by Allen Steele
“Fine. Just fine.” Judging from Morgan’s tone of voice, I didn’t have to see his face to know that it was probably a pale shade of green. “Jas is…”
“I am comfortable.” If there was any emotion in hisher voice, the translation device of hisher suit masked it. “Thank you, Mr. Truffaut. I compliment your skills as a pilot.”
I liked that. If the Prime Emissary didn’t have any complaints, then Rain was in no position to argue. As usual, Ali remained stoical, although I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. Pilots respect each other when they’re behind the stick; if he had any criticism to offer, he’d tell me once we were out of the cockpit.
“Thank you, Jas. I appreciate it.” I checked the comp again. “ETA in about two hours, thirty-six minutes, folks. So just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
VII
Two and a half hours later, we rendezvoused with the Pride of Cucamonga.
Perhaps I was spoiled. The Robert E. Lee, after all, was a streamlined beauty to behold, and even cycleships like the Victory possessed a certain elegant symmetry. By comparison, the Pride was as ugly as a crowbar. About four hundred feet in length, the freighter was comprised of cylindrical subsections arranged in tandem, with the hab module at the bow and its massive fusion engine at the stern. Two enormous cargo modules, each resembling a giant drum, protruded at perpendicular angles from either side of the hub just aft of the hab module, giving the ship a cruciform appearance. The service module at the midsection was jammed with maneuvering thrusters, auxiliary tanks, and radiators, while the deflector array stuck out from the prow like an immense wok.
As we drew closer, it became clear that the Pride was a spacecraft with more than a few billion miles to its logbook. In places along its hull, I spotted plates that were of a slightly different color than the ones surrounding them, an indication that the ship had recently undergone a major refit. There were blackened scorch marks beneath the thrusters, and the telemetry dish appeared to be a replacement.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed these things. Ted studied the ship as I matched course with it, then looked back at Morgan. “Tell me again why we didn’t rate a new ship.”
“For its class, it’s the best one currently available.” Morgan unclasped his harness and pushed himself out of his couch. “Everything else in the Janus fleet is currently committed to other contracts. Besides, my engineers told me that it would be easier to refit an older vessel than build a new one.”
“Refit…you mean repair, don’t you?” I didn’t look away from my controls.
“No, I mean refit. There were certain modifications that needed to be made for this mission…particularly to the navigation system.” Taking hold of the back of my couch, Morgan pulled himself closer to the windows, inserting himself between Ted and me. “Once we show a profit, the company will have the capital to construct a new ship specifically designed for…”
“Mr. Goldstein, please…” Ted reached up to gently push the boss away. “Give us a little breathing room, okay?” He glanced at me. “How are you doing there?”
“So far, so good.” Keeping one eye on the lidar and the other on the comp screen, I fired the pitch and yaw thrusters to put Lucy on a direct line with the main docking port, located on the hub between the two cargo containers. Once I was holding station about five hundred feet from the ship, I touched my headset wand. “Pride of Cucamonga, this is Loose Lucy. Do you copy?”
A moment passed, then a gruff male voice came through. “Affirmative, Lucy. Have you in sight, and you’re clear to dock.”
That had to be the chief engineer. I guessed that he was on the bridge. Obviously a man of few words. “Roger that, Pride,” I replied. “Thank you.”
“Need any help?” Ted asked quietly.
“No, thanks. Got it covered.” To tell the truth, I was nervous as hell. Everything about both Lucy and the Pride gave me the uncertain feeling that neither craft was one hundred percent dependable, regardless of whatever Morgan had to say. Too late to chicken out now, though, so I opened the nose fairing to expose the docking collar, and once I had the Pride’s hub port lined up within the crosshairs of the forward radar, I fired aft thrusters and gently moved in.
I shouldn’t have worried so much. Lucy was a good girl; she behaved herself as I coaxed her toward the docking port. Even so, I didn’t breathe easy until the forward probe slid home and I felt the telltale thump of the flanges being engaged. An enunciator buzzed, confirming that we’d made a solid connection.
