Saturn Rukh (5 page)

“... and we’re going to be gone another two-and-a-half years. I wonder how she’s taking it?”

“I’m sure glad I’m not married,” said Rod with relief, as he started to slow down the Jet-Do with the front jets.

“I’d like to be,” said Chastity, giving him a squeeze from behind. “But I’d never consider giving up my job, and it wouldn’t be fair to my husband to be away all the time. Kids, of course, were something I had to give up thoughts of long ago. Those radiation resistance drugs they give us can repair tissue damage and keep cancers from spreading, but they can’t repair the DNA damage in eggs.”

“I’ve got a donation saved in a sperm bank,” said Rod. “Good thing too ... I must have logged over five thousand rems by now.”

“Any takers yet?” teased Chastity.

“Almost,” said Rod. “About five years ago.”

“Prettier than me?”

“Impossible!” exclaimed Rod. “Besides, she wanted me to settle down to the Luna run so I would be home more often. That job’s no better than being a bus driver.” He paused. “So, when do you want to take your vacation? I need to schedule the simulator facility.”

“It’s more important that we cross-train,” Chastity replied. “I’ll just skip it.”

“Don’t you want to visit your folks?” asked Rod. “We won’t be back on Earth again until three years from now.”

“I don’t have any ‘folks’ to visit,” replied Chastity. “My dad still refuses to allow me to visit him and Mom. He kicked me out of the house when he caught me on a bench in the cemetery doing some heavy petting with a neighborhood boy—I had a bad case of ‘minister’s daughter’ syndrome. I went to live with my Aunt Martha, but she died ten years ago.”

“Oh…” said Rod. “Then, I guess we can start tomorrow.”

~ * ~

Two months later, the two crewmembers who had been based on Mars—Sandra Green and Daniel Horning—finally arrived at Earth. They would have one month of leave on Earth, and then spend the last month living together in the crew capsule under simulated trip conditions, to make sure the members of the crew were compatible. Since they were all professional scientists, and four of them had been living in the close quarters of space habitats recently, no problems were anticipated, but if there was a serious incompatibility problem, it was important that they find out before they were committed to thirty months of living together.

After taking their vacation, Dan and Sandra met again on the shuttle that took them from Canaveral Spaceport up to the Boeing-Mitsubishi Assembly Station.

Doc had hardly seen Sandra on Mars, what with him being at the main base at the foot of Mount Olympus, while Sandra spent most of her time at Boreal Base looking for ancient frozen microscopic lifeforms in the polar ice field. The two had, however, worked together once over the medical emergency link on a nasty accident case. A technician had lost a forearm to the whipping end of a broken cable. Sandra had successfully stitched the arm back on under Dan’s direction. He had gotten to know her better during their two-month journey back from Mars. Sandra was small and “pleasingly plump,” with a cap of easily managed gray-flecked dark brown hair that Dan thought of as a “nurse’s cut.” Sandra was very bubbly and pleasant to live with, and was the life of the party at the weekly “socials” during the return journey, where everyone stopped working and gathered together for a special communal meal. Sandra was famous for her rum-flavored cinnamon rolls. Although she flirted a lot in social situations, she was usually reserved in her relationships with men, wanting to be treated as a professional colleague rather than merely as a person of the opposite sex.

“That month off certainly went fast, but I had the
greatest
time!” bubbled Sandra as they boarded the shuttle.

“What did you do?” asked Dan.

“Went on an expedition,” said Sandra.

“Sounds like a busman’s holiday,” said Dan.

“I joined a team that was studying the whales in the Gulf of California. We think we have finally figured out how whales speak to each other, and this group wanted to check their theories by listening in as the mother whales taught the whale calves how to speak.”

“Developing a dictionary of whale words?” asked Dan. “Do you mean that soon we’ll have experts in whale language?”

“Not quite,” said Sandra. “That was what held up research in cetacean communication so long. Whales don’t use ‘words’ like humans do, so even the concept of a dictionary of whale words makes no sense. Although they use sound to communicate, they are capable of making many different sounds at the same time over a wide range, from clicks to groans to whistles. It seems that the sounds not only communicate concepts but feelings and relationships too. A very complex language, and we are only just beginning to understand it.”

