“You’re quite welcome, Philip,” she answered absently, continuing to read.
The message on her tablet had included an admonition from Lieutenant Caruthers to learn about the ship’s masts and sails before morning, for she’d be going out on the hull with him as they left orbit. Provided the alterations to her vacsuit were completed by then, of course. And she quite didn’t think it was at all fair of them to send her outside the ship on her first morning in the Navy — though it probably made sense, in a way, as they’d want to find out early on if she reacted badly.
“It’s just that I can never think what to say to him in return,” Philip continued.
“The thing about bullies like Roland, Philip, is that they’re often quite insecure themselves.” She continued reading, wondering how she was ever going to remember all of it for the morning. “Frequently about the same things they use to attack you. It’s just a matter of turning it all back on them.”
“I’d never thought of it that way.”
Alexis turned to look at him. “That does not, by the way, mean saying things like ‘I know you are, but what am I’.”
Philip laughed. “No, I imagine not. Have to be a bit cleverer than that, I guess.”
“A bit.” Alexis returned to studying the diagram of Merlin’s masts and sails. “Is he often like that?”
“Told you he was a prat, but he’s been absolutely horrible since we left Zariah.” He yawned. “I think he got notice he’s turned down for lieutenant again.”
“How’s that?” she asked.
“Last we were at Zariah Station, Roland went off for two watches and wouldn’t say where. Usually he’s bragging about which whor …” Philip stopped and cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, which establishment he’s off to when on leave, I mean.”
Alexis chuckled. “I believe I take your meaning, Philip. Do go on.”
“I think he stood for lieutenant again, but didn’t say. You can do it after you’re three years a midshipman, you see, and he’s been five. Stood for promotion twice earlier, but the captains wouldn’t pass him, so I suspect he didn’t want anyone to know he was standing again.”
“I see — is it a very difficult examination then?”
“I’ve heard it is. Three or more captains all barking questions at you and you’ve to answer immediately.” He shuddered. “Not looking forward to it, myself. The captain and Lieutenant Caruthers will sometimes quiz us so, to help us prepare.” He smiled as though remembering something pleasant. “Roland does as well at that as at the other.”
“I wonder what’s given Roland so much trouble with it.”
Philip yawned. “Wouldn’t know — but I believe it’s time to get a bit of rest.”
“Quite right,” Alexis agreed, rubbing her tired eyes. “I do hope I remember all of this lot in the morning.” She stood and slid her chest under the lower bunk, then raised the desk, hearing it fasten to the wall with a sturdy clunk. She stretched and then hesitated for a moment, looking about the small compartment. Well, then, we hadn’t considered this bit, had we?
She thought about the situation and then shrugged. The baggy underthings supplied by the Navy weren’t any more revealing than what she’d wear on a hot summer’s day back on Dalthus, after all. She considered asking Philip about it, but dismissed the notion — she’d already revealed her utter ignorance of the Navy quite enough for one day, and she was well familiar with the way men behaved in the work camps. So long as they changed their actual underthings in the head or when the other was out of the berth, she saw no reason to make an issue of it. She raised a hand to her collar and began unsealing her jumpsuit.
“Here, now! What’re you doing?”
Alexis stopped and turned to see Philip staring at her with wide eyes and pale face. Well, and it appears I misjudged that as well, now didn’t I?
“I’m going to bed,” she told him.
“But … you’re undressing!”
Alexis laughed. “You don’t expect me to sleep in this jumpsuit, do you?” She paused for a moment. “Or is there some rule that we must?”
Philip cleared his throat. “No, I suppose not,” he said uncomfortably. “But you can’t just strip down right here!”
Alexis thought of the summer days spent at the village pond near home, where the bathers would frequently wear next to nothing, or even nothing at all, and smiled. “I wasn’t going to strip naked, Philip,” she told him, grinning wider as a red flush spread up his face. “We’ll simply have to deal with this — preferably without a lot of bother and inconvenience. Surely these underthings cover enough? You’ve seen knees and elbows before, I assume?”
