The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [77]
He put his hands over his mouth. "Of course. It never occurred to me, but naturally—"
"It isn’t supposed to occur to you," Anne said severely. "I, on the other hand, have thought of very little else since I stopped throwing up."
THE DOCKING PROCEDURE went smoothly. D.W. and Sofia went almost directly to their quarters, having worked continually during the flight. Even Emilio and Anne were tired simply from being passengers, and despite the excitement of seeing the living quarters for the first time, neither of them protested being sent to "bed"—sleeping bags suspended in midair.
While the newcomers slept, George, Marc, Alan and Jimmy moved the last few hundred items off the docker. A lot of thought had gone into the geometry of the storage areas; it was hard to anticipate how the load would shift under acceleration. Indeed, all aspects of the living quarters had been planned for function in first weightlessness and later with a definite down, which would be aft, toward the engines, once they were fired. So everything had to be carefully secured before the first of two shakedown burns D.W. planned for the next day.
The work took hours, which was partly why Jimmy Quinn was so late waking up the next morning, but only partly. Eileen Quinn once observed that getting Jimmy up for school was more like performing a resurrection than providing a wake-up call; never a willing early riser, Jimmy hated mornings even in space. So when he floated into the common room after dealing with the aggravating complexities of weightless hygiene, he was ready to apologize for delaying the shakedown burn. To his surprise, Anne and George were still missing from breakfast, so he wasn’t the latest after all. He went about his business, silent as usual at that time of day, sucking down a tube of coffee and some lobster bisque he’d discovered in the food bins. It was only after the caffeine began to work that he realized that everyone was kind of waiting for something to happen.
He was about to ask D.W. what time the burn was scheduled for when the laughter from Anne and George’s room got noticeable and he turned to say, "What do you suppose they’re up to?" He meant it as an innocent question, but Emilio cracked up and D.W. put his hands over his face. Alan Pace was clearly trying very hard not to notice anything, but Marc was laughing and Sofia’s shoulders were shaking, although Jimmy couldn’t see her face because she’d gone off to a corner of the galley.
"What—?" he started to ask again, but now Anne was audibly convulsed and then George’s voice rang out from their cabin. "Well, sports fans, we’re talking a major disappointment here in Fantasy Land."
That set D.W. off, but Alan was still quite composed and remarked, "Ah, I expect this is a difficulty somehow attributable to Newton’s Third Law," which Jimmy, in his morning fog, had to think about for a moment before he said vaguely, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction..." And then it began to dawn on him.
"Ole George is prolly having a little trouble gettin’ a purchase," D.W. commented, which made even Alan Pace laugh. But Marc Robichaux pushed off purposefully toward a storage cabinet and floated back moments later, smiling seraphically, a middle-aged Angel Gabriel holding a two-inch-wide roll of silver adhesive tape. This he delivered by cracking open the door to Anne and George’s room and holding it inside one-handed, the way one might deliver toilet paper to a discommoded guest. Meanwhile, Karl Malden’s sonorous TV voice, marred by a slight Spanish accent, called out to them, "Duct tape! Don’t leave home without it."
Anne shrieked with laughter, but George yelled, "I don’t suppose we could get a little gravity around here?" and D.W. hollered back, "Nope. All we got is levity."
And thus began the first morning of the Jesuit mission to Rakhat.
"WELL, LADIES AND gentlemen, the Stella Maris is on her way out of the solar system," Jimmy called out from the bridge, a remarkably short time after they got under way.
A ragged cheer went up. Knobby hands