Joshua finished Vespers, looking forward to his first meal aboard the CHRISTOS.

Brunch always followed the mid-morning ritual, by shipboard precedent. So it was no surprise to hear a light tinny rapping on the cubicle door announcing the call to Mess.

Joshua brushed Miss Denis in exiting the small cabin. She stopped and waited in the confined corridor for the Cardinal to close the cabin door.

Joshua shook down his Cassock and straightened as much as the low ceiling would allow. "Well Arlyis, ready for lunch?"

"Mmm. I may still be adjusting to shipboard time, but my stomach isn't. Feed me."

Joshua grunted in agreement.

"Are your arrangements all completed and satisfactory? Brother Paulis mentioned there might be some problems with your data link. He complained to me that your requirements might slow the navigation systems."

Arlyis laughed. "That's just the sound of Mendel's knee jerking. A load analysis of the ship systems was done before anything was installed."

"Paulis did voice the same concern."

"Why am I not surprised? The chief engineer and his mate both singing the same song. Gosh! Believe me, this is all coming from Mendel. He just hasn't come to terms with the refit yet."

A particular Monkish order crewed church starships. Mendel and Paulis were two of the five that ran this one.

Joshua recalled what he knew of Miss Denis. A lay worker for the church, Arlyis was a highly motivated and independent woman who put her career first. A small home on Alcomer, supported by the modest earnings from the church-sponsored university, was the only outside interest she allowed herself.

Joshua knew from her dossier that any earnings spared from paying student loans were poured into it. Only the carrot of tenure at the college could have pulled her from Alcomer.

She smiled at Joshua. "We'd better hurry or Brother Luke will be clearing off the table before we get seated!"

Joshua returned a thin-lipped smile in response, motioning Arlyis ahead.

The Shipboard dining area was comprised of two trencher tables bolted against the opposing walls of the ship's narrow mess, leaving an adequate, but tight, passage between. An un-decorated cross hung from the bulkhead, providing the only break in the gray, utilitarian space.

Joshua spotted a gap in the seating and ushered Arlyis towards it. Colonel Colmer and his men sat somewhat apart from the non-military crew. This left two chairs unoccupied between them and the all-but-bald Father Leslie Logan. Properly, Joshua seated Miss Denis first, taking an adjoining seat next to Sir Fredric Colmer.

Friar Luke brought them plates of a light, white compote garnished with sprigs of green rosemary, apricot slices, and biscuits. Everything hand prepared by the monks on board ship.

Colonel Colmer, already well into the meal, stopped and stood as Arlys was seated. He smiled broadly.

"I think this is the first time I have had the privilege to be at table with you, Miss Denies. I'm Honored."

Arlyis flushed a little at the attention, but waved it off. "Oh sit down, Colonel, I'm just a working girl. No need to stand up for me!"

"Not so, Miss. I read your biography, as a matter of course. It's rare to work with such talent as you and the rest aboard. My courtesy is not just owed, it is respect earned."

Arlys looked at Colmer with a bit more intensity. The statement seemed an attempt to impress, but the man's manner and undertone spoke loudly of honest appreciation.

"Well, you are very gallant, Sir Colmer. Now sit!"

Colmer's smile widened even further into a full, and suddenly boyish one.

"A pleasure. I hope you've brought an adequate appetite with you Miss Denies, the monks out did themselves today."

Private Brian Street leaned forward to agree.

"Tastes better than it looks, Miss. Sister Seika was say'in earlier that the Monks use bio-engineered cultures and legumes to make this here white stuff. Says it's only grown on board this ship. They could open up a restaurant. Any idea how long this tour will be? I could grow attached ta' the chow."

Brother Luke beamed at the complement and interjected, "I developed it myself, almost six thousand bells ago, it was. Cultured it on Metrome, off Beltiguise."

Joshua shook his head, directing his response to the Private. "I have no idea, Brian. Hopefully your Colonel, or one of the others, will be in a position to give me an estimate after we have had a chance to look at the site."

Not being his first tour on a monkish ship, Joshua had ended his vespers with table-grace, so he tucked in to the meal without further fuss as soon as Colmer had reseated.

Joshua chewed thoughtfully. "This is good, Brother Luke. You will have to make this again."

Luke nodded. "Forty more bells, can do again. Cultures require some time to re-grow."

Sir Colmer, with evident reluctance, returned to his conversation with Brian and Private Eldon, who were verbally field striping some piece of military gear now safely stored away below. Joshua finished the meal with the attention it deserved, relatively unmolested from interruption.

Father Logan had engaged Arlyis, and with his usual passion, the topic turned to music. Besides being a spectral emissions specialist, Logan collected classical and cultural specialty music, no small thing considering the plethora of settled planetary cultures.

Joshua found it almost impossible not to tune in on the skin-headed Father Logan, who loudly lectured Arlyis about his hobby.

"But if you haven't heard Volokowsky, well...I will make you a copy. You must hear for yourself."

