As we flew onward, we adapted to shipboard
life once again (sorry, Nick—spaceshipboard life once again). It was a totally
different ship, of course, but onboard life was basically the same. Mel and I
spent a lot of our time studying the textbooks about animal husbandry and gardening
that we had brought with us for the journey, relearning the stuff we needed to
know for when we got back. When we weren’t doing that, we worked out in the gym
to keep ourselves in condition. I regularly visited the bridge, but unlike on
the Albatross, I didn’t tarry there
for terribly long when I did, as it wasn’t really required.
I was sure that the ship knew where it was
going better than I did, so I just checked the monitors for flight status and
systems conditions. This was made extremely difficult by the fact that I didn’t
understand the Martian language. I did, however, figure out that if all the
readouts on the monitors were showing in green and nothing on the monitors was
flashing in red, we were in good shape.
We did not see much of Dick or Courtney in
the weeks that followed; they apparently found a computer or two to play with.
This was hardly surprising on a ship this large, as there were computers that
monitored all the flight systems spread throughout the ship, all of which I was
sure could access the libraries of all Martian knowledge and history. I doubt
that the fact that neither of them could speak Martian would have deterred them
at all. They were, after all, fluent in computer geek speak, which I’m sure
eventually overcomes and breaks down all language barriers relating to
computers. Anyway, they were otherwise happily engaged, so as I said, we didn’t
see much of them, which made us happy. Thus our happy band of astronauts blazed
through space toward our home planet Earth, or at least near it.
No comments:
Post a Comment