The instruments told Bill that they had entered a heliosphere, but he didn’t know whether it encircled only Proxima, or the entire trinary star system. Was there bow shock between the three stars in the system? The telemetry would likely inform the astrophysicists, in another four years when the signal reached Mars. He couldn’t detect any planets yet, but again, the astrophysicists probably could, when the data arrived.
Astrophysicists had mature tools that had been in their infancy in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Back then, radio telescopes and gravity wave detection were brand new. These days, for instance, the gravity wave detectors could pinpoint the movements of bodies as small as a gas giant planet. It had been a long time before they could ever detect anything but giant black hole or neutron star mergers, but the modern detectors were in space and far more delicate. There had also been an awful lot of scientific advances that led to technological advances.
But Bill still couldn’t see Anglada. They were only weeks away from it, the closest planet to Proxima. Having braked for half the trip, they were rapidly decelerating and would be at a near standstill when they were at the point where he could ease the craft into orbit.
This would be trickier than any other orbit he had ever entered into, as he had no idea what the planet’s mass was, at least no more accurate than “a little more massive than Earth,” and neither yet had anyone else. But it would be just another maneuver. He was looking forward to it; the mass could be accurately measured when they were close enough.
They had left Mars several months short of eight years earlier, and would be in orbit around Anglada in a few weeks or less.
When his duties in the pilot room were finished, he headed to the commons for breakfast. Its robots were better cooks than his robots. His robots were antiques, bought from the company when he first became a captain after high school, paid for by credit that would be deducted from his pay. It didn’t matter, as unlike Earth where everybody but the very rich had to work, spacers had the choice to work or not, as had been previously the case on Earth as well, before Earth had become an authoritarian hell hole.
He passed Walt on the way, who was headed downstairs. “Going for breakfast?” Walt asked. “I just came from there. The omelette seemed especially good.”
“Yeah. Oh, do me a favor, will you? Check out number two forty real good, its pilot room readings were a little abnormal.”
“Up, or down?”
“Both.”
“Shit. I’ll call you.” He left towards the stairs in a hurry.
Of course, this worried Bill a little, but there was no point in dwelling on it. If something was wrong, Walt would call. He walked into the empty commons and ordered an “Irish Omelette”; egg, shredded potato, chopped corned beef, and minced onion. His phone rang as the robot rolled away with his order.
It was Walt. “Bill? It’s all cool, it’s just a corroded contact. I’ll replace it when it cools enough.”
“That’s a relief, thanks.” There were a thousand things that could have caused those readings, most of them disastrous. Luckily, this one was harmless and Walt should be able to fix it easily. Of course, “fixing it” couldn’t be a whole lot easier, since it involved pushing buttons on a robot’s remote panel. Easy as long as you knew what buttons to push, and in what order, when, and why.
Walt was downstairs with a silent “whew!” The bad contact was easy to diagnose, because it was shooting sparks. If there had been anything flammable there, it could have caused a fire. He finished inspection while it cooled, logging a reading from a different motor, replaced the contact and headed home upstairs for a shower and breakfast. It had been hot down there today.
Mary had put up a playbill in the commons long ago, advertising dancing lessons. Nobody wanted to learn. She finally came in, took it down, took a toke, said “fuck dancing,” and ordered a beer.
Walt, cleaned up and filled up, was on his couch resting, as was his habit after climbing the stairs. He was watching the latest Martian football game he had access to. It was different than Earthian football; it had to be, because of gravity. The field was four times as large, and the balls were weighted, the same size but three times as massive as a football on Earth. “American football” as it had been called was long forgotten, not having been played for centuries, and neither had any other sport on that planet since the supervolcano had exploded.
The New York dome was beating Australia. Odd how some domes had been named after Earthian cities and coun-tries, what with spacers not liking Earthians, he thought.
Saturday night came, if it could actually be called night, or even Saturday, and the band was setting up. Bob surprised everyone in the band by pulling a harmonica out of his pocket. “Next Wednesday at practice, there are a few songs I want us to learn,” he said grinning. “Excuse me, I want to shake up Stairway some and use the Dobro. Be right back.”
