We hugged. “Don’t let her push you around.”

Stan made a petulant face, wiped it with his hand like a clown, and smiled sunnily. “I’m proud you made it, Casseia,” he said. He hugged me quickly, shook my hand, gave me a small package, and left.

I sat in a corner and opened the wrapper. Inside was a cartridge of all our blood family docs and vids. Stan had paid extra for the weight clearance of one hundred grams; the box was marked with a cargo stamp. I felt even more empty and alone.

I faced the crowded lounge with a kind of luxurious dread. The shuttle would depart in two hours. I’d be aboard the Tuamotu in less than six hours. We would rise from Mars orbit and inject Solar in less than twenty hours…

I pocketed Stan’s gift, squared my shoulders, and entered the crowd with a big, false smile.

Even at its most opulent, space travel was never comfortable. The shuttle to orbit was a rude introduction to the necessary economies of leaving a planet: shot out of your planetary goldfish bowl on a pillar of flaming hydrogen or methane, in a cylindrical cabin less than ten meters wide, everyone arranged in stacked circles with feet pointing outward, seventy passengers and two shuttle crew, losing Mars’s reassuring gentle grip and dropping endlessly…

Temp bichemistry helped. Those passengers who had installed permanent bichemistries to adapt to micro-g conditions spent the first hour in orbit asleep while the boat swung carefully to mate with Tuamotu. I had refused such a radical procedure — how often would I travel between worlds? — and chosen temp. I spent the whole time awake, feeling my body smooth over the deep uncertainty of always falling.

Some things I didn’t expect. The quick adjustments of temp bichemistry caused a kind of euphoria that was pleasant and disturbing at once. For several minutes I was incredibly randy. That passed, however, and all I felt was a steady tingle throughout my body.

Bithras and Pak-Lee had arrived at Atwood after I was seated, and were in the shuttle somewhere below me. Alice Two was in the hold in a special thinker berth.

Being away from net links was like sensory deprivation for a thinker; less than a tenth of Alice Two’s capacity would be engaged while we were in space. The bandwidth of space communication was too narrow to keep her fully linked and employed. She would not sleep, of course, but she would spend much of the journey correlating events in Earth and Martian history drawn from her large data store.

Thinkers had been known to create massive and authoritative LitVid works while in machine dream. Some said the best historians were no longer human, but I disagreed. Alice One and Alice Two seemed quite human to me. Alice even called her copy a “daughter.” I’d never worked closely with thinkers before, and I was charmed.

Sitting on my cramped couch in the dark, a projection of Mars’s orange and red surface scrolling above me, I wondered what Charles was doing now. Unlike Charles, I hadn’t yet found anyone to seriously occupy my free time. The day before launch, I had spoken with Diane, and she had asked if I looked forward to a shipboard romance. “Dust that,” I’d answered. “I’ll be a busy rabbit.”

The trip would take eight Terrestrial months, one way. Each passenger chose from three options: warm sleep with mind embedded in a sophisticated sim environment (sometimes crudely called cybernation), realtime journey, or a pre-scheduled mix of the two. Most Martians chose realtime. Most Terrestrials returning to Earth chose sims and warm sleep.

The Mars scene cut suddenly to a view of the Tuamotu in space. Booms furled, passenger cylinders hugged tightly to the hull, our home for the next eight months looked tiny against the stars. Tugs fastened helium-three fuel and water and methane mass tanks to the bow. The drive funnels flexed experimentally at the stern.

A small voice provided running commentary in one ear. Tuamotu was fifteen Earth years old, built in Earth orbit, nano maintained, veteran of five crossings, refitted before her trip to Mars, well-regarded by travel guides on Earth and Mars. She carried a crew of five: three humans, a dedicated thinker, and a slaved thinker backup.

I had a touch of tunnel fever at the thought of being shut up for so long. I had studied the ship’s layout a few hours before boarding, learning my way around the passenger cylinder, previewing shipboard routine. But I would have to overcome the conviction that there was no way out. Despite spending most of my life in tunnels and enclosed spaces, I always knew there was another tunnel, another warren, and as a last resort, I could suit and pop through a lock and go Up… luxuries not available on the Tuamotu.

I was less than comfortable with the thought of spending so many months in the company of so few. What if Bithras, Allen, and I did not get along at all?

A tiny elevator carried three passengers at a time from the primary lock down the length of the hull and debouched us into a small cabin forward of the drive shields. The steward for our cylinder — short, taut, sandy-haired and brown-skinned, male, about forty Earth years old, with sharp black eyes — greeted us formally and politely, and introduced himself as Acre — just Acre. He had the remarkable ability to change his feet into hands, and to bend his long tan legs backwards and forwards, which he demonstrated quickly and with minimal explanation. He escorted us in small groups to the secondary lock. Here, we climbed through an access pipe barely a meter wide into our cylinder, where we drifted in the observation lounge, surrounded by direct-view windows now shuttered and shielded.

The lounge had room for all of us. We crowded together waiting for instructions. Bithras headed the Jast contingent of passengers and conferred briefly with the steward before scowling and searching the crowd. His eyes met mine, the scowl reversed into a radiant smile, and he crooked his arm and waved twinkle-fingers.

The steward called my name from the access pipe. I floated forward, fumbling at the grips and bumping a few of my fellows apologetically before anchoring myself. “You’re in charge of our friend here, I understand,” he said, pushing forward Alice ’s box. Alice ’s arbeiter carriage weighed as much as she did and had not been brought along; we would rent her a carriage on Earth.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Please hold on to it while we check cabin assignments and get things organized.”

“Her, not it,” I said.

“Sorry.” He smiled. “We’ll stow her in her niche after orientation.”

I took Alice in hand and moved to the side of the lounge. She was endo not exo for the moment — her sensors and voice were inactive.

“Now that we’re all here,” the steward said, “welcome aboard Tuamotu. We’ll give out some important information and then off to your cabins to snug in.”

Bithras and Allen Pak-Lee floated beside me. “This is my second passage to Earth,” Bithras said in an undertone, “and your first, of course.”

“My first,” I affirmed.

Most Earth English accents were familiar to me from LitVid; the steward, Acre , might have been Australian, His features seemed indigene. Acre delivered the “doctro” crisply and clearly in less than five minutes. He gave us a few safety tips for the next leg of the trip — boost and solar orbit injection — and had us circle around the lounge to become familiar with weightless aids and procedures.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll discuss immunization levels and all the options available throughout the voyage. Some options are closed — all warm-sleep berths are taken for the duration. All temp berths and switchouts are closed, as well. We hope that causes no inconvenience.”

“Woe,” murmured Bithras.

Acre helped me stow Alice in her niche just forward of the lounge and showed me how to run the legally required connection checks. Bithras attended for a few minutes, applied a strip of ID tape to a seam to protect against unauthorized removal, and left the rest to Acre and me.