Hannah Dereshev finally broke the tense silence over the dinner table.

"With reservations," she said, "I accept."

Michael Gilmore and Samad Loonat breathed again. Gilmore looked at Samad. "And?" he said.

"No problem. I accept," Samad said.

Gilmore grinned and lifted his glass. "To the rest of the crew, then." They lifted their own glasses — wine for Hannah, juice for Samad — and joined the toast. Gilmore put his glass down. "What reservations, Number One?"

It had been a cheek, a major cheek, to ask a just-qualified captain if she wouldn't mind remaining a first officer for a bit longer. She would keep her new rank, he would make damn sure of that, and no sane person would turn down an offer to join the delegation fleet, but he had still felt uneasy about asking her. And yet, he knew they worked together well, making a good team, and he wanted her on Ark Royal. He would never forget who had helped him when he had transferred to the Royal Space Fleet, one step ahead of burn out, severe depression and a breakdown. In her quiet and efficient way she had helped him get a crew and ship into shape, and in the process helped rebuild his own esteem.

She had been married to Samad even back then, and you wouldn't get one on a ship without the other. If Hannah was Ark Royal's first officer, Samad would have to be chief engineer. Gilmore valued them both as friends and loved them as a couple, because their pairing symbolised all that was good about spacer society. An Israeli and a Moslem, married. The old, binding restrictions of custom and prejudice on Earth had been broken. Cut off from Earth during the Dieback and left to their own devices, space people had carved out their own culture, and this was a part of it. Spacers could be what they wanted to be.

"Being on a military ship," said Hannah.

"I understand," Gilmore said. There was no military in space: it was almost axiomatic. Even though the majority of spacers still came from Earth and technically owed allegiance to terrestrial nations, they were by-and-large united on this view. Military implied national interests, and spacers didn't believe in those. If you could hold up a thumb and completely obliterate the home world, you found you couldn't really take the squabbling of its nations seriously. In space, there was room and resources for everyone and no one needed a military. That was the idea. "I didn't like it either," he said, "but you have to admit that a prince should travel in a military vessel, not a freighter. We won't be armed."

That was the biggest obstacle. Both these two had suffered at the hands of various forms of military in their childhood, which was why they had both escaped to space. So far, in space, no ships had ever been armed; no ships had ever had to fight. But Gilmore's disapproval of arming spaceships was based on principle, while theirs ran far deeper.

"This whole delegation thing," Hannah said, "makes me unhappy. The Rusties are going to play off one nation against the other, and whoever wins, it'll be Earth politicians. They've been held off for long enough, but now they're going to bring their pettiness and their politics out into space and-" Her voice had been rising: she cut it off with a quick, angry gesture. "I don't like that," she said. Samad reached out and took her hand, and she pulled a face. "Listen to me, harping on. Samad, Mike, the food's getting cold."

*

There were two other people in the waiting room, and one of them, an Indian woman, was the first to be called. Peter Kirton, a tall, lanky blond man, passed away the time reading the latest message from his mother one his aide. With one eye he noticed that the third person, a man of Asiatic descent, was fiddling hard with his own aide, a look of concentration on his face. He wondered if this was a way of impressing the people interviewing them.

He turned back to the letter: for privacy he had set the words to text only, though he had kept the image of his mother's face, mouthing the words above the lettering that ran across the bottom of the display. "Some of us are very excited that you might be joining the delegation, dear, though some are still of the opinion that the Rusties are agents of the devil. Your father and I hope you get the job, if it's His will, but I have to admit we're still not sure about the aliens. We've been praying for guidance but so far no sign has been given-"

Agents of the devil, he thought with a snort, and the other man looked up for a moment, surprised. Of course they weren't. They weren't in the Bible because- because what? Good question.

Despite the comments of some of his peers on Mars, Peter hadn't turned into a complete agnostic. He had just felt that the religion he had grown up in was too restrictive, too closed. There was more to God's universe than what he saw around him, and he wanted to find it out. But enough of his upbringing remained for him to want a very good reason if he was going to challenge Biblical authority. He was sure there was a good reason, but he disliked glib answers and "they didn't know about it in those days" was just as glib as "because the Bible says so."

