Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [44]
On Earth, where he had spent all but a tiny fraction of his not-quite-fifty active years, exhaustion had always been echoed in heavy-seeming limbs, and alertness in a subliminal awareness of physical power. The present dislocation was presumably mild when compared to what long-term moon-dwellers must feel, but the moon had seemed such a radically alien place that every move he made there had been tentative. Hope was not quite alien enough, at least in this sector, to overturn his ingrained expectations—whose failure had, in consequence, come to seem like a kind of betrayal.
On the surface, Matthew recalled, his weight would be 0.92 Earth-normal rather than 0.5. In theory, that ought to be a great deal more comfortable, posing problems of adaptation that were objectively trivial. But would that objective triviality be faithfully replicated in his subjective sensations? Might it not be the case that the narrowness of the difference between the new world’s surface on Earth would enhance the sensation of betrayal? And might not that too, add to the jitters that the people on the surface were feeling?
He would find out soon enough.
When two of the crew members finally did contrive to locate him, coming at him at a trot, he took due note of the fact that their first impulse, upon catching sight of him, was to reach for their guns. Only one of the two—a small, slender, short-haired woman who looked no older than eighteen or nineteen Earth-years—actually drew her weapon, but the difference was too small to be reassuring. Her companion, also a woman but considerably taller and a trifle more mature, had rested her fingers speculatively on the butt of her own weapon before deciding to leave it where it was. They both seemed very anxious, as if they expected him to charge them with waving fists.
Matthew put his hands in the air, making the gesture as theatrical as he could.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m just lost, that’s all. I’m not some alien marauder intent on taking the control room by storm.” He knew that Hope did not have a “control room” as such, or even a “bridge,” but he felt entitled to a modest theatrical license.
The woman who had drawn her gun did not return the weapon to its holster. She didn’t say anything; she was still looking at him as if he were a mad dog, utterly unpredictable as well as dangerous. The taller woman had pulled out her phone instead of her gun, but she had turned away in order to speak into it, so that Matthew could not make out what she was saying.
“Have you ever actually fired that thing?” he asked the younger one, letting his annoyance show. “If not, I’d rather you didn’t point it my way.”
“It’s non-lethal,” she retorted. Matthew took that as a no. He also took the whole charade as an indicator of the fact that Konstantin Milyukov really did have it in mind to take his renegade systems back by brutal force of arms if there seemed to be no other way. Matthew didn’t dare to assume that it couldn’t be done. The crew had been building the ship for hundreds of years—the transition from Earth’s solar system to interstellar space had been only a minor punctuation mark in the long text of that endeavor—and they must know its present physical layout far better than Shen’s people, no matter how cleverly Shen had concealed his software shock troops.
The taller woman still had her phone in her hand, and the line was presumably still open, but she had turned to face Matthew again and seemed to be waiting for him to say something more.
“I had an appointment with Professor Lityansky,” Matthew told his captors, “but I fear that I’m a little late. I’m sure he’s as anxious to