Mary was already partying, at a table in the back with four others playing Packle. She was on her third martini and no one had yet yelled “packle.” There were a lot of doobies on the table, as they were the stakes. Might as well have used straws or napkins, one was being passed around the table as Mary sipped her martini.
Ralph was keeping an eye on her, pretending to read a book. He and Jerry had determined that the treatment had been effective, only he wanted to be sure. Unlike the holograms that laid on tables and looked like antique three dimensional books made of paper, he had a real book, a three hundred year old antique. Printed books were still being produced, but often were just show pieces, sometimes without any printing on the pages. Its title was “The Traitorous Chartov.”
Bob saw the title as he walked past. “Wow, I didn’t know you were a student of ancient music!”
Ralph’s brain fumbled a second. “Uh, I like history. Just started reading this and kind of zoned out. Who was that ‘Chartov’ guy?”
“Chartov was an incredibly talented guitarist and dissident folk singer who was executed by the Russian government before the Great Establishment. That’s a great book, I have a copy.”
“You mean when Gatstro conquered China and took over the world?”
“Before that. Hey, I need to get my Dobro, I’ll talk to you later.”

When he got back with a different guitar and a stand, Will asked “What’s that thing you had in your pocket before you got your Dobro?”
“What, this?” he said, pulling the blues harp out again. “A harmonica, another ancient instrument.” He played a verse of “Turkey in the Straw”. “There are some really good twentieth century and older songs that use these. They were especially popular in the American west in the eighteen hundreds.”
Sue said “Robot” and lit a muggle. A robot came over with a beer as she passed the joint and started coughing. “One more beer and we play, okay?”
Bill was in the pilot room. He had pinpointed the planets’ orbits, including Anglada, and had determined its exact diameter and mass. The computers would compute the trajectory for orbit and slip the ship into it. It had all been pre-programmed by the computers themselves; these days programmers only told the computers what to do in standard interplanetary like everyone always spoke.
It appeared to have two satellites. One was sizable, nowhere near as large as Earth’s moon but larger than either of Mars’ little moons. The other was tiny, no bigger than one of the Titanic’s twenty six ships, although baseball sized rocks were called asteroids when they were in space, and satellites when they were orbiting something. He decided to make an announcement.
“Bill here, folks. We’ll be orbiting Anglada in about two hours. I’m turning on the hologram in the auditorium so everyone can have a look when we get closer.”
Ralph, in his office by himself, said “Huh?” He stopped writing and started walking to the commons. He had never seen a planet bigger than Mars close up. Few had. For many, this was their very first trip to space, and the Martians hadn’t even seen Mars. Considering the late Mort was captain, the asterites probably didn’t either.
The musicians stopped playing and the commons filled up quickly, most going in the auditorium. Its huge, two story tall hologram, looking like a missing wall looking out into space, faced the rear of the craft, pointed in the direction it was moving. Doc had run, fastening his shirt as he sprinted, one of those who had never been in space before.
The star was a virtual white dot; no screen can shine as brightly as a star, not even a hologram. It was much brighter than the two next brightest stars, which were much brighter than all of the other stars in the screen. They were the other two stars in the system.
Then as Proxima got bigger and brighter, one star that had been too dim to see started getting brighter, until it was brighter than Proxima’s sister stars. It was Anglada. They were almost there. The dot got bigger and bigger until it was visible as a tiny hemisphere. By then, Proxima looked almost as big as the Sun from Earth, bigger than from Mars. Anglada was far smaller looking.
Before long, they would be in orbit and floating, and Bill was excited. He had taken a good look at the tiny satellite, and discovered that it was the Earthian robot from fifty years before they left Mars.
Now, Bill had a slight problem: the book was wrong. There were originally supposed to be three captains, but they had only found two, and Mort had died. The book said a captain had to stay with the ship at all times, and also that a captain must stay with anyone on the planet. Obviously the computer that wrote the book either didn’t “know” that old people often die, or thought that Bill could be in two places at once.
He called his two engineers and asked that they would meet him in the pilot room. They were in the commons, watching the hologram, which would look creepy to you or me, a missing wall with outer space on the other side of the missing wall.
“Damn!” Joe said. “I was getting into this!”
“Oh, well,” Walt said. They went towards the pilot room. “I sure hope this doesn’t take long,” Joe said.
