There was not much inside them but acceleration couches and the suspended-animation pods. The couches looked safe enough, all padding, and I didn’t think anyone would venture into the pods, unless they wanted to have sex in a dark coffin full of machinery. Cat said I lacked imagination.
The fourth floor was where most of the aquaculture was, so there was theoretical danger of drowning. All the tanks were shallow enough for adults to stand in with their heads above water, but most of the children were small enough for it to be a potential hazard. All the families with children lived on the first floor, but of course the kids would be roaming everywhere. The DON’T FEED THE FISH sign gave me an idea. I found Waldo Everest, who confirmed that the fish were fed a measured amount each day, and he agreed to go along with my plan: make the children responsible for actually scattering the feed. So the aquaculture pools would be their workplace, rather than a forbidden “attractive nuisance.”
I’d never heard of that phrase until Cat used it. Describes some people well.
There were three shallow rice paddies which also were home to thousands of crayfish, not quite big enough for the menu yet. About half the floor area was given over to fast-growing grains, fish food. This floor smelled best to me, a whiff of the sea along with green growing things.
Not many safety hazards other than the fish ponds and some of the harvesting machinery. This was the stairwell where Ami fell and broke her arm, but it wasn’t uniquely dangerous.
The elevator was right across from the stairs, 120 meters away, but you couldn’t just walk across. The narrow path between the various hydroponic fields zigged and zagged. So we just walked around the sidewalk in front of the living quarters, which on this floor made up half a circumference of apartments, identical in size but with slightly different layouts.
The apartment where Marygay and I lived was right next to the elevator, a privilege of rank that was also a necessary convenience: the control room was directly overhead. I invited Cat in for tea. One apartment was as good as any other, to look over for safety hazards.
Compared to military quarters, the apartments were large. The ship was originally configured to hold 205 people, each one having one room four meters square. So our 150 were well spread out. Twenty-eight couples planned on having one or two children during the voyage, but even so, it wouldn’t be especially crowded.
It did feel claustrophobic after our big house in Paxton, with the windows looking out on forest on one side and the broad lake behind. I put holo windows of the lake on the wall of our bedroom, but was thinking we ought to reset them. It looked real but felt false.
“Fire hazard,” I said, putting the kettle on for tea. “Burn hazard, anyhow.” The two burners were induction heaters, so you’d have to be really trying, to injure yourself. “You have knives and things,” Cat said. By choice, she didn’t have a cooking area in her own place. Marygay and I had brought along enough kitchenware to cook and serve a meal for six, and a cabinet of precious spices and herbs. Up to a certain hour, by our tentative rules, you could go to the kitchen and get a meal’s worth of raw materials, rather than show up for chow and have what everyone else was having.
“They say the bathroom’s the most dangerous room in the house,” she said.
“Not much to worry about there.” We had a toilet and small sink. Each floor had a shower room and a schedule, and there was a shower by the pool on the common floor.
The teapot chimed and I poured us each a cup, and sat next to her on the couch. I looked around the room critically. “Not much to worry about anywhere. You think about accidents at home–falls, cuts, burns, exposure to dangerous substances–and most of them involve things we don’t have here.”
She nodded. “Balanced by dangers we don’t have at home. Like meteorites and life-support failures and the idea of standing on top of tonnes of antimatter.”