Seed of Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

got command of Venturer Twelve, he had needed her. But now he kept his distance, and they were nothing more than commander and second in command. For him, at least, it was over. Now he worked constantly, never relaxing, maintaining the impenetrable shield of efficiency, giving no hint of the humanity that must lie beneath that hard carapace. And yet...
    She said, aware of the touch of tenderness in her voice: "You will look in on Maseba tomoitow?"
    He nodded, without looking at her, and she realized that she had failed again to make contact She saluted formally and left.
    Back in her own quarters, she showered luxuriously until the water conservation buzzer sounded, then changed into a soft, one-piece zipsuit. She rang, and a moment later P.O. Dockridge thrust his terrier head round the. door.
    "Yes, ma'am?" Dockridge was over-age, and with his unsatisfactorily mended leg should not have been in the crew; but Bruce had asked for him, so the regulations were bent a little.
    "Two whole-wheat and ham sandwiches—and coffee."
    Dockridge screwed up his face. 'They'll have to be taken off your real-food ration, ma'am."
    "So take them. Leave them by the door, will you?"
    "Yes, ma'am." And Dockridge was gone.
    A moment later there came another knock. This one she had been expecting. Sergei Kuznetsov looked round the door, beamed, came in and filled the cabin.
    "Ah!" He smelled of fresh pine, and his great chest swelled inside his off-duty zipsuit. He sat beside her, and, like a conjuror, produced a plastic bottle of colorless liquid. "See? Vodka!" His eyes shone with pleasure and anticipation.
    "Sergei, where did you get it? What about Corps regs?"
    When Kuznetsov shrugged it was like a small earthquake. "So? Maseba brews himself arak. And me—I was supervising engineer on the Wangituru job. Captain Sikorski is from Magnitogorsk; I am from Magnitogorsk. I should miss such an opportunity!"
    She watched as the enormous man poured her a drink. They toasted each other, and as she sipped it, she sadly reflected that at least, with him, she could find relief and comfort of a kind.
    But only of a kind.

    Two themes of conversation were traditional during a junior officers' mess meal aboard a Corps ship in deep space, and both of them were treated as equally suitable subjects for obscene variations on a number of standard joke patterns. Piet Huygens remembered reading a doctoral thesis in psychiatry during his college days on the subject which went to great lengths to show reasons for the lack of originality in subject matter and form during such conversations, and to explain why novelty in any respect was by some tacit agreement considered tabu. Basically, the writer argued, the stereotyped to-and-fro of such mess conversation was an automatic response on the part of the human beings concerned to their environment. Protected from the incomprehensible, whirling horror of sub-space by only the hull of a ship, aware of the puny insignificance of his physical presence in a totally alien environment, a man—or woman—reacted defensively by exhibiting
    this obsessional preoccupation with two natural and ever-present functions of the human body, food and sex. Thus boredom was, in a sense, used as a protection against fear, and assiduously pursued by even the most intelligent members of the group.
    At the present moment, as Piet Huygens sat picking at the combination of processed plankton steak and freeze-dried vegetables that constituted his meal, he was aware that the conversations on either side of him were progressing in a depressingly normal manner. To his left a couple of junior-grade engineering lieutenants were speculating on the sexual adventures which they, as Corps officers, were likely to enjoy during the stopover on Kepler III; and on his right, Lieutenant Quat, a very senior quartermaster, was holding forth to the table in general on the revolting nature of a particular type of recycled protein which was no longer used aboard Corps