I Speak for Earth by John Brunner

while she’s still below light-speed—and pilot tests show it stands up pretty well. Just lately I figured out a way of welding metal using polarization of molecular binding forces. And for some reason till I came along no one had thought of photo-polymerizing plastics in free space—that wrinkle meant that anything shipped up from Earth could be lighter by the amount of hydrogen which would have been in it, and comes as the raw material instead of as fragile parts that have to be packed in cotton-wool. So now we’re collecting our hydrogen on the spot and manufacturingthings like instrument boards and furniture for the crew’s quarters right there. I don’t think there’s any more to add.”
    “Fair enough,” said Schneider with a smile. “Would you like to go on?” He nodded at the Indian woman, who leaned back in her chair, reflexively adjusting her sari at her waist.
    “My name is Rohini Das,” she said, and Joe felt an expression of amazement cross his face. Before he could help it, he had leaned forward eagerly.
    “The
Rohini Das?” he said. “The mathematician?”
    Rohini Das gave him a half smile. She had clearly been extraordinarily lovely in her teens, Joe reflected, but like rather many Indian women she was now settling towards a comfortable plumpness. She glanced at Schneider, who indicated with a nod that she should go on.
    “Well, I am twenty-eight years old, and I was born in India, not far from Agra. Now I work at the Higher Education Institute of Travancore, where I teach mathematics and classical literature. This strikes some people as strange, but not myself. I was not well educated, but I had a good friend, an old man who had known the famous mathematician Ramajuna when he was alive, and I was taught something of algebra and so on when I was fifteen. I liked it, and then I read some scientific journals my good friend owned, and I saw a mistake in a calculation, so when I was eighteen people subscribed for me to go and study mathematics because I had discovered what is now called the generator function of the hyperspatial series. To me it was just—how shall I put it?—it was like something aesthetically satisfying; it had to be like that because it was right. But then Dr. Crown in New York showed that it led to a means of transferring energy from one place to another instantaneously or at any rate of providing a signal much faster than light, so it turned out to be important, and I think our friend Mr. Morea from the starship knows more about what happened to it after that than I do. Everyone became very angry when, instead of studying mathematics, I started to write a long poem about Akbar, the famous Indian conqueror, but when they read it they said it was wonderful, so I got my post which I have been at for six years.”
    She chuckled. “I am afraid that whoever selected me was careless—I would probably treat Gyul Kodran like one of my obnoxious students”
    Schneider gave an answering smile, and turned to her partner in the chess game. The stolid man spoke rapidly in a voice like a machine.
    “Name is Stepan Prodshenko. Age thirty years and two months. Born in Sverdlovsk where my father was a factory manager and my mother a teacher. My father is a hero of soviet labor. I studied physics at the Marx-Lenin High School in Sverdlovsk and then at Moscow University, obtaining a Khrushchev prize for my doctorate thesis. I am now engaged in theoretical research into the nature of the matter-energy exchange in meson transformation. I am also an athlete, and have an Olympic silver medal for the five-thousand meter race; I am also a licensed teacher of gymnastics. I am single. Thank you.”
    “I think you might have added,” said Schneider gentry, “that you sing first tenor parts with the Moscow University Choir.”
    Prodshenko’s stolid mask lasted a fraction of a second. Then he suddenly gave a boyish grin and threw his hands up in the air. He said, “But that is only a hobby for me!