The loudspeaker said: “End of acceleration. Spin will be placed on the ship at once.”
But it did not happen all at once; it happened very slowly. We drifted toward one wall and slid down it toward the outer wall of the ship. That made what had been the outer wall the floor; we stood on it— and the side with the bunks on it was now a wall and the side with the TV screen on it, which had been the ceiling, was now the opposite wall. Gradually we got heavier.
Noisy was still strapped to his couch; the ship’s aide had moved the buckles so that he could not reach them himself. Now he was up against the wall, hanging on the straps like a papoose. He began to yell for us to help him down.
He was not in any danger and he could not have been too uncomfortable, for we weren’t up to a full gravity, not by a whole lot. It turned out later that the Captain had brought the spin up to one-third g and held it there, because Ganymede has one-third g. So there wasn’t any urgent need to turn Noisy loose.
Nor was there any rush to do so. We were still discussing it and some of the fellows were making comical remarks which Noisy did not appreciate when the same ship’s aide came in, unstrapped Noisy, and told all of us to follow him.
That’s how I happened to attend Captain’s mast.
“Captain’s mast” is a sort of court, like when in ancient times the lord of the countryside would sit and dispense the high and middle justice. We followed the aide, whose name was Dr. Archibald, to Captain Harkness’s cabin. There were a lot of other people waiting there in the passage outside the cabin. Presently Captain Harkness came out and Noisy was the first case.
We were all witnesses but the Captain didn’t question but a few of us; I wasn’t questioned. Dr. Archibald told about finding Noisy wandering around the ship while we were under acceleration and the Captain asked Noisy if he had heard the order to stay at his bunk?
Noisy beat around the bush a good deal and tried to spread the blame on all of us, but when the Captain pinned him down he had to admit that he had heard the order.
Captain Harkness said, “Son, you are an undisciplined lunk. I don’t know what sort of trouble you’ll run into as a colonist, but so far as my ship is concerned, you’ve had it.”
He mused for a moment, than added, “You say you did this because you were hungry?”
Noisy said yes, he hadn’t had anything since breakfast and he still hadn’t had his lunch.
“Ten days bread and water,” said the Captain. “Next case.”
Noisy looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
The next case was the same thing, but a woman-one of those large, impressive ones who run things. She had had a row with her ship’s aide and had stomped off to tell the Captain about it personally— while we were under acceleration.
Captain Harkness soon cut through the fog. “Madam,” he said, with icy dignity, “by your bull-headed stupidity you have endangered the lives of all of us. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
She started a tirade about how “rude” the aide had been to her and how she never heard of anything so preposterous in her life as this kangaroo court, and so forth, and so forth. The Captain cut her short.
“Have you ever washed dishes?” he asked.
“Why, no!”
“Well, you are going to wash dishes—for the next four hundred million miles.”
6. E = MC²
I looked up dad after they let us go. It was like finding a needle in a haystack but I kept asking and presently I found him. Molly and he had a room to themselves. Peggy was there and I thought she was rooming with them, which annoyed me some, until I saw that there were only two couches and realized that Peggy must be in a dormitory. It turned out that all the kids over eight were in dormitories.