Why don't you and I go up to the simulator room on the engineering deck and see just how rough we've both become."
But when Tony watched Cinnamon at the simulator controls he had some misgivings. Cinnamon was more than rusty. She just didn't have the feel of the heavy thrusters. She seemed to do better when he programmed a specific sequence, but when he turned her over to James she rapidly lost her way.
"I think your problem is that the virtual reality helmet isn't able to fit around your head properly," Tony suggested kindly. "What say we take a break for today, and when you come here tomorrow, you can do something else with your hair."
The next day, Cinnamon had shifted the thick braids back on her head, exposing more of her large rounded ears. The grey dome of the helmet rested securely over her face. Tony's visor was linked to the same program as Cinnamon's, and the holographic multi-colored laser pattern before them resolved itself into an image of a SLAM bridge, complete with video console, rocket controls, and an image of Rocheworld outside the triangular cockpit windows. The array of tiny lasers built into the surface of the visor generated the same light patterns that would have crossed the visor if the real SLAM bridge had really been there. Working on the none-existent bridge of the hypothetical lander, Tony got lots of practice showing Cinnamon what she was doing wrong. But when he turned the controls back over to her for the next landing, they crashed again, even though the emergency problem James had inserted was a minor one.
"How did you get such high scores at GNASA?" he finally exploded.
Cinnamon hung her head. "I don't know. They just always tested me on the one emergency simulation that I had practiced. I knew that the examiners had certain favorite situations and I concentrated exclusively on them. I had hoped, that by doing very well on one or two tests, I could average out for the tests I would be bound to screw up. But then I just got lucky. Every single test was the one that I had studied."
Tony stared at her. "You mean you bluffed your way through the whole training program?"
She nodded. "I do know how to fly light aircraft, and I'm pretty good at the Dragonfly aeroplanes, but I just can't seem to get the feel of the heavy lander rockets."
"Well, you're going to get the feel now!"
He worked her hard. Hours after the agreed stopping time, he was still hovering over her, berating her mistakes. It was so frustrating to watch her do so well on one of his setups, and then fail so miserably when James presented the same scenario. Tony never had a long fuse on his temper, and by the time they were ready to quit, he was livid with rage. As he watched her struggle to lift the helmet off over her pinned up braids, the sight of Cinnamon's tear-stained face pushed Tony over the edge. With a growl of rage, he took out his pocket knife and cut off both braids.
Cinnamon looked from his eyes to the long braids still in his hand, then turned her back to him and hung her head.
Tony stared at the smooth curve of her bared neck, and down her long straight back. All his anger drained away. He watched his hand reach out and stroke her back, slowly drifting down to the small curves of her buttocks. She froze, scarcely breathing. Slowly he turned her around, and cupped her face in his hands. Then he kissed her fiercely. Taking her hand, he pulled her down the long central shaft to his room.
He undressed her slowly. She still made no move to either help or resist him. He looked at her body appraisingly. Living in zero gee usually helped the women retain their figures, but Cinnamon's small curves could never have sagged. Tony, as the only homosexual man on the ship, had had a hard time accepting the voluptuous curves of the more promiscuous women on board. Once he had fled Carmen's room without having satisfied either of them.
Cinnamon, however, reminded him of all the beautiful young men he had ever loved; young men now old or dead, forever out of his reach. He became so lost in his memories, that he was momentarily startled to be reminded that this lover before him had no penis. He turned her around, and drowned himself in his fantasies.
Cinnamon waited for Tony to fall asleep, and then gathered up her clothes and slipped back to her own room. Throughout the whole encounter, Tony had not spoken a word to her. Had she expected a declaration of love? She had at least expected the man to know it was her that he was with. She was confused, and didn't know where to go for advice. Nels? Their relationship was strictly professional. Carmen couldn't seem to handle her own love life lately. Maybe, in her ignorance, she was over reacting to the whole thing. After all, technically she was still a virgin. Cinnamon smiled ruefully and rubbed her posterior.
At noon the next day, Tony was again at the flight simulator. He made no comment about the day before, nor did he seem to notice her hair. Cinnamon had had her imp cut it into a straight bob at her jawline. She felt funny about the cut; it seemed odd to see her ears again.
They went through the simulator lesson slowly. Tony refused to program the situations, letting her struggle with James' choices. He was quick to berate her, but by the end of the session she had improved slightly.
Tony begrudgingly complimented her, and then silently led her back again to his apartment. This time Cinnamon was determined to take some initiative, and during their silent love making she rolled over and forced him to took into her eyes. Finally, at the age of 72, Cinnamon Byrd lost her virginity. Later, curled up in Tony's arms, Cinnamon heard James call to her quietly through the imp in her hair.