The door opened and the woman who had gone in first paused there, shaking hands with another woman with a lieutenant commander's rank on her shoulders. He left and the commander looked at him. "Mr Kirton? Come through, please."

*

There were five people in the waiting room. Julia Coyne knew three of them and had slept with one, and they all talked together quietly, trying to hide their nerves, while the first and then the second candidate was called in.

"Hey, Julia," one of them said suddenly. "Wasn't today-"

"Yes," she said, glaring at him. He got the hint.

"Ah. Sorry," he said. The ex-boyfriend grinned and mimed sticking a needle into himself. Sore point.

Yes, today was indeed the audition day for the UK-1 choir's entry into the All- Luna Choir Festival, and there had been no doubt in Julia's mind at all that she would be accepted. She had been a member the time they had sung there (second place) and the time before (third place) and she had picked up just enough hints from the Director of Music to know that he had a truly killer programme lined up for this time.

But then this came up and she really, really couldn't refuse. To turn down a chance of joining the Ark Royal's crew ... madness. And the Moon would still be there next year, and so would the Festival, and so would the UK-1 choir. Still, she had to bite her tongue to stop reminding herself that for the first time she had been promised a solo.

"Mebbe you could arrange a choir on the Ark Royal," said one of her friends.

"Barbershop quartet," the other said, and collapsed laughing. The size of Ark Royal's crew was already a standing joke — no one sent a ship between planets with a crew of six, yet alone between stars — and Julia hoped, treacherously, that he would still find it amusing enough in front of their interviewers to crack a joke about it then. She expected they would take the matter a little more seriously, and suddenly the number of contenders would be down to four.

And then Commander Dereshev was standing over them. They stood to attention quickly. Julia wondered if she had a potential ally here — someone who would value another woman on the crew. A penalty of UK-1's deliberate air of anachronism was a sexism that sometimes verged on the neo-Elizabethan.

"Ms Coyne?" Not a lot of sympathy or collusion there, Julia had to admit. "We'll see you now."

*

There were three people in the waiting room. Adrian Nichol had been trying to sit so that the gold wings on his left breast were prominent. Neither of the others had their wings; only engineering insignia, which Adrian also wore. No problem, he thought. Ark Royal wants an engineer-cum-pilot: well, they've got one. Hello, Mr Nichol.

The first one was called in.

"He's got the job," the other muttered.

"He's not a pilot, though," Adrian pointed out.

The man gave him a strange look. "Sure he is. There's just no call for wings on somewhere like UK-1."

"Ah." A point that hadn't occurred to Adrian, as was the thought of earning wings and not wearing them so that everyone knew you had them, even if your present job was purely engineering.

He thought he got out of it quite well, though. "You're, ah, a pilot too, then?"

"Sure am. And before you ask, yes, we're both golds, like you."

"So how did you ...?"

The man wasn't so immune to normal human instincts that he didn't want to talk about it. Experience of landing orbiters manually on Earth and Mars (check, thought Adrian). Participation in the Tharsis Aerial Rally on Mars (check, thought Adrian), in which he had just scraped in at second last year (so you're the bastard who cut me off, Adrian thought). Maintenance certificates on no fewer than eight different models of lander (check, thought Adrian with increasing misery: he could make eight if you counted both the OL104a.1 and the OL104a.2, which differed only in the circuitry for life support. He dropped a casual hint and sure enough the other man proudly listed eight completely different models.)

Might as well go home now, Adrian thought, his despair now crushingly absolute, and he was just plucking up the courage to leave when he was called in.

*

"First on the list: software officer," said Gilmore, back in his apartment. Two men a woman appeared in the displays of their aides. Applications for the crew had come fast and furious and minimum criteria had been set: rank lieutenant or lower (with the three of them, including a commander and a lieutenant commander, a crew of six would be top-heavy anyway); aptitude score in the top five percent of their class.

"Not Quah," said Hannah.

