Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

There were, for example, many more women among both passengers and crew

than had originally been planned. They had been packed on board, in the

plans as well as in fact, at what had been effectively the last minute-that

is to say, when the Interstellar Expeditionary Project had been converted

into a survival armada-for the same reason that the IEP had first planned

to include women only among the officers: because they were regarded as too

rare and valuable to risk suicide. Originally, it had been very clear, the

IEP was to have been like the usual inter-

And all the Stars a Stage 93

planetary probe in this respect: something that one threw away drones on.

Jurg Wester (and where was he now? a carbonized mark among many on, the

floor of the furnace that had been Salt Flats?) bad been right about that,

as about some other things.

Because of this change in plans and procedures, the women on board the

Javelin had far less privacy than did the men, despite every attempt at

rearranging the ship, simply because there were fewer facilities of all

kinds available for them. This drawback was in addition to the fact that

there was very little privacy available for either sex, or for both as a

unit. There were few corridors anywhere in the ship; they had been torn out

Cabins, where they existed at all, simply gave on other cabins, so that in

proceeding from one task to another one was constantly forced to happen

upon and bull through the most personal kinds of scenes. This was so

commonplace that even the habit of apologizing for it was dying out, and