Without preamble, once we were all assembled and seated, David said, “This doesn’t change our situation here by all that much.”
Sheila said, “Sure it does. They might be able to take us home, or at least a couple of us and it tells us that there are people alive down there who are still interested in space travel. People who have enough time to worry about things like that.”
“If we believe them,” said David. He held up a hand to stop the protest. “Listen, the Chinese have always been suspicious of those of us in the west, not that I blame them. Our interaction with them hasn’t always been the best and our treatment of Chinese immigrants has been poor at best. Now, all of a sudden, they are open with us about their problems on their station and their facilities on the ground. They alert us that they’re up here in orbit but that they have a way to get home.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself because that was what I had been thinking. The true test of another’s intelligence is how much he agrees with your philosophy.
I said, “I think this ‘all of a sudden’ discussion with us would be the result of an impact with a meteor. That has radically altered their situation and that we, as humans, need one another to survive.”
Yeah, I know that it sounded like high school psychology, but then, it also made some sense. I had seen the experiments where the monkeys preferred the soft, bath towel wrapped artificial moms to those of wire which also held the food. I understood this human need for companionship. We were a herd species, whether we liked it or not. Well, not herd, but certainly social.
Sarah said, “I have to agree with Mike on this.”
“All I’m saying,” said David, “is that they have no reason to help us and we don’t know if they can. We have nothing to offer them.”
“What they’re telling us,” said Sheila, her voice rising, “is that there is a functioning space port still on the ground. One that we might be able to use.”
“If we had a shuttle here,” said David.
Jason spoke for the first time and I was surprised because I hadn’t really noticed him, though David had told us all to gather in the lounge.
“We are built of various pods of various shapes from various vehicles launched into orbit. Now, I haven’t really made a careful study of this, but I believe that we could adapt one or more of the pods into re-entry vehicles. I mean, it’s not as if we’re going to try to reuse them for anything else. All they have to do is survive re-entry and put us on the ground at a speed which we could survive. If there is a working space port, then it will have medical facilities so that injuries could be treated. It would have a long runway that we might be able to use. It changes things slightly.”
David shook his head. “This is ridiculous. You’re going to cobble together a vehicle for re-entry. That’s a complex task and even the best minds in the United States made errors that caused vehicles that were specifically designed for re-entry to break up and burn. Spectacularly break up and burn as we all saw on television.”
“Well,” snapped Jason, “it’s certainly better than the alternative.” He looked from face to face and added, “If no one else will say it, I will. We can’t live here forever and you know it. Our resources are finite and I don’t relish the idea of starving to death in the next couple of months. I understand it is not a pleasant way to go.”
“No one has said a word about starving to death,” said David.
Jason snorted. “We’re not stupid. We all know . . .” He waved a hand to indicate everyone, “We all know that the supplies are limited. We know the oxygen will slowly be polluted. We know that the water recycling will slowly begin to fail. We know that we have only months to live.”
The color drained from Sheila’s face as if she had never thought of this. I think she, all of us with the exception of David, had not faced the reality of our situation. We knew, in an intellectual way that our resources were limited. David and I had danced around this with his talk of vague hopes, but I don’t think we had confronted it in the way a cancer patient must face the terminal diagnosis. We were thinking in terms of getting down or of rescue though we had not thought about how to accomplish the one and who would be able to accomplish the other.
David said, “There are things we can do. But let’s not jump to conclusions here right now. Let’s think this through.”
“I’m tired of this,” said Jason. “I tired of the pretending. The Chinese might offer us a way to survive. It’s about the only hope we have.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate,” I said.
“This is not an intellectual game,” said Sarah.
I ignored her and said, “To play devil’s advocate, what if the Chinese agree but can only take two or three. Who goes and who stays?”
“Women first,” said David.
“No,” said Jason. “They get no special treatment here and now. They wanted to take the jobs of men and said they could do the jobs of men and now we’re going to give them special privilege because something dangerous has come up. No. We’re all in this together.”
“Shut up, Jason,” said Sarah with real anger. “Neither Sheila nor I asked for special privilege. And I will not accept it.”
David seemed to ignore her and said, “Sheila?”
“I am a full member of this crew and I find your suggestion offensive.”
David grinned and said, “Offensive or not, there is a practical consideration that until now was politically incorrect to address. It really has to do with reproduction and repopulation. A man can reproduce on a daily basis, if he’s young enough, virile enough and eats enough and can find enough women. A woman can’t. More women mean that the population has a better chance of survival and that might be the name of the game right now.”
“So I’m now reduced to a reproductive vessel?” said Sarah, her voice rising.
I could see this was taking a turn it didn’t need to take. I butted in and said, “This is going a little far afield given our immediate problems.”
“Shut up, Mike,” said Sarah. “I want to hear his response, if he has one.”
David said, “I was looking at this dispassionately. I was looking at it from the biological stand point and that if we, as a species, are going to survive, we need to think in terms of how we reproduce. One man can impregnate many women, but they must wait for nine months before they can reproduce again. It is a matter of numbers . . .”
“This is insulting,” said Sarah. “I’m reduced to a breeding machine for the repopulation of the Earth without anyone asking if I think it a worthy project.”
“You misunderstand,” said David. “I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort. I was suggesting that your value to the human race is higher than mine, Mike’s or Jason’s given the circumstances we find ourselves in. Value to the race for survival.”
“I don’t misunderstand,” said Sarah. “I understand perfectly. All too perfectly. We’re about to return to the dark ages where a woman is property and the man king.”
David looked at me for some help but I shook my head. “You dug this hole.”
“I was just trying to be rational,” said David, “about who would be most valuable if the Chinese offered a couple of us the opportunity to return to the surface. The women are more valuable than the men.”
“Well, how about this, smart guy?” said Sarah sarcastically. “What if there is an overabundance of women, but only a couple of men with a sperm count that would have any chance of breeding with the women? What if there was something in the asteroid or the resulting rain of debris that made it difficult if not impossible for men to reproduce as quickly and reliably as you have postulated? Wouldn’t the men then be more valuable than the women?”
“You don’t know that,” said David. “There is no evidence of that. You’re just making things up.”
Sarah was too good of a scientist to say that there was no evidence that it wasn’t the case. Instead she said, “I’m merely suggesting that repopulation isn’t all on the shoulders of the women.”
I could see that the argument was waning and I think that Sarah understood the rationale of David’s argument. She might not like it, but, the situation had changed to the point where such an argument was valid.
I said, “We’re a little ahead of ourselves here. We don’t know that the Chinese would help out. Maybe they’ll just go home and forget about us. Why risk a docking when that is unnecessary for your return? Why risk an accident?”
“Because they can’t just leave us up here to die,” said Sheila.
But I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t believe that. She knew they could and probably would leave us here to die. She was just hoping for the chance to get back home, though home probably didn’t exist and life on Earth was going to be very tough for those down there. But then, it would be life, no matter how tough.
Jason finally said, “I suggest we just draw numbers. Number one gets the first seat offered and number five gets the last. If we get two, then one and two get to go. And if we get nothing, well, we’ve ended the argument here and now and that is worth something.”
I said nothing as they prepared the numbers and put them into a small cargo box for us to drawn from. My luck held to its normal outstanding trend. I drew number five. Of course, I didn’t think number one would get to go anyway, but Sheila was happy with it, and this made an interesting, if useless diversion for us.