"Agreed." Quah had been perhaps the best candidate, but he was part of a dyad and his partner was also in software. They would insist on coming together or not at all, and Ark Royal didn't have room or the budget. She would have six crew, one prince and one Rustie on board, and that was it. "So, it's between Jayaran and Kirton." Gilmore cocked an eye at Samad, who shrugged. Jayaran was of Indian descent but not a citizen of the country that had overrun Bangladesh, so he had no objections on that count. "Personally, I thought Kirton had the most promise."

"He's a Martian!" Hannah exclaimed.

"That's why he shows promise. He left."

"He'd be good on our crew, wouldn't he?" she said. "My lot crucified Christ and his lot-" She jerked a thumb at Samad "-are heretics."

"But this one has left Mars," Gilmore said patiently. "Look, confidential reports from his previous C/Os. Quiet, but gets on with the rest of the crew. Doesn't proselytise."

"And a humour-free zone," Hannah pointed out.

"We can't have everything." Privately, Gilmore had always admired the Martian puritans: anyone who would turn their back on what they saw as a corrupt, decadent Earth couldn't be all bad, and they had worked wonders of engineering in carving out a home on Mars when all the other attempts at creating a self-sustaining society there had failed.

"It's his experience that impresses me," Samad said. "In on nine major projects, right from the beginning, three in a supervisory or planning role ... that's not bad for someone his age." Kirton was 27. The point about being in on the projects from the start was that Ark Royal's network, too, needed to be designed from the bottom up.

"I think he's trying to prove something to the folk back home," said Hannah.

"But he does it well."

Hannah shrugged. "Are we prepared to list Jayaran's virtues, or do we go with Kirton?"

"Jayaran's good," Gilmore said, "but apart from being able to crack jokes she just doesn't match Kirton, point for point."

"Well, if you feel we can get on with Kirton, I'm happy," Hannah said.

"Excellent," said Gilmore. "Coffee, before we get on to Systems?"

*

"Coyne," said Hannah.

"Tuchner," said Gilmore.

They looked at Samad. "Love?" said Hannah.

"Still deliberating," said Samad.

Hannah began to tick points off on her fingers. "Julia Coyne has worked in Systems ever since graduating. All her superiors speak glowingly of her."

"She seemed to expect favours from you, as another woman," said Gilmore.

"She'll soon unlearn that," Hannah said.

(Samad smiled. "And how.")

"She's trying to overcompensate for being black and a woman," said Gilmore.

Hannah looked shocked. "Mike, that attitude went out with the Neanderthals."

"Tell her that. She drew attention to it, not me."

"She has an awareness of culture," Hannah said. "It's of interest to her. She said that too, remember?"

"I remember. I don't want a member of the crew studying each of us and trying to analyse our cultural heritage. And I don't want a dreamer who drifts off at important moments."

"Mike, she's professional enough to concentrate on her job."

Gilmore brought his own choice back into the conversation. "Tuchner can do everything Coyne can. In fact, he can do it slightly better. And he's not going to be staring into space trying to think up a new tune."

"Neither is Coyne," said Hannah impatiently.

"Tuchner has never worked in a ship's crew, Mike," said Samad, almost apologetic. "Plenty of experience, yes, but it's always been in control centres or as part of a large team. He's never had to get on with a small number of people in a small place. Coyne has."

Gilmore drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "Can I take it I'm outvoted?"

"Coyne," said Hannah.

"Um, Coyne," said Samad.

Gilmore sighed. "Coyne," he said.

*

"Now, this one is pushy," said Hannah. Sub-Lieutenant Adrian Nichol, short and dark haired, looked out at them from the display.

"Official ship's snot," said Gilmore, "if we took him. Are we going to?"

"I don't think so," Hannah said.

King Richard had decreed that Ark Royal would have a landing boat of its own: he saw no point in his crew and delegation, once they reached the Roving, being dependent on the Rusties or on the other ships for transport to and from the surface. Gilmore had wanted at least two crew to run it but, again, budgetary limitations had raised their heads. As it was, each crew member on Ark Royal would be standing eight-hour watches. So, the pilot had to be someone who could help maintain the boat as well; pilot's qualifications would not be needed while the ship was in deep space and he or she could then stand watch with the rest.