When they got to the pilot room, Bill said “Sorry to call you in here like this, but who wants to be a captain?”
“Not me!” they both exclaimed in unison.
“Well, shit,” Bill said. “We’re the only three without planetside jobs, except Bob, and we’re at least one captain short since Mort died. I’ll tell you what, whichever one of you doesn’t want to be captain won’t have to. You can do both shifts in the dunge... uh, basement.”
“That’s easy,” Walt said. “I hate those God damned stairs! I’ll be captain!”
It’s odd how the mind works. A mind gets used to a thing and expects it, even when it should know better, like someone agreeing to be captain because he hates the stairs, when he’ll floating not long after he says it.
“Okay with you, Joe?”
“Hell, yeah! I love it down there and don’t know shit about being a captain.”
“Okay, Captain Rollins, you still report to me but you’re captain when I’m on the planet.”
“Okay, can we go back to the commons now?”
“Sure, I’ll go with you. It’s half an hour before we get all the way into orbit and I have to oversee the last adjustment.”
“Well, shit,” Joe said. I guess I’d better get downstairs. See ya.”
“Have fun,” Walt said.
Ten minutes later Joe was back. “Cool, I didn’t miss it.” Bill went into the pilot room. The planet’s surface covered the bottom third of the screen. You could see that it had an atmosphere, and oceans. The star looked about the same size as the sun, although they said it was a lot smaller. It just looked the same size because it was closer.
Bill was very busy. Pilot room readings told him that the atmosphere was ninety nine point seven percent nitrogen, and the rest various other gasses in tiny amounts, none poisonous. There was practically no carbon dioxide, although their breathing alone would add an imperceptibly tiny bit when they landed there. Air pressure was a little higher than on Earth or in most spacer domes. They wouldn’t need an environment suit, although they had been provided for the trip since it was unknown, but they would need oxygen masks.
It appeared from the atmosphere that this planet would likely be lifeless. You can’t have plants without enough carbon in the atmosphere to turn the carbon dioxide into plant matter, like plants always do. And of course without plants there could be no animals. But then, the plants on Grommler that the Sirius craft visited weren’t based on DNA. Maybe it had some weird kind of life that didn’t need carbon, but he was no scientist.
“Carbon,” he thought. “The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience,” although sentience needed other elements, too. He put the data on a patch of screen in two dimensional format. The scientists would be interested in these data, and would understand it a hell of a lot better than he did. Though he was largely self-taught, Bill had a healthy respect for formal education, thanks to his ex-wife.
He pressurized the necessary ships in the ring and turned on the heat in them. All would be well below freezing. Should have done this an hour ago, he thought. He went back in the commons. “Hey, Jerry,” he said. Jerry looked at him. “Can I have a word?” Jerry got up and followed him into the hall.
Few noticed, all ranged from slightly buzzed to zombified, enjoying the mindless entertainment on the screen, the planet moving beneath them. Several were looking at the data, which they would examine carefully later. Like in the morning when they weren’t stoned and had their morning coffee.
“Could you and Ralph make the decision of who should go? Seems you two are the most qualified to make a decision like that.”
“Sure, I’ll talk to him now. How many passengers?”
“Seven. I’ll let you guys decide, based on their fields. Oh, I think one of you should go, too. I’ll go the next trip, take Walt this time, he can be the landing captain. Meet you in the craft holding the landers in, oh, forty five minutes, okay?”
“Sure.”
The book said that a crew member should scout the surface for dangerous life, but the book was wrong in this case. No life means no dangerous life, and since nitrogen is inert, it can’t keep anything alive by itself.
Bill went to the bar and ordered a beer. He’d seen that “circle the planet” show before. Probably a great show for these stoners. It was a boring re-run for him. He had the table display a book. By the time he finished his beer, Served in a sippy with a bag inside, of course, it would be time for a few folks to visit an alien star’s planet.
Later, Jerry’s voice came from all the recipients’ phones’ speakers: “Lawrence McMahan, Susan Nommie, Sylvia Hestor, William Lathiter, Arthur Chu, and Walter Rollins, please meet me in... uh, the commons.” As good a place as any, he thought.
They assembled there, and all walked around the circle of ships to the one with landing craft and down a flight of stairs. Bill was waiting. “Well, you guys all ready?”