Philip hesitated. “Well yes, but …” He flushed a deeper shade of red. “They’re underthings … and such.”
“Yes, the same underthings you have on, I imagine.” She resumed unsealing the jumpsuit, which caused Philip to turn his face to the wall and cover his eyes.
“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “I’m sure they’re much the same, it’s just the …” He trailed off, his discomfort clear.
Alexis sat on her bunk to remove her boots, then pulled the jump suit off and slid under her blanket. “The ‘and-suches’?” she asked, trying desperately not to laugh at the poor boy. For all he knew far more about the ship and the Navy than she did, he was still but thirteen.
“Yes,” Philip agreed, still facing the wall. “The … 'and-suches' are quite disconcerting.”
“You could always move in with Roland, I suppose.”
“No, I don’t want to do that, but … it’s just the idea, you understand.”
“My 'and-suches' or Roland’s gastric distress, Philip. I fear you’ll have to pick one or the other.”
Philip swallowed heavily and squared his shoulders, still not looking away from the wall or lowering his hand. “I’m sure I’ll get used to the idea in time. For the moment though, just please do give me a bit of warning and I’ll look well away.”
Alexis bit her lip to keep from laughing. She propped her pillow up and grabbed her tablet to study a bit more before going to sleep.
“You can turn around now, Philip,” she told him. “The 'and-suches' are all safely covered.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m opening the hatch now, Mister Carew.” Alexis heard Lieutenant Caruthers’ voice over her suit radio. “Just stand easy.”
And it’s easy for you to say, she thought, swallowing hard. She was wearing her newly sized vacsuit and standing at the fore of Merlin’s sail locker, just in front of the closed hatch. The suit felt bulky and weighted down with the equipment she’d need outside the ship. A pair of safety lines at the belt, to keep her from floating off into space, more tools than she could name, and a gun that shot a heavy bag attached to a long, light line – a “rescue gun” they’d named it. Just the thing to inspire confidence in one who was about to step into space for the first time. Caruthers stood beside her and reached over to grasp the handle and slowly pull the hatch open. You and your bloody ‘traditions’.
It was, she was told, a Navy tradition for a new spacer to stand at the front of everyone his first watch “Outside”, both in normal-space and darkspace so that their first view outside the hull would be unobscured by any of the other hands. She closed her eyes as the hatch slid slowly open, took a deep breath and then opened them, gasping in reaction. She threw her left hand out, grasping the edge of the hatchway, suddenly certain that she about to tumble forward and fall forever.
“Easy, Mister Carew,” Caruthers reminded her.
Hearing her breathing heavy inside the suit’s helmet, Alexis swallowed again and took in the scene. Framed by the hatchway was a yawning emptiness scattered with faraway stars. To the upper-right, she could see just a sliver of Dalthus above and a bit ahead of the ship’s bow as it placidly orbited the planet. I’m in space, she thought, amazed.
“Out onto the hull now, Mister Carew. We’ve work to be about.”
Remembering her instructions, Alexis gra
sped one of the safety lines at her belt and unclipped an end, pulling it taut and sliding her other hand along it to ensure that the free end was still attached. She carefully knelt down, keeping her eyes on the hatch’s edge and tentatively reached a hand through the hatchway.
The ship’s sail locker opened at the very bow of the ship, like a doorway halfway up a vast, curving wall. Immediately in front of it was the ship’s bowsprit, a meter-wide, narrowing spike, thrusting out from the bow, to which the rigging attached to hold the masts in place. Along its length and cross-hatching the hull as well, were a series of wires and pipes to which the safety lines could be attached, allowing the spacers to safely navigate the hull and masts.
Alexis carefully clipped the free end of her safety line to one of these and gave it a nervous tug, then stood up. She could feel the eyes of the entire sail crew behind her, watching as she made her first step Outside. And they’ll be judging me, sure. Just as miners or loggers would. Wanting to see if I’ve aught for them to respect.
