Chapter 29 Chapter Twenty-Eight
"...you've seen all the technical reports, Dimitri, so you'll understand why our morale is low. All the tests and measurements go nowhere, 'Rangodak' remains where he is, occupying half the sky, Dismiss us.
"But it shouldn't be useless—a jettisoned piece of space junk. Vasily pointed out that it must have some kind of active motion in order to stay at a point of balance that isn't quite stable. Otherwise it would have drifted away from there Opened—like Discovery—and was long overdue to crash-land on Io.
"Then what should we do next? Atom bombs are not allowed on board, are we violating Article 8, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations? I'm just joking."
"We're less stressed now, but we're still weeks away from the return launch window, and there's a lot of boredom and frustration about failure. Don't laugh - I can imagine that, sitting in the Moscow office How would you react to such a confession. How could an intelligent being be bored, surrounded by the most majestic spectacle that man has ever seen?"
"But it's true, morale has taken a huge hit. Not too long ago we were all obscenely healthy. These days, almost everyone has a bit of a cold or a stomach ache, or a scrape that Catalina's pills and powder won't heal .She has given up treatment now, but scolds us every day.
"Sasha has been trying to keep us in a good mood. He posted a series of notices on the bulletin board of the ship. The theme is 'Extinct Russian English!' He also listed two terrible languages that he claimed to have overheard. Mixtures, misuse of words, etc. We all need a cleansing of the language when we go home. Several times I have happened to hear your countrymen unknowingly chatting in English, but—backed off when they encountered difficult words In the native language. Another time, I found myself speaking Russian with Walter Kono—and neither of us noticed for a few minutes.
"One little unexpected event that day will give you some idea of our emotional state. One night, the smoke detector suddenly went off in the middle of the night.
"Well, the deadly cigar that Chandra smuggled aboard came to light. He couldn't resist its temptation, so he stole one in the bathroom, totally like a guilty bad student.
"Of course he was very embarrassed, and after the initial panic, everyone thought it was ridiculous. You know, some trivial things that are not interesting in the eyes of outsiders can make a group of smart people laugh. Next For a few days, if anyone pretended to order a cigar, everyone would fall apart.
"What's even more ridiculous is that no one would mind if Chandra just walked into the transition chamber, or turned off the smoke detectors. But he's too ashamed to admit that he has such a human weakness, So now he spends more time talking to Hal."
Floyd pressed the "stop" button, ending the recording.As much as he'd love to keep teasing Chandra, maybe that's not fair.All sorts of little human flaws have been on full display over the past few weeks, and there have even been a few nasty quarrels for completely inexplicable reasons.For that matter, how was he doing himself?Isn't that what he was criticizing?
Nor was he sure that his attitude toward Curnow was appropriate.Although he never thought he would really like the big engineer, or appreciate his loud voice, Floyd's attitude towards Kono was not just tolerance, but respect and admiration.Russian