XXVII
Caitlin floated by herself in the common room. A handclasp on a table edge held her against air currents that made a cloud of her unbound hair. She had turned off lights, the better to see out the viewscreens. Like big windows, they gave her the encompassing universe.
In most, stars crowded as ever before, the same god-hoard of gems in a crystal-black bowl, so many that she could not see how heaven was altered; nor did the argence of the Milky Way pour through channels greatly different from those above Earth or Demeter. In one direction the T machine was visible, but barely, a needle lost among vastnesses. Chinook had moved well clear of it before assuming a stable orbit around the planet.
The strangeness stood to right and left of her. Right was the sun disc, one-sixth the width of that which shone upon her birthland. Its red glow needed no stopping down; she could look straight at it, suffer nothing but after-images, and discern a faint, ocherous corona. She found no zodiacal lens, which turned the sight doubly foreign.
Left was the giant world. The ship happened to have emerged opposite the dayside, and at her distance would need a pair of Terrestrial years to swing once around. Hence the globe stayed nearly at full phase, broad and bright enough to shine all else out of the screen which revealed it. Unaided vision noticed how spin had flattened the disc. Tones of amber shaded subtly into each other, below cloud belts that were deep or pale orange streaked by blue-green and auburn. The shadow of a moon was like the pupil of an eye. Where night sliced off a crescent, it was not wholly dark, but a faint sheen wavered.
Mingled luminances turned the room into a cavern of soft lights and lairing shadows, a place of mystery and silence.
The stillness did not break the moment Martti Leino entered. He checked his flight in the doorway when he spied Caitlin and hung for a minute, staring at the slender, frosted form, before he almost barked, “Hello.”
Tresses swirled in radiance and darkness as she pivoted on her arm. The free hand brushed a lock aside to clear sight for her. “Oh. The top of the morning to you,” she hailed, though in a hushed voice.
“Morning – well, yes, our clocks do say eight hundred – as close to a morning as we’ll ever know,” he blurted. Immediately:
“I was looking for you.”
“Were you that? Why?”
He shoved from the doorframe, arrowed across to the table, caught it and let his body stream free like hers, directly across from her. This close to him, her face was clear in the shinings from outside, while shadows brought forth the sculpturing of it. His speech stumbled: “I noticed what trouble you were having at breakfast-”
“Aye, weightlessness is grand until one must clean up and stash things, then it becomes a polka-dotted bitch.” While supplies did include plenty of squeeze-tube rations and other materials intended for these conditions, housekeeping for nine humans and a nonhuman got complicated even when the quartermaster was experienced. “Well, my ancestors outlived worse. Only think, I might have been a maidservant in a Victorian Protestant home! I’ll be learning the way of this.”
“You shouldn’t have to cope alone, now that Su will be too busy. I- I can help, Caitlin.”
“What? Will yourself not be in hourly demand?”
“No. I’ll get jobs, of course, but- Oh, true, every spaceman’s trained to assist in some kind of research, and when we’ve no proper scientists along –
Well, the studies that our best qualified people can carry out won’t need much support from me. Phil Weisenberg can generally handle the setting-up and so Side 111
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The forth. I’ve talked with him and he agrees I can probably be more useful, most of the time, helping you… if you want,” Leirio finished, dropping his glance.
“Why, that’s dear of you and I thank you.” She reached to clasp his shoulder.
“May the roads you take be always soft beneath your feet.”
“We, we have to help each other… be as kind to each other as we can,”