it. He could practically feel the AI churning away, crunching data.
“Thanks, Gilly,” she said. “You’re a champ.”
He wrote for three hours straight and then began to pull their past engagements and rework them, looking for chemical traces to bolster his theory. They hadn’t been scanning at a micro level at the time, so it was hard to extract the data he wanted, but there was enough to make his case, he thought: that salamanders had been able to communicate even after death via chemical secretion. He bundled up the data into tables, wrapped up his text, and submitted it to the ship.
His shoulders and neck ached. He crawled into his bunk and fell into a half-dozing state. He dreamed about the ship, except it was bloodthirsty. It was hunting down salamanders not because of programming but because it wanted to. He woke in confusion and for a few moments wasn’t sure which part had been the dream. Then he rolled over and thought of other things and fell back to sleep.
* * *
—
Anders was back on ping the next day, so Gilly made contact and scheduled a game of ninja stars. Then he read over his document. He found plenty of areas to tidy or clarify and when his playdate reminder popped, he snoozed it, and again half an hour later, then dismissed a message from Anders that asked if he was coming. When he finally made his way down to F Deck, he rounded a corner and found Anders urinating against a wall. He stopped.
Anders turned toward him, putting out a steady stream. His eyebrows rose. “Gilly!”
“What are you doing?”
Anders looked at the pool of urine. “Don’t worry. The ship cleans it up.”
“But you don’t have to piss on the floor.”
Anders said nothing.
“Are you okay?” Gilly said.
Anders began to tuck himself into his pants, being very careful. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
He was beginning to regret it. “Well, I’m here.” He shifted his weight. “Where have you been going, anyway? You keep dropping off ping.”
Anders zipped. “Want me to show you?”
“Sure.”
“During the next engagement.”
Gilly squinted. “What?”
“I found something. But it only works during an engagement.”
“Are you asking me to leave station during an engagement?”
“Forget it,” Anders said.
“I can’t do that and neither can you.”
“Forget I asked. Can you open small-arms lockers?”
The arms lockers were located on every second deck, in case they were flung four years backward in time to when salamanders got close enough to see with the naked eye. “No. Jackson has to authorize that.”
“I mean in practice. You’re Intel. You can cycle the locks, right?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Guns, Gilly,” Anders said. “We get a couple of guns. Then it’s the same as ninja stars.”
“We’re not doing that.”
“Not big guns. Just the pistols.”
“Accessing arms lockers without approval? This is court-martial stuff.”
Anders’s jaw came out. Gilly could see that in Anders’s head, pistols were just the beginning. After pistols, there would be rifles, junior burger guns, or lightning guns. Now he was offended because Gilly wouldn’t even do pistols. “Fuck me,” Anders said. “You’re such a pussy.”
“I’m leaving,” Gilly said.
Anders came after him. The corridor was too small for Anders to overtake him, but Gilly could sense him following. “Wait. Gilly. We can play ninja stars.”
“I don’t want to play anymore.”
“Something else, then.”
His film flared. There was another burst valve, this time on K Deck. It was amazing to Gilly that he could deduce an alien species’ chemical-based learning pattern but not diagnose a few exploding pipes. “I have shit to do, Anders.” He reached the ladder hatch and hauled it open. When he began to descend, Anders stared at him balefully.
“You don’t know anything,” Anders said.
He ignored this and kept climbing. With luck, Anders wouldn’t follow. Anders was weirdly reluctant to use ladders. When they played ninja stars, nine times out of ten,