1905They’d found time at last to be alone together, and a place as well—inside the cargo bay of an ascraft slung from Eagle’s belly. Technicians and crew members were still swarming through the Eagle, getting her ready for her long flight, but the air/spacecraft, already packed with provisions and secured for the voyage, was deserted. There was room enough, just barely, for the two of them to float together in weightless ecstasy, moving gently to rhythms old long before man had left his homeworld, urged on by drives ancient before life had left the sea.The cargo bay was crowded, packed with kiloliter canisters of water, for the most part. The Farstar mission was expected to last the better part of a year, and, since there was no guarantee of their welcome in the Alya system, consumables enough for some twelve hundred people for that long a time had to be carried along. Every spare cubic meter of space aboard each of the starships was packed with supplies, especially with Organic Precursors, or OPs, stores of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorous, and all of the other elements that would be nanotechnically assembled into food during the voyage.
