The muster was called at the start of the forenoon watch, on the speakers, the whole ship. There had never been an order about how the Endurance kept her counts — only the habit laid down on the far side of everything, the first muster under a strange sky, all souls by name — and the habit had outlived the captains who laid it down. The divisions answered out of every living compartment: engineering off the trench shores, tactical from the magazines, the galley, the rig, the bridge. Sick bay answered for itself and for its berths — eight who could not stand, four who could stand and not walk — and the chief engineer’s name came down the ward speaker and was answered with one whole breath spent entire on the word.
The certified absences were read last, by name, no rank-order and no apology. Then the number, once:
One hundred and fifty-eight souls. All answered or answered for. Log it so.
The arithmetic underneath it
Tactical had walked the ship compartment by compartment since the crossing — every station answered, every space opened, the rolls read against the watch bill twice — and handed the reconciled count across the duty desk square and witnessed. The certificates behind the six newest absences took four lines each: cause, place, identification, date. One place-line was struck through and corrected in the certifying officer’s own hand, at the engine deck’s request, because the man had a post and the post had a name: the brass — main drive trench. The corrections were initialled the way the records wanted corrections owned.
The Endurance had cleared the Houston yards with two hundred and forty. One more is carried on no muster at all: a man living well on a green world he chose over the voyage, logged out in good order years before, with a single-charge beacon by the door he has never once spent.
The countersignature
The muster slate came down to the ward before the forenoon was out, for the Chief Medical Officer’s counter-signature under the six. The stated purpose travels with the figure:
A muster figure is the only sentence in the message they won’t be able to argue with. Ships can be doubted. Warnings can be filed for committee. A count of souls, certified — that, they have to look at. One hundred and fifty-eight people came back from the far side of the universe, Doctor. The number is the proof and the bill in one line, and I intend to read it to them myself.
Signed at the foot of the ward roll: M. Soto, Chief Medical Officer. The difference between the two numbers is not arithmetic and never will be; the arithmetic is kept anyway.