“Fascinating,” said Dan.

“What did
you
do on your vacation?” asked Sandra, changing the subject.

“Spent time with the wife and kids,” said Dan. “Took the kids out of high school and we all went to DisneyNation for a week. I told the principal the kids would learn some American history.” The trip had been fun for the kids, but Dan and Pamela had argued most of the time. Although Pamela kept saying she didn’t mind his going away on these long trips in space, she pouted and was unapproachable every time they were alone. Dan had done his best and fussed over her, spending much more than he had planned on the vacation, but Pamela liked fun and pretty things. Besides, he had told himself, what was the point of working so hard if it wasn’t to spend the money on making his family happy?

After arrival at the Assembly Station, the two donned space-suits, and they and their luggage were then taken out to the Saturn expedition vehicle by technicians driving Jet-Dos. After the lock cycled, the inner door opened and they were greeted by Rod and Chastity, waiting for them in the hexagonal-shaped lower facilities deck.

“Why don’t you come inside with Rod for a while, Dr. Horning,” said Chastity, motioning him inside, while she floated past him through the inner airlock door. “I’ll help Sandra out of her suit and show her where to store her things.”

“Let’s drop that ‘Dr. Horning’ bit,” said Dan. “Just think of me as ‘Dan the plumber’—patching the pipes of personnel pods and people.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” said Chastity, as she traded places with him inside the airlock and shut the airlock door behind her so Sandra could get out of her suit in some semblance of privacy.

“Your locker is here,” said Chastity, opening one of the six identical doors fitted into the comer of the airlock. “It’s got a jumpsuit, boots, and a set of standard underwear—all in your size. And this is where you hang your suit.” She put Sandra’s helmet into its holder and turned to help her with the suit plumbing.

“I think I would prefer my own clothing,” said Sandra, reaching for the large duffel bag she had hauled along. Chastity kept herself busy checking out Sandra’s suit and hanging it up while Sandra got out of her cooljohns and got dressed. When Chastity turned around again, she saw that instead of a jumpsuit, Sandra was dressed in gray slacks and a white silk blouse tied at the throat. She looked very nice, very feminine, and very efficient at the same time.

As Sandra and Chastity changed places with Rod and Dan, Chastity saw that Seichi was talking with the two men. The minute Seichi saw Chastity appear, he excused himself, and turning away to the galley across the room, started to make himself a cup of tea. Chastity felt frustrated. Somehow, ever since their initial poor start, Seichi had managed to avoid coming into direct contact with her despite the close confines of the crew capsule. She desperately wanted to make friends, but she couldn’t bring herself to just apologize—after all, she was the one who had been wronged.

“Seichi!” called Chastity to his turning back. “I’d like to introduce you to our crewmate, Sandra Green ...”

Seichi turned, and avoiding Chastity’s eyes, greeted Sandra with a free-fall bow.

“Yoroshiku onegaishimasu
—pleased to meet you, Ms. Green. I must go now to my station.” Leaving the two women and his tea behind, he pulled himself up the ladder where he took up the position at the engineering console in one apex of the triangular control deck.

Sandra gave Chastity a querying look.

“It’s not you,” said Chastity with disgust. “It’s me. He thinks I’m mad at him, so he’s been avoiding me. I’m not, though, really…” Sandra let it pass, so Chastity changed the subject. “There’s a couple of things I need to explain to you, now that you are living in crew quarters instead of passenger quarters,” she said. “When you came in on the passenger modules from Mars, you were traveling first class—crew quarters is like living in steerage. First thing is the toilets…” She pointed to the two narrow doors.

“Which one is the ladies’?” asked Sandra.

“Either... or neither…” replied Chastity. “First come, first served.”

“I can get used to that...” said Sandra bravely.

“Normally, however, there is an unwritten rule that the men try to use the right-hand one first, leaving the left-hand one for the ladies.” Chastity opened the left of the two small doors and ushered Sandra inside. She then stood in back of her to point out things inside.

