Of course, that day might be the last day of our lives. But if so, then let it be. Whatever death is, it won’t include gravity. Or acceleration.

I could tell that the humans were disappointed, that I seemed to have learned so little about Spy and the Other-prime. Not everything I learned can be expressed in human terms, though. Can we trust them? Yes and no. Do they understand humans? Not as well as I do—but better than I do, in some large way.

Language is a hindrance. Having to write this down means leaving out much of what is important. There is nothing close to a one-to-one correspondence between my natural perceptions and this written thing, forced through the filter of human language. There are no human words, literally, for much of what Spy expressed while it was investigating ad Astra. Some basic assumptions about time and causality, for instance—I don’t know whether they are “actual,” from a human point of view, or just an alien (to them) way of expressing commonplace observations.

How could something as basic to reality as time be different for two different races? The dissimilarity must be just in the perception, or maybe expression, of reality. Time must be, independent of the creature experiencing it.

It was curious about details of your social and personal relationships. I complained that it should have been talking to Snowbird about such things; it said that it would, eventually, but it wanted to “triangulate,” a human term it had to explain to me, between its observations and mine.

This is clear now: it knows more about humans, and human nature, than I do after living side by side with you for years. The Other-prime has been observing you remotely for tens of thousands of years, though like us has only been monitoring human communication since the invention of radio.

I didn’t know this when I led Spy through the ship when it first contacted me, and if I were human I would feel embarrassed at the naive answers I gave to its calculated questions. I suppose it was satisfying its curiosity about Martians as well as humans.

Snowbird says the water is deep enough.

Chapter 8 - LOOSE CANNON

8

LOOSE CANNON

Am I the only creature aboard this boat that’s glad to have gravity back? Maybe the Jew in me needs to suffer.

I suppose one reason I like it is the aging athlete’s anxiety about keeping in shape, not slipping back. I can use the treadmill harness in zero gee and work up a sweat, pretending to run, but my legs tell me they haven’t really worked. Which is probably unscientific nonsense.

Once we started decelerating, Moonboy settled into black depression again, no surprise, and again stopped communicating. Most of us are probably relieved. He was not a wellspring of light banter during zero gee. Unless you’re amused by paranoia.