"I thought he was endearing, in an adolescent sort of way," said Samad.

"The man's in his early twenties. He should have left adolescence behind him by now," said Gilmore.

"The point is," Samad said, "we want someone who can both fly and maintain the boat, and help me with the rest of the ship. Now, I could give the boat's engines a pretty good overhaul, but everything else I'd be feeling my way with. If you want someone who can look after all aspects of the boat with his eyes shut, take Nichol. A couple of pointed snubs should cure him of his tendency to talk about himself."

"And his other duties?" Hannah said.

"In my opinion, he can handle them. He answered my questions well and his record is good."

"All this is fine," said Gilmore, "but we also have to get on with him. This boy is ... not suitable."

The advantage of having just three candidates was that one could be knocked out straightaway. Unfortunately, that one was not Nichol; in terms of experience, he and one of the others were neck and neck. The third was quickly dismissed and they turned back to the two remaining contenders. Gilmore again proposed a vote.

"Carlson," said Gilmore.

"Nichol," said Samad.

Hannah looked from one to the other. "Samad will work the most closely with the winner and I'll let his judgement override my prejudices. Nichol."

"Nichol it is," Gilmore said with bad grace. "Number One, contact the successful candidates and offer them the jobs. I want them on board Ark Royal and helping with the refit in one week."

"Aye aye, sir."

*

"So you lost, dad?" said Joel Gilmore on his father's last night on UK-1. They had gone out to dinner. "Shouldn't a captain get final say over his crew?"

Gilmore looked at him closely to make sure it wasn't a jibe. It wasn't; it was a genuine enquiry. "I did get final say," he said. "I could have vetoed any of them and dictated who was going on the crew and who wasn't, but that's not my way. I chose to put it to the vote, and when you do that you've got to accept the result. Anyway, Nichol will be all right."

He didn't mention that the reason for this change of heart was sitting opposite him at the table. Joel was younger than Nichol but Gilmore could still see the similarities: a quivering puppy eagerness. More acceptable in a midshipman in his first job than an experienced sub-lieutenant, perhaps, but bearable.

"I expect they'll be a good crew," Joel said wistfully. It had been obvious that he had harboured a secret hope he would be chosen for his father's crew, but it had never been more than a dream and he had known it. Gilmore wouldn't have had his son on his ship in a million years. Nor was it just the risk of favouritism that disinclined him; it was the thought that maybe Joel would see through him and realise that his father wasn't so hot after all. That was something Joel didn't know and hopefully never would.

"They will be," Gilmore said.

"You'll take lots of pictures, won't you?" Joel said. "And — um — yeah, keep a diary. I'll want to know everything."

"Gigabytes," Gilmore said. "Absolute gigabytes." Joel grinned.

It had been a good month together and Gilmore had enjoyed getting to know his son as an adult. His recurring fear on board a ship was that each mission would expose him: that this time, surely, he would be revealed as a no-good captain; a mediocrity who was just muddling through. To his annoyance, the fear had translated itself into his home life, now that he had one, and he was only just now coming to terms with the idea that Joel wouldn't condemn him however bad he was. But that wasn't exactly a vote of confidence either.

"I'll still snatch some time to see you, I expect," Gilmore said. "We don't set off for another six months."

"Yeah, but you'll be at L3 and I'll be here and every second L3 is getting further and further away."

Which was true. By the time the fleet set off, they would practically be facing each other across the sun.

"I won't be gone all that long," Gilmore said.

"Yeah, yeah." Joel looked gloomily down into his drink. There seemed to be something he was bursting to say, but wasn't sure how to say it. Gilmore himself wasn't sure how to handle it; was his son about to come out with something deep and emotional? Please, God, he thought, anything but "I love you, dad."

"Dad," Joel said. Gilmore leaned closer. "Dad ... while you're away ... can I still have the apartment?"