Journey Between Worlds (9 page)

Dad was waiting for me near the entrance to the dining room; I introduced Janet, and we went in and found a table. I looked around but didn't see Alex anywhere. Pretty soon another woman joined us, since all the tables were for four.

“I don't suppose we're going to get very fancy meal service,” Janet said.

As a matter of fact, the dining room was fixed up quite attractively, with an orange carpet and tabletops in a matching tone, and gold and beige fabric covering the walls. The chairs were comfortable, too, though they weren't upholstered; they didn't need to be, with the low gravity. What did she expect, crystal chandeliers? But I looked around, and the tables were jammed awfully close together, and the food did come all in one course—in compartmented trays instead of on china—and there wasn't any choice of menu. I said, “I guess we'd better get used to things being sort of primitive. They probably aren't any better on Mars.”

Dad looked at me in a rather puzzled way, and I remembered how careful I'd been to avoid telling him anything at all about what I expected of Mars. But when Janet commented, “The plumbing is certainly primitive enough,” I found myself agreeing heartily.

“I don't think ‘primitive' is the right word,” said Dad. “Different from what you're used to, maybe. But it was a feat of very sophisticated engineering to fix things so that more than two hundred people can live for ten weeks in a self-contained environment like this.”

“I guess so. But how long do they expect us to get along without any water to wash in? All I've had so far are those premoistened towel things.” I remembered Alex's remark about getting used to water rationing, and went on, “Maybe to a Martian it doesn't matter, but—”

The other woman at our table, a Madame Duprés, interposed icily, “I think you'll find Martian cities considerably cleaner than cities on Earth.” (She was right, by the way; because they're sealed and the air is manufactured, no dirt can get in.)

Well, of course I hadn't meant to imply that Martians weren't clean personally, only that they didn't see anything abnormal in having to make do with a limited supply of water. Somehow it hadn't come out right! My cheeks burned; the woman was probably another colonist and had thought I was insulting her. Whatever could I say?

I was saved by the ringing of a gong; everyone stopped talking and looked up to see a flight attendant standing on the dais at one end of the room, with a microphone in her hand. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that you've all enjoyed your breakfast, and that you had a comfortable night, though for some of you I know it was a short one—”

“Comfortable?” muttered Janet. “Who does she think she's kidding?”

The woman went on, “I'm Ms. Gonzalez, your head flight attendant. Right after this meal my staff and I will show you around the ship and explain some of the things you'll need to know. But first, I want to introduce the man you're all anxious to meet: Captain Bjornsen.”

The captain got up and welcomed us, and then introduced other officers until I began to wonder who was piloting at the moment. One of the things he told us, though, was that the operation of the ship was largely automatic, and that the crew didn't have much to do until it came time to establish the orbit around Mars, except in case of emergency. It was certainly true that we saw a good deal of the officers all through the trip. People said, jokingly, that one reason they had so many of them on a spaceliner was so that the passengers would always have men and women in elegant uniforms to socialize with.

After everyone had finished eating, the flight attendants broke us up into small groups, by cabin numbers, for the Grand Tour. I wasn't in the same group as Dad, but since Janet was with me I didn't feel lonesome. And I didn't notice at all what a wet blanket Janet was. If I'd made that first tour with Alex, maybe I would have loved
Susie
from the start.

 

 

Do you know what life on a spaceliner is more like than anything else? Summer camp! I know that sounds ridiculous, because on the surface there don't seem to be many similarities. More adults than kids. (Though there are lots of kids, too, since practically all of the homesteaders have them.) No contact with nature at all.

But underneath there's a very close analogy. It's organized like camp. I didn't spot this at first, of course, but looking back I can see it. I only went to camp once, the summer I was fourteen, but it made a lasting impression on me, and some of the things that went on in the
Susie
were just the same.

To begin with, both in camp and aboard a spaceliner you're completely isolated from the outside. There you are, thrown with the same people day in and day out, with nobody coming or going; and a big camp's got just about the same number of people as the
Susie,
too. Naturally, on a ship you're a great deal more isolated than at camp, because you can't leave and you're millions of miles away from any other source of air, water, and food. That isolation, though, is precisely what makes adults willing to act like campers.

Next, there's the matter of obeying regulations. In camp those are enforced by the director, and on a spaceliner it's by the captain. He isn't like a military captain; he's aware that people are there because they've chosen to be, and that they expect to be given a chance to enjoy themselves. But in the last analysis, what he says goes. No arguments. No democratic votes. His decisions are all for the passengers' good, not his; but he doesn't stop to explain them.

If you have a problem, though, you don't try to see the captain about it. You talk to your flight attendant. And in some ways a flight attendant acts very much like a camp counselor. Don't think that she isn't there to supervise as well as to entertain; she is. If anyone needs supervising, she'll do it! She's responsible to the captain.

Some of the older people who were used to hotels and ocean cruises had to be straightened out about flight attendants; they thought they were supposed to tip them. That's not done, any more than it is on an airliner, even though you're aboard for weeks. (As a matter of fact, there's no tipping at all on Mars, and no Colonial appreciates a tip being offered.)

Anyway, as our tour guide started telling us what to expect aboard
Susie,
she was awfully reminiscent of a camp counselor with her little flock of charges and her list of points to be covered in first-day orientation. “Don't enter such-and-such an area without permission,” “If you aren't feeling well report to the nurse,” and so on. In both cases it's a separate little world whose smooth functioning—not to mention safety—depends on obedience to certain rules, and you have to be shown the ropes.