“Nice job,” Emily said. “Couldn’t have done better myself.”
“Thank you.” I safed the engines, then reached up to pressurize the forward airlock. “We’re here, ladies and gentlemen…um, no offense, Prime Emissary.”
“None taken.” Again, the short, catlike hiss that I’d learned to recognize as the hjadd equivalent of a chuckle. “My kind answers to both.”
That earned a couple of laughs from everyone except Rain and Ash. I didn’t have to look back to know that she continued to be unimpressed with me. As for Ash…well, he probably either needed to throw up or have a drink, whichever came first.
“All right, we’re here.” Ted unbuckled his harness, then pushed himself out of his seat. “So let’s go aboard and see what this tub is made of.”
( EIGHT )
Doc at the airlock…
Rain in space…
a definition of the blues…
great minds think alike.
VIII
The Pride of Cucamonga looked a lot better inside than it did on the outside. For a freighter that had put in plenty of time on the Jovian run, it was in pretty good shape. Nonetheless, with the chipped iron grey paint of its bulkheads and exposed conduits running across low ceilings, no one could have mistaken it for a passenger liner. The Pride was a workhorse, plain and simple.
One of the luxuries it didn’t have was artificial gravity. Since the ship wasn’t equipped with diametric drive, it also lacked a Millis-Clement field generator. And although the hub could be rotated to provide centrifugal force to the cargo modules, since we weren’t carrying livestock, the modules would be locked down for the duration of the journey. I was glad that I’d brought along a new pair of stickshoes; all the ones aboard had been used by the previous crew, and their insoles looked like fungal colonies.
The chief engineer met us at the airlock: Doc Schachner, a stocky gent in his midsixties who’d lost the hair on top of his head but made up for it with a thick white beard that went halfway down his chest. Doc knew Goldstein and called him by his first name, something that Morgan seemed to tolerate only barely; I’d later learn that Doc had a history of disagreements with his boss that might have gotten him canned a long time ago were it not for the fact that the chief was almost always right.
And for good reason. I eventually learned that Edward J. Schachner had earned his nickname along with the doctorate in astronautical engineering he’d picked up at the University of Edinburgh. After spending a decade designing spacecraft for Janus, he’d eventually decided that he’d rather fly spaceships than a drafting board. The Pride was one of the ships he’d built, and there probably wasn’t a wire or rivet aboard that he didn’t know like the back of his hand.
Doc wasn’t one for small talk. A brief self-introduction was all we got before he escorted us from the airlock to the central access shaft that led through the ship’s core. As he led us from the hub into the hab module, Doc paused every now and then to open pressure hatches leading from one deck to the next. As the last person in line, I quickly learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of his temper; when I neglected to close a hatch behind us, he made me go back and dog it tight, and after that made sure that each hatch was shut before we moved on. Ted might be the captain, but the Pride was clearly Doc’s ship, and he didn’t leave anything to chance.
Deck Two contained the crew quarters, but before we got there, Doc stopped at Deck Three. Opening the hatch, he asked Jas to accompany him; during the Pride
’s refit, a separate cabin specifically designed for hjadd passengers had been added. So we waited in the shaft while Doc showed the Prime Emissary to his stateroom; when he returned a few minutes later, he took us the rest of the way to Deck Two.
Our quarters were located along a ring-shaped corridor that wound its way around the inside of the hab module. They were larger than the first-class cabins aboard the Lee, but not much; instead of bunks, we had sleep-sacks that could be strung up to form hammocks, and lockers instead of closets and shelves. No furniture, of course—a chair was unnecessary in zero g, a desk worse than useless—but at least I had my own privy, even if the toilet had vacuum hoses and the bath stall was equipped with hot and cold running sponges. As luck would have it, my cabin was located next to Ash’s; noting that the walls weren’t very thick and that there was a vent between our rooms, I hoped that he didn’t snore.