“The shower stall is behind that watertight door. The washbowl is folded up into the wall there, to give you some dressing room. The urinal tube is there, with your own personalized cup in the compartment above it with your name on it... and that,” she said, pointing, “is the dreaded zero-gee toilet.”

“It certainly doesn’t look like the toilets in the Mars passenger modules,” said Sandra apprehensively.

“The passenger modules on the Mars rotate to provide a permanent quarter-gee artificial gravity,” said Chastity. “So the passenger toilets are very much like airline toilets.
These
are designed so they will function with the gravity pointing in any direction including zero gee.” Chastity reached over Sandra’s shoulder and pulled on the back of the toilet. The whole toilet easily swung forward—rotating bodily on a pivot hidden in the wall.

Sandra’s nose wrinkled. “I’ve heard about the problems with those zero-gee toilets ...” she said, but then the biologist in her recognized something wrong. “Zero gee?” she said. “We can’t be traveling to Saturn in zero gee. Although we’ve medicines to counteract radiation damage during long space journeys, we’ve yet to find a medicine that will prevent deterioration of the bones and vascular system from the lack of gravity.”

“I know,” said Chastity. “That’s why the passenger module on a Mars liner separates into three compartments that extend out from the central passway. That way, just a slight amount of rotation gives a quarter-gee in the passenger module without a lot of Coriolis. The full-time quarter-gee is just enough to keep the body from breaking down, and it’s also what keeps the toilets simple in the passenger module. That’s also why passenger habitats mass so much. But we do things differently on a cargo run to keep the habitat mass down. Most of the time we fly along in zero gee. But once a day, in the morning, we put the capsule on slow spin to give a tenth-gee at the positions of the toilets. The Coriolis forces are nasty at these short radii, so some of us stay in bed and wait it out, while the others take their turns at the toilet. Then, after everyone is ready, we up the spin rate and do one-gee exercises for an hour to keep our bones healthy. During rotation the gravity force is toward the wall. When the capsule is sitting on Luna or Mars, the gravity force is toward the deck. The toilets
can
also work at zero gee, but they are best used at finite gees.”

“What happens if you need to go when the capsule is in free fall?”

“I would recommend clinching your butt,” said Chastity. “For the alternative is worse.” She sighed. “But sometimes, ‘when you gotta go ... you gotta go.’ So, open the door to the shower stall and step inside out of the way, while I come in and go through the motions so you can see how it’s done.” Sandra obediently scrambled into the shower. With a grimace, Chastity pulled the outer door shut behind her and stepped into the toilet area.

~ * ~

“That was most enlightening,” said Sandra as the two exited the toilet. “You are right, clinching
is
the easier way out. I shall train myself for the morning elimination period.”

“I’ll take the evening,” said Chastity.

They were both surprised to see that three of the men, Seichi, Rod, and Pete, were all congregated down in the lower deck. With the aluminum tube taking up a third of the floor area, the facilities deck was crowded with the five of them in it. As usual, Seichi was keeping out of the way of Chastity. As soon as she appeared, he activated the inner airlock door.

“I will make more room,” he said, entering the airlock. Although he didn’t need to, he closed the inner airlock door again.

Chastity wistfully turned back from watching Seichi avoid her again. The hurt look on her face changed as she glanced at Rod and Pete. The two looked uncomfortable, and it wasn’t because of her problems with Seichi. There was a loud voice coming from the control deck above.

“… I’ve only been gone four days! How could you have spent ten million dollars in four days! That’s my pay for a whole month!...”

“Dan had a call from his wife,” said Rod, “so we came down to give him some privacy.”

Dan tried to keep his voice down, but it still carried through the open grating from above.

“Pammy ...please don’t pout... Yes, I know I’m worth a billion dollars ... but they are only paying me ten million a month while I’m on the mission ... I get the rest when I return ...” There was a long pause. “... Yes, it was nice of you to think of me ... and I’m sure I will appreciate having a nice house on the Riviera ... but it
could
have waited until I got back ... Honey! Please don’t be mad ... I do
too
love you sweetums ... and I’ll tell you more about how much I love you once we get our habitats set up and I have some privacy. I hear someone coming ... Gotta go now ... Bye…” There was a heavy sigh.