“The danger of an Escherspace jump for us is psychological, not biological. Anything with less intelligence than, say, a dog or a monkey, just shakes off the experience and goes about its business afterward. The trouble with us is that we’d try to make sense of it.”
“How long have you known Doctor Faust?” Lamont asked, poking unenthusiastically with his fork at the multicolored cubes of food on his plate. Rosemary had been about to finish her shift when he arrived at the medical bay earlier, and she had invited him to join her for dinner in the cafeteria. It was a bit more crowded than usual, doubtless because members of the crew were stretching their schedules to get a longer look at the exquisite display outside from the wide observation window that looked out from the front of the ship.
“Why do you ask?” Rosemary countered.
The newspaperman raised his hands disarmingly, surprised at the unexpected edge of suspicion in her voice. “Just curious,” He explained. “You obviously spend a lot of time together, but occasionally I pick up on something in your exchanges that gives me, you know, an inkling.”
Rosemary nodded, apparently embarrassed by her own defensiveness. “You’re right. I was his assistant before he was asked to join the Westward project. We were in Europe, studying the long-term biological effects of the Epiphany event.”
Lamont frowned, thinking back to something she had said to him while they were riding the space lift back up from the planet the previous month. “You have seen things,” He suggested.
The young medic nodded, chewing on her lower lip rather than on the morsel of food that was speared on the fork in front of it. “United Space reckoned that his experience with the strange and unexpected would be an advantage out here.”
“Hence the antique normalization apparatus that was collecting dust, so to speak, in the storage closet.” Lamont realized.
Rosemary rolled her eyes and popped the half-cube of orange algae cake into her mouth. “Don’t get me started.”
Lamont leaned back in his chair, directing his gaze outward toward the nebulous clouds through which they were passing with deceptive languidness. He knew that they were traversing thousands of miles every second, but the pinkish point of light at the center of the clouds looked no larger than it had been earlier that day. “It’s funny,” He observed, “That the normalization technology was being experimented with long before anybody knew about Escherspace.”
The medic shrugged. “The danger of an Escherspace jump for us is psychological, not biological. We know from experiments that anything with less intelligence than, say, a dog or a monkey, just shakes off the experience and goes about its business afterward. The trouble with us is that we’d try to make sense of it.”
“Make sense of what, exactly?” Lamont asked, steepling his fingers under his nose. “That’s the part I’m not clear about. When we pass through Escherspace, what is actually happening to us at the physical level?”
Rosemary waved dismissively with her fork. “Who knows, mate? But if you’re that curious about it, we do happen to have the foremost expert on such things aboard this ship.”
“Phobos,” Lamont acknowledged. “If I ask him about it, do you think he’ll give me a straight answer?”
“The senior staff are all the same,” Rosemary shrugged. “They seem to revel in the luxury of being circumspect.” She stifled a yawn and checked her wristwatch. “Speaking of luxury, I’d better turn in. I don’t have a private suite at my disposal, and someone else is going to need my bunk in six hours.”
Next: Second Shift
Being several days behind and then binge-reading to catch up is a pleasurable experience punctuated by the pain of reaching the end.