Communications and Navigation was on the sixth floor below Command and Control, the CAN under CAC. Raul sat in a COM chair, fingers flying across a virtual keyboard, speaking, pointing with his eyes, and nodding as he created a huge volume of text over twenty-eight minutes. He never took longer. His tested attention span was twenty-eight minutes. This process demanded complete concentration. As he finished, he appended the commander’s executive summary for the day and sent the traffic off to Earth. “There you go, Suresh. Eleven days of data and history so far.”
“And the note to the senator?”
“Yeah. It went in the earlier transmission with the personal stuff. This was the official packet.”
“You are very fast at this.”
“Maricia makes things efficient. She seems so laid-back, but she is incredible at creating time for fun by decreasing time burned at work.”
“Are you up for a little exercise?”
“That was the plan. Maricia is testing the bots and can’t make it. Is it just the two of us, or is Leila joining?”
“I don’t know. She seems to have a project going on that has her stumped.”
“Stumped in engineering? A faulty mop or something?”
“It has something to do with optimizing the ion engine output.”
“It seems like you would be able to figure that out in your sleep. You got your PhD when you were twenty-one?”
“Nineteen. She wants to figure this out without my help. What’s that?” Suresh pointed to a closed file on screen.
“Oh, Control sends us little advisories all the time. This is something about REAP 19.”
“Open it. What does it say?”
Raul clicked the icon and produced the brief communiqué.
REAP 19 REPORT 176, PREVIOUSLY NOT INTERPRETABLE, INDICATES THREE MALE CREW MEMBERS EXPERIENCED EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY AND VIOLENCE. BEHAVIOR NOT UNEXPECTED IN MISSIONS OF THIS LENGTH AND OUTCOME IN MINIMALLY TRAINED ASTRONAUTS.OBSERVATION ADVISED.
“Wimps,” Suresh muttered. “Mental midgets have no business up here.”
“Are you men up for a speed climb?” Cyrus asked as he entered the room.
“Not now,” Raul said. He always avoided competition, Cyrus had noted, feeling physically outmatched. “I’ve got deadlines.”
“Hey, it’s not a competition.” Cyrus lied. He thought beating the big guy would not be hard. He had a lot of weight to haul up the wall.
“Sure,” Suresh said. “We can see what Leila is up to in Engineering when we start. She excels at speed ascent.”
They took stairs down to quarters and changed clothes. Suresh checked the computer, and Leila’s locator was still in Engineering. He called her. “The king and I are coming down to enter the shaft. Want to join us for a climb?”
There was a short delay before she responded. “Hi, Suresh. I think I’ll pass for now. It looks like you are in quarters. Are you headed this way?”
“Yeah, we’ll be there in less than a minute.”
“Check. See you.”
The two men took two more flights down to the bottom floor. Cyrus activated the door to Engineering. Inside, Leila and Chen seemed deeply engaged in screens showing formulae and calculations. Suresh studied the screens for a few moments. “Optimization algorithm. How is it going?”
“Not well. We might improve performance by less than 1 percent,” Leila said. “We are running some other scenarios and parameters to see if we can get better.”
“Have you looked at boosting the voltage even higher?” Suresh asked as he looked at the data.
“We are looking at that, yes,” Leila said.
“I don’t see a second derivative of the transformer function.”
“Chen, you’ve worked up a sweat,” Cyrus observed, sensing something was not right.
“We just turned down the heat,” Chen replied. “I’m not sure why it was so hot in here.”
“I was cold this morning.” Leila glanced at Chen as she turned to Cyrus. “I turned up the heat. How are you going to climb, friction or holds?”
The shaft of the ship contained an elevator, a staircase, and several conduits for electrical, plumbing, air, and other essentials. There was an access shaft that contained rungs on one side and small nubs for climbing on the opposite wall. It was almost one meter across in the short dimension. Thus, there were three methods of ascending, the ladder, the climbing holds, or a friction climb.
“Funny,” Suresh said. “It doesn’t seem warm to me. And, to answer your question, speed using holds. Are you sure neither of you wants to climb?”
