Sherry swallowed her mouthful of sandwich. "So, what's going on this afternoon?"
Cathy opened her info pack, letting the cover fall over her plate. "Ubs," she said through her sandwich. She swallowed. "Choosing which clubs to join. I think I'm going to do astronomy, spaceflight, and gymnastics. The spaceflight club gets to talk to the captain, the navigator, and the the rest of the crew about how the ship works!"
"Sounds fun, but I think I'll pass," Sherry said. "Can I see the list?"
"You haven't read your info pack yet?"
"I just want to look the list over once more, so I don't forget any of the ones l want to ask about." Sherry grabbed the page, and took another bite of her sandwich while skimming it.
"Pass it here when you're done, ok?" Kara said.
Cathy rolled her eyes. "Carry your own damn infopacks around, will you?"
Sherry nodded, handed the page to Kara, and finished her sandwich.
"We still have half an hour. I think I'll get my info-pack so I can mark the ones I actually get to sign up for." Michi pushed her chair back.
Kara handed the page back to Cathy. "Good idea."
Everybody must have had the same idea, Sherry noticed, because they were all heading for deck one.
They pushed through the crowd at the elevator. The elevator doors opened just as they reached the stairs, and Jess and Kara winked at each other and started running down the stairs, jumping the last four steps before each landing.
They came back into the stairwell from the deck five entrance just as Sherry, Cathy, and Michi turned the corner, and started running down the next flight of stairs.
The elevator dinged just as the stairwell door closed.
All five started running, dodging the other people on the stairs. Jess yanked open the door to deck four and Kara ducked past her, ran to the elevator, and pressed the call button. They all took off down another flight of stairs, and just before the heavy stairwell door drifted closed, Sherry heard the elevator ding.
On deck three, Kara was giggling madly, and Cathy had slowed to a walk, puffing.
"That was mean," Sherry said when the elevator finally arrived on deck one and the people inside got out, grumbling.
"You don't mean that," Kara said. "You're smiling."
Jess laughed. "Meet here in five?"
Kara led the way to their shared room as Michi and Jess headed to their seperate ones.
"You sure about doing gymnastics, Cathy?" Kara asked, holding the door open as she caught up.
"They have a beginners class," Cathy said. "Besides, I'd like to go tree climbing when we get there."
"Oh, the aliens, right?" Kara shrugged. "Eh, they have their space, I have mine. I don't want a strange human coming into my home, why should I change for an alien?"
Sherry pulled the schedule and club information out of her info pack, and put them in her back pocket.
At the door to the stairs, Kara idled, chatting, until the elevator doors started to slide closed with a load of people heading up.
"Go!" She and Jess said simultaneously, and they started running up the stairs.
Michi shook her head. "No way."
Cathy sighed. "I'm walking."
They could hear Kara and Jess laughing and pounding up the stairs, already two decks up. Their footsteps echoed through the stairwell, over the noise of everybody else walking either up or down.
"Any idea which clubs you want to join, Michi?" Sherry tried not to look at Cathy, puffing again.
"Sort of. I was thinking of either volleyball or badminton, and maybe the newsletter. You?"
"There's a newsletter? Damn, I didn't notice that." Sherry pulled out her club list. "I've worked on a school newspaper before, it's great fun. Oh, there it is." She pushed the stairwell door open with her hip and shoulder. "I had been thinking of the painting club, but now I'm not sure."
"You can do more than one club, if you can find time for it. It's just that you have to do at least one club and one sport." Cathy pointed down the hall. "There's Kara and Jess."
"Hey. They set up the club displays so the backboards cover the windows. I figured I'd check while we were waiting for you slowpokes." Kara turned on her toes, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she looked up and down the hall.
They followed the crowd trickling into hall two, and split up to go looking for the displays they were interested in. Sherry tried to find the newsletter booth right away, to make sure she got in.
"Have you worked on a newsletter before?" the suit behind the table asked, when he noticed her stopping to look at the publication schedule.
Sherry nodded. "Couple of school papers. They usually stuck me covering the band and drama stuff, because I didn't complain too much about it."
"That's great that you have experience, then. We try to get a mix of experience so it isn't all old pros or all newcomers fumbling around."
Sherry grinned. "And you're the editor?"
"I'm the supervisor. John Fairing, but you can call me John. First club meeting, you'll pick an editor yourselves. I just answer questions, and read the paper over before it goes to press, to make sure there's nothing inappropriate in it."
"Define inappropriate."
John laughed. "You've had a teacher pull the plug on you before, have you?" He picked a sheet off the table. "This is the editorial policy. Previous groups have had no problem with it, and as long as you stick to it, there won't be any trouble."