“Who’s driving?” Walt asked.
Bill gave him a troubled look. “You are.”
“I don’t know how to drive one of these things!”
“Well, hell, I guess I am, then, and you’re captain until I get back. Don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything in the pilot room. Damn that Morton! Bastard had to go and die on me. Jerry, I need to give everybody flying lessons. Lets get in.” He handed his hat to Walt. It was rather big on him.
Once they were all crowded inside the craft, he said “Just watch me, flying these things is really easy. You have a wheel to turn to the right or left you could make yourself dizzy with, this slider for backwards or forwards speed, this up and down arrow for up and down, just hold an arrow until you’re at a good altitude, or you can punch in a number here for meters above the ground, or here for meters above sea level. The rest are marked and self-explanatory. You couldn’t crash one of these if you tried, and a lot of people have actually tried.
“Here are the buttons for autopilot, here and here. This one automatically takes you to the ship. It’s that simple, and we can place a marker down there and the next one will land automatically when you push this button. I’ll go first. Just watch me.”
It was far faster going to Anglada from orbit than it was from Mars to the interstellar craft, as quickly as if they had parachuted. They came down over a lake, and Bill was having fun, treating the craft as if it were a boat before rising and heading towards sand.
“Ready for a beach party?” he asked grinning as he landed on the beach. Everyone put on oxygen masks.
Will frowned. He wanted rocks and mountains, but would have time enough to travel later. This was just a preliminary excursion. At least now he knew... very little. He got out a magnetometer. This planet had a good, strong magnetic field. Must have an iron core, he thought. At least he could get some sand to sample and study, he thought sarcastically.
Nobody thought the unthinkable: they would be outside without an environment suit. Outside! Most had never been outside, and everyone knew that without a suit it was deadly. All of their lives its danger had been drilled into them, except for Bill, who had been born and raised in Canada and had spent several years in Arizona.
Sue, the hydrologist, laughed and said “It has water.” Everyone grinned, but she was worried about the planet’s gravity, and trying not to show it.
Jerry said “Who’s doing the drones? We can’t know who needs to go where until we get a picture of the planet.”
Larry replied “That’s my job,” and was the first one out of the landing craft. He loosed the drones while everyone else exited. “Uh, half hour ought to give you some good data. Damn, but this is weird. I feel like... I don’t know, like I...” He said as the others exited, and shivered.
“Feel naked,” Sue said. “Being outside without an environment suit is kind of gross and really weird. Even scary, kind of, in a weird way.”
Bill just grinned. He was only cold.
Sue was puzzled, and wondered why no one else was puzzled, too. “Where’s all the oxygen? All this water is dihydrogen monoxide, doesn’t this place have electrical storms? That should release oxygen from the water.”
Jerry said “do we have a marine biologist? Maybe there are fish of some kind?”
“Without plants?” Bill said.
“Maybe there are plants, but they’re all underwater?”
“Then where’s the oxygen?”
Will shook his head. “Doesn’t seem anything like I expected. Proxima is a red dwarf, why aren’t colors different?”
Jerry said “Easy, your brain compensates and you don’t notice. On Earth, everything takes on an orange hue in early morning and late evening but few notice.”
Sue, relieved that she wasn’t squashed by gravity, finally got the will to say “Hey, I’m from Pallas and it doesn’t seem like it’s any more heavy than Pallas, I thought it was supposed to be like Earth?”
Bill said “That was my doing,” and blew on his hands. “I raised gravity on the ship little by little, so little you didn’t notice. You could go to Earth without an exo!” He blew on his hands again, turned up his clothing’s temperature controls with his phone, and wished for gloves. “Oxygen? How about some nice warm carbon dioxide? Are those drones back yet? I’m freezing. Next time I come down I’m wearing an environment suit.”
Hundreds of years earlier before people walked on any worlds but the Earth and the moon, people were extremely careful to make the craft completely sterile and lifeless, but they were looking for life outside Earth. They would have worn environment suits to protect the environment from themselves, rather than the other way around.
Presumably they never found it until the Sirius expedition, although there could have been life that was missed and inadvertently destroyed by ignorance or carelessness. It could have been found and then lost, a lot of data were. It was certain that nobody cared any more.
