Gillespie leaned forward. “In a ship specially designed and equipped for that sort of thing it might be possible. But Aesop reckons there would be upwards of two hundred beta-space jumps involved, providing we didn’t hit a region where conditions were worse—and our fuel capsules are good for thirty at the outside. There’s the time factor, as well. Without any beta-space charts to help him, Aesop would have to do a major four-pi survey before each jump, and a job like that can take up to four days. Multiply it out and you get a journey time of over two years—and we’ve got food for a month.”
“I see,” Mossbake said quietly. “It’s funny I didn’t think of food—with my catering experience, too. Does that mean we just…starve?”
The twelve seated at the table changed their attitude slightly, as though they had been joined by an invisible thirteenth presence, and Surgenor decided the time had come, once again, for him to go into his act. In two decades of survey work he had almost perfected the Surgenor image of the big rock-steady man, experienced, imperturbable, slow to anger, possessing reserves of every kind of strength. In a way, he sometimes stood in for the ship itself, presenting—as had already happened within the hour—a human target for the frustration which other crewmen would like to have vented on Aesop. It was a part he had once enjoyed playing, in the days when it had still been possible to deceive himself, but of late it had grown onerous and he had a yearning to retire from the stage…
“Starve?” Surgenor looked at Mossbake in a kind of humorous surprise. “You can starve if that’s what you really want to do, but there’s a galaxy out there with a lot of planets in it, and a lot of untouched food on those planets—and I’m going to eat my way through one of them. Or a good part of it, anyway.”
“You’re not worried about not getting back home?”
“No. I would prefer to go back—it would be crazy to pretend anything else—but if I can’t make it back I’m going to go on living somewhere else. It’s a hell of a sight better than being…’ Surgenor broke off as Billy Narvik, who was at the opposite end of the table, gave a sudden bark of laughter.
“I’m sorry,” Narvik said, still grinning with drugged benevolence, as he saw that he had become the focus of attention. “I apologize for interrupting the proceedings, but you guys are so funny.”
“In what way?” Mike Targett said, speaking for the first time.
“This conference…You’re sitting around—all so serious—counting up fuel capsules and cans of beans, and nobody has even mentioned the one really important commodity, the only one that matters a damn.”
“What is it?”
“Her!” Narvik pointed at Christine Holmes, who was sitting directly across the table from him. “The only female we’ve got.”
Surgenor tapped the table with his glass. “I don’t think you’re in any condition to take part in this meeting, Billy—and we’re talking about survival.”
“What do you think I’m talking about, for God’s sake?” Narvik looked about him with calm eyes. “Survival of the species! We have one female, and—I’m sorry if this offends any sensibilities—but it seems to me that we have to decide how to make the best use of her.”
Sig Carlen got to his feet and moved to a position behind Narvik’s chair, shoulder muscles spread. “Are we agreed that friend Narvik should lie down in his room for a while?”
“That won’t change anything,” Narvik said pleasantly. “This is a whole new ball game, folks, and the sooner we lay down the rules the better it’ll be for everybody.”
Surgenor nodded to Carlen, who slipped his hands under Narvik’s arms and began lifting him out of his chair. Narvik resisted only passively, by slumping like a drunk.
“Leave him alone,” Schilling cut in. “He’s talking sense, isn’t he? If we have to make a new start in this galaxy we’ll have to face up to certain facts and get used to new ways of thinking, and I for one…’
“You for one,” Carlen interrupted, “might have to get used to new ways of eating—without your teeth, for example.”
Schilling responded by baring his teeth and pinching one between forefinger and thumb. “I’ve got good teeth, Sig. I don’t think you could even loosen them.”
“I’ll be helping him,” Victor Voysey said, his freckled face sombre. “And I use an axle wrench.”
“You can take your…’
“That’s enough!” Surgenor made no attempt to hide his anger. “Narvik was right when he said this is a whole new ball game, and here is one of the ground rules—Chris Holmes is to be a fully private, autonomous individual. We can’t exist any other way.”
“We won’t exist at all, before long, unless we’re realistic about breeding,” Schilling said doggedly.
Surgenor stared at him in open dislike. “Could it be that you consider yourself prime breeding stock?”
“Better’n you, big Dave. At least I’m still…’
“Gentlemen!” Christine Holmes got to her feet amid an abrupt silence and looked around the table, her strong-jawed face white with strain, then gave a shaky laugh. “Did I say gentlemen? I’m sorry—I’ll start again. Bastards. If you bastards don’t mind I’d like to show you something which has a bearing on the discussion—and you’d better look at it carefully, because this is the only chance you’re going to get.”
She gripped her clothing with both hands, pulling the uniform blouse upwards and the top of her slacks downwards to expose a flat abdomen which was puckered with surgical scars. Surgenor looked at her dark-shadowed eyes and felt that in the past twenty years he had been nowhere, had learned very little.
“There’s nothing in there shipmates. No works, no bits and pieces—they’ve all been taken away,” Christine said. “Can everybody see?”
“There’s no need for this,” Schilling muttered, turning his gaze away.
“Ah, but there is! You’re the one who was talking about facing up to the facts—and this is a fact, sonny.” Christine forced her voice into normal conversational tones, and even managed to smile as she rearranged her clothing and sat down.
She interlaced her fingers and glanced around the table. “I hope I haven’t shocked any of free-thinking pioneers, but I thought it best to prove that you can class me as one of the boys. It makes things simpler, doesn’t it?”
“Very much simpler,” Surgenor said at once, anxious to drive the episode into the past. “Perhaps now we can get on with the business of agreeing the instructions we’re going to give Aesop.”
“I didn’t even know we could instruct Aesop,” Carlen said, releasing the now-quiescent Narvik and returning to his seat.
“Our present situation is way outside his terms of reference, so this is where we need the flexible human response the union execs keep talking about.”
“We wouldn’t need it if we weren’t here in the first place.”
“I’m not getting involved in that one.” Surgenor kept his eyes away from Christine as he spoke. “Now, we have to agree that we stay in this galaxy—which seems as good as any of the billions of others out there. We have to instruct Aesop to check out the region for suitable, planet-bearing suns. Then we have to decide on a food rationing system to extend our supplies.” Jotting notes on a memo pad, Surgenor droned his way through a short list of proposals, trying to make them sound commonplace, hoping that what they had done to Christine would be equally reduced and made unmemorable.
The sub-committee appointed to select a destination sun consisted of Surgenor, Al Gillespie and Mike Targett. Surgenor was mildly surprised at how easy it had been to get the sort of group he wanted, and guessed that the incipient faction headed by Burt Schilling were glad to get away from the table until the ripples of the Christine Holmes incident would have had time to fade.