Chapter 10

Jass felt like she was going crazy. She hadn't lived in conditions this cramped since college, and this was a step above that. The ship, which had been designed for a maximum of twelve people now held twenty, and she felt as if she bumped into someone with every move. It would have been impractical to ask the Pequod crew to remain in their quarters for the entire trip to Cybele. Their quarters were designed for sleeping, not for spending a day in, much less a week. On top of that, most of them were eager to help with anything they could, since they were unused to having so much free time aboard a ship and wanted to contribute something to a crew that had rescued them. She had to admit, the interior of the ship was now cleaner than it had ever been, and Kristin had gotten the cargo more organized with help from several unoccupied spacers.

She pulled herself down the main corridor, apologizing wearily as she bumped into others and bounced off again. Finally, she floated through the door of the medlab and closed the door behind her with a sigh. In a moment, she had strapped herself into the treadmill and begun to run.

It felt good to feel her feet connecting with the treadmill pad, she thought, good to finally stomp something in a satisfactory way. Zero g had many pleasant aspects, but she missed being able to casually make emphatic movements. Sometimes you just wanted to kick something or wave a hand without wondering if the action would send you careening into a wall.

She'd read reports claiming that most of the benefits of running in zero gravity were psychological, and the limited physical benefits might not be important enough to legitimize the space that treadmills occupied in most ship's medlabs. Jass wondered if the authors of these reports had ever spent months in zero g themselves. It wasn't about keeping her body ready to live under gravity again, or keeping her bone mass high enough. It was about really connecting with something, meeting an immoveable object. She went a little loopy if she floated around the ship too long.

Jass expected her computer to beep at any moment with some quasi-emergency that she would be expected to handle, but as long as the computer kept silent, she kept running. She kept her eyes closed, imagining herself running through the streets of Spirit City, as she did most mornings when she was planetside. It was slightly depressing to run so long with only a view of the medlab wall.

Finally, beginning to sweat even in the chill of the room, she slowed to a halt and tried to catch her breath. It was the longest uninterrupted running time she'd had since the Curious Machine had left Mars.

Jass slipped out of the straps that held her to the treadmill and wiped her face and shoulders with a towel to prevent any loose droplets of sweat from shaking loose and getting into the ventilation system. The filters could handle a certain amount of liquid, but it was better to add as little liquid to the atmosphere as possible.

She floated down to the shower room and scrubbed herself clean with the less-than-satisfying powder and pulled on a fresh set of clothes. Her stomach growled and she glanced at the time. Forty minutes until her next shift, more than enough time to grab lunch. She pulled her hair into her usual braid as she floated out into the corridor.

Up ahead, she heard the sound of a loud conversation and saw Martina backing out of the science lab. The young woman looked like she had been crying, but she turned toward the main cabin without seeing Jass.

The captain hesitated, wondering if she should go after her, but thought better of it. She typed a text to Kristin, who was on her shift in the cabin, to check on Martina and see if she could figure out what was wrong.

The galley was occupied by two of the Pequod's crew and Denjiro, who had them all laughing as he told stories about his early years in space.

“So then there I was, this innocent college kid floating in my first zero g galley, and the captain, who was this guy only a few years older than me, thought he knew everything—so he sneaks up behind me and signals to the other guys to keep quiet.”

The other crew members were snickering, but didn't see Jass waiting in the doorway.

“And he gets a water pouch and squeezes it until there's this huge bubble of water floating in the air. I mean, this thing was the size of a basketball. And he very carefully pushes it towards me, but of course, I'm facing the other way because I was actually listening to the announcement over the comm like I was supposed to.”

Jass grinned. She had heard this story before and suddenly got an idea. She pulled a piece of trash out of her pocket, which she had intended to dispose of in the galley, and silently crumpled it into a ball. This motion attracted the attention of one of the Pequod's crew, but he looked away again without giving a clue that anything was amiss.

“So there's this HUGE ball of water headed straight for me, and everyone else is watching this thing tumble through the air, and no-one says anything until the thing is a few inches from the back of my head.” Denjiro continued, prompted by laughter from the other crew.

The ball of trash sailed silently toward the back of Denjiro's head.

“And I turn around and--” Denjiro turned to demonstrate and squawked as the ball of trash collided with his nose. Jass and the other crew collapsed in laughter and Jass rolled through the air into the room.

“You know, captain, that story really didn't need a visual aid.” Denjiro grinned as he grabbed the ball from the air and lobbed it back at Jass, who caught it easily and deposited it in the disposal.

“Hey, you give me a set-up like that, what did you think I was going to do? You've got to stop standing with your back to open doors.” She rummaged through one of the over-full drawers to find a protein bar.

“So, captain, how goes our little ship?” he asked, as the two members of the other crew left, still laughing. “I hear we're making good time.”

“It would seem so,” she replied, taking a bite from the bar and dropping the wrapper into the disposal. “Aaron has a good course laid in, and Dani's program has the engines running at peak efficiency, so we're looking at a delay of four to five days instead of seven. I'm headed up there now to check for any changes.”

He nodded. “The engines seem to be handling the new program well, so I'm happy. But it'll be nice to get to Cybele and get a fresh start, this first leg has been a little rough.”

Jass swallowed the last of the protein bar. “Ugh, don't remind me. Only a few more days, though. I'll let you know when we have a firm arrival time. Keep those engines running!”

She pulled herself out of the galley and went hand-over-hand up the corridor to the main cabin. When she arrived, Dani and Kristin were talking quietly and waved to her.

