The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [78]
"He’s been waiting for months to use that line," George snorted, watching the clocks and seeing the first discrepancies appear.
"Are we there yet?" Anne asked brightly. There were boos and groans.
"Well, I thought it was funny, Anne," Emilio told her earnestly, as he set the table, "but I have really low standards."
From the moment the engines were fired, they had full gravity, and it very quickly seemed normal to be inside an asteroid traveling toward Alpha Centauri, no matter how crazy the idea was objectively. The only indication that they were doing anything extraordinary came from two clock-calendar readouts mounted in the common room, which George was watching with open-mouthed fascination. The ship’s clock, hand-labeled US, appeared normal. The Earth-relative clock, labeled THEM, was calibrated as a function of their computed velocity.
"Look," George said. "You can see it already." The seconds were ticking by noticeably faster on the Earth clock.
"I am still confused about this," Emilio said, glancing up at the clocks as he laid out napkins that Anne and D.W. had had a big argument about several months earlier. Anne’s logic was, "I refuse to spend half a year watching you guys wipe your mouths on your sleeves. There is no reason to make this trip into some kind of nasty macho endurance test. There’ll be plenty of time to wallow in hardship when we get where we’re going." "Table linens are a silly-ass waste of cargo capacity," had been D.W.’s counter. Finally, Sofia had pointed out that cloth napkins would weigh about eight hundred grams and weren’t worth shouting about. "Coffee," Sofia said, "is worth shouting about." And, thank God, Emilio thought, the women had won that argument, too.
"The faster we go, the closer we approach the speed of light," George explained again patiently, "and the faster time will roll by on the Earth clock. At our peak velocity, halfway through the voyage, it will be our impression that one year is passing on Earth for every three days spent on the ship. Of course, on Earth, if anyone knew what we’re up to, it would seem that time on the ship slowed down so that each day takes four months to pass. That’s relativity for you. It depends on your point of view."
"Okay, I’ve got that. But why? Why does it work that way?" Emilio persisted.
"Deus vult, mes amis," Marc Robichaux called cheerfully from the galley. "God likes it that way."
"As good an answer as any, I suppose," George said.
"Praise! We require lavish praise!" Anne announced as she and Marc brought out the first meal they’d managed to cook normally in space: spaghetti with red sauce, a salad made with Wolverton veggies and reconstituted Chianti concentrate. "Oh, I am so glad we’re done with weightlessness!"
"Really? I rather enjoyed zero G," Sofia said, taking a seat at the table. George leaned over to Anne and said something inaudible. Everyone smiled when she hit him.
"Only because it didn’t make you sick!" Emilio retorted, ignoring the Edwardses, although Anne heard and seconded his sentiment.
"Well, that may be part of it," Sofia admitted, "but I very much liked being any height I pleased."
Walking in from the bridge right on cue, Jimmy Quinn plummeted into a chair with comic suddenness. Even sitting, he towered over her. "Sofia and I have a deal," Jimmy told them. "She doesn’t say anything about basketball and I never mention miniature golf."
"Well, Miz Mendes, we may have quite a spell of zero G to look forward to," D.W. said. "You’ll get another shot at bein’ tall when we get where we’re goin’ and have to stop and look around."
"And when we reverse the engines halfway there," George pointed out. "We’ll be in freefall while we come about."
"You and Anne gonna try it again?" Jimmy asked. Anne slapped him in the back of the head as she passed behind him to get the pepper from the galley. "You know, George, if you aren’t going