The day-by-day running of the ship had been planned with great care, and--theoretically at least---Dhala and Quarlos knew what they'd be doing at every moment of the 24 hours. They opted on a 12-hours on, 12-hours-off basis, taking charge alternately, and never being both asleep at the same time. The officer on duty remained on the Control Deck, while his deputy saw to the general housekeeping, inspected the ship, coped with the odd jobs that constantly arose, or relaxed in his cubicle.390Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo9CgE2OoQq
Although Dhala was nominal Captain on this leg of the mission, no outside observer could have deduced the fact. He and Quarlos switched roles, rank, and responsibilities completely every 12 hours. This kept them both at peak training, minimized the chances of friction, and helped toward the goal of 100% redundancy.
Dhala's day started at 0600, ships time---the Universal Ephemeris Time of the astronomer. If he was late, H.A.L had a variety of beeps and chimes to remind him of his duty, but they had never been used. As a test, Quarlos had once switched off the alarm; Dhala had still risen automatically at the correct time.
His first official set of the day would be to advance the Master Hibernaculum Timer twelve hours. If this operation was missed twice in a row, H.A.L. would assume that both he and Quarlos had been incapacitated, and would take the necessary emergency action.
Dhala would attend to his toilet, and do his isometric exercises, before settling down to breakfast and the morning's radio-fax edition of the World Times. On Earth, he never read the paper as carefully as he did now, even the smallest items of society gossip, the most fleeting political rumors, seemed of absorbing interest as it flashed across the screen.
At 0700 he would officially relieve Quarlos on the Control Deck, bringing him a squeeze-tube of coffee from the kitchen. If (and this was par for the course) there was nothing to report and no action to be taken, he would settled down to check all the instrument readings, and would run through a series of texts designed to spot possible malfunctions. By 1000 this would be completed, and he would start on a study period.
Dhala had been a student for more than half his life; he would continue to be one until he retired. Thanks to the 20th-century revolution in training and information-handling techniques, he already possessed the equivalent of 2 or 3 college educations--and, what was more, he could remember 90% of what he had learned.
50 years ago, he would have been considered a specialist in applied astronomy, cybernetics, and space propulsion systems---yet he was prone to deny, with righteous indignation, that he was a specialist at all. Dhala had never found it possible to focus his interest exclusively on any subject; despite the dark warnings of his instructors, he had insisted on taking his Master's degree in General Astronautics---a course with a vague and wooly syllabus, designed for those whose IQs were in the low 130s and who would never reach the top ranks of their profession.
His decision had been correct; that very refusal to specialize had made him uniquely qualified for his present task. In much the same way Antonio Quadros (who sometimes disparagingly called himself "General Practitioner in space biology") had been an ideal choice as his deputy. The two of them, with (if need be) help from H.A.L's vast information stores, could cope with any problems likely to come up during the voyage---so long as they kept their minds alert and receptive, and continually reengraved old memory patterns.
So for two hours, from 1000 to 1200, Dhala would engage in a dialogue with an electronic tutor, checking his general knowledge or absorbing material specific to this mission. He would prowl endlessly over ship's plans, circuit diagrams, and voyage profiles, or would try to assimilate all that
all that was known about Jupiter, Saturn, and their far-ranging families of moons.
At midday, he would retire to the galley and leave the ship to H.A.L. while he prepared his lunch. Even here, he was still fully in touch with events, for the tiny lounge-cum-dining room contained a duplicate of the Situation Display Panel, and H.A.L. could call him at a moment's notice. Quarlos would join him for this meal, before retiring for his 6-hour sleep period, and usually they would watch one of the regular TV programs beamed to them from Earth.
Their menus had been planned with as much care as any part of the mission. The food, most of it freeze-dried, was uniformly excellent, and had been chosen for the minimum of trouble. Packets had merely to be opened and popped into the tiny auto-galley, which beeped for attention when the job was finished. They could enjoy what tasted like---and equally important, looked like---fruit juice, cheese (any kind), steaks, pork, roasts, manioc, fresh vegetables, assorted fruits, ice cream, and even cornbread.
After lunch, from 1300 to 1600 Dhala would make a slow and careful tour of the ship---or such part of it as was accessible. Pesquisador measured almost four hundred feet from end to end, but the little universe occupied by her crew lay solely within the 40-foot sphere of the pressure hull.
Here were all the life-support systems and the Control Deck which was the nerve center of the ship. Below this was a small "space-garage" fitted with three airlocks, through which powered capsules, just large enough to hold one man, could sail out into the void if the need arose for extravehicular activity.
The equatorial region of the pressure sphere---the slice, so to speak, from Capricorn to Cancer---enclosed a slowly spinning drum, 35 feet in diameter. As it made one revolution per ten seconds, this carousel or centrifuge produced an artificial gravity equal to that of the Moon. This was sufficient to prevent the physical atrophy which would result from the total absence of weight, and it also allowed the routine functions of living to be carried out under normal---or nearly normal---conditions.
The carousel therefore contained the kitchen, dining, watching, and toilet facilities. Only here was it safe to prepare and handle hot drinks---quite dangerous in weightless conditions, where one can be badly burned by floating globes of boiling water. The problem of shaving was also solved; there would be no weightless bristles drifting around to threaten electrical equipment and produce a health risk.