“Did you see Martina, Kristin? Were you able to find out what was wrong?” Jass sat at her console and began to go over the latest reports.

“Yeah, I did. I tell you, this whole intern thing was a bad idea. Think we can get the investors to change their minds for the next trip?” Kristin's dark rough-edged hair was held away from her face by a purple bandanna, and she adjusted it slightly.

“What did you find out?”

Kristin leaned against the console, looking out at the star field in the front window. “Well, in the first place, our little intern seems to have had a thing for our scientist.”

Jass looked up from her reports. “Martina has a crush on Merriam? Oh hell, that's not going to end well. Were they sleeping together?”

Kristin shrugged. “She wouldn't tell me, but knowing him, it's likely. You really think he'd turn down the chance to get with any girl?”

“Ugh. I'm going to wring his scrawny little neck. She's nineteen!”

“Which, in this case, makes her an adult.”

Jass sat back in her seat and looked at Kristin. “Ok, so she's being stupid and he's taking advantage of it. Why was she so upset this morning?”

“Oh, it gets better. You saw that dark-haired girl from the Pequod crew who came aboard in tears, looking for someone to rescue her?”

“Please tell me he didn't.”

Kristin nodded. “Apparently, Merriam was more than happy to offer overnight counseling services. And Martina found out. Walked in on them, apparently. Seems our scientist was too preoccupied to lock the door behind him.”

Jass groaned, and turned away from her console. “I'm going to have to talk to both of them. We need everyone working at their peak, not distracted by hormones. How are our stores of suppressants in the med lab?”

“Should be near full.” Kristin punched a few commands into her computer and nodded. “Yeah, looks like only five have been listed as used. There's plenty.”

“I'll pick some up and make sure they use them.” She sighed. “Were we this stupid and crazy at nineteen, Kristin?”

The other girl smiled. “I think we were stupid in our own ways. Quitting school, for one thing. Just because we weren't stupid about guys doesn't mean we weren't stupid.”

“Ok, so that may not have been the smartest thing we ever did. But I can't shake the feeling that there's a difference. I mean, our stupidity had a purpose to it. I quit because I wanted to learn something I wasn't getting in a classroom. You quit because you'd already figured out what you wanted and how to get it.” Jass typed a command into the console and brought up the personnel record for Martina Olleson. “She doesn't seem to be learning anything, or even to want anything. I can't figure her out.”

“Maybe that's not your job.” Kristin sat in an empty chair and looked at Jass. “You're her boss, not her guidance counselor. Give her some hormone suppressants so she can do her job, fine. But her college stuff is her business. If she really doesn't want anything, you can't force that on her. She's not you or me, or anyone else. It's her first real trip off-world. She's going to make some mistakes, and they may be painful ones, but she has to be the one to make them.”

“I know, I know. It's just hard to see someone so young wasting an opportunity. It's infuriating.” She closed the personnel screen, and went back to reading the reports.

Jass banged on the metal door of one of the crew compartments and heard a muffled shriek inside. She smiled wryly. She had been correct, then. Merriam wasn't in the science lab, nor was he in the main cabin or any other part of the ship. It had been a simple matter to check and see which compartment had been assigned to the dark-haired girl from the Pequod.

A shaky female voice came from the room. “Who is it?”

“This is Captain Jass Stewart, and Merriam Stone, if you value your job, you will open this door in the next ten seconds.”

She was rewarded with the sound of a male voice swearing, and the sound of clattering inside the compartment. Approximately nine seconds later, the door opened. Merriam stuck his head into the corridor.

“What?”

Jass grabbed his hand and slapped a thin packet into it. “Hormone suppressants. If you can't think straight enough to do your job, I expect you to use them.” She glanced into the compartment beyond him and could see the girl struggling to slip into her clothes. “As long as you're getting your work done, I don't really care what—or who—you do. But hell, Merriam, you're thirty-two. You couldn't find someone your own age?”

She moved down the corridor, but Merriam shouted after her, “You can't make me take these!”

“You're on shift in the main cabin in twenty minutes,” she called over her shoulder. “If you miss it, I'll make sure they end up in your food. Get your shit together.”

She found Martina checking the cargo that the Pequod would need to offload on the Cybele colony. The girl was still sniffling and stopped to wipe her eyes from time to time.

“Martina.”

The girl turned around rapidly, trying to hide the signs of her distress. “Oh, I was just finishing up here, I'm sorry I'm going slower than I thought...”

“Don't bother to explain, I heard what happened.”

“Oh.”

Jass floated closer and held out a package of pills. “Relax, I'm your boss, not your mother. I don't care who you're sleeping with or not sleeping with as long as your job gets done. But these can make some of the urges a little easier to deal with. I'm not going to order you to take them unless this starts to have an impact on your work.”

Martina took the pills listlessly and put them in her pocket. “I can handle it on my own.”

“Wasn't questioning that. In fact, I highly recommend that you do just that. But let me give a little piece of advice.” She leaned in closer to the younger woman. “Don't get involved with anyone on board a deep space ship. It's never pretty, and it almost always ends badly. Besides, if you're going to hook up with someone, did it have to be Merriam? He's thirteen years older than you, and a whiner at that. If you really can't go without sex for nine months, at least pick one of the nicer guys.”

The intern's face flamed red, and she didn't look up from her checklist. Jass sighed and left the cargo bay. Offloading at Cybele couldn't come soon enough.