Paul: The kamikaze thing is not going to happen. I’m the only one who could do that, and I won’t. Besides, if our intent had been to launch a huge relativistic bomb, there would be no need for a crew. One kamikaze pilot, perhaps.

Dustin: (Laughs.) Now that does make me nervous. You would need a crew, if only to keep that pilot from going mad during six years of isolation. But of course the crew wouldn’t know they were all going to die.

Paul: Are you a philosopher or a story writer?

Dustin: Sometimes the difference is moot. Are you lying? Don’t answer; we covered that one in freshman logic.

Fly-in-Amber: Are you two joking? Sometimes it’s hard to tell when humans are serious.

Dustin: Sometimes jokes are serious, Fly in-Amber.

Paul: Not this time. He’s just playing games.

Dustin: One of us is.

Snowbird: This is making my brain hurt. I have to leave.

So everyone laughed, and talked Snowbird into staying, promising that they would keep things straight. And the rest of it was pretty much a recital of what we already knew.

But no one here knows Paul as well as I do, and I know he has a deep reserve of seriousness, which sometimes frightens me. I’m a little frightened now.

A few days ago, out of the blue, before we went to sleep, he suggested that Namir, and perhaps the other two, were under orders to kill the rest of us if we tried to surrender, and use the ad Astra as a kind of 9/11 on the Others.

But a starship isn’t a jet plane. They wouldn’t know how to do it.

There’s only one person here who does.

Chapter 8 - WATER SPORTS

8

WATER SPORTS

Last night when all the humans were in bed, I walked quietly out past the hydroponics to the gym. I touched the water in the pool—it was very warm—and decided to try floating in it. See whether it indeed would give Snowbird and me some relief from all this gravity/ acceleration.

There was no easy way for a four-legged person to get in. Humans just sit on the edge and slide in. We can’t quite bend that way.

In retrospect, I realized I should have waited until at least one human was around. But there is a dignity factor about clothing, and I was not sure how to interpret it across species.