This run, of course, was a little different
It wasn't so much the particular gang of passengers he had taken aboard. (He had expected temperament, tantrums, and unbearable foolishness but it turned out that eggheads were much like normal people.) It wasn't that half his ship had been torn down and rebuilt into what the contract called a “universal central-access laboratory.”
Actually, and he hated the thought, it was ”Junior” -the planet that lay ahead of them.
The crew didn't know, of course, but he, himself, hard head and all, was beginning to find the matter unpleasant.
But only beginning-
At the moment, he told himself, it was this Mark Annuncio, if that was the name, who was annoying him. He slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other and thought angrily about it. His large, round face was ruddy with annoyance.
Insolence!
A boy of not more than twenty, with no position that he knew of among the passengers, to make a request like that.
What was behind it? That at least ought to be straightened out.
In his present mood, he would like to straighten it out by means of a jacket collar twisted in a fist and a rattle of teeth, but better not-better not-
After all, this was a curious kind of flight for the Confederacy of Worlds to sponsor, and a twenty-year-old, overcurious rubberneck might be an integral part of the strangeness. What was he on board for? There was this Dr. Sheffield, for instance, who seemed to have no job but to play nursemaid for the boy. Now why was that? Who was this Annuncio?
He had been space-sick for the entire trip, or was that just a device to keep to his cabin-
There was a light buzzing as the door signal sounded.
It would be the boy.
Easy now, thought the Captain. Easy now.
Three
Mark Annuncio entered the Captain's cabin and licked his lips in a futile attempt to get rid of the bitter taste in his mouth. He felt lightheaded and heavyhearted.
At the moment, he would have given up his Service status to be back on Earth.
He thought wishfully of his own familiar quarters; small but private; alone with his own kind. It was just a bed, desk, chair, and closet, but he had all of Central Library on free call. Here there was nothing. He had thought there would be a lot to learn on board ship. He had never been on board ship before. But he hadn't expected days and days of space-sickness.
He was so homesick he could cry, and he hated himself because he knew that his eyes were red and moist and that the Captain would see it. He hated himself because he wasn't large and wide; because he looked like a mouse.
In a word, that was it. He had mouse-brown hair with nothing but silken straightness to it; a narrow, receding chin, a small mouth, and a pointed nose. A! he needed were five or six delicate vibrissae on each side of the nose to make the illusion complete. And he was below average in height.
And then he saw the star field in the Captain's observation port and the breath went out of him.
Stars!
Stars as he had never seen them.
Mark had never left the planet Earth before. (Dr. Sheffield told him that was why he was space-sick. Mark didn't believe him. He had read in fifty different books that space-sickness was psychogenic. Even Dr. Sheffield tried to fool him sometimes.).
He had never left Earth before, and he was used to Earth's sky. He was accustomed to viewing two thousand stars spread over half a celestial sphere, with only ten of the first magnitude.
But here they crowded madly. There were ten times the number in Earth's sky in that small square alone. And bright!
He fixed the star pattern greedily in his mind. It overwhelmed him. He knew the figures on the Hercules duster, of course. It contained between one million and ten million stars (no exact census had been taken as yet), but figures are one thing and stars are another.
He wanted to count them. It was a sudden overwhelming desire. He was curious about the number. He wondered if they al had names; if there were astronomic data on all of them. Let's see…
He counted them in groups of hundreds. Two-three-he might have used the mental pattern alone, but he liked to watch the actual physical objects when they were so startlingly beautiful-six-seven-
The Captain's hearty voice splattered over him and brought him back to ship’s interior.
“Mr Annuncio. Glad to meet you.”
Mark looked up, startled, resentful. Why was his count being interrupted?
He said irritably, “The stars!” and pointed.
The Captain turned to stare. “What about them? What's wrong?”
Mark looked at the Captain's wide back and his overdeveloped posterior. He looked at the gray stubble that covered the Captain's head, at the two large hands with thick fingers that clasped one another in the small of the Captain's back and flapped rhythmically against the shiny plastex of his jacket.
Mark thought, What does he care about the stars? Does he care about their size and brightness and spectral Classes?
His lower lip trembled. The Captain was just one of the non-compos. Everyone on ship was a noncompos. That's what they called them back in the Service. Noncompos. All of them. Couldn't cube fifteen without a computer.
Mark felt very lonely.
He let it go (no use trying to explain) and said, “The stars get so thick here. Like pea soup.”
“All appearance, Mr. Annuncio.” (The Captain pronounced the c in Mark's name like an s rather than a ch and the sound grated on Mark’s ear.) “Average distance between stars in the thickest duster is over a light-year. Plenty of room, eh? Looks thick, though. Grant you that. If the lights were out, they'd shine like a trillion Chisholm paints in an oscillating force field.”
But he didn't offer to put the lights out and Mark wasn't going to ask him to.
The Captain said “Sit down, Mr. Annuncio. No use standing, eh? You smoke? Mind if I do? Sorry you couldn't be here this morning. Had an excellent view of Lagrange I and II at six space-hours. Red and green. Like traffic lights, eh? Missed you all trip. Space legs need strengthening, eh?”
He barked out his ”eh’s” in a high-pitched voice that Mark found devilishly irritating.
Mark said in a low voice, “I'm all right now.” The Captain seemed to find that unsatisfactory. He puffed at his cigar and stared down at Mark with eyebrows hunched down over his eyes. He said slowly, ”Glad to see you now, anyway. Get acquainted a little. Shake hands. The Triple G.'s been on a good many government-chartered cruises. No trouble. Never had trouble. Wouldn't want trouble. You understand.”
Mark didn't. He was tired of trying to. His eyes drifted back hungrily to the stars. The pattern had changed a little.
The Captain caught his eyes for a moment. He was frowning and his shoulders seemed to tremble at the edge of a shrug. He walked to the control panel, and like a gigantic eyelid, metal slithered across the studded observation port.
Mark jumped up in a fury, shrieking, “What's the idea? I'm counting them, you fool.”
”Counting-” The Captain flushed, but maintained a quality of politeness in his voice. He said, “Sorry! Little matter of business we must discuss.”
He stressed the word “business” lightly.
Mark knew what he meant. “There's nothing to discuss. I want to see the ship's log. I called you hours ago to tell you that. You're delaying me.”
The Captain said, “Suppose you tell me why you want to see it, eh? Never been asked before. Where's your authority?” Mark felt astonished. ”I can look at anything I want to. I'm in Mnemonic Service.”