Around the carousel's rim were five little cubicles, fitted out by each astronauta according to taste and containing his personal belongings. Only Dhala's and Quarlos's were now being used, while the future occupants of the other three cabins reposed in their hi-tech sarcophagi next door.
if necessary, the carousel's spin could be stopped. When this happened, its angular momentum had to be stored in a flywheel, then switched back again when rotation was resumed. Normally it was left running at constant speed, as it was easy enough to enter the big, slowly turning drum by going hand-over-hand along a pole through the zero-gee region at its center. Transferring to the moving section was just as easy and automatic (you needed to get the knack, of course) as stepping onto a moving escalator.
The spherical pressure hull formed the head of a flimsy, arrow-shaped structure more than 100 yards long. Pesquisador, like all vehicles designed for deepspace penetration, was too fragile and unstreamlined ever to enter an atmosphere, or to defy the full gravitational field of any planet. She had been assembled around the Earth, tested on a translunar maiden flight, and finally checked out in orbit above the Moon.
She was a creature of outer space---and she looked it. Immediately behind the pressure hull was grouped a cluster of four large liquid hydrogen tanks---and beyond them, forming a long, slender V were the radiating fins that dissipated the waste heat of the nuclear reactor. Veined with a delicate tracery of pipes for the cooling fluid, they looked like the wings of some vast dragonfly, and from certain angles gave Pesquisador a vague resemblance to Vasco da Gama's famous sailing ship, the São Gabriel.390Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxaWvB298fd
At the very end of the V, 300 feet from the crew-compartment, was the shielded inferno of the reactor, and the complex of focusing electrodes through which emerged the incandescent star-stuff of the plasma drive. This had done its work weeks ago, forcing Pesquisador out of her parking orbit around the Moon. Now the reactor was merely ticking over as it generated electrical power for the ship's services, and the great radiating fins, that would glow cherry red when Pesquisador was accelerating under maximum thrust, were dark and cool.
Although it would not require an excursion out into space to examine this region of the ship, there were instruments and remote TV cameras which gave a full report on conditions here. Dhala now felt that he knew intimately every square foot of radiator, panels, and every piece of plumbing associated with them.
By 1600, he would have finished his inspection, and would make a detailed verbal report to Space Central, talking until the acknowledgment arrived. Then he would switch off his own transmitter, listen to what Earth had to say, and send back his reply to any queries. At 1800 hours, Quarlos would awaken, and he would hand over command. He would then have six off-duty hours, to use as his pleased. Sometimes he would continue his studies, or listen to music, or look at movies. Much of the time he would wander at will through the ship's inexhaustible electronic library. He had become fascinated by the great explorations of the past--understandably enough, in the circumstances. Sometimes he would cruise with Pytheas out of the Pillars of Hercules, along the coast of a Europe barely out of the Stone Age, and venture almost to the chilly mists of the Arctic. Or, 2,000 years later, he would pursue the Manila galleons with Anson, sail with Cook along the unknown hazards of the Great Barrier Reef, achieve with Magellan the first circumnavigation of the globe. And he began to read the Odyssey, which of all books spoke to him most vividly across the gulf of time.
For relaxation he could always engage H.A.L. in a big number of semi-mathematical games, including checkers, chess, and polyominoes. If H.A.L. went all out, he could win any one of them, but that would be bad for morale. So he'd been programmed to win only 50% of the time, and his human partners feigned ignorance of this.
The final hours of Dhala's day were devoted to general cleaning up and odd jobs, followed by supper at 2000 - again with Quarlos. Then there would be an hour during which he'd make or receive any personal call from Earth.
Just like all his colleagues, Dhala was a single man; it was unfair to send family men on a mission of such duration, although numerous ladies had promised to wait until the expedition returned, none had truly believed it. At first, both Dhala and Quarlos had been making rather intimate personal calls once a week, although the knowledge that many ears must be listening at the Earth end of the circuit tended to prohibit that. Yet already, although the voyage had barely begun, the warmth and frequency of the conversations with their senhoras on Earth had begun to diminish. This was to be expected this, for it was one of the penalties of the astronauta lifestyle, as it had once been that of the sailor's.
It was true (notorious, really) that seamen had compensations at other ports; unfortunately there were no tropical islands full of dusky maids beyond the orbit of Earth. The space medics, of course, had tackled this malady with their usual enthusiasm; they ship's pharmacopeia provided adequate, though not glamorous, substitutes.390Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE6m0FZUeL3
Just before he signed off Dhala would make his last report, and check that H.A.L. had transmitted all the instrumentation tapes for the day's run. Then, if he felt like it, he'd spend two hours either reading or looking at a movie; and at midnight he'd go to sleep---usually without any help from electronarcosis. Quarlos's program was a mirror image of his own, and the two schedules dovetailed together without friction. 390Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU3TFTnpghv
Both men were fully occupied, they were too intelligent and well-adjusted to quarrel, and the voyage had settled down to a comfortable, utterly uneventful routine, the passage of time marked only by the changing numbers on the digital clocks.
The greatest hope of Pesquisador 's little crew was that nothing would mar this peaceful monotony in the weeks and months that lay ahead.390Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡweEDDnPNED
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