Was that a tone of flirtation in the captain’s voice? Elena decided she must be misreading it. Social cues had probably altered a lot in the past five centuries. “What, this white jumpsuit isn’t the height of contemporary fashion?” Elena realized the front of her suit was unzipped perhaps too far for modesty, at least by the standards of her own time, but Callie hadn’t so much as glanced at her chest, so it probably wasn’t a problem. That lack of even a casual cleavage glance further weighed against the idea that Callie had been flirting. Elena felt a little spurt of disappointment at the thought. It was always nice when people you found hot found you hot back, but that was probably too much to expect in circumstances this bizarre.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Callie was saying. “Of course, this whole idea is contingent on us actually getting the bridge generator to work. Otherwise, we can’t get back wherever you came from.”

Elena sighed. “I wish I could help. The space station’s robots hooked up the device, and Sebastien was the one to activate it.”

“Our engineer, Ashok, thinks he can figure it out. You’ll meet him, and the rest of the crew, soon. It’s just Ashok, and our pilot Drake and our navigator and comms expert Janice. You already know me, and Stephen, and the computer.”

“That reminds me, I meant to ask – are AI considered, ah, people? Socially? Legally?”

“Those as sophisticated as the one on this ship, yeah. There are a lot of weak AI, expert systems really, that are optimized for one particular task – appraisals, law, finance, stuff like that. They’re not considered people. As far as we can tell they don’t have consciousness or any theory of mind. But the ones based on template minds do, and they have commensurate rights and privileges. Our computer even gets paid for running the ship, though I don’t know what he does with the lix he earns.”

“Investments and charity, mainly, and ship upgrades, since the White Raven is my body,” Shall commented.

“Except it’s my ship, so I reimburse him for those.” Callie sounded annoyed. Elena noticed that she often sounded annoyed when Shall spoke, and resolved to find out why. Elena understood the inner workings of organisms vastly better than she did the inner workings of interpersonal relationships, but if she was going on a potentially dangerous rescue mission with these people, she needed to get to know them better.

“Assuming the generator does work, when do we leave?” Elena had been doing calculations in her head, about her crew’s water and food supplies, and the numbers weren’t happy.

“We have to resupply and fuel up and make some mission-specific changes to the ship, but probably within ten or twelve hours, if all goes well. Robin can make it that long?”