as the shower needled Bren’s back—a moment of blissful content in a voyage neither that blissful nor content.
And considering the call he’d just gotten in the middle of his night, he stayed, head against the wall, longer than his habit, eyes shut, letting the steam make a warm, blind cocoon around him, letting the shower run on recycle for uncounted warm minutes. Complex input was suspended, output temporarily unnecessary.
But a brain habituated to adrenaline could stand tranquility only so long before worry tunneled its way back.
What’s Jase want?—followed closely by— We’re not that far from moving—and: This could be the big move. Natural, wouldn’t it be, if that’s what the navigators are doing upthere, setting up the final move, that Jase would want to talk now?
It’s my night. He knew he’d wake me up. Jase could come here.
Couldn’t be any ship-problem, could it? Nothing mechanical. Mechanical problems surelycouldn’t be at issue.
That was it. Now he’d done it. He’d thought about the ship itself… about the frail bubble of metal and ceramics around his cabin, beyond the shower, beyond the diplomatic enclave of passengers on five-deck.
Said ship had already endured, be it centuries ago, one spectacular and notorious navigational failure, stranding the original colonial mission in the great uncharted nowhere of the universe—after which everything else had happened: escaping a nearly lethal star, reaching an inhabited planet. The survivors had built Alpha Station, in orbit about that planet—and developed a bitter rift between those who wanted to stay in space and serve the ship, and those who wanted to go down to the green planet, take their fortunes and their lives in their hands and cast their lot with the steam-age locals.
