They had taken off two hours ago from the George H. W. Bush, a supercarrier keeping station in the Bay of Bengal. Doob had viewed the ship through the eyes of a man who, in a few months, would be making a permanent move to its orbiting equivalent. She was a completely artificial island, thousands of people densely packed into a wad of pure technology. The professionalism of the crew and the efficiency with which she ran were amazing. Could something like that be duplicated in space, with people chosen by lot from all over the world, and trained in camps over the course of a single year?