Mark took soil samples, not expecting to find anything alive in it. Susan took a jar of water, just for laughs. Will took a bag of sand. Sylvia took holograms. Nobody took their time and were back in the landing craft as fast as they could go.
“Sorry, guys,” Jerry said shivering when they were back in the craft. “I should have warned you about agoraphobia. Nobody’s ever been outside without a suit before. I should have remembered and warned you.”
“Who wants to pilot this thing back?” Bill asked. Nobody answered. “Okay, Ralph. You’ll have to be pilot on the next trip, anyway.”
“What do I do?”
“Press the one marked ‘home’.”
He pressed it. “What do I do now?”
Bill smiled. “Relax and enjoy the trip!”
Up in the orbiting ship, Bob had programmed the wall behind the stage, making it the same view as the auditorium wall looking out at the planet. Most folks had tired of the circle show and had moved back to the bar, tables, and their rooms. Bob picked up his guitar and started singing. He found it hard to play without gravity and he had to actually think.
“Sun turnin’ ‘round with graceful motion, we’re setting off with soft explosions, bound for a star with fiery oceans...” As he sang, an ocean sunrise was on the screen behind him. Couldn’t have done that on purpose if I tried, he thought as he sang.
The landing party got back to the commons as Bob started the ancient tune “Space Station Number Five.” Being in orbit around an alien star’s world had apparently gotten to him. The party split up, Sue and Will leaving, but were back before Bob finished the song. Sue had a smaller flute, Will his new Dobro.
They didn’t play. Bob was playing ancient tunes about outer space, some of which dated to before people had ever gone past Earth’s atmosphere, none of which Will or Sue knew.
The next morning, Bill was in the pilot room, Joe was in the basement, and Will was looking at the newest correspondence from his grandson, who, according to the letter, was now twenty five. Since it had taken four years for the message to reach Anglada, Billy would be close to thirty now. He guessed he could look at the date stamp on the document and add four years, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, either, unless you knew exactly how far Anglada was from Mars. “Four light years” isn’t very precise when it comes to how long radio signals go to Mars from Anglada.
Joe’s phone rang. It was Bill, asking him to meet him and Walt in the pilot room when he finished up downstairs. Walt got there first. Bill said “I’m going to the robot ship to see if there is any information we can transmit back to Mars, so you’ll have to be captain for a while.”
“You’ll need an engineer.”
“I know,” he said as Joe came in. “Here he is. Joe, how would you like to see if we can get the robot ship to talk to the Titanic?”
“Sounds like fun. I’d like to look at its propulsion, too, just out of curiosity.”
“Well, if we have time.” He was curious, too. Not a GOTS vessel, not even a rival spacer vessel, this craft was Earthian. He hadn’t seen an Earthian ship since when all the transport companies were based on Earth, when he first started working for GOTS over two centuries earlier, stationary time. An awful lot had changed in his long life.
Walt went to the commons for breakfast. He was discovering, as were the other passengers, that in orbit you ate from flexible plastic tubes.
Joe and Bill went around the ring to the hangar deck. Joe started to get into a landing craft.
“Wait a minute, Joe, we’re going to need suits.”
“Huh? Why?”
“It’s a robot. There won’t be any air or heat. I hope we can get inside the thing without a spacewalk. Hell, I hope we can get in, period!”
They donned environment suits and got in the landing craft. Bill took off, showing Joe how to fly it as they headed to the robot.
As ancient as the ship was, there wasn’t any documentation for it left at all unless there was some inside. Bill counted on that. Before records were computerized, records were only lost to fires and floods and other disasters. Since the invention of electronic data processing, there were more data from a millennium earlier that still existed than a century earlier. But it wouldn’t matter, if it was all on Earth. They couldn’t have even gotten to it if they were on Mars.
They flew to the robot, looking for a way inside. Maybe it was completely crammed with equipment and there was no room inside for people? It was a hexagon-shaped tube, unlike the rectangular spacer ships. Bill and Joe both wondered why. But then, a door on its side opened. “There!” Joe exclaimed.
“I see it.” He flew the craft inside the other craft’s opening, wondering why they designed it like that, but glad they had. He wasn’t looking forward to a spacewalk. The door closed, and Bill tried to call the Titanic.
