Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [137]
Nancia activated her outside sensors and realized that it was almost night . . . not that the darkness made any difference to her, but her infrared sensors picked up only the outline of a human form approaching the ship; she couldn't see Daddy's face at all. And it would be rude to turn on a spotlight. Oh, well, he'd be there any minute. She opened her lower doors in silent welcome.
CenCom's voice was an irritation now, not a welcome distraction. "XN? I asked if you can lift off within two hours. Your provision list is more than adequate for a short voyage, and these pampered brats are kvetching about having to wait around on base."
"Two hours?" Nancia repeated. That wouldn't give her much time for a visit—well, be realistic; it was probably more time than Daddy could spare. But there were other problems with leaving so soon. "Are you out of your mind? I haven't even picked a brawn yet!" She intended to get to know the available brawns over the next few days before choosing a partner. The selection process was not something to be rushed through, and she certainly didn't want to waste the precious minutes of Daddy's visit choosing a brawn!
"Don't you young ships ever catch the newsbeams? I told you Vega. Remember what happened to the CR-899? Her brawn's stranded on his home planet—Vega 3.3."
"What a dreary way to name their planets," Nancia commented. "Can't they think of any nice names?"
"Vegans are . . . very logical," CenCom said. "The original group of settlers were, anyway—the ones who went out by slowship, before FTL. I gather the culture evolved to an extremely rigid form during the generations born on shipboard. They don't make a lot of allowances for human frailty, little things like names being easier to remember than strings of numbers."
"Makes no difference to me," Nancia said smugly. Her memory banks could encode and store any form of information she needed.
"You should get along just great with the Vegans," CenCom told her. "Anyway, this brawn is out in Vegan subspace, no ship, nothing in the vicinity but a couple of old FTL drones. OG Shipping ought to be able to divert their metachip drone from Nyota, but as usual, we can't contact the manager. So it's either waste months of Caleb's service term by sending him home FTL, or provide our own transport. You're it. You can drop off your friends and relations on the planets around Nyota ya Jaha—I'll transmit a databurst of your orders after we get through chatting—and then proceed to Vega 3.3 to pick up your first brawn. Very neat organization. Psych records suggest the two of you ought to make a great team."
"Oh, they do, do they?" said Nancia. She had her own opinion of the Psych branch of Central and the intrusive tests and questionnaires with which they bombarded shellpersons, and she had no intention of being hustled by Central into forgoing her right to choose a brawn just because some shelltapper in a white coat thought they knew how to pick a man for her—and because she was a convenient free ride for a brawn who'd already lost one ship. Nancia was about to turn up her beam to CenCom and favor the operator with a few choice words on the subject when she felt her visitor stepping aboard. Well, there'd be time for that argument later; she could think about it on the way out. Agreeing to transport the CR-899's stranded brawn back to Central wouldn't commit her to a permanent partnership, and when she returned from this voyage she'd have plenty of time to choose her next brawn . . . and to tell Psych what they could do with their personality profiles.
Meanwhile, her visitor had ignored the open lift doors in favor of climbing the stairs to the central cabin, taking the last steps two at a time; Daddy made a point of keeping in shape. Nancia activated her stairway sensors and speakers simultaneously.
"Daddy, how nice of you—"
But the visitor was Flix, not Daddy. At least, from what Nancia could see of his face