The ship was huge, ten times the size of the transfer vehicle that had carried the trainees from low Earth orbit out to CM-2. Most of it, though, was the drive. The living quarters would be a tight fit for the forty passengers and crew. Rick walked over to the point of closest approach to the main engines of the Vantage, and stood staring up at them. They were Diabelli Omnivores, a linked ring of a dozen blue cylinders, each about four meters across and forty meters long. Within them, deuterium and helium-3 would be fused. The heat produced by that raised the main propellant, hydrogen, to a temperature of more than a million degrees.
Naturally, the Omnivores were never used close to any other object. Smaller ion rockets surrounding the main drive ring provided for maneuvering and docking. The main engines were called omnivores because with some modification they could fuse any of the lighter elements up to neon. It meant that the Vantage, like her sister ships Vanquish and Vanity, could find suitable fuel anywhere in the solar system.
It also meant that in the hottest fusion mode the internal temperature would reach a billion degrees.
“Close your mouth, Rick.” Deedee’s voice came from right next to him. “You’re an apprentice now, not a trainee. You’re not supposed to gape.”
He turned. Apparently two hours sleep agreed with Deedee. She was bright-eyed and full of bounce. Rather than look at her he pointed up at the Omnivores. “We’ll be sitting right on top of those monsters. If something goes wrong with the drive, we’ll never even know it. Might as well be in the middle of a supernova. How come you’re not as worried as I am?”
“Maybe I am. Maybe women just know how to fake things.”
“Yeah. But you never gave me a chance to find out about that.”
Although Rick kept his tone light, there was a hidden bitterness in him. Apparently Deedee thought nothing unusual had happened the previous night. But it had. After a couple of hours of dancing, Rick had suggested that he and Deedee go off together, just the two of them, and find someplace quiet. He spoke casually, as though it was no big deal, which was the way you handled these things. That didn’t mean it was, though.
And she had declined.
“Not tonight, Rick. Tonight I want to dance ’til I drop. But if I did go with anybody, you’re the one I would want to go with.”
She had known very well what he was suggesting, but she had hauled him back onto the dance floor. Her answer left him horny and restless. The way she had put it he was not supposed to feel rejected. He did. But he wasn’t going to let her know it, then or now.
There was a stir among the people at the far end of the chamber. Looking that way, Rick saw that an entry port to the front part of the Vantage was opening. A light ladder was scrolling out and reaching down to ground level, though in such low gravity it was hardly necessary. Every one of the apprentices could jump to hit the port blindfold. Some of them were already moving forward toward the ladder.
“Wait for it!” Barney French’s roar came from the entrance to the chamber. “Didn’t you lot ever hear of discipline? Apprentices stay there. I have to be first up so I can assign quarters—unless you all want to sleep on top of each other.”
She came soaring over their heads and went through the port dead center. Just behind her flew Jigger Tait and Gina Styan. It was news to Rick that those two were taking a ride out to the Belt on the Vantage, but he was delighted to see them.
“All right!” Barney reappeared in the port. “Come on. All aboard that’s going aboard. Girls first!”
Her last words were lost in a burst of laughter. Chick Teazle, too impatient to wait for her to finish, had jumped before she got to “girls first.”
Once you were launched in low gee there was no way to stop yourself. Chick floated upward, waving his arms and legs uselessly. Barney waited until he reached the port, then reached down to grab his foot and boosted. He went spinning away right over the top of the ship, to Barney’s raucous, “There you go, Miss Teazle.”
It was new proof that the trainee group still had tricks to learn in space. Rick waited his turn, right after Goggles Landau, then bent his knees and jumped. It was a point of pride to hit the exact center of the port, and he did it.
Barney French didn’t seem to notice. “Luban, 24-C,” she said. “To the right. Keep moving.”
To the right meant toward the front of the ship. Rick floated his way along a cramped corridor with bare metal walls. He had expected that 24-C would be a dorm, and was surprised to find that he had a tiny private room. It held a terminal, a small cabinet up near the ceiling, one chair, and a bed that could be opened all the way only when the chair was folded up into a recess in the wall.
Rick took from his bag the picture of his mother. He had sneaked it out when he left home, and been ashamed to show it back in the dorms of New Mexico or CM-2. Now he placed it on top of the data terminal. Everything else in the bag went into the cabinet. After that there was nothing to do.
Barney French had told him to come to 24-C, but she had not ordered him to stay there. He went back into the corridor. Vido Valdez was heading toward him. He did not seem nearly as unhappy as he had been yesterday, when he learned that Monkey had failed. And Rick had seen him close-dancing late in the evening with Gladys de Witt.
So much for undying love.
Since people were still coming aboard the Vantage, Rick headed the other way, toward the bows of the ship. The corridor ended in what looked like a food service area, with little tables that could be folded out of the walls. It would seat no more than eight people. Beyond it was another corridor, even narrower. Rick eased his way along it, and found himself at last in a tiny round chamber with a curved and bulging transparent wall.
He was in the very front of the ship, staring out at the blank metal facade of the main port floor and wall. As he watched, he heard a series of clanging sounds from behind him followed by the slow rotation of the ship. The port floor was deserted. Rick decided that the ship must now be sealed, and the external pressure would be dropping toward zero so that the docking facility could be opened to space.
And he was still here, sitting in the bows. Shouldn’t he be somewhere else, safely strapped in before the Vantage began to move?
Then he realized that the ship was moving, so gently that he had not noticed it. He was looking out at the starscape beyond CM-2.
He leaned back, overwhelmed by two thoughts. First, he realized the enormous difference between moving to space when you left Earth, and moving through space, which is what they were doing now. To get into space called for powerful thrusters and high accelerations, and you were wise to strap yourself in. But once you were here, even the gentlest acceleration was enough to move you around and no special precautions were needed when you started.
Second was the sudden knowledge: they were on the way. Earth was visible over on the right-hand side of the transparent bubble. When he had first looked at it from CM-2 it had seemed so far away. But in the next few days it would shrink from a whole round world to a tiny pale dot, no brighter in the sky than Venus or Jupiter. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of distance would gradually turn to hundreds of millions.