“But it is technologically feasible to turn off the drive, and to send and receive messages?”

“It is. And practically ridiculous. We won’t do it.”

Parmikan smiled his wet smile, and for once he appeared to be genuinely pleased about something.

“We will, Ms. Roker. Or rather, you will. You will turn the drive off once a day, for communication with Earth.”

He drew a yellow document from his pocket, stamped prominently with the Council seal, and handed it to me.

Not Captain Roker. Ms. Roker. It took only a few seconds to scan the paper and understand what it was. I was holding Parmikan’s appointment as captain of the Hoatzin for this mission. In all the excitement of preparing for our departure I had completely forgotten the original letter to me. An invitation to serve as crew member on the expedition, not captain. For the days before our departure I had instinctively and naturally assumed the senior position. And Lyle and Parmikan had been sly enough to go along with me, even addressing me as “Captain Roker” until we were on our way and it was too late to do anything about it.

“Well, Ms. Roker? Do you question the authority assigned by this document?”

“I question its wisdom. But I accept its validity.” I scanned down the rest of the page. Parmikan’s command extended from the time we left the Penrose Institute until the moment when we docked on our return. No loopholes. “I agree, you’re the captain. I don’t see anything here defining my duties, though, or saying that I’ll agree to them. So if you want to turn the drive off yourself, without my help…”

Stefan Parmikan said nothing, but his sliding brown eyes met mine for one triumphant split-second. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny playback unit, and turned it on.

“I’m reporting for duty right now,” said a voice. It was my own.

“For the expedition described in Professor McAndrew’s letter to you? But the mission and your role in it are not yet fully defined.” That was Dorian Jarver.

“You can define that later. I’m here, and I’m ready to start.”

There was a pause, as that section of the recording ended. Then Jarver’s voice came again: “In accordance with Captain Jean Pelham Roker’s earlier statement, this serves to define her duties on the Hoatzin mission identified as Project Missing Matter. Ms. Roker will serve as a general crew member, taking her orders and assignments from Captain Stefan Parmikan and from Senior Officer Van Lyle.”

Set-up. But my own fault completely. I had felt bad vibrations the moment I met Parmikan and Lyle. Then I had gone right ahead and ignored my own instincts. Let’s call that my third mistake.

McAndrew was climbing back in through the tiny airlock. I turned to him. “Mac, suppose we turned the drive off every day for a minute or two, long enough to send a burst mode message back to Earth. Allowing for the time we need to power the drive down and back up, how much would that add to our total trip?”

He stared at me for a moment, then his jaw dropped and his face took on a strange half-witted vacancy. That was fine. It just meant that he was off in his own world, thinking and calculating. I had given up trying to understand what went on inside McAndrew’s head when he was solving a problem. Even though what I had asked him was straightforward and I could have done the calculation myself given a little time, I would bet money that he was not using any technique I’d have chosen. As one of the Institute members told me years ago, McAndrew has a mind that sees round corners.

“Five days,” he said after a few seconds. “Of course, that’s shipboard days. Two months Terran, allowing for time squeeze.”

“Quite acceptable,” said Parmikan. “Ms. Roker, please work out the necessary arrangements and bring them to me.”

He turned and headed off for the private area of his own bunk, leaving me to fume and curse. And then, after a few minutes, to sit down and work out the best times for a regular interruption to the drive. I had to work it into other activities, so that Parmikan would make his daily call with minimum disruption to ship routine.

McAndrew came to me when I was almost finished. “Jeanie, I didn’t catch on to what he wanted when you asked me that, or I’d have said it was hard to do. You don’t have to take this sort of guff from him.”

“I do.” I picked up the results of my efforts, aware that Van Lyle had been watching me all the time I was working. “You know the first rule of space travel as well as I do: Like it or not, you can only have one captain. Parmikan is the captain of the Hoatzin.”

I carried the schedule I had generated across to Parmikan’s curtained rest area. The little private spaces allotted to each of us were intentionally set as far apart from each other as possible, around the perimeter of the living capsule. I rapped on the curtain rail. “This is my recommended schedule,” I said, when Parmikan’s head poked through. I held it out to him, but he did not take it.

“Is it a simple procedure?” he asked.

“I believe so. I’ve done my best to make it as simple as possible.”

“Good. Then you should have no trouble carrying it out. Notify me when the drive is off, and we are ready for our first communication opportunity with Terra. By then I’ll have another assignment for you.”

His head vanished back through the curtain. I had an insight into Parmikan’s style of command. He would give all the orders. I would do all the work. This was Anna Lisa Griss’s revenge for my asserting my authority over her. I would have to obey Parmikan’s every random whim for two months.

I was still naive enough to think that would be enough to satisfy her. My fourth mistake, was that? I’m beginning to lose count.

I stayed angry at being ordered around, until I remembered Lyle and Parmikan’s general ignorance of shipboard matters. Then I thought, Hey, it’s better like this. How would you feel if Parmikan took over the controls himself? And I went away to set up the program to power down the drive at regular intervals.

Except that McAndrew had heard my exchange with Parmikan, and he was feeling sorry for me. He insisted that he would do the tedious job of changing the drive program schedule. I let him. It was quite safe to do so, because Mac’s such a perfectionist on this sort of thing that he sometimes makes me feel sloppy.

But Mac is only devious in scientific matters. He didn’t catch something in the Hoatzin’s overall mission profile that I would have noticed at once.

I discovered it much later, and almost too late. Call that my fifth mistake, and let’s stop counting.

To me, the interruptions to our outward progress were a useless nuisance. I have no idea what was sent or received by Parmikan and Lyle in their daily communications. I was specifically excluded from them, and in any case Parmikan had me far too busy with a hundred other things to worry much about messages — he had an absolute genius for thinking up demeaning and pointless tasks. I do know, though, that the person sending or receiving at the other end was not Dorian Jarver. The link was set up to a location on Terra, not to the Penrose Institute.

And McAndrew, being McAndrew, contrived to turn the periods when the drive was off into an opportunity. He decided that he could use those few dead minutes every day to perform his first experiments. One morning right after breakfast I went to the rear of the living capsule to escape from Van Lyle — he, and his probing eyes, followed me everywhere. I found McAndrew sitting beside his instrument panel, frowning at the wall.

“Problems?”

He shrugged, and scratched at the back of his balding head. “I’d have said no. Everything passes the internal checks. But look at this.” He pulled up a display. “I’ve got the most sensitive mass detectors ever, lined up on our final destination. All the other instruments confirm that there’s absolutely nothing out there. But see these.”