I didn’t get much of a chance to make myself at home. I’d just swapped my boots for my stickshoes when Rain knocked on my door. Time to unload Loose Lucy, and she needed me to fly the cargo pod. So off I went to earn my paycheck.
And that’s when my troubles began.
IX
Never take a job if you know you’re going to be working for someone who has less experience than you do.
Although the Pride was a civilian ship, nonetheless there’s a certain hierarchy aboard merchanteers that’s quasi-military in nature. In this instance, the quartermaster outranks the shuttle pilot when it comes to taking care of the payload. Therefore, Rain was my boss for this particular chore. Under any other circumstances, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but from the moment we suited up for EVA, I knew working with her would be difficult.
The Pride’s secondary airlock was located on the opposite side of the hub from where Lucy was docked. Before you cycled through it, you entered the ready room where the EVA gear was stowed. Prepping for a spacewalk isn’t for the modest; it entails stripping down to your birthday suit in order to put on the one-piece undergarment that, among other things, collects your sweat and urine to be distilled and recycled as coolant water and oxygen for the life-support system. If nudity is a problem, then you can always keep your back turned…but nonetheless, in a compartment little larger than a closet, it’s hard to keep from bumping into the other guy.
Rain wasn’t willing to trust me, despite my promises that I’d keep my hands to myself and not sneak a peek. Can’t say that I blamed her; in zero g, it can be hard to be gallant, especially since you’re having to use both hands to pull on the overgarment while attaching all the necessary lines and hoses. But she’d have nothing of it, so I had to wait outside while she suited up. That was my first indication that she had precious little experience, because nearly an hour went by before she let me in…and then, as soon as I saw her, I noticed that she’d missed a couple of steps, not the least of which was neglecting to close the zipper on her left wrist, something that might have caused a blowout.
Rain didn’t like it very much when I pointed this out to her, nor was she appreciative when I properly attached the electrical line from her backpack to her chest unit. In fact, she squawked as if I was trying to grope her, until she realized what I was trying to do and why. Then she insisted on waiting for me in the airlock while I suited up…a violation of safety protocols, since the buddy system calls for no one to enter an airlock alone.
Prude. I took my time getting into my gear, meaning that I was ready to go in twenty minutes. A final check-out of each other’s suits, followed by a comlink test, then we put on our helmets, pressurized our suits, and voided the airlock.
The cargo pod was docked on the hub’s outer hull. It was almost identical to the one I’d operated on Highgate, so nothing about it was unfamiliar. Nonetheless, I waited until Rain attached her safety line to a hook just outside the airlock, then made her way hand over hand along the outside of the hub until she reached Loose Lucy, before I climbed into the cockpit. She spacewalked well enough, but nonetheless I couldn’t help but notice a certain clumsiness in the way she moved. It was obvious that she hadn’t spent a lot of time in EVA.
Rain was…how old? Nineteen, maybe twenty? I had time to think about this while I waited for her to find her way to the shuttle. How much previous experience could she have had before Morgan hired her? Probably not very much…especially not since the Federation Navy only consisted of a handful of small ships, plus the Lee. So how come someone so young got the job of quartermaster aboard a freighter, particularly one vested with such an important mission?
A bad sign, indeed. And it only got worse.
The way we were supposed to work was that, once Rain opened Lucy’s cargo deck and climbed inside, she’d untie each bale and, one at a time, push them to the hatch. I would then use the pod to transfer the bales to the cargo modules, alternating between Cargo One and Cargo Two, so that the mass would be evenly distributed on either side of the ship. Once the bales were aboard, Rain and I would enter the modules and tie them down, making sure that they were securely lashed to the inside decks before we closed the hatches.
It should have been a simple operation, one that would’ve taken a few hours at most. If I’d been working with a seasoned grunt, that is. But Rain seemed to have little idea what she was doing. She struggled to untie lines, tumbled the bales toward the hatch and swore at me when I had trouble catching them with the pod’s manipulators, and frequently forgot the order in which we were supposed to reload them aboard the modules. Three times, I returned to the shuttle only to discover that she’d already pitched out another bale; on one occasion, I had to chase after a bale that had floated away from Lucy, barely managing to retrieve it before it drifted too far to be rescued.