"Cinnamon? Is everything okay with you?"
"Yes, James, everything is fine," she whispered. "Why do you ask?"
"You have not requested a song all day," the computer responded.
"How about "The Shoop Shoop Song"?" she requested, although she didn't see why she wanted it. Tony had hardly kissed her face at all!
Jinjur, always concerned about her crew's safety, decided that before they risked sending a human crew down to Rocheworld, they would send down one of their robotic amphibious crawlers to locate and reestablish contact with the pod of flouwen that had befriended the humans during their last visit to the surface. By communicating with them through the robotic lander she could arrange for her landing party to meet the members of the pod at some selected point on the "Hawaiian Islands", the small group of meteorite craters sticking up out of the shallow part of the ocean on the outer pole of Eau.
"We need to let the flouwen know that the crawler is coming," said George. "We don't want it to end up entangled as an undigestible lunch in some voracious wildlife." He shuddered, remembering his close call with the exploding, grey, rock-like creature that had trapped him with its sticky threads and tried to eat him. "Caroline, can we use one of the communication lasers to contact them from here?"
"Certainly," Caroline replied. "The one we are preparing for them to use would be ideal."
"They communicate sonically," Shirley objected. "The translation programs in our vehicle computers can talk with the flouwen through a sonar transmitter, but it won't work with a laser transmitter since the flouwen have no method of converting the light fluctuations into sound fluctuations. Also, as far as I know, we never developed any sort of Morse Code so we could send messages with dots and dashes of light. They are sensitive to light, however, so all we need to do is find the right type of modulation."
"They're mathematicians," said George. "Maybe we can send them dot-dash pictures broken into raster scans using a frame size with prime numbers for width and height. Once they realize the repetition pattern, their mathematical brains should be able to organize it into a two-dimensional picture."
"We can do better than that." Caroline was thinking hard as she spoke. "Didn't one of the flouwen develop an 'eye' like we humans use?"
"Yes," confirmed Shirley. "I had a long talk with White Whistler when I was riding on him. He is the one that learned to turn part of his body into a clear lens that would focus the light from the stars onto a portion of his light sensitive body. He used the artificial eye to study the spectra of the stars and follow the orbital movements of Gargantua and its moons. He was pleased to learn that he was correct in his deduction that the Prometheus wasn't a natural satellite since it didn't move in an elliptical orbit."
"Well, since he can see like a human, perhaps we can use the laser to send him a picture of the crawler landing by some distinctive point on the outer islands," Caroline continued. "Although the laser sends only a single dot of light, we can make the dot move quickly enough to give the illusion of a line. By reflecting it off a rapidly vibrating mirror, we can even do simple animation. It would have to be a simple figure, and we would have no way of knowing for sure if they received our message ."
"But it's certainly worth a try," George decided. "It will also give us a good opportunity to test out the laser itself. Is it almost complete?"
"Caroline and I have most of it put together," Shirley confirmed.
"You might want to ask Greystoke help you out," said George. "As an award-winning sonovideo composer, he should be able to come up with a simple, yet comprehensible, animated message."
"Maybe he can also come up with some good idea to get the flouwen's attention," said Shirley. "The animation idea needs a screen to write the images on. Some of the tall cliffs on the islands would be ideal movie screens, but how do we attract an audience there to see them?"
Barnard had just set behind Eau, and the sky was dark and clear above the oceans of Eau. Floating in the star-speckled sky was Roche, illuminated in an arc on one side as the shadow of Eau crept across its surface. Off to one side was the giant gas planet Gargantua, with its large retinue of moons. Clear«»White«»Whistle was showing Dainty~ Blue~Warbler how to make an eye for looking with. Roaring*Hot*Vermillion was protesting loudly.
*I still think it is perverted to make part of yourself clear unless you are making a new one!*
«It is not perverted if it leads to new understanding,» the white flouwen countered. «With the clear part you can focus the lights from the sky on to the rest of yourself and look farther than you can see.»
~ I want to look,~ the youngest flouwen decided. ~ Let me taste how you make this 'eye'.~
Clear«»White«»Whistle gave the youngling a sample of memory juices. After a moment, Dainty~Blue~Warbler formed a clear spot in its jelly-like body.
«Good! Now be sure that there is no water on the surface of your lens to distort the light. The light in the shape of a crescent is Sky¤Rock. The big circle surrounded by little circles is Warm. Off to one side is the Flying¤Circle that the humans live in. All the rest of the tiny points of light are called stars.»
