"Well, I thought it was funny, Anne," Emilio told her earnestly, as he set the table, "but I have really low standards."

From the moment the engines were fired, they had full gravity, and it very quickly seemed normal to be inside an asteroid traveling toward Alpha Centauri, no matter how crazy the idea was objectively. The only indication that they were doing anything extraordinary came from two clock-calendar readouts mounted in the common room, which George was watching with open-mouthed fascination. The ship's clock, hand-labeled US, appeared normal. The Earth-relative clock, labeled THEM, was calibrated as a function of their computed velocity.

"Look," George said. "You can see it already." The seconds were ticking by noticeably faster on the Earth clock.

"I am still confused about this," Emilio said, glancing up at the clocks as he laid out napkins that Anne and D.W. had had a big argument about several months earlier. Anne's logic was, "I refuse to spend half a year watching you guys wipe your mouths on your sleeves. There is no reason to make this trip into some kind of nasty macho endurance test. There'll be plenty of time to wallow in hardship when we get where we're going." "Table linens are a silly-ass waste of cargo capacity," had been D.W.'s counter. Finally, Sofia had pointed out that cloth napkins would weigh about eight hundred grams and weren't worth shouting about. "Coffee," Sofia said, "is worth shouting about." And, thank God, Emilio thought, the women had won that argument, too.

"The faster we go, the closer we approach the speed of light," George explained again patiently, "and the faster time will roll by on the Earth clock. At our peak velocity, halfway through the voyage, it will be our impression that one year is passing on Earth for every three days spent on the ship. Of course, on Earth, if anyone knew what we're up to, it would seem that time on the ship slowed down so that each day takes four months to pass. That's relativity for you. It depends on your point of view."

"Okay, I've got that. But why? Why does it work that way?" Emilio persisted.

"Deus vult, mes amis," Marc Robichaux called cheerfully from the galley. "God likes it that way."

"As good an answer as any, I suppose," George said.

"Praise! We require lavish praise!" Anne announced as she and Marc brought out the first meal they'd managed to cook normally in space: spaghetti with red sauce, a salad made with Wolverton veggies and reconstituted Chianti concentrate. "Oh, I am so glad we're done with weightlessness!"

"Really? I rather enjoyed zero G," Sofia said, taking a seat at the table. George leaned over to Anne and said something inaudible. Everyone smiled when she hit him.

"Only because it didn't make you sick!" Emilio retorted, ignoring the Edwardses, although Anne heard and seconded his sentiment.

"Well, that may be part of it," Sofia admitted, "but I very much liked being any height I pleased."

Walking in from the bridge right on cue, Jimmy Quinn plummeted into a chair with comic suddenness. Even sitting, he towered over her. "Sofia and I have a deal," Jimmy told them. "She doesn't say anything about basketball and I never mention miniature golf."

"Well, Miz Mendes, we may have quite a spell of zero G to look forward to," D.W. said. "You'll get another shot at bein' tall when we get where we're goin' and have to stop and look around."

"And when we reverse the engines halfway there," George pointed out. "We'll be in freefall while we come about."

"You and Anne gonna try it again?" Jimmy asked. Anne slapped him in the back of the head as she passed behind him to get the pepper from the galley. "You know, George, if you aren't going to share, it's not fair to the rest of us."

Alan Pace looked pained, but there was a chorus of hoots from the rest of them, as they settled around the table. They paused for grace and then passed the food around, laughing and ragging at one another. It was easy to feel they were all back at George and Anne's place, having dinner. Pleased at how the group was gelling, generally, D.W. listened and let the conversation drift a while, before holding up a hand. "Okay, listen up, rangers and rangerettes. Here's the ordo regularis, startin' tomorrow.»

The days were divided hour by hour. There would be free time for the four civilians, as D.W. called them, while the four Jesuits convened for the Mass, although anyone was welcome to join them. Classes were scheduled for three hours per day, nominal Sundays excepted, to give further depth to their training and maintain mental discipline, and to make sure that each crew member gained at least a passing knowledge of every other's specialty. In addition, they were each scheduled for a daily hour of physical training. "Gotta be ready for anything," said the old squadron commander. "Nobody slacks off."

There were routine maintenance operations and a rotating duty roster. There were clothes and dishes to be cleaned even in space, filters to be changed, plants and fish to be tended, hair and crumbs and unidentifiable orts to be vacuumed, even when traveling at a substantial portion of the speed of light toward God only knew what. But there would also be time for them to pursue private projects. The ship's computers contained pretty close to the sum of Western knowledge in memory and a fair bit of non-Western data as well, so there was plenty to work with. And each day after lunch, D.W. proposed, they would work together on a joint project. "I have consulted with Miz Mendes, here, on this one," he said, aiming an eye in her direction. "Father Pace is going to teach us to sing the whole of Handel's Messiah. "

"It's quite nice music," Sofia said, shrugging in response to the muted surprise around the table. "I have no objection to learning it in anticipation of the appearance of the Messiah. I simply argue that Handel was somewhat premature."

Another chorus of hoots and whistles broke out, punctuated by George's "Go get 'em, Sofia!" and Anne's blissful cry, "We've got another duelist at the table!" And D. W. Yarbrough grinned, beaming at Sofia like she was his own personal triumph. Which in some ways she was, Anne thought.

"Seriously, however, music is why we are here. The one thing we know for certain about the Singers is that they sing," Alan Pace pointed out, accurately if a trifle pedantically, trying to introduce some sort of serious discussion into the conversation. "Music may very well afford us our only means of communication."

The clink of forks and dishes became audible in the quiet, and Anne was about to say something tart when Sofia Mendes spoke.

"Oh, I shouldn't think so. Dr. Sandoz has mastered thirteen languages, six of them in the space of a little over three years," she said coolly, passing the salad to Jimmy, whose own mouth had dropped open at Pace's comment. "Would you be interested in a wager? If we make contact successfully, I am willing to bet that he'll have the basic grammar worked out in under two months." She smiled pleasantly at Pace and watched him, brows raised expectantly, as she took another bite of spaghetti.

"I'll take a piece of that action, Alan," D.W. said comfortably, looking somewhere in the vicinity of Alan Pace but quite possibly at Sofia or Emilio instead. "You lose, we can call you Al for a month."

"Ah. Stakes are too high for me," Pace said, backing down smoothly. "I stand corrected, Sandoz."

"Forget it," said Emilio a little stiffly, and he left the table carrying a plate of half-eaten food to the galley, evidently finished with his meal.

He was grateful to hear Anne pick up the conversation after he left, and put himself to work cleaning the pots. Intent on mastering his reaction, he was startled when he heard Sofia Mendes's voice behind him, and that infuriated him further.