Nodding, Grant said, “Thanks for dropping in.”
Muzorawa flashed a dazzling smile. “It was nothing. And stop being a hermit! Join us at dinner.”
“Us?”
“Egon, Tamiko, Ursula…”
“Lane?”
He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Yes, maybe even her. But we’ll keep her on the opposite side of the table from Egon!”
Grant laughed.
“We’ll sit her next to you.”
He was as good as his word.
Apprehensive, uncertain, Grant entered the cafeteria with the first surge of people coming in for dinner. As he slowly made his way along the serving line, pushing his tray and making his selections absentmindedly, he looked around for Muzorawa or Karlstad or any of the others. None of them in sight.
Then he saw O’Hara getting into the line, with Muzorawa’s bearded face a few heads behind her. By the time he had finished loading his tray, Karlstad, Kayla Ukara, and Tamiko Hideshi were also in line.
Feeling awkward, Grant hesitated a moment, then decided that it was foolish to just stand there dithering. Most of the tables were unoccupied as yet, so he picked an empty one big enough for six and sat down facing the line.
Sure enough, O’Hara came straight to him, still limping slightly. Then Muzorawa and the others. They all sat at Grant’s table and said hello as if nothing had happened. Finally Karlstad picked his way deftly through the line and joined them. Muzorawa had saved a seat for him on the opposite side of the table from O’Hara, who had placed herself next to Grant.
Just as Karlstad sat down, the light panels in the ceiling flickered once, twice. They all looked up.
“Uh-oh,” said Hideshi.
“Wait,” Muzorawa replied softly. “I think it’s stabilized…”
The lights suddenly went out altogether, plunging the crowded cafeteria into complete darkness. Grant heard the throng of diners moan, an instinctive collective sob of fear and tension that quickly dissolved into grumbling and muttering. He felt his heart thumping beneath his ribs.
“It’s stabilized, all right.” Karlstad sneered.
“What is it?” Grant asked, breatheless with anxiety. “What’s going on?”
Dim emergency lighting winked on, throwing the cafeteria into pools of faint light and deep shadow.
“Power outage,” Ukara said, almost hissing the words.
“It happens every now and then,” Muzorawa said, calm and reassuring.
We need electrical power to keep the air pumps going, Grant realized, sitting wire-tense in his chair.
“It might be Io’s flux tube expanding,” Karlstad suggested.
“More likely a plasma circuit between Io and the planet,” said Ukara.
“Yes,” Muzorawa agreed. “We probably passed through a plasma cloud and it overloaded our generators.”
“I don’t like this,” Hideshi admitted, her voice trembling.
Grant asked, “Plasma clouds jump from the cloud tops to Io?” His own voice sounded high and shaky.
“Not often,” Muzorawa replied. “But it has been observed from time to time.”
Karlstad muttered, “And we’re just lucky enough to be in the middle of it.”
“How long—”
The lights came back on. Everyone sighed gratefully. The cafeteria echoed with a hundred chattered, relieved conversations.
It took a while for Grant to feel at ease again. Losing electrical power could be fatal. There are backup generators, he reassured himself. And superconducting batteries that can run the life-support systems for days on end. Still, he treasured the bright, glareless light from the ceiling panels.
Everyone seemed to relax.
“Hell, I was looking forward to a candlelight dinner,” someone shouted. People laughed: too loudly, Grant thought.
They’re forcing themselves to forget the blackout, he realized. To bury it, pretend it never happened, or at least pretend it’ll never happen again.
Karlstad started making cynical jokes about someone in the biology department whom Grant actually knew, a fussy little neurophysiologist who was counting the days until his time was up and he could head back to Earth. O’Hara added to the moment with a story of how she had slipped data from the neurophysiologist’s own brain scan into the file for Sheena.
“That was after the gorilla’s brain-boost?” Hideshi asked.
“It was,” said O’Hara, grinning broadly. “Just a few days after he’d injected Sheena with the neuronal growth hormones.”
“But he was looking at data from his own brain?” asked Karlstad.
“That he was. He took one look at the neuronal activity and thought he was going to get the Nobel Prize!”
They all roared with laughter.
“Didn’t Sheena break his arm later on?”
“No, that was Ferguson.”
“Oh, right. The surgeon.”
Abruptly the overhead speakers blared, “GRANT ARCHER, REPORT TO THE DIRECTORS OFFICE.”
Suddenly fearful, Grant look up toward the ceiling. “What does he want me for?”
“It won’t be good news,” Karlstad muttered. “It never is when he calls you to his office.”
“You’d better get going,” Muzorawa said.
“Now? In the middle of dinner?”
Karlstad pointed a finger at him. “When our peerless leader calls, you answer. Without hesitation.”
“And without dessert,” O’Hara added.
Grant pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Doesn’t he care at all about us?”
Karlstad shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think he cares about anything anymore. Since the accident he’s been—”
Muzorawa laid a heavy hand on his wrist and Karlstad snapped his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth.
“You’d better get to the director’s office,” the fluid dynamicist said softly. “Dr. Wo doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Grant nodded and headed out of the cafeteria.
There was a dinner tray on Dr. Wo’s desk, but Grant saw that the director had hardly picked at his food. The office was uncomfortably warm, as before. Is it part of his dominance technique? Grant wondered. Does he enjoy watching me sweat?
Finally he looked up at Grant, scowling. “You have been in this station long enough to know your way from the Cafeteria to this office,” Wo rasped as Grant sat before his desk.
“Yessir, I do.”
“Then why did it take you so long to get here?” Wo demanded in his grating voice. “Did you go the long way around?”
Grant felt like getting up and storming out of the office, but he held his temper and said nothing.
After a long, silent moment, the director announced grudgingly, “Your duties as a lab assistant are finished. You will report to Dr. Muzorawa tomorrow morning to begin training with the fluid dynamics group.”
Grant felt an electric current of surprise race through him.
“That is all. You may go.”
“I’ll be working with Dr. Muzorawa?” he heard himself say, his voice high with wonder and disbelief.
“That is what I told you, isn’t it? Now stop wasting my time. The working day begins at eight hundred hours. Sharp! Understand me?”
“Yessir,” Grant said, scrambling to his feet, trying to keep his face impassive and hide the ecstatic grin that wanted to break out. “Thank you, sir.”
Wo waved one hand as if brushing away an annoyance.
Grant stepped out into the corridor, slid Dr. Wo’s door shut, and leaned against it, his legs rubbery. I’ll be doing real work! he rejoiced. Not astrophysics, but real, actual scientific research!
Then his surge of joy drained out of him. I’ll be learning more about what they’re doing, he thought. I’ll be finding out things I should report to the New Morality.