Starborne

Again, silence. There is no clearly apparent consensus candidate and they all know it. They have all become accustomed to the captaincy of the incumbent in these eleven months; he seems well fitted to the role, and it seems a useful employment of his strange restless intensity. Many have voiced the hope that he will simply remain in office, which would spare the rest of them the bother of having to do the job and also keep him safely busy. Which is why discussions of the upcoming expiration of the year-captain’s term have been few and far between, and why this one has rapidly petered out.

Huw says, “If we may return to the question of the makeup of the landing party now—”

“Play your stone, Huw,” Leon grunts.

Huw flamboyantly sweeps a black stone out of the pile of loose ones and slaps it almost without looking against the board, capturing a little group of Leon’s that evidently had been left undefended for some time now. Leon gasps in surprise. Huw says, addressing the others, “The exploration team ought to consist, I would think, of three people, no more, no less. Obviously we can’t send one person down alone, and two is probably too few to deal with the risks that might arise. On the other hand, we mustn’t risk any big percentage of our total complement in any landing. Three is probably the right number.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?” Leon says sourly.

Huw ignores him. “The ideal exploration party, it seems to me, would include one biologist, one planetographer, and, of course, one man to operate and do necessary maintenance work on the vehicle the party uses. The year-captain is the expert on alien biologies: he’s an obvious choice, though we could send Giovanna or even Elizabeth if for some reason the year-captain can’t or won’t go. As for the planetographer—”

“I don’t think we should let any women be part of the group,” Paco says firmly.

The unexpected remark cuts across Huw’s line of discourse so completely that Huw falls silent and his mouth gapes open two or three times, fishlike. Everyone turns to stare at Paco. He is beaming in a very self-satisfied way, as though he has just demonstrated the existence of a fourth law of thermodynamics.

There are four women in the lounge: Julia, Innelda, Giovanna, Sylvia. Julia and Innelda and Giovanna seem too astonished to reply. It is Sylvia, finally, who speaks up. “Bravo, Paco! What a marvelously medieval idea! The bold, brave knights go forth to check out the country of the dragons, and the ladies stay home in the castle. Is that it?”

Paco’s self-congratulatory glow dims. He gives her a surly look.

“That’s not what I mean at all,” he says.

“No?”

“No. It’s purely a matter of genetic diversity, don’t you see?” The room has become very quiet. Paco hunches forward and begins to count off points on his fingers. “Look. We have twenty-five live wombs on board, to put matters in the most basic possible way. Twenty-five walking ovum banks, twenty-five potential carriers of fetuses. That is to say, we’ve got only you twenty-five women available among ourselves with which to get the population of New Earth started. There’s plenty of sperm available around here, you know. One man could fertilize a whole army of women, if necessary. It’s potential mothers who are scarce, and we don’t want to make them any scarcer. Each woman on board represents an irreplaceable four percent of all the women well be bringing to the new world. Each of you is an irreplaceable pool of genetic information, in other words. And an instrument of embryo nurture. The chance of losing even one of you on a risky exploration mission is too big a gamble to take. Q.E.D.”

Innelda and Julia and Giovanna begin to speak all at once. But it is Sylvia’s light, clear voice that carries through the hubbub:

“You’re an idiot, Paco. One live womb more or less, as you so prettily put it, one instrument of embryo nurture, won’t make any statistical difference in the long run. The handful of fertile men and women aboard this ship aren’t going to be a significant factor in populating New Earth, and you know it. What really matters is the gene bank downstairs and theex utero genetic machinery. We’ve got barrels of fertile ova stored safely away down there. And plenty of sperm too, thank you. That’s where the genetic diversity of New Earth is going to come from, not from us. Naturally we don’t want to lose any members of the expedition, but to claim that the women of the voyage are such sacred and special carriers of life that it’s folly to risk them in a planetside mission is nonsense, Paco, downright stupid nonsense!”

“So you’ll volunteer for the first landing, then?” Paco asks her.