Free Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Engdahl Page B

upon myself in any case.
    It wasn’t that Janet and I didn’t get along. On the contrary, we got along very well indeed, and decided right off that we saw eye to eye about a lot of things. To start with, we must have been the only two people on the ship who hated the very idea of going to Mars. If they’d matched roommates by computer they couldn’t have done a better job of putting women with the same attitudes together.
    Not that on the surface we were anything like each other. Janet was much older, in the first place; eventually I found out that she was almost thirty, though she didn’t look it. More to the point, she had striking silver-blonde hair, blue eyes, and a figure that made me look very much the schoolgirl by comparison. And her clothes! How she ever got a wardrobe like that into twenty kilos, I’ll never know. I suppose everything was featherweight. Of course, she hadn’t committed the faux pas of cramming in a sweater, not because she knew enough about Mars to foresee that she wouldn’t need one, but because Janet wasn’t the kind who wore sweaters.
    But to give the idea that Janet Crane was more interested in her appearance than in anything else would be entirely wrong. She couldn’t have cared less about the impression she made on men, or women either, except from the professional standpoint. Janet was a Scientist, with a capital “S”; she was a biologist, and someday she intended to be a top biologist.
    The difficulty was that top biologists have to have experience with extraterrestrial microorganisms as well as with the life found on Earth. Most of them do a year of graduate work at the University of Mars before even getting their doctorates. Janet, who already had hers, had put the trip off because she didn’t want to go; but the time had come when she couldn’t advance any further in her career until she got it over with. Moreover, she wouldn’t be eligible for the student fare much longer.
    On that first morning, we went to the dining room together as soon as the intercom in our cabin announced that breakfast was being served. It was good to be able to stretch my legs after being cooped up for so long. And I felt extraordinarily light and buoyant because the Susie ’s spin produced only one-third gravity, the same as surface gravity on Mars.
    It’s surprising when you stop to think of it that the spinning of a ship on its axis feels like gravity, not like spin. I mean, wouldn’t you think that you’d know you were going round and round, and get dizzy? But you don’t; you can’t detect any motion at all. You can’t tell any difference between the centrifugal force and real gravity. Of course, it’s a little disconcerting to have the floor curve upward ahead of you, yet find it level when you get there. And the gravity isn’t the same everywhere; it gets less as you go toward the center of the sphere. That’s why the staterooms, dining room, and lounge are all next to the outer hull, with crew quarters and cargo space inboard. I had a general idea of the layout from what Alex had told me, though I’m sure I would have gotten lost if there hadn’t been colored arrows on the wall pointing the way.
    Dad was waiting for me near the entrance to the dining room; I introduced Janet, and we went in and found a table. I looked around but didn’t see Alex anywhere. Pretty soon another woman joined us, since all the tables were for four.
    â€œI don’t suppose we’re going to get very fancy meal service,” Janet said.
    As a matter of fact, the dining room was fixed up quite attractively, with an orange carpet and tabletops in a matching tone, and gold and beige fabric covering the walls. The chairs were comfortable, too, though they weren’t upholstered; they didn’t need to be, with the low gravity. What did she expect, crystal chandeliers? But I looked around, and the tables were