When the ship being under power forced a long downtime, intraship messages flew through the system— Hi, how was your stay? Missed you last night, saw a vid you’d like, found this great restaurant …

There wasn’t so much of the interpersonal chatter at Voyager. It mostly ran: I’m dead, I’ve got frostbite, I’m getting too old for this, and, I saw vids I haven’t seen in twenty years. You know they’ve got stuff straight from the last century ? At the same time, and more useful, various department heads, also idle but for the easy reach of a handheld, put their gripe lists through channels. It was a compendium of the ship’s small disasters and suggestions, like the suggestion that the long Services shutdown was going to mean no clean towels and people should hang the others carefully and let them dry.

There was one from Molly, down in cargo. JR: thought you should know. Chad and Fletcher had an argument during burn-prep. Jeremy broke it up, on grounds of ship safety. Chad accused Fletcher in the downer artifact business. Fletcher objected. All involved went to quarters for takehold. For your information .

There were six others, of similar content, one that cited the specifics of things said and added the information that it was not just Jeremy, Fletcher, and Chad, but that Sue and Connor had been there.

That built a larger picture.

There was a note from Lyra that said she’d heard from Jeff about the near-fight, but not containing the detail about Connor and Sue.

There was, significantly, no note from any of the alleged participants, and most significantly, there was none from Jeremy, who was supposed to report any problem with Fletcher directly to him.

The artifact matter was back on his section of the deck. They hadn’t time before Esperance to do another search; and the senior staff and particularly the Old Man were going to hear about the encounter, and worry about it. And that made him angry and a little desperate.

He sent back down to Lyra: The encounter between Chad and Fletcher. Who started it ?

Lyra answered, realtime: My informant didn’t say. It was in the mess hall entry, a lot of witnesses. I could venture a guess .

Don’t guess , he sent back, trying to reason with his own inclination to be mad at Fletcher for pushing it; and mad at his own junior-crew hotheads for pushing Fletcher. He didn’t know the facts, Lyra didn’t know, and the facts of a specific encounter coming from scattered reports didn’t mass enough information on the problems on A deck in general. He wished he could go to voice, for a multiple conference with Bucklin and Lyra, to see whether three heads could make any better sense of the situation with the junior crew; but ops kept jealous monopoly over the audio channels during a yellow alert, and that would be the condition until Esperance.

He keyed a query to Bucklin, instead, fired him the last five minutes’ autosave and beeped him. For Lyra:

I want you to tag Fletcher. This says nothing about my estimation of who’s in the wrong in the encounter. There’re just too many on the other side for any one person to track . He sent the I’m not happy sign, older than the Hinder Stars.

Lyra echoed it. So did Bucklin. He, Lyra, and Bucklin owned handhelds, with all the access into Finity systems that went with it; and all the accessibility of senior staff to their transmissions. Nothing in Finity command was walled off from anybody at a higher level, and there wasn’t anybody at a lower level than the juniors were. He couldn’t even discuss the theft without the chance of some senior intercepting what was going on—and he didn’t want the recurrence of the matter racketing up to the Old Man’s attention. That he couldn’t find a solution was more than frustrating: it was approaching desperation to get at the truth—and the culprit wasn’t talking.

I’m coming down there for mess , he said. It was his option, whether to be on A deck or B, and right now it sounded like a good idea to get down there as soon as the engines shut down and crew began to move about.

We could confine junior crew to quarters , Bucklin sent back.

It was certainly an idea. There was no reason junior crew had to move about during their jump-prep inertial glide. Services were shut down. There was no work to be done.

It would at least let us get clear of system , Lyra sent.

It let them keep status quo with the juniors, as far as the mass-point—where, the Old Man had warned them, senior crew might need their wits about them, with no distractions.

Good idea , he said to Lyra’s suggestion, and this time did key up the voice function, going onto intercom to every junior-assigned cabin with an official order. “This is JR,” he said. “This is a change in instructions…”

“… Junior crew is to stay in quarters until further notice. Junior officers will deliver meals to junior crew at the rest break, and I suggest you spend the time reviewing safety procedures. If you have any special needs due to the change of arrangements please indicate them to junior staff, and we will take care of them .”

“I think JR found out,” Jeremy said from the upper bunk, the ship continuing under hard push.

“Nothing happened, for God’s sake!”

“I told you!” drifted down from the bunk above.

“You told me, hell!” He recalled he was supposed to be the senior in the arrangement, and shut up, glumly so. He wished they’d get rec. Jeremy was hyped and nervous, swinging his foot over the edge with an energy he hadn’t complained of yet, but he’d been on the verge.

“You just tell them shut up, is all,” Jeremy said.

“Oh, that’d do a lot of good.”

“Well, it’s better than staring at them. They don’t like staring.”

“I don’t care what they don’t like.” He had a printout in his lap and he dragged a knee up to prop it against the force that made the page bend. “I’m reading, anyway.”

“What are you reading?”

“Physics for the hopeless,” he said. It was the manual, the long version, in the section on yellow alert. “What do they mean ‘red takeholds’?”

“They’re painted red”

“Why?”

“So you can see them. They’re all those inset hand-grips up and down the corridors, so you don’t splat all over if we move.”

“I guessed that. What’s this red alarm?”

“The klaxon. If you hear the klaxon you grab hold where you are. If it’s just a bell you have time to run to any door and bunk down, two to a bunk, or you get in the shower. If you’re carrying anything you throw it in the shower and shut the door.”

It was in the print, clearer with Jeremy’s condensed version.

“Why the shower?” Then the answer dawned on him, and he said, in unison with Jeremy: “Smaller space.”

“So you don’t fall as far,” Jeremy added cheerfully. “A meter’s better than three meters.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“Stuck it out in the shower? Yeah. One time JR and Bucklin had six in their quarters, one in each bunk, three in the shower.”

“Counting them.”

“No, Lyra and Toby snugged up on the bunk base and Toby broke his nose. Everybody was coming back from mess and the take hold sounded, and I bunked down with Angie.”

“Who’s Angie?”

“She kind of took care of me,” Jeremy said. Then added, in a slightly quieter voice: “She died.”

He’d walked into it. Damn, he thought. “I’m sorry.”

“Lot of people died,” Jeremy said. And then added with a shaky sigh: “I’m kind of tired of people dying, you know?”

What did you say? “Maybe that’s past,” he offered, best hope he could think of. “Maybe if the ship’s gone to trading for a living, then things can settle down.”