41. Graveyard Shift
Floyd could do little except to keep out of the way, and he was becoming fairly adept at it. Although he had volunteered to help with any chores around the ship, he had quickly discovered that all the engineering tasks were much too specialized, and he was now so out of touch with the frontiers of astronomical research that he could do little to assist Vasili with his observations. Nevertheless, there were endless small jobs to be done aboard Leonov and Discovery, and he was happy to relieve more important people of those responsibilities. Dr Heywood Floyd, one-time Chairman of the National Council on Astronautics and Chancellor (on leave) of the University of Hawaii, now claimed to be the highest-paid plumber and general maintenance man in the Solar System. He probably knew more about the odd nooks and crannies on both ships than anyone else; the only places he had never been were the dangerously radioactive power modules and the small cubicle aboard Leonov which no one except Tanya ever entered. Floyd assumed that it was the code room; by mutual agreement it was never mentioned.
Perhaps his most useful function was to serve as watch while the rest of the crew slept during the nominal 2200-0600 hour night. Someone was always on duty aboard each ship, and the changeover took place at the ghastly hour of 0200. Only the captain was exempt from that routine; as her Number Two (not to mention her husband), Vasili had the responsibility for working out the watch roster, but he had skilfully foisted this unpopular job on Floyd.
'It's just an administrative detail,' he explained airily. 'If you can take it over, I'd be very grateful - it would leave me more time for my scientific work.'
Floyd was too experienced a bureaucrat to be caught that way, in normal circumstances; but his usual defences did not always function well in that environment.
So there he was aboard Discovery at ship's midnight, calling Max on Leonov every half hour to check that he was awake. The official penalty for sleeping on duty, so Walter Curnow maintained, was ejection through the airlock sans suit; had this been enforced, Tanya would have been sadly short-handed by then. But so few real emergencies could arise in space, and there were so many automatic alarms to deal with them, that no one took watch duty very seriously.
Since he was no longer feeling quite so sorry for himself, and the small hours no longer encouraged bouts of self-pity, Floyd was once again using his watch time profitably. There were always books to be read (he had abandoned Remembrance of Things Past for the third time, Dr Zhivago for the second), technical papers to be studied, reports to be written. And sometimes he would have stimulating conversations with Hal using the keyboard input because the computer's voice recognition was still erratic. They usually went something like:
Hal - this is Dr Floyd.
GOOD EVENING, DOCTOR.
I'm taking over watch at 2200. Is everything okay?
EVERYTHING IS FINE, DOCTOR
Then why is that red light flashing on Panel 5?
THE MONITOR CAMERA IN THE POD BAY IS FAULTY. WALTER TOLD ME TO IGNORE IT. THERE IS NO WAY IN WHICH I CAN SWITCH IT OFF. I'M SORRY.
That's quite okay, Hal. Thank you.
YOU'RE WELCOME, DOCTOR.
And so on.
Sometimes Hal would suggest a game of chess, presumably obeying a programming instruction set long ago and never cancelled. Floyd would not accept the challenge; he had always regarded chess as a frightful waste of time, and had never even learned the rules of the game. Hal seemed unable to believe that there were humans who couldn't - or wouldn't - play chess, and kept on trying hopefully.
Here we go again, thought Floyd, when a faint chime sounded from the display panel.
DOCTOR FLOYD?
What is it, Hal?
THERE IS A MESSAGE FOR YOU.
So it isn't another challenge, thought Floyd with mild surprise. It was unusual to employ Hal as a messenger boy, though he was freq…