Another way in which a spaceliner's like camp is the way you get along without the comforts you have at home. For instance, our guide began by explaining about the drinking water; we'd be given a limited number of tokens a day for the automatic dispensing machines. Then she went on to describe the bath arrangements. There were the plastic-wrapped moistened towelettes for ordinary hands-and-face washing—much more sanitary than plain water anyway, she assured us—plus two sponge baths a week, for which we'd get tickets. Well, it's not that there's any shortage of water at camp (there, it could be something else basic, like electric lights), but the principle's the same. You find out that you don't need it as much as you thought you did.

The main thing that brought the summer camp idea into my mind, however, was the similarity of mealtime arrangements. In the first place, meals were stretched out to occupy as much time as possible. (There were four a day, following the British custom: afternoon tea as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) Everyone ate together and waited until the last table was through, simply because it took longer that way. There were no regularly assigned tables; people were encouraged to mix differently each time, and the ship's officers tried to spread themselves around. Since the dining room was the only place in the ship big enough to accommodate everybody at once, all announcements were made at meals. But besides that, dinner was usually followed by community singing, just as if we were in the dining hall back at good old Camp Twin Firs! In the evening there'd often be a movie, or someone (usually a properly enthusiastic flight attendant) would organize impromptu skits. You wouldn't think that grown men and women, many of them scientists, would enter into that sort of thing. But they did, and I think most of them enjoyed it. It goes to show how customs really are the result of environment. Put people in the right situation, and they'll suspend all their old ideas about what's appropriate.

There weren't many organized activities during the daytime. Between meals, we could use the dining room to play cards, or just sit and talk, if the lounge was full. The lounge itself was small and was really meant for reading, music, and more or less private conversation. Most of it was broken up into small library cubicles, each with its own computer terminal. During the tour our flight attendant demonstrated how to enter the request for the book, recording, or game you wanted and download it to your handheld computer if you felt like taking it to your cabin; it was a standard setup except that it was based on physical media instead of being connected to the Net. That was startling, till we realized that interplanetary data channels have to be kept free for vital messages and even private mail is transmitted through official communications centers. Mars has its own Net, of course, but it's limited to local material and texts that have been physically imported.

The only other place to go in the
Susie,
aside from the children's playroom, was the gym. That was at the center of the passenger sphere, which meant that it was kept under zero gravity. The flight attendant explained that each morning there would be classes in zero-g acrobatics and asked how many of us were interested. I thought of how Alex had said this was fun and was about to volunteer, but I whispered to Janet first, “Are you going to?”

“Heavens, no!” she laughed. “Me? I'll keep my feet on the floor where they belong, thank you. Besides, I have studying to do.”

I decided that probably she was right, it wouldn't be sensible. And hadn't I told Dad that I was going to start reading up on my basic college subjects during the trip? It would be foolish to waste such a good opportunity. So I didn't put up my hand.

At one end of the cylindrical gym was the observation bubble. There, at the axis of the ship, stars seemed to circle in the hazeless black sky, although actually it was the ship itself that was rotating. For the passengers' benefit
Susie
had been positioned to place the crescent Earth at the bubble's center. Ice blue and cloud-flecked, it waned as the ship spiraled outward from the sun.

We could pause only briefly since other tour groups were crowding up behind. The flight attendant shepherded us back through the gym, weightless, hand over hand along the guide rail. But I wanted a better look. “Let's come back later by ourselves, Janet,” I suggested.

“It's hardly worth the trouble,” she said. “We've seen plenty of pictures that were more effective. Earth will be smaller by then, and thinner.”

As it happened, though, I did get back to the observation deck before Earth became a mere point of light, inestimably distant. I went that same evening, with Alex.

 

 

I didn't see Alex until dinner time. Janet and I were settling ourselves at a table near the door when suddenly he appeared beside me. “Hello, Melinda,” he said. “How does
Susie
impress you so far?”

“Well, better than the original
Susan Constant,
anyway,” I replied lightly. But as I said it, it suddenly struck me as being true. People who crossed the Atlantic in seventeenth-century sailing ships had a hard time of it. Usually they lived for weeks on end all jammed together in the hold, with no proper food or sanitation or anything; lots of them got sick and died.

“At least our ship's fairly sure to reach its destination,” Alex said, smiling. “Theirs wasn't, not by any means.”

That was true, too. It was taking us a shorter time to cross all these millions of miles than it had taken them to get from England to Virginia. And we even knew the exact day, hour, and minute that we'd arrive! “They had some unpredictable winds to contend with,” I agreed.

“Not to mention a potential for being sunk.”

“I don't know anything about any other
Susan Constant,
” Janet said. “But if you're trying to say that it's guaranteed to be all fun and games on this one, I won't buy it.”

Alex shook his head. “I wasn't saying that,” he said soberly. “We all know better. But there's a certain parallel that's valid, I think. A certain indication that progress has been made since the sailing ship era.”

“Progress for what, though?” I asked. “We may able to go to Mars in comparative safety and comfort, but who needs to?”

“Progress for science,” Janet stated firmly. “That's the real value of the base on Mars. All this colonization business is one giant boondoggle, as far as I'm concerned.”

Alex scowled at her. “I've heard that opinion before, of course; I spent a year on Earth.” He hesitated, deciding how best to make his point. “You're both missing something. The settlement of Mars is the most important step forward the human race has ever made. But the scientific knowledge gained in the process is only incidental.”

“Incidental?” sputtered Janet. “How can you say that? How else can you justify—”

“Please, let's not argue about it now,” I begged, sorry that I'd ever raised the question. “Let's enjoy our dinner.” I knew that Alex's upbringing had affected his way of looking at things, and I didn't want to get back to the point where he was objecting to my natural assumptions again. I toyed nervously with my food, wishing that I'd chosen to eat with Dad.