Free Forever Free by Joe Haldeman Page B

Situation Computer—learning or relearning the arcana of spaceflight. Marygay had gone through it before; everyone who went on the time shuttle had to know the basics of how the ship was run.
    Unsurprisingly, things had gotten simpler in the centuries since I was last in training. One person could actually control the whole ship, under normal circumstances.
    We trained for specialties, too. For me it was shuttle piloting and the suspended-animation facility, which made me long for summer even more than usual.
    We were through first winter and well into deep winter before word came from Earth.
    Some people like deep winter for its austere simplicity. It rarely snows. The diminished sun climbs its same steady course. It gets down to thirty or forty below at night; sixty-five below before thaw season begins.
    The people who like deep winter are not fishermen. When the lake is solid enough to walk on, I go out to make ninety-six holes in the ice, using hollow heated cylinders.
    Each cylinder is a meter of thick aluminum with a heating element wound through inside. The cylinder is flared with insulation at the top so as not to sink. I set out a dozen at a time, upright, spaced evenly for the trotlines, then turn them on and wait. After a couple of hours, they melt through, and I turn off the power. Wait another hour or so, and then the fun begins.
    Of course by the time the ice is refrozen on the inside, the outside is stuck fast. I carry a sledgehammer and a crowbar. I whang around the outside of the cylinder until there's a cracking, sucking sound, and then I take hold of the flange and haul this thirty-kilogram ice cube up. I turn the power on that one up high and move down to repeat the process on the next one.
    By the time I get to the end of the dozen, the first one has warmed enough so that I can slip it off the bar of ice it's holding. Then I use the crowbar to break up the ice that's re-formed in the hole, slip the aluminum sleeve back in, turn the power down to minimum, cap it, and move to the next one.
    The reason for this rigmarole is a combination of thermodynamics and fish psychology. I have to keep the water in the hole at exactly zero or the fish won't bite. But if you don't start out with liquid water and just melt through—you wind up with a cylinder of ice clinking around in it. The fish will bite the hook, but hang up and get away.
    Bill and Sara did half the holes one day, and Marygay and I did the other half the next. When we came in from work, late afternoon, the house smelled wonderful. Sara was roasting a chicken over the fire, and had made hot mulled cider with sweet wine.
    She wasn't in the kitchen. Marygay and I poured cups and went into the living room.
    Our children were sitting silently with a Man. I recognized him by his bulk and the scar. "Afternoon, Sheriff."
    Without preamble: "The Whole Tree said no."
    I sat down heavily, sloshing some cider. Marygay sat on the couch armrest. "Just that?" she said. "Only 'no' and nothing more?"
    My spinning mind came up with "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.' "
    "There are details." He pulled out a four- or five-page document, folded over, and set it on the coffee table. "Basically, they thank you for your work, and have paid each of the one hundred fifty volunteers one one-hundred-fiftieth of what the ship is worth."
    "In Earth credits, no doubt," I said.
    "Yes … but also a trip to Earth, to spend it. It is a large fortune, and could make life easier and more interesting for all of you."
    "Let all one hundred fifty of us aboard?"
    "No." The sheriff smiled. "You might go someplace other than Earth."
    "How many, and which of us?"
    "Seventeen; you choose. They'll be in suspended animation during the flight, as a security precaution."
    "While Man does the flying and life support. How many of you?"
    "I wasn't told. How many would it take?"
    "Maybe twenty, if ten were farmers." We hadn't actually thought in terms of minimums. "Are any of you farmers?"
    "I don't know