Elizabeth Browning Barrett’s name was a joke that almost nobody had gotten even back on Earth. She was not actually a cook, she was an administrator, a bureaucrat. However, when the cook who the ship had hired, in those heady early days, turned out to be a man who could make a mean soufflé but who was completely hopeless at meeting the demands of a 30 member crew for three meals a day plus snacks, she’d stepped in. Her innate talent for organization, and her courage, the essential quality of a cook, made her a natural.
She was also married, technically, which was part of why she was here. They’d been separated a year or so, after a romantic disaster so painful that when she had gotten word that she could literally leave the planet for, essentially, forever, she had literally thought that it seemed like a good idea, even with the divorce still pending. So maybe she wasn’t married anymore. Who knew? Or cared?
Now she was walking the halls.
The New Argo had three and a half decks. The top deck had only two rooms, the sun porch, and the cockpit, standing opposite each other at what was imaginatively called the ship’s prows. The next deck, the first full-sized one, was mostly living quarters, because studies had shown that even though phrases like “up” and “down” had very little meaning in the vacuum of space, crew morale was negatively affected by the feeling of living below-deck. Below that was the social deck—mess hall, card room, entertainment systems and so on. Below, as ever, was a hold.
At night, when there was a lot on her mind, she would pace methodically, top to bottom. It was spotlessly clean, for the most part, thanks to “regulations”. That was military heritage for you, even for people who were mostly civilians before. In a way, they were a relic. Every ship was, that had been out any length of time given the time-bending needed to get anywhere worth getting to in the Universe, but they were in a different, more pronounced way. The New Argo had set out in the early days of interstellar travel, when it was still being painted as a heroic adventure. They were that kind of men and women—people who had never really fit on Earth, who’d always felt that call that for so many centuries had not been a viable option. In the first burst of enthusiasm for such things, a surprising number of people had signed up.
In the endless, silent night of space, more than a few had come to regret it. But there was no way back. Nor were they all there entirely by choice. More than one passenger had something in their past that made leaving Earth forever something very much worth doing. But, the unwritten code of being locked in a tin can for, essentially, forever, meant no one asked, and for the most part, no one talked. Everyone got on well, too, if only because there are ways to make even a trip that takes forever seem endlessly longer for bad apples. It really was, for so many, a second chance, even if what they were doing now no longer seemed like what they thought they’d be doing. Some were still grateful.
She was on the second deck now, when an open door caught her attention. Wendell’s room, she thought. Nothing too unusual there, despite regulations. Probably just too drunk to close the door when he passed out. Besides, if anyone stole anything on this ship, where would they keep it? Still something didn’t seem right to her.
Slowly, hesitantly, she reached out and gave the barest knock with her knuckles on the door. She heard what might be the sound of something moving inside, a kind of gasping sound, then nothing. She waited for what seemed like hours. No more sounds. Finally, she held her breath and pushed the door open.
She put her hands over her mouth.