Alexis held her breath and lifted one foot over the hatchway’s edge, feeling the pull and click as her suit’s magnetized sole made contact with the hull. Not so bad at all, she thought, lifting her other foot and swinging it forward. As she passed the hatchway, leaving Merlin’s artificial gravity, her stride didn’t come down as she’d expected. Instead, her free foot arced up, away from the hull, but her other foot, the one still in contact with the hull, had started to lift in the natural cadence of walking. She found herself, suddenly and unexpectedly, with both feet floating several centimeters above the hull as the momentum of her stride carried her slowly out along the ship’s bowsprit.
Alexis tried desperately not to panic, though she twisted and flailed frantically in an effort to regain contact with material of the bowsprit. She stretched her legs to their fullest, pointing her toes desperately to regain just the slightest bit of contact that would let the magnets bring her back down, even going so far as to wave her arms and hands as though she were swimming. As she continued to drift, her breathing grew more ragged and she could feel the blood pounding in her head. Rationally, she knew that she was probably in little danger, there was an entire crew of experienced spacers behind her in the locker, as well as Lieutenant Caruthers, and surely, they’d be on the lookout to keep her from such obvious harm her first minute Outside.
“If you are finished skylarking, Mister Carew?” Caruthers asked dryly.
On the lookout for me to make a fool of myself, Alexis thought, feeling her face grow hot with shame. How’m I to … Her thought trailed off as she drifted higher and felt a tug at her waist. Silly twit. She stopped waving her arms about and grasped the safety line at her waist, pulling herself down with such force that her knees buckled and she stumbled forward as her feet made contact with the bowsprit.
“Very good, Mister Carew, please stop where you are and don’t move a muscle, now.”
Alexis froze, certain that she’d drifted into some dangerous area of the ship. Her heart was still beating rapidly and she slowly turned her head to see the lieutenant gliding toward her along the bowsprit in an odd, shuffling gait that kept one foot firmly planted at all times. So that’s the way of it.
Behind Caruthers, the men were exiting the sail locker and Alexis had another moment of vertigo as she saw them clamber out to stand and walk on what seemed to her a vertical surface. She realized that there was quite a bit more to get used to in all this, when “down” seemed to be whichever way your feet were pointing.
Caruthers reached her and carefully examined her safety line where it was clipped to the guidewire, as well as the bowsprit near her feet. Alexis’ suit radio crackled briefly and she heard the lieutenant call out, “I make it eleven meters, seven, lads!”
There was a chorus of groans over the general channel and what sounded like a single cheer. “Ladding had eleven meters even, sir, looks like he takes it.”
Alexis’ eyes grew wide and then she smiled as she realized what had happened.
“Can’t blame the lads for a bit of fun at a landsman’s expense, can we, Mister Carew?”
The lads and yourself, I think, lieutenant, she thought, realizing that her hands were still shaking a bit inside of the suit’s gloves. She took a deep breath before answering, knowing that the men would judge her on how she took both the joke and their betting on it.
“No sir,” she said, voice still a little ragged from the experience, but trying for far more bravado than she actually felt. “But if someone had thought to tell me, I’d have given a bloody great shove out the hatch and gone for a record.” She heard a bit of good-natured laughter and thought she might have won a few of the crew over, at least.
“All right, lads,” Caruthers called. “We’ve had our fun and there’s work to be done. Let’s have the mainmast stepped, top and topgallant, if you please, bosun!” A chorus of “Aye sir!” sounded over the radio and the men started moving over the hull to the top of ship. “You picked a fine spot to come down, Mister Carew. Watch carefully from here and you’ll see the whole of the evolution.”
“Aye sir,” Alexis watching in fascination and trying to relate what she saw to what she’d read. Within a few minutes, however, she found herself distracted by the discomfort of the vacsuit. Though its insulated materials protected her from temperature extremes such as the cold of open space or the heat of direct sunlight unfiltered by an atmosphere, it was also efficient at keeping heat in, and Alexis soon found herself quite warm, with an occasional bead of sweat trickling down her face — an annoying occurrence when she instinctively raised a hand to wipe it away and encountered her helmet. She wondered how much worse it was for the men who were laboring to raise the ship’s masts.