“Damn,” he said. “This thing’s really shielded well, I can’t get a signal.” He got a mapper out of the landing craft, a small device that flew around creating a visual map of wherever it was, and some compressed air propulsion units, as there was no more gravity in the “Donner,” as they had started calling it, than in the Titanic where the steering breezes were from the ship itself.
The map drew itself on their phones. “I can’t read the writing on the signs,” Joe said.
“It’s Russian. Tell your phone to translate. I’ve found the pilot room, let’s go there first.”
It appeared that this ship was designed and built to be flown by humans. The suit readings said that the temperature was chilly but not freezing, heated by radiant heaters, but it also had air. The pressure was less than Earth, but more than most domes and more than the Titanic, although there were components in the Earth’s air that were in the ship. Not wanting to smell that nasty old Earth, they kept their helmets fastened. Everybody knew Earth stunk like something dead and rotting mixed with pungent, unnatural smells.
“All right!” Bill said excitedly after they had reached and examined the pilot room. “Full operating manual, full repair manual, full trip log. Think you can fix the radio so we can transmit it?”
Joe was on the ground, halfway inside an opened panel. He crawled back out. “I don’t have a clue, sorry. I don’t recognize anything in there.”
“Well, let’s see, how can we get the data to our boat?”
Joe pulled out a plastic and gold chip. “No problem!” and put it in a slot and touched a couple of contacts. When a light lit, he removed it and handed it to Bill. “How’s your air? I wanted to examine the engines but I can come back, and I’ll understand them better after reading the manuals, anyway.”
“Plenty, but let’s go back anyway. We both have some reading to do.”
Back on the Titanic, Bob and Sue were in the commons wondering where Will and Joe were. “Where’s our drummer?” Bob demanded before Will floated up. It was obvious to Sue where he probably was, in the pilot room or downstairs. Will knew where he was. They both laughed, and Will said “Some of us have to work for a living!” Bob grinned. “Earthians!” he said, and lit a muggle. “I think I’ll get breakfast. Menu,” he said as he passed the joint, and a holographic menu appeared as if by magic.
Just then Joe appeared, although not as magically as the menu, simply floating in through the entrance. Bob said “I just ordered breakfast, are you eating?”
“No, I’m not hungry and I have some reading to do.”
Sue grinned an evil grin. “Spicy?”
Joe laughed. “Very. It’s the operating and repair manuals for the robot ship we found. Hey, can we practice tonight? I’m not sure I can even play without gravity. Drums ain’t like a flute.”
“I don’t know,” Will said, “ I never tried to play without gravity before we got here and it wasn’t easy in my quarters. I don’t see how you could play drums unless you and the drums were hooked to the floor somehow.”
Bob said “Guitar was possible without gravity, but it wasn’t easy. It looks like playing’s not going to happen this weekend. We’ll need a lot of practice before we can play in zero G. Even Sue!”
A while later, Bill was in the commons reading the manuals when he made his discovery. “Holy SHIT!” He exclaimed excitedly. “I can take that thing down! I have to talk to Joe to make sure.” More precisely than what he said, he could land the robot on Earth, if he was orbiting Earth. Of course, he wasn’t. Ralph, who seemed to live in the commons these days, looked up from his non-holographic book, made of paper.
“Uh, Bill?” Ralph, always the worrier, was concerned. “What’s wrong?” What was he going to take down?
“Nothing! I think this manual says I can land that robot on the planet. I need to talk to Joe.” As if by magic, although actually with no ifs or magic involved, only coincidence, Joe appeared from a nearby table. “Joe!” Bill said. “Did you read the...”
“Yeah! Dude, we can land that thing!”
“Anglada’s more massive than Earth!”
“I ran the numbers. That baby could land on a planet twice as massive!”
“Really?”
“Really! Let’s go!”
“Well, I need to learn how to land it first. I’ll call you.
Sue, at the other table with Will and Bob, overheard Joe and Bill. She said “I know how we can have gravity.” A twinkle lit her eye. “We need a change of venue!”
Bob could see the gears turning in her head, but couldn’t see where they were going, or even which way they were turning. He raised an eyebrow. “Care to enlighten us?”
