“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, a little hesitantly.
Dr. Pohan bobbed his head up and down, then replied, “We must go through the formalities of checking your boarding file and medical record.”
“That should all be in your computer,” Deirdre said.
“Yes, of course. But then I’m afraid I must subject you to a complete physical examination.”
“But my medical records—”
“Not good enough,” said Dr. Pohan, almost jovially. “You see, we have had a death aboard ship on our way out here from Earth. It is my duty to make certain we don’t have any others.”
“A death? Someone died?”
“One of the passengers. Most unusual. And most puzzling. If I can’t track down the reason for it, we will not be allowed to disembark our passengers. We will have made the long voyage to Jupiter for nothing.”
CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS
Australia was a passenger vessel, designed to carry paying customers swiftly from the Earth/Moon system out to the rock rats’ habitat in orbit around the asteroid Ceres. It was built like a slim tower, with a dozen decks between the bridge in the ship’s nose and the fusion propulsion plant at its tail. Unlike the cumbersome ore ships that plodded across the inner solar system, Australia drove through space under constant acceleration, usually at one Earth-normal gravity or close to it, accelerating half the distance, then flipping over and decelerating the rest of the way. Except for the brief periods of docking or turn-around, the passengers would feel a comfortable one g environment for the entire voyage. Comfortable, that is, for those who were accustomed to Earth-normal gravity.
This trip was special, though. Instead of terminating at Ceres and then heading back Earthward, Australia was going on to the research station in orbit around the giant planet Jupiter, a journey that would take an additional two weeks from Ceres.