None of these problems were her fault. They were always the result of my incompetence and stupidity. I was an oaf, an idiot, a doofus, an amateur, a complete zero, and God only knew how she’d been saddled with the likes of me. Even after Ted, overhearing her more unkind remarks over the comlink, told her to calm down and cooperate with me, she continued to insist upon doing things her way.
It wasn’t until Emily suited up and came down to give us a hand that we finally managed to get the shuttle unloaded. I docked the pod, but instead of helping them secure the bales, I went straight to the bridge. Didn’t bother to take off my suit; simply shelved the helmet, plugged the backpack into its recharger unit, took off my gloves, then hauled myself up the access shaft to Deck One.
The command center was a circular compartment ringed by rectangular portholes, with a pentagonal control console dominating the center of the room. A hologram image of the Pride floated above the table, with close-up views of the ship displayed on flatscreens suspended from the low ceiling. Ted was at the engineering station, peering over Doc’s shoulder as they ran through a systems check; on the other side of the table, Ali was seated at the helm. Everyone looked up as I entered through the floor hatch. The women’s voices were coming through the ceiling speakers, so no doubt they’d heard everything that had gone on between Rain and me.
“Something on your mind, Jules?” Ted turned to me as I used a ceiling rail to make my way across the compartment.
“Damn right.” I was trying hard to keep my temper in check, but I wasn’t succeeding. “I can’t work with her, skipper. She’s insane.”
“Hmm…yes, I think I see your point.” He thoughtfully stroked his chin as if pondering a solution to the problem. “Well, I’d hate to lose you, but I suppose Emcee can do double duty as shuttle pilot.” He reached to his earpiece. “I’ll put in a call to New Brighton, have someone bring up a skiff to take you home.”
“Whoa, wait a minute! That’s not what I…”
“You just accused one of your crewmates of insanity. Since I picked Rain myself, I suppose that means that you lack respect for my judgment. And if you’re unable to work with either of us…”
“Just a second! I…”
“I’ll give you”—Ted glanced at his watch—“sixty seconds. But
that’s all. We’re rather busy just now.”
He wasn’t joking. Ted Harker might be an easygoing chap, but no one questioned his authority on the bridge of his ship and got away with it. I took a deep breath, started over again. “Sir, I have total respect for your judgment. And…all right, maybe she isn’t insane. But you heard what happened out there…”
“I did, indeed. All of us did. That’s why my wife went down below.” His eyes narrowed. “Which is where you should be right now. Why aren’t you?”
“Because…Captain, how much experience does Rain have with this sort of thing? Seriously?”
“Very little. In fact, this is only her third time in space…and her first assignment as quartermaster.”
I stared at him. “Her first…what did she do before then?”
“She worked groundside at New Brighton for eight months before signing on with Janus. After that, two orbital sorties aboard cargo shuttles, unloading freight from the Lee. True, she hasn’t logged as many hours as you have, but she takes her job seriously, and I have complete confidence in her. I’m sorry that you have problems working for someone younger than you, but…”
“No, sir, that’s not it. It’s just that…look, she’s been on my case ever since I met her. I’ve been trying to get along with her, but it’s gotten to the point where…” Again, I hesitated. “If you really want me to leave the ship, then I will. But I can’t work with someone who carries a chip on her shoulder all the time.”
Ted didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I’d just talked myself out of a job. Behind him, Doc was quietly shaking his head. An old pro, he knew how petty feuds among crew members could escalate if left unresolved.
“Very well,” Ted said at last. “I’ll have a few words with Rain once she gets off duty, ask her to calm down. If she continues to harass you, I want you to let me know. As for now…since you’re here, I have a small errand for you.” He glanced over his shoulder at Doc. “Can you get along without me for a minute?” The chief nodded, and Ted unstuck his shoes from the deck. Grabbing hold of a ceiling rail, he pulled himself around the console. “Come along, please.”