“Anglada! All the gravity we want!”
“Uh, Bill?” Bob said to the captain at the next table.
“Yeah, Bob? Whatcha need?”
“We can’t play without gravity, how about we play on the planet?”
“I’ll let you know, I need to do some studying and listening.” Who he wanted to listen to were the two youngest people on the ship, the unknown leaders, the psychologists. Also he needed to read the operator manual more closely and see how many passengers the robot vessel could carry.
The next day he was in the commons arguing with Walt. “Damn it, Bill, you can’t do it! It’s too dangerous!”
“Nobody else is a pilot!”
“Neither are you in an Earthian ship! What the hell is wrong with you, Bill?”
Ralph floated up. “Something’s wrong with Bill?” He grinned at Bill.
“He’s crazy!”
“Uh, should I work on your engines? I’m the one who decides ‘crazy.’ Why do you think the captain’s crazy?”
Bill actually appreciated that, showing deference to his rank, and showing it to someone who wasn’t showing it. Will said “He wants to test pilot that Earthian piece of shit. If he dies...”
Ralph looked at Bill. “How dangerous is it?”
“I’m the only pilot.”
Then I’ll take it down,” said Ralph. “I’m a pilot. I learned how to drive the landing craft.”
“But the landing craft has completely different controls!”
“Doesn’t the Titanic?”
Bill’s jaw dropped. Walt had never seen a dropped jaw before. “I’ll pilot it,” Walt said. “I’m an engineer. I’m pretty sure that makes me more qualified than anybody but Joe, and he’s never piloted anything.”
Bill was defeated. But, he thought, they’re right. I have to get these people home, we already lost one old man. And he was the oldest, real time. Or maybe normal time. His time was far from normal, even if he had eggs for breakfast at his normal time.
It was also normal for Joe to want to go along. But Bill was adamant. “I can’t afford to risk both my engineers.” Poring over the documentation, Joe discovered that he could have landed it remotely, but Walt was already halfway down.
Bill had cold cereal in his quarters as Walt test drove the Earthian ship to the planet’s surface. It was a first, he had always had a hot breakfast. But he was still steaming over Walt being the test pilot. Jerry was in the commons, also eating breakfast.
But they all got over it, or they would have all been dead by then. But after landing, the Earthian ship never took off again, despite its capability to do so. Two centuries later it would be a tourist attraction, although no one could know it at the time.
The band only missed one Saturday, which was now moved to Sunday, the day that was now called Saturday because of the stupid time craziness. The ship’s clock had reset itself and with it, all other devices, as knowing its exact distance from Mars, could compute the exact time. Not as exact as an atomic clock...
There were always a few landing craft setting down on on the planet every day, usually at least a dozen and a lot more on a Saturday night.
It was a lot later than anybody imagined. Years later. Almost nine years had passed on the ship, but over a quarter century on Mars. Bill had lived for sixty nine years, but the calendar said he was two hundred seventy five.
But time was normal again, if a little late. What wasn’t normal was the outside. It was creepy out there, especially at night. But they showed up for the shows, especially since most of their jobs were on the planet. Most of them, anyway.
Two weeks after the first muddy boots, robots were printing printers to print houses with. Two days after that the first house was printed, then a house a day, complete with fusion/fission energy source, water, and waste disposal, all combined and self-contained.
Everyone was busy, except the formerly most hopeful of the scientists, the biologists. They had nothing to study after the first few weeks of putting soil and rocks under microscopes, and doing other tests. Now they were all bored.
A month later all but five of the houses were occupied. Jerry noted that the incidence of agoraphobia varied, but all seemed to have it to some degree, and one man, Edward Sanchez, who was luckily a biologist, had a terrible panic attack the first time he tried to see a musical performance. Harold had to have a robot sedate him.
Jerry had an epiphany—It wasn’t just the crazy time warp that caused the Sirius expedition’s members to become mentally ill, although that was probably the largest factor, but spacers’ built-in agoraphobia from never being outside in their lives likely had a lot to do with it. He hurried to his office to report on it and start devising a study. He felt it in himself; the outside made your skin crawl. He shivered.
He dictated a few notes to the computer and called Jerry. He needed collaboration.