"Can you hear me?" her voice said, on the intercom. "Anybody hear me?"
Norman reached for the microphone, but Harry snatched it away. "I'll do this," he said. "Yes, Beth, we can hear you."
"I'm in the ship," she said, her voice crackling on the intercom. "I've found another compartment, aft, behind the crew bunks. It's quite interesting."
Quite interesting, Norman thought. Jesus, quite interesting. He grabbed the microphone from Harry. "Beth, what the hell are you doing over there?"
"Oh, hi, Norman. You made it back okay, huh?"
"Barely."
"You have some trouble?" She didn't sound concerned.
"Yes, I did."
"Are you all right? You sound mad."
"You bet I'm mad. Beth, why did you leave while I was out there?"
"Harry said he'd take over for me."
"He what?" Norman looked at Harry. Harry was shaking his head no.
"Harry said he'd take over at the console for me. He told me to go ahead to the ship. Since the squid wasn't around, it seemed like a good time."
Norman cupped his hand over microphone. "I don't the remember that," Harry said.
"Did you talk to her?"
"I don't remember talking to her."
Beth said, "Just ask him, Norman. He'll tell you."
"He says he never said that."
"Well, then, he's full of it," Beth said. "What do you think, I'd abandon you when you were outside, for Christ's sake?" There was a pause. "I'd never do that, Norman."
"I swear," Harry said to Norman. "I never had any conversation with Beth. I never talked to her at all. I'm telling you, she was gone when I woke up. There was nobody here. If you ask me, she always intended to go to the ship."
Norman remembered how quickly Beth had agreed to let Norman go to the sub, how surprised he had been. Perhaps Harry was right, he thought. Perhaps Beth had been planning it all along.
"You know what I think?" Harry said. "I think she's cracking up."
Over the intercom, Beth said, "You guys get it straightened out?"
Norman said, "I think so, Beth, yes."
"Good," Beth said. "Because I have made a discovery over here, in the spaceship."
"What's that?"
"I've found the crew."
"You both came," Beth said. She was sitting on a console in the comfortable beige flight deck of the spacecraft. "Yes," Norman said, looking at her. She looked okay. If anything, she looked better than ever. Stronger, clearer. She actually looked rather beautiful, he thought. "Harry thought that the squid wouldn't come back."
Chapter 17
"The squid was out there?"
Norman briefly told her about his attack.
"Jesus. I'm sorry, Norman. I'd never have left if I had any idea."
She certainly didn't sound like somebody who was cracking up, Norman thought. She sounded appropriate and sincere. "Anyway," he said, "I injured it, and Harry thought it wouldn't come back."
Harry said, "And we couldn't decide who should stay behind, so we both came."
"Well, come this way," Beth said. She led them back, through the crew quarters, past the twenty bunks for the crew, the large galley. Norman paused at the galley. So did Harry.
"I'm hungry," Harry said.
"Eat something," Beth said. "I did. They have some sort of nut bars or something, they taste okay." She opened a drawer in the galley, produced bars wrapped in metal foil, gave them each one. Norman tore the foil and saw something that looked like chocolate. It tasted dry.
"Anything to drink?"
"Sure." She threw open a refrigerator door. "Diet Coke?"
"You're kidding. .....
"The can design is different, and I'm afraid it's warm, but it's Diet Coke, all right."
"I'm buying stock in that company," Harry said. "Now that we know it'll still be there in fifty years." He read the can. "Official drink of the Star Voyager Expedition."
"Yeah, it's a promo," Beth said.
Harry turned the can around. The other side was printed in Japanese. "Wonder what this means?"
"It means, don't buy that stock after all," she said. Norman sipped the Coke with a sense of vague unease. The galley seemed subtly changed from the last time he had seen it. He wasn't sure - he'd only glanced briefly at the room before - but he usually had a good memory for room layouts, and his wife had always joked that Norman could find his way around any kitchen. "You know," he said, "I don't remember a refrigerator in the galley."
"I never really noticed, myself," Beth said.
"As a matter of fact," Norman said, "this whole room looks different to me. It looks bigger, and - I don't know - different."
"It's 'cause you're hungry." Harry grinned.
"Maybe," Norman said. Harry could actually be right. In the sixties, there had been a number of studies of visual perception which demonstrated that subjects interpreted blurred slides according to their predispositions. Hungry people saw all the slides as food.
But this room really did look different. For instance, he didn't remember the door to the galley being to the left, as it was now. He remembered it as being in the center of the wall separating the galley from the bunks.
"This way," Beth said, leading them farther aft. "Actually, the refrigerator was what got me thinking. It's one thing to store a lot of food on a test ship being sent through a black hole. But to stock a refrigerator - why bother to do that? It made me think, there might be a crew after all."