It was nightside here too. Even plants required that diurnal pulse. An internally illuminated yellow wall map at his left showed him his location and the best access routes out. It also showed this agrarium. The largest extrusions of the ship were monopolized for food production, but he had not entered one of these complexes for years—not since provisioning that first attempted colony on Pandora’s Black Dragon continent. Long before they had gained their Colony foothold on the Egg.

Kingston’s first big mistake.

Oakes stepped closer to the map, aware of distant movement far out in the agrarium but more interested in this symbol. He was not prepared for what the map told him. The agrarium he had entered was almost as large as the central core of the ship. It spread out, fanlike, from roots in the original hull. Ship and Colony maintenance figures he had been initialing took on a new reality here. And the map’s explanatory footnote was an exclamation point.

As Oakes looked on, the nightside shift of agrarium workers broke for their mid-meal WorShip. They did so as one and no perceptible signal passed among them, no reluctance of any sort evident. They moved together into the dim blue light of the WorShip alcove.

They believe! Oakes thought, they really believe that the ship is God!

As the shift supervisor led them in their litany, Oakes found himself washed in a sadness that came so suddenly and so hard that it held him on the verge of tears. He realized then that he envied them their faith, their small comfort of the ritual that was so much bother to him.

The supervisor, a squat, bowlegged man with dirt on his hands and knees, led them in the Chant of Sure Growth.

“Behold the bed of dirt,” and he dropped a pinch of dirt to the floor.

“And the seed asleep in it,” the crew responded, lifting their bowls and setting them down.

“Behold water,” he dribbled some from his glass.

“And the waking it brings,” they raised their glasses.

“Behold light,” he lifted his face to the U-V racks overhead.

“And the life it opens.” They spread their hands, palms up.

“Behold the fullness of the grain, the thickness of the leaf,” he spooned from the communal pot, into the bowl to his left.

“And the seed of life it plants in us,” each worker spooned a helping for the Shipman on his left.

“Behold Ship and the food Ship gives.” The supervisor sat down.

“And the joy of company to share it,” they said, and sat to eat.

Oakes turned away unnoticed.

The joy of company! he snorted to himself. If there were less company and more food there would be a damn sight more joy!

He moved along the rim of the ship’s outer hull then, raw space only a few meters away. His mind was racing.

That agrarium could feed thirty thousand people. Instead of counting people, they could count agraria and add the support figures! He knew that groundside shipments supplied eighty percent of Colony stores. Here was a key to real numbers! Why had they not seen that before?