Noting Joshua's attention, Father Logan said, "Oh, by the way, Brother Ferdinand, the ah, Captain mentioned we should be approaching our first stop in the Draco by ..." Logan stopped to do the calculation ... "eight bells, I believe, as the monks divide shipboard time. Odd, a twenty hour day, not like Alcomer, or a navel ship. Arlyis and I really should start unpacking the radio emission apparatus as soon as we can. I need to renew our recordings of the lost colony transmissions, and take new mass readings."

Joshua waved a spoon at Father Logan, fighting a rising irritation.

"Don't be too caught up in the colony theory. We are to research mass loss phenomena, and strange signals, not hunt down hypothetical lost colonies. The digital signal may not be the only anomaly. In fact, I certainly hope not. By the way, anything you find, I want to review personally. Then everything gets sent to New Vatica." Joshua softened. "This is just the first stop. I think it best to start out by being as thorough as possible. In the short time I have been aboard, I have heard a raft of guesses, but seen no new data. I expect open minds about me, Father Logan, not preconceptions."

Arlyis blinked at this, suggesting, "I'm certain that in the end, we all want to come away from this with a few new ideas, Cardinal Joshua. Father Logan just wants to be sure no data area is overlooked."

"Of course!" blustered Father Logan. "I really have hopes of making a positive, and relevant, addition to science on this expedition, you see. What was it Thomas Edison said, a new discovery every month and a breakthrough innovation once a year? All for the greater glory of the Lord, of course!"

Appeased, Joshua returned to his plate. Speculation bothered him. A bagful of rumors, revolving around lost colonies, splinter sects and such were circulating. It was wasted focus, as Joshua saw it, a chasing of ghosts and shadows that inevitably seemed to haunt men's minds, when facts were sparse. Given the crew's makeup, some of the ideas circulating were more dry and analytical, but Joshua disliked both sorts of "runaway imagination", as a matter of course, when evidence was lacking. He held his post because of an almost preternatural intuition, but it was based on the inflow of very accurate information. You did not lay a report on Joshua's desk without having checked every assertion twice. Perhaps this was a flaw in his makeup, as some had suggested, but if so, not one that affected his success in piecing together the truth of things.

Arlyis and Father Logan eventually finished eating and left, heading toward the hold to retrieve their gear. Since those early to lunch were already leaving, Brother Luke began busing some of the tables.

Joshua noticed that Ferdinand and Tiel, respectively the ship's Captain and Navigator, had both failed to appear at mess. That left Brother Mendel, the engineer, who would be still at station in the engine pod below, waiting to be relieved. The remaining crewman, Brother Paulis, rushed quietly through his meal.

Keeping the monk's names straight was a chore. The flight crew all dressed the same, were of about the same stature, cut their hair in tonsure, and seemed to do, in rotation, most of the same shipboard tasks.

There was more to it than that, though. The lives of their passengers seemed to flow past all of them like water over pebbles in a stream. They seemed to have the same adaptable, yet disassociated attitude towards non-crew members. The researchers were just visitors, tolerated, accepted, but generally non-essential. The attitude left in its wake a mask of demeanor that made them difficult to know well, or individualize. The Order ran most of the churches' non-military fleet, the sect's members rarely leaving shipboard. The hermetic isolation, it seemed to Joshua, tended to leave them a bit...odd.

Joshua murmured pardons to Sir Colmer and Arlyis, then rose, determined to visit the ship's bridge.

The CHRISTOS was a freight packet ship, about 230 meters long, moderate as such things went, capable of transporting 5000 cubic meters of cargo. Besides the bridge, the ship included 12 small cabin/work areas, a dedicated kitchen, dining room, and lounge area. All were ordered "floor outward" in a revolving central ring section whose rotation provided a comfortable gravity for the crew. An externally bayed shuttle was fitted for most landing transfers.

Joshua walked through the tan ceramaloy passage, rhythmically dodging the overhead section breaks. On his first tour, he almost flattened his forehead before internalizing the need to duck regularly. Tall as he was, it was either that, or stay in his cabin when traveling.

Fully decked out commercial liners were different, of course, but that kind of luxury travel wasn't the norm for clergy. Sea-craft and spacecraft, he mused, had much in common in so far as passenger accommodation went. It always struck him that the primary concern on ships seemed to be frugality of space usage. Artistic design where attempted, seemed focused on allowing the spaces to be even more spare in execution than to beautify anything. No matter how well designed, no shipboard area had ever seemed to him more than adequate, at best.

The CHRISTOS used the usual mix of technologies found in ships of its class, so it was not a sleek looking ship, Joshua reflected. Hydro-conversion fusion reactors, using heavy water for fuel, powered the engines employed for ascent and descent. Solar sail technology was used for interplanetary maneuvers (the CHRISTOS carried enough mono-molecular sail to cover a quarter of Texas). Berger pocket continua generators were fitted for FTL travel. This meant a lot of girded together modules, spiky protrusions, independently rotating sections and other knobby features.

Since the Captain and navigator had not appeared at mess, it was a good excuse to approach the bridge, a rare enough opportunity for a non-pilot and, he admitted, still one he enjoyed. In passing, he wondered how Michael's mission was faring...