Project Charon 2: Originator

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Tina didn’t like leaving big tasks to the last minute—and feared that if she didn’t start on the cactuses now, they would run out of space and would have to discard them—so she started packing them up the next morning.

She took a large knife and cut off long fronds and other growths.

While piling them into a bucket to be incinerated, she wished she had time to perform DNA analysis on them. She had already done this during the journey, using the few simple tools she had: a kit from the onboard agriculture set, a program on her pocket reader and a handful of implements from the onboard “kitchen”.

Unreliable as those results were, they appeared to confirm what she already knew: some trigger had made the plants turn on their third DNA strand that produced profoundly different growths. The ones she was putting into the bin and carting off to the incinerator were different yet again.

The plants were adapting to the surrounding space incredibly fast.

She wondered if it was Gandama that had turned the plants into cactuses, because that was the best way to guarantee survival: spikes to prevent being eaten by armadillos, leafless trunks to conserve water. It confirmed observations she had made, and would be interesting to add these latest developments to the paper that was going to be published, except it was too late for that.

When she finished cutting, she had to persuade the cactuses to sit in their pots. She needed to tie them up so that the medium didn’t go floating all over the ship, and carry them up through the centre of the rotating arm into one of the cabins that was already full with far too many other supplies.

They simply had to reserve the other cabin for food and other essentials.

She floated around the cabin in zero-g, checking contents of containers to see if they really needed to be in here. For the most part, they did. During the last week of flight, they needed access to tools, spare parts for vital services, recycler filters and various cleaning products. The vacuum cleaner was definitely essential.

What was worse, they needed to build a pen in here for the geese, because she didn’t want them in the cabin with the food, and although Rasa had said they could sleep in her cabin, Tina would be sleeping in the same cabin and she didn’t want the geese in there. They never shut up.

Which meant there was less space for the cactuses, especially since the geese would probably take a bite out of them given half the chance.

And that meant she had to sort the cactuses into ones she definitely wanted to keep and ones she’d be happy to risk sticking into the cargo hold—where there was plenty of space, but it was unheated and she was afraid that the cactuses would freeze.

During all this, Finn sat at the controls. She had taught him how to operate the ship after leaving Kelso. Although he didn’t have an official licence, he had flown ships before, both inside the massive maintenance halls in the Force where he didn’t need a licence as long as he stayed inside, and when he was underage and still lived with his family.

Tina wanted someone else beside her capable of flying the ship well enough so that she didn’t need to stay on board all the time. Also so that she had a backup pilot.

After a few trips to the gym to pick up cactuses, Rex came to join Finn by sitting in the second pilot seat, and then Rasa joined them as well. Their chatter annoyed Tina.

“Come on, we have lots of work to do.”

“But mum, we’re just having a break for lunch.”

“No eating in here, if we can avoid it.”

“I’m not eating.”

“Just warning you.”

“And then you say that I’m grumpy,” Finn said.

“I’ll quit being grumpy when the work is done.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re getting to it.”

Rex and Rasa pushed off from the seats behind the pilot and floated back to the tube that went into the habitat. Tina went back to the farm.

After a couple more trips she got something to eat as well, before heading up to ask if Finn wanted something. But he wasn’t at the controls anymore.

Finn wasn’t in the living room either.

It was strange.

Tina went back into the main body of the ship and could hear the distinct sound of Rasa’s laughter, and also Finn’s voice. Then Rex gave a whoop.

What were they doing in the cargo hold? It was bitterly cold in there and they’d decided to avoid storing anything of importance there.

The cargo hold only contained the contra weights that functioned as counter-mass to stabilise any movements in the longer arm of the habitat. It also provided limited gravity, low enough to easily manoeuvre items around, but enough to keep them on the ground.

As Tina climbed out of the access hole that led into it, the pale light in the ceiling caught several glass-like objects that glittered as they flew through the air and then hit the metal deck, shattering into little pieces.

Rex called, “I win!”

Rasa laughed.

And then they fell silent, having noticed Tina.

“What’s going on?” Her breath steamed. The air was bitterly cold in this space, which they only used to store those supplies that they didn’t need in the near future.

Finn met her eyes. His cheeks were red from the cold. With his hands, he did up the fly of his pants.

Wait.

Tina looked from Finn to Rex.

When he still wore his old harness, Rex had been obsessed about being able to use the normal facilities, rather than wear a nappy, and he’d been especially obsessed with being able to piss standing up.

Then she looked at the glass-like fragments on the ground. Was that really what she thought it was? “I thought I was sharing this ship with adults and almost-adults. I can’t believe this.”

“We’ll clean everything up,” Finn said.

“You better.”

“It’s easy,” Rex said. “It’s so cold in here that the piss freezes before it hits the ground and you can just sweep it up.”

Tina snorted.

Finn said, “Come on, every boy needs to have taken part in a pissing contest at least once. It’s part of normal growing up.”

Tina had a memory of the sprawling primary school building in the small agricultural community at Tirkala where she had grown up. The complex had wide spacious classrooms with wide verandas. It also included a rickety shed made of prefab panels that were light grey, but turned dark when wet. The boys were always having “who can hit the highest” contests up the wall. One day, some bright spark even got the contestants to drink dye so that it was clear who produced which wet spot. However, he hadn’t figured that fluids take a while to go through the body, even of an eight-year-old boy, or realised that the dye wasn’t fit for human consumption, so the day ended with a couple of boys taken to hospital for participating in a pissing contest.

She’d been about to go on a rant about immaturity, but she took a deep breath instead. Everyone had been getting along very well. She was especially happy how Rex and Rasa worked together so well. And Finn was right: a pissing contest seemed to be an essential part of boyhood that Rex had never experienced.

“Just clean it up when you’re done.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to see the results of your expensive investment in my harness?” Rex said.

“If winning a pissing contest is the best you can do then I’m not sure it was such a good investment.”

“It’s a pissing contest I don’t have to do in a nappy anymore.”

Definitely worth the exorbitant price.

Tina was only half sarcastic about that.