In orbit, the sails and masts were stowed, so as to protect them from damage by any debris. While the sails were folded and stored in compartments along the bow, the masts themselves were folded back along the top and bottom of the ship. As she watched, the spacers clambered up the bow to the top and walked back along the hull to the end of the mast. They grasped the end and lifted it from the hull, easing it gently upright on its hinge near the bow. Some of the spacers grasped trailing lines and pulled them through fittings on the upper hull, leaning their weight against the push of their fellows in order to control the speed of the mast’s ascent.
When it was in place, in much less time than Alexis would have thought possible, one spacer locked the mast’s hinge while others grasped additional lines and spread out to port, starboard, and along the narrow bowsprit to secure them, locking the mast in place.
Next, four spacers attached their safety lines to guides that ran up the mast and quickly ascended to its top, ten meters above the deck. Once there, two of them affixed their lines to rings at the top and slid a telescoping segment of out of the center of the mast. The two then leapt upward, letting their momentum and mass pull the inner mast with them, while the two who’d remained behind pushed and shoved at the rising tube. When that had risen to its full height, another ten meters or so above the hull, they repeated the process again with another segment, until the uppermost spacers were thirty meters up. Additional lines were brought out and passed up the mast to anchor each of these new levels to the hull and bowsprit.
“Lieutenant Caruthers,” Alexis asked, “why do we do this by hand? Surely a motor of some kind would make it easier.”
“It wouldn’t work at all in darkspace,” he answered. “But if it did, it would add mass to the ship, mass that would slow us or could be better used to other purposes. As the men are already aboard to work the sails in the Dark, there’s little need to lessen the work in normal-space.” He gestured to where the spacers were making lines fast to the hull and then to the masts. “Name for me those mast segments, if you please, Mister Carew.”
Alexis fought to remember what she’d read the night before, it seemed that every piece of the vast ship had some odd and distinct name. Each of the lines anchoring that mast, she knew, had its own name, and she
breathed a bit of a sigh of relief that Caruthers was only asking her to name the masts themselves.
“The mainmast for the whole, sir, as it’s on the top of the ship,” she said, thinking. “And above it the topmast and then …” She paused. “Topgallant, sir,” she answered finally.
“Main topmast and main topgallant, Mister Carew, as each mast has those pieces. Clarity, Mister Carew, if you remember.” Alexis thought she could hear his smile over the radio. “And these others?” he asked, pointing down. Or, at least, down for the two of them as they stood on the bowsprit.
Alexis looked in that direction and staggered a bit as she saw another group of spacers, these working upside down from her perspective as they raised the mast that had been flush against the bottom — Keel, she reminded herself — of the ship. For the first time, she noticed that there had been spacers walking along the bowsprit under her and Caruthers as they made fast the lines to hold that mast in place. Eyes wide, she followed their progress with fascination.
“Mister Carew?”
She shook herself, bringing her attention back to the lieutenant. “I’m sorry, sir. Mizzen,” she answered. “The mizzen mast, mizzen, uh, topmast, and mizzen topgallant mast.”
Alexis looked back to the mainmast and saw the crew of spacers had brought out long poles — yards, she remembered — and were hoisting them up to the heights of the mast, laid perpendicular to the mast itself. Spacers clinging to the mast pulled on lines to draw the yard upward, while men on the deck held lines to keep it in check and from gaining too much momentum, for, while the long yards might have no weight with the ship in orbit, they did not lack for mass. And despite the material’s ability to make the yard both strong and light, a hundred kilos of awkward, ungainly yard took as much energy to stop, as it did to start it moving to begin with, and Alexis saw that what the task lacked in necessary brute strength, it made up for in a need for deliberation and judgment.
Into the Dark (Alexis Carew Book 1) Page 9