Sherry skimmed it. No -ist jokes, no promotion of violence or illegal activity, no lies, and no stories making fun of fellow students. There was no mention of "subject to the teacher's judgement", she was happy to see.
She nodded. "How do I sign up?"
"Just swipe your card. And don't forget to take copies of the editorial policy," he handed her back the paper she had put down, then picked up a few more, "the publication schedule, and the quickstart guide to the publishing program."
Sherry folded the paper and put it in her back pocket to read later, and swiped her ID card through the card reader on the table. It beeped once and flashed a green light.
"Great, see you at the first meeting, Sherry."
She gave him a half-wave as she turned to look for the painting club. The room had gotten a lot busier while she had been talking to John. She had to go around knots of people standing in the middle of the aisle between booths, and frequently had to stand on her toes or crane her neck around the corner to see which clubs were at some of the more popular booths.
The painting booth ended up being back near the entrance, and was hung with some very nice and some very horrible pictures.
"--by the same person," the lady behind the table was saying. She pointed at one of the horrible pictures. "This was done in the first day, and this," she pointed to the rather good picture beside it, "was done on the last day."
"Wow," the boy at the table said. He looked back and forth at the two pictures for a while, then took a half-step sideways when he noticed Sherry beside him, picking up papers. "Sorry. So, does everybody see that kind of improvement?"
"No, some people start with more drawing and painting skills, so they don't improve quite so dramatically. Everybody does see improvement though."
Sherry nodded. "I did something like that a while ago, it was pretty amazing how much better I got."
"Are you interested in joining the club too? If you've already done something like this, we have an advanced stream as well."
"Not sure, I'm just looking." Sherry looked over the papers for the advanced stream that the lady behind the table handed her.
It looked a little more aimed at people wanting to learn rather than just have fun. Sherry put the papers back on the table and went to see which sports still had space on their teams. Hopefully there would be some that weren't too competitive, because if she had to do sports she wanted to at least have fun, not stress about who was winning and by how much.
She waved at Cathy as she walked past what was obviously the gymnastics table. Most of the people there were girls and tiny, even compared to Cathy. Probably Michi's size, or smaller.
She wandered the tables, looking at what was available. Nothing really appealed to her, some less than others.
"Picked a sport yet?"
Sherry turned around. "Oh, hi Kara. No, You?"
Kara shrugged. "The guy running volleyball is cute."
"Yeah?" Sherry leaned over to look at the volleyball table. "Hey, he is. I wonder if there's a team that doesn't get all competitive."
"Dunno, let's ask."
They stopped at the edge of the knot of girls asking inane questions about how the teams would be selected, and getting him to explain in detail how the tournament would work.
"Lo-sers," Kara muttered, barely loud enough for Sherry to hear. "Just interrupt them. It's not like they're actually after information, they just want his attention."
"Excuse me," Sherry said, waving her hand a bit. "Really quick question. Will there be a team that isn't really competitive? Because I'm interested, just not very good."
"There will be if enough people want to do that. I think it won't be a problem."
"Thanks." Sherry swiped her ID card, and grabbed one of each page from the table.
She and Kara retreated a safe distance.
"Boy, some people. Bet you anything we'll see those girls there signed up for noncompetetive, trying to get him to help them with every move."
"You'll win. No bet."
Sherry chewed her breakfast slowly while reading over her schedule.
"Huh. Breakfast, classes, lunch, more classes, sports, free time--for a mere half-hour, too, that won't be long enough to shower if the lineups are anything like this morning--dinner, clubs, study time, bed. Cripes, they're keeping us busy." Kara put her schedule down and leaned back in her chair.
"What did you expect?" Michi asked. "It's not like they're going to let us run around the ship and entertain ourselves. At least they aren't locking us up, or putting us in coldsleep or something."
Cathy snorted, almost choking on her apple juice. "As if," she said when she'd finished coughing. "It takes more than eight weeks to get you into coldsleep. Totally not worth it. Plus it's more expensive than just feeding us for the eight weeks."
"What classes do you guys have first?" Sherry asked.
"Math, bleh. Then science. After lunch, English."
"Same as Kara," Cathy said. "Only no bleh on the math."
"Science, history, math," Michi said.
"English, math, history," Jess said.
"I'm with Michi then," Sherry said. "I wonder why they split us up like that?"
"Cause we were in different grades back home, duh." Kara wrinkled her forehead at Sherry.
"Duh is right." Sherry smacked her forehead. "Sorry 'bout the blonde moment."
Jess snickered. "Admit it, you dye your hair. You're not nearly enough of an airhead to be that blonde."
"I dare you to find dark roots," Sherry said, pointing her fork at Jess. "Only not right now, we gotta go to class."