A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin Page B

Also, the separate observations of the group members will mutually interverify.”
    “Who programs this translator?” Shan snarled in a whisper. “Interverify! Shit!”
    Lidi looked around at the others, inviting questions.
    “How long will the trip actually take?” Betton asked.
    “No long,” the translator voice said, then self-corrected: “No time.”
    Another pause.
    “Thank you,” said Sweet Today, and the scientist on a planet twenty-two years of time-dilated travel from Ve Port answered,
     “We are grateful for your generous courage, and our hope is with you.”
    They went directly from the ansible room to the
Shoby.
    The churten equipment, which was not very space-consuming and the controls of which consisted essentially of an on-off switch,
     had been installed alongside the Nearly As Fast As Light motivators and controls of an ordinary interstellar ship of the Ekumenical
     Fleet. The
Shoby
had been built on Hain about four hundred years ago, and was thirty-two years old. Most of its early runs had been exploratory,
     with a Hainish-Chiffewarian crew. Since in such runs a ship might spend years in orbit in a planetary system, the Hainish
     and Chiffewarians, feeling that it might as well be lived in rather than endured, had arranged and furnished it like a very
     large, very comfortable house. Three of its residential modules had been disconnected and left in the hangars on Ve, and still
     there was more than enough room for a crew of only ten. Tai, Betton, and Shan, new from Terra, and Gveter from Anarres, accustomed
     to the barracks and the communal austerities of their marginally habitable worlds, stalked about the
Shoby,
disapproving it. “Excremental,” Gveter growled. “Luxury!” Tai sneered. Sweet Today, Lidi, and the Gethenians, more used to
     the amenities of shipboard life, settled right in and made themselves at home. And Gveter and the younger Terrans found it
     hard to maintain ethical discomfort in the spacious, high-ceilinged, well-furnished, slightly shabby living rooms and bedrooms,
     studies, high- and low-G gyms, the dining room, library, kitchen, and bridge of the
Shoby.
The carpet in the bridge was a genuineHenyekaulil, soft deep blues and purples woven in the patterns of the constellations of the Hainish sky. There was a large,
     healthy plantation of Terran bamboo in the meditation gym, part of the ship’s self-contained vegetal/respiratory system. The
     windows of any room could be programmed by the homesick to a view of Abbenay or New Cairo or the beach at Liden, or cleared
     to look out on the suns nearer and farther and the darkness between the suns.
    Rig and Asten discovered that as well as the elevators there was a stately staircase with a curving banister, leading from
     the reception hall up to the library. They slid down the banister shrieking wildly, until Shan threatened to apply a local
     gravity field and force them to slide up it, which they besought him to do. Betton watched the little ones with a superior
     gaze, and took the elevator; but the next day he slid down the banister, going a good deal faster than Rig and Asten because
     he could push off harder and had greater mass, and nearly broke his tailbone. It was Betton who organized the tray-sliding
     races, but Rig generally won them, being small enough to stay on the tray all the way down the stairs. None of the children
     had had any lessons at the beach, except in swimming and being Shobies; but while they waited through an unexpected five-day
     delay at Ve Port, Gveter did physics with Betton and math with all three daily in the library, and they did some history with
     Shan and Oreth, and danced with Tai in the low-G gym.
    When she danced, Tai became light, free, laughing. Rig and Asten loved her then, and her son danced with her like a colt,
     like a kid, awkward and blissful. Shan often joined them; he was a dark and elegant dancer, and she would dance with him,
     but even then was shy, would not