Starship Walker

Slow Walking

"Liam! Pay attention!"

"I am, Gillian!"

They were bickering again.

Gillian liked Liam, but the lad could be annoying. His attention wandered too much, and he often became truculent under criticism.

This was the third day of Liam's education as a Walker. They were conducting training Walks on a temporary platform, placed, with other equipment, in a clear area a short distance from Pool Ten. Mr Dryen, the Navigation Officer, and Mr Rogers, the astrophysicist, were scheduled to begin tutoring Liam in their respective domain skills in the following days. Gillian was pleased. It would give her the chance of a rest.

"Take a break, you two!" Abel sounded irritated with them both.

Gillian pulled off her mask and stepped off the stage. Liam followed her. He took his mask off, poked a finger through its mouth opening and began twirling it around.

"He's such a child!" Gillian muttered to Abel as she crossed to the coffee machine.

Liam, walking faster than Gillian, caught up and overheard her. "Ok! I admit: I'm distracted by the view - all those stars! It's amazing - I can't stop looking."

Abel gently removed the spinning mask from Liam's hand.

Gillian said, "You'll have plenty of time to enjoy that later, Liam. Right now, we have to focus on getting this ship home. Several thousand people are counting on us. We've got a lot of work to get through before you'll be ready to take the ship's helm."

"I know that, I know!"

Abel gave Gillian a gentle nudge. "That's enough, Gillian. Let's all just relax and have some coffee."

The three sat together in foldable chairs, around a small table, enclosed within a bowl of light. All around and above, the gloom of the second wheel pressed in on them. At the borders of the gloom, a great steel wire enclosure was half visible, glinting in the weak light. It was a convoluted pattern of wire mesh, whose shapes prevented communications of any sort crossing its boundary. Liam had christened the place as "The Birdcage", and had only recently stopped making annoying tweeting noises as they entered it.

Contained within this caged zone, isolated from the rest of the ship, an interface linked their Walk suits to a monitor console used by Abel, and from there to a vertical, nondescript grey tube, like a water pipe. It contained the simulator for their training operations. McWhirter had even planned to have cable interfaces connecting their Walk suits to the system, but had been dissuaded by Abel and others, because it would only make Liam trip more. Also, such equipment was not readily available aboard the ship, and was difficult to print. The simulator was a duplicate of the ship's systems, not connected to the quantum tractors that formed the ship's star drive.

All this was designed so that there was no possibility of Gillian, or anyone else, unconsciously or deliberately, communicating with the ship's systems. Their activities were entirely off-line, isolated.

"Liam," Abel said, "Do you think you're making adequate progress?"

The youth shrugged, and glanced at Gillian, who replied for him: "He's not bad, but he could do better."

"I'm asking what you think, Liam."

"I agree with her."

"Liam, I'm not seeing the level of focus from you that I believe we need - the concentration required for piloting this ship."

Liam, who was not drinking his coffee, lifted one hand from his knee and dropped it back in a little gesture of frustration. "I'm trying hard, believe me, but I've always had trouble concentrating. That's something I need to practice, I suppose." He paused. "And - I haven't recovered from that first sight of the stars! It stunned me!" His voice became eager. "I keep needing to look at them!"