“It’s tempting,” Leila said, “but I think I’m going to work on this project for a while and hit the bike later. Go ahead.”
“I think you’re wasting your time. The engine is as efficient as it can get. I’ve been over the engineering several times.”
A short door accessed the shaft where a climbing rope dangled down the center. Harnesses were stowed in a compartment near the floor. Cyrus pulled out the gear. They each put on a harness. The rope had an auto-belay feature. There was a timer to activate at the bottom that stopped when the climber touched a knob at the top. “How about a race?” Cyrus felt confidant, since he had much less weight to haul up. “No holds, only friction first.” He challenged.
Suresh nodded then ducked through the door into the shaft. He clipped on the rope, hit the timer, and started climbing furiously. For a large man, he was fast. Cyrus looked inside to watch him ascend about fifteen meters in seconds. The competition was over to his regret.
An hour later, the two men were recovering on the second floor after a grueling workout, drinking beer. “You should be getting some good data from the telescopes and imagers at this point, Suresh.”
“The microvibrations have stopped, and the acceleration is down to just above 1 g. Image quality is quite good. We keep transmitting good data.”
“I can’t believe how fast you climb. You’re not a small guy.”
“I have done this a long time. I wonder how long this would take when we’re weightless.”
“We hibernate as soon as we’re weightless.”
“A little before, actually.” Suresh stretched and flexed.
Cyrus looked at his arms and chest. “So you like to climb with your woman?”
“Sometimes. She has a high muscle-to-mass ratio and a high percentage of fast twitch fibers.”
“Is she fast?”
“Faster than I, just barely.”
“You are a lucky man to have her. She is beautiful, athletic, and brilliant. She must be quite a wife.”
“She is a teaser.” Suresh took a long draft then exhaled as he suppressed a burp. “She had to fight off so many suitors for so long that saying no has become a habit.”
“Should a wife not serve her man, Suresh?”
“She is otherwise the model wife,” Suresh said as he regretted giving any impression that he or his life was anything but perfect.
“Women you love can be difficult to understand, even for a genius like you.”
“Women, Cy? You also have more than one?”
“Not in this life.” He chuckled then took a long pull from his frosted mug. “What did you mean by ‘also’?”
“In my culture, it is acceptable, even admirable to have more than one woman.”
“Spaniards are the greatest lovers historically, Suresh. Have you taken note of Raul and Maricia?”
“I have three wives.”
Cyrus choked and spat out some of his brew in shocked surprise. He had thought that would have been winnowed out in the psyche screening. He mopped the table with a towel. Suresh brushed scattered droplets from his forearms. “How did you do that?”
“I find them all—useful.”
“Useful.” Cyrus felt a new respect for this man. “Which of your wives do you regret leaving behind, Suresh?”
“Sari. She was the yang for Leila’s sexual yin. One woman, my friend, by millennia of experience cannot meet all the needs of a complete man.”
“Wisdom for the ages,” Cyrus said as he hoisted his mug.
They sipped beverages in the empty mess hall. The cook-bot rolled in from the galley. “Men,” he stated, “do you want more beer or advice about women?” It moved on wheels and was vaguely humanoid with a head and binocular cameras. Brushed titanium made it durable and maintenance-free. It also matched many other objects in the galley such that when it was stowed, a novice could not tell it was a robot. It had eight appendages and was nicknamed Durgon Kushman, a bastardization of an Indian goddess’s name.
“Neither. I’m full of both,” said Cyrus.
“I think you’re full of shit, that’s what I think, but, hell, I’m just a stinking galley slave. Not that you’re not a fine fellow, Officer Paria.” Today’s accent was vaguely East Coast American.
“Speech program A11 C7, 2365 World Cup Final, India versus Argentina,” Suresh said. The robot then began projecting the football game requested.
“A fan of Indian soccer,” Cyrus observed.
“Yes. One should support one’s own country, don’t you think?”
“I’m an exile. Persia is a smoldering wasteland. I usually root for the underdog.”
The conversation lasted a few more minutes until it was time to shower. The cook-bot was not through with the first half.