~ Wow! The whole sky is as crowded as the rest of the world! What is the Flying¤Circle doing? It is flashing like an earthquake! Does it always do that?~
«I have never seen it do that before.» Clear«»White«»Whistle was puzzled.
Roaring*Hot*Vermillion quickly formed and eye to look too. *It is getting brighter!*
~It is coming right at us!~
The beam of blue-green light, visible in the forward scattering from the salt specks in the air, flashed rapidly again and again as it stepped its way across the ocean, swept over the three flouwen, and marched off toward the distant horizon.
«The light seems to be going toward the Islands of Thought. I will go see what it looks like from there.»
*The waves are going in that direction! Let's all surf there!* Roaring*Hot*Vermillion dissolved the crystalline lens in its surface and allowed its fluid body to form a more streamlined shape so it could skim along the top of Eau's waves, lifting tall in the weak gravity of the ocean planet. The sweeping beam of blue-green light passed over them a number of times during their long journey, each time directing them toward the distant Islands of Thought. It was the following sunset before the three gamboling flouwen approached the large ring-shaped islands on the outer pole of Eau. Reluctantly, they managed to pull themselves away from the joys of playing in the surf as the mystery of the flashing light beams called to them. The marching pattern of beams converged on a spot in the ocean in front of a tall cliff. On the cliff was a crude pattern of large spots of flickering light in differing colors. The flickering spots moved across the cliffside in various directions.
*It is a bunch of moving dots.* Roaring*Hot*Vermillion insisted. *Dumb.*
«The humans are not too smart,» Clear«»White«»Whistle admitted, «But I don't think they would send down a bunch of dots for no reason.»
~Maybe they mean the strings of dots to be a line,~ Dainty~Blue~Warbler offered. ~That is the definition of a line. Try letting your eye get blurry and the lines look somewhat like a human swimming over to two spinning oblong shapes, one red and one blue.~
The other two tried defocusing their eyes. «That looks like a Stiff¤Mover swimming, and the other looks like what the world and Sky¤Rock would look like if you were looking at it from high above. I think the humans are trying to let us know that they are coming back to visit us here. I am going to greet them when they come.»
*If you want to send them a picture back, you should get Warm§Amber§Resonance to help you do a picture play!*
«Good idea.»
~But how are the humans going to be able to look at us from so far away?~
«I don't know, but maybe their winged pet Floating¤Rock can help them. It seems much smarter than they are.»
~How can the pet be both bigger and smarter than the master?~
«I do not know. That is why I want to study them more. Maybe Floating¤Rock is only smarter at learning, not thinking.»
~Is learning not the same as thinking?~
«Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle thinks, trying to find the fifth cardinal infinity; is that the same as you learning the first cardinal infinity? And what about the poems that Sweet•Green•Fizz makes? Do you suppose that Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle could compose such things? Or that the skill to make such poems could be learned?»
*I do not even understand the poems! Why try to make more poems when there is so many better things to be doing? Dumb! If you need any help with your picture play, you can find me over on the north shore. Come on Dainty~Blue~Warbler, surfing is even more exciting when there is the threat that you may get beached!*
~Wave!~
*Dumb!*
"How many times do you want this repeated?" Greystoke asked, as he monitored the two laser systems, one scanning the ocean in a insweeping radial pattern that converged on the outer islands, and one focused on a cliffside there.
"I don't know," Caroline said. "It's not like we're even sure that we're being received."
"There is something happening on the surface of the water near where we are beaming the message," James called through their imps. "I will transfer the picture from the high resolution telescope up to your screens."
On the screen, there appeared a view of the planet surface showing the relatively calm grey-green water on the south side of the Hawaiian Islands. A blue patch of something floating in the water resolved itself into an egg shape. Shortly after, an amber egg formed next to it. Slowly they two egg-shaped patches began to circle around each other in a credible imitation of Roche and Eau's heavenly ballet. Off to the side a white circle appeared. Then a small portion of white detached itself from the circle and moved in an arc down toward the blue lobe. As the small piece of white reached the blue "planet", the other shapes all flowed into a ring and more colors began to appear. Together, in all the colors of the various flouwen in the pod, a ring was formed around the white figure, surrounding it and circling it slowly.
"They've seen our message! They are telling us they will meet us!" Greystoke cheered. He quickly changed the animation pattern on the cliff-side to imitate the one that the flouwen had formed, letting them know their message had been received.
"Good," said Caroline. "Now we can get the crawler and a sonar communicator down there and talk in a real language instead of pictures. Despite what they say, you'll never get me to believe that a picture is worth a thousand words."
Greystoke laughed. With his long artistic fingers he formed an Ameslan symbol. Even Caroline could tell it suggested that she perform a physically impossible sexual act. She grinned wryly and began to dismantle the laser set up.
§That was fun . It was different trying to keep the picture oriented to the surface instead of toward a submerged audience. To work on a plane instead of in three dimensions presents unusual difficulties.§ Warm§Amber§Resonance relaxed into a more natural shape.
~ When do you think they will be coming?~
«Not for a while, I expect.» Clear«»White«»Whistle was feeling better now that the small piece that had portrayed the human spacecraft was rejoined with the rest of its body. The piece had only been separated from the main body of the white flouwen for a few moments, but it was glad to be back with the rest of itself and needed to be soothed.
~ Why do you suppose they are coming back, and why would they come down here?~ asked Dainty~Blue/\Warbler, reluctant to rejoin Roaring*Hot*Vermillion surfing when there were so many interesting things to be learned here.
•They know that the elders are here,• replied Sweet•Green•Fizz. •Obviously they want to come and try to talk to the deep thinkers rather than you children.•
Caroline reported the flouwen response to Jinjur. "I was thinking that it might be a good idea to send down with the crawler a touchscreen console like the one we are building for the flouwen. It would be disastrous for us to go all the way down and then find out the input board for the laser communicator is poorly designed."
"I doubt that you could design anything poorly," Jinjur laughed. "Do you and John have a prototype that you can spare?"
"Yes. Our first working model has a lot of rough edges, but it will let us know if we are on the right track. It is small enough to fit into the cargo hatch of the crawler and we will be able to get the parts back for salvage when we reach the surface."
"Good idea," Jinjur agreed. "How's everything else coming?"
"Fine and shiney," Caroline confirmed. "Although it is a bit wearing to be working so closely with John."
"He does take that 'closely' seriously doesn't he?"
They both giggled.
"He just doesn't take no for an answer!"
"He doesn't even take later for an answer!"
"If his constant passes get too annoying, try just giving him more to do," Jinjur suggested. "Even he can't make love while he's working."
"No, but he can make plans for later." Caroline said dubiously.
"So make a date for later. He's almost as good as he thinks he is, and it can help you relax enough to go to sleep." Jinjur looked critically at the circles under Caroline's eyes. "I bet you've spent the last couple rest periods thinking up better designs for that laser transmitter. Why don't you take a few hours off and try to relax."
"But I'd rather ."
"I know you would. Consider that an order."
Caroline slumped and gloomily left the cabin.
You'd think I was punishing her, though Jinjur wryly. Everyone is acting oddly lately.
The women had an excuse; it was always a bit of trouble with all the women having premenstrual syndrome at the same time, but at least you knew what the problem was. But while Thomas and John were acting normally except for the ordinary excitement, Tony and Nels were acting very weird. Nels had been hovering outside Jinjur's door for days now, but whenever she called out to him, he head vanished! As for Tony .
Jinjur reviewed the talk she recently had with Tony. He had wanted her to know that Cinnamon could not be relied on to handle the heavy rocket thrusters in the SLAM II lander. All the time he was talking, Jinjur got the impression that while Tony wanted her to know about the problem, he desperately wanted Cinnamon to continue to be included on the away team.
Jinjur had already decided that Thomas and Tony would be the pilots for the rocket lander and Cinnamon would just be one of the back-up pilots for the Dragonfly. Apparently Tony had no doubts about Cinnamon being able to pilot the aeroplane and he had left her cabin much relieved. But Jinjur was curious why he was so anxious to include the lab assistant. First Carmen and then Tony! She would have to spend more time with this Cinnamon.
Thomas was working out in the gym. Now that he knew he would be on the away team, he needed to get back into shape to handle the gravity on the planet. Although some simple medications inserted in their daily rations of algae shakes sufficed to counteract the calcium loss and other problems induced by living in their nearly free-fall environment aboard Prometheus, muscles still became flabby unless you exercised. The sweat glistened on his light brown skin, a Jamaican tan that even the years in space could not fade. The zero-gee exercise drills let Thomas work his body hard and soon drops of sweat were spinning off into the air, only to be carefully collected and herded off to the air conditioning ducts by the tiny cleaning imps. If only he could take a swim—the pleasure of feeling his long lean body cut through the waters of Montego Bay was the thing Thomas missed most about leaving Earth. He thought wistfully about the possibility of swimming with the flouwen in the oceans of Eau, but it just wouldn't be the same in a spacesuit.
Richard Redwing and Sam Houston entered the gym together, laughing. The Indian stripped off his coverall, revealing his very muscular physique. Thomas felt his ego cringe at the display of muscle, but it was immediately revived by the sight of Sam Houston's pale, scrawny torso.
"How about a three-way wrestling match?" called Richard.
"Just so you can cream us?" retorted Thomas. "No, thank you."
"You're right, it wouldn't give me much of a workout." Richard preened playfully.
"How about the two of us against you?" offered Sam. Although very tall and thin, Sam knew that all his field work in the heavy spacesuits on Luna and Mars had given his lanky body hidden strength. Sam was hoping that, with a bit of help, he could give his friend the comeuppance he deserved. Richard was his greatest pal, but he was inclined to be cocky.
"Two against one is hardly fair . for you," Richard scoffed. "Maybe with Jinjur on your team ." He turned his back incitingly. With savage growls the two other men threw themselves at him, but at the last second Richard dodged out of their way. Unfortunately, he had underestimated Sam's reach and a large knuckled hand grasped Richard around the ankle and sent him spinning. Soon the three of them were locked in mock combat, a twisting ball of intermingled white, brown, and red flesh.
Cinnamon was on her way to the sick bay when she met Carmen just outside the door.
"Are you here to be ravished by the pump?" Carmen asked. She shuddered slightly. With no gravity to help them, the women on board had to use a menstrual extractor each month. Like all women who had been in close contact for an extended time, their hormonal cycles had synchronized and the sick bay needed only to be set up for the procedure one or two days a month.
"Yes," Cinnamon answered. "I once swore that I would never perform this procedure on myself. Why else would I stay a virgin all the way through college?" And a good deal later, she added mentally.
"What are you talking about?" Carmen asked. "Surely you didn't ever operate a menstrual extractor back on good old Terra Firma?"
"Don't call me Shirley," said Cinnamon in automatic response to the old joke. Then she pulled herself back to the conversation. "I became an expert on operating a menstrual extractor when I was a medic back in Alaska. The extractor will remove the uterine lining even if it is not time for the women's period; even if the woman was supposed to have no period. When the Supreme Court decided that life, and citizenship, began at conception, whom else could the local women turn to? To go to my father for an abortion meant facing a jail term." She failed to notice the shock on her companion's face.
"Dad knew what I was doing, of course, and while he managed to avoid turning in all the women who suddenly found the IUDs in them were now illegal, he couldn't take any more direct action himself. If he had lost his license, the town would have been left with no medical care at all. Thank the gods that particular craziness didn't last too long."
"You performed abortions?!" Carmen screamed. All of her early upbringing merged with her current desire for children and rose up in a wave of revulsion. "How could you!? It was bad enough that those judges, estos santos, were martyred for their convictions! People like you abortionists kept on killing the babies!"
Cinnamon was stunned. "Where were you in 2015? I saved the women who had decided that they simply couldn't face having a baby. Without my help, they would have found some other way to stop the pregnancy. The Thomas decision meant that almost all forms of birth control were outlawed—IUDs, Norplant, the Pill, anything that would keep a fertilized egg from implanting. Condoms and spermicide where all that was allowed and in the rural areas it was impossible to stay supplied. I kept those women from poisoning themselves with rue or tansy, or from trying to break their water with knitting needles and puncturing their wombs instead.
"Finally, the country woke up to the power they had given to the extremists during all those conservative administrations. We had been too worried with world affairs to be concerned with who was safekeeping our own laws, and it was almost too late. Sure, the next election brought in anyone who promised to be pro-choice, but those on the Supreme Court were there for life. When the first bomb ripped through the courthouse I admit I cheered. Maybe only one justice was killed, but the truth was out. All the judges had prices on their heads and they weren't ready to pay the ultimate price for their beliefs. Four others resigned with in the year, but for as long as that decision remained in power, women were literally dying in despair. I am proud that I managed to save some of them."
Carmen was horrified. She pushed herself away from Cinnamon and headed back toward the lounge. Tears clouded her vision and her face was red with rage and revulsion.
Cinnamon watched her go, and shook her head sadly. When the country decided that it had done something foolish, it rectified it, and then tried to forget. It seemed odd to Cinnamon that there existed anyone who still denied the fundamental truth that abortions occurred, no matter what the laws were. She pushed herself in to the medical lab and checked to see that the extractor was sterile and reset. Then she disrobed and lay back on the table as a portion of the Christmas Bush approached her bearing a long slim tube. Cinnamon forced herself to relax, and allowed the tube to slide gently into position. The whole procedure took only ten minutes and then it was all over. Cinnamon filled the time worrying about her relationship with Tony and humming softly to herself.
"Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken ."