by Dale Olausen
"Then, of course, the Beth had to have a dunking too! The Merpeople helped us with that, but when it was finished we had no choice but to stay on their world until she was all dried out. What a holiday we had and, believe me, we deserved it! I have to admit, we had our share of liquids other than water. The Merpeople know how to show visitors a good time!"
"The Confederation Central Pest Laboratories heard about us and our fun," added Jaff, laughing. "They got hold of me and asked for a specimen of the bug. But the sea did its work so well I didn't have one to give them! Instead I let them have the omega-coordinates for the delightful planet where we had come in contact with the infernal creatures, and told them to go fetch their own bugs! I don't know if they did!"
Kary entertained the gathering with a few more stories and Sarah listened attentively. The young Explorer had a gift for story-telling and Sarah found herself often tensing up in anticipation of the next sentence, or else laughing uproariously at some absurdity that Kary was showing up. In the end, however, she threw her hands out in protest.
"I don't believe that you're telling the truth, Kary," she said. "You're making it sound like your lives are all excitement. But life just isn't like that! I don't believe that it's like that even for Explorers!"
A dozen pairs of eyes stared at Sarah. "Hey, she's a sharp one," commented Ginette Maas.
Kary nodded. "When somebody asks us what our life is like, I usually tell them the stories about the interesting things that have happened to us," she explained. "That's what they want to hear. They don't want to know the dull truth which is that most of the time we just do routine work and cope with petty annoyances."
"Tell her about the petty annoyances. Tell her about Roger!" shouted Jodi from the end of the table. Cherrie took up the cause.
"Oh, Kary, tell Sarah about Roger!" The little girl snickered until she nearly choked on her food, and had to spend a minute coughing into her napkin while Jaff whacked her on the back.
"Roger is the Confederation Government's contribution to our ranks," said Kary as soon as the commotion had died down. "Recently the Government seems to have decided that we, the Explorers, are a useful segment of the galactic society, after all. Some brilliant bureaucrat came up with the most amazing idea: that the Government should have representatives aboard the Explorer ships. You see, nowadays when we make a planetfall we very likely are not looking for the things that the Government would be interested in. So this genius of a civil servant thought that a Government scientist aboard an Explorer ship could do a few tests that would interest the bureaucratic mind, whatever planet the ship might land upon."
"Besides, it gives the jokers in Outer Universe Studies an excuse to send a few of their craziest fieldworkers away," Jodi interjected sourly.
"Enough already," interrupted Captain Castilo. "It's hardly fair to run Roger down to someone who has never even met the man."
"Roger is very competent at what he does." Ginette was acting as a conciliator. "He tends to be a little immature in his behaviour, that's all."
"Immature in his behaviour!" Jodi snorted. "Come on! He's lazy, he's inconsiderate, he's egotistical! He’s got a dream-leaf habit, I swear, the way his eyes are out of focus half the time. And the way he goes on about the wonders of his home planet, Mallora - he's impossible!"
"And he's a big lunk, and he's rude to me!", shouted Cherrie. "And his eyes water!"
"Order!" Castilo's tone put an end to the railing. "You all know that we have to live with Roger until his contract ends. So let's do it with as much grace as possible."
“I have to agree with Jodi about the dream-leaf habit, though,” Jaff said, his voice quiet. “I admit that I was worried about him during the last long layover we had. Dream-leaf’s not a big deal, but there are a lot of worse habits to be picked up in various Trade Cities.”
"Let's give Sarah a chance to talk," suggested Ginette, obviously determined to change the subject. "Matty tells us that you come from Earth. So what's the old ancestral home like, these days, anyway?"
Sarah shook her head. "I don't think that there's much that I can say that's not on record in any library in the galaxy," she protested, to no avail.
Questions were fired at her rapidly; she was kept so busy answering them that she ate all of her dessert without noticing its flavour. Considering the taste of the Central Caf cuisine that may have been just as well.
"Kells should have heard this," Jaff said regretfully after Castilo had finished quizzing Sarah about the political situation on Earth.
"We like to call Kells the on-board intellectual," Kary explained to Sarah. "He would have asked you some interesting questions, I bet, if he wasn't laid up the way he is. It would have thrilled him no end to pick the brain of a person who actually grew up on the old Mother Earth."
"Have you given any thought to how you're going replace Kells?" Matty asked abruptly, breaking a long silence.
All the Explorer eyes turned to him.
"Did you have to bring that up?" muttered Jodi. Her fingertip traced tense little spirals on the tabletop in front of her.
"Well, I suppose we have all more or less been hoping that the problem would go away if we ignored it," sighed Castilo. "It looks to me as though we'll have to wait until we can get to a more hospitable environment before we can do anything. Which is really too bad, because it happens to be very important that we get back to our work as quickly as we can."
"The old Explorer magic still works everywhere in the galaxy except here," said Ginette, "so there should be no shortage of applicants once we put some feelers out, even if there is a labour shortage in the Confederation. But choosing won't be easy. We're going to have to live with this person for months - and we already have a Roger among us."
"Yes, and usually the people who want to come along are a starry-eyed bunch," added Castilo, "and it's not always easy to tell which candidate is going to be able to handle the inevitable disappointment."
"Dav! Ginette!" Kary scrambled to her feet excitedly.
"Are we stupid? Can't we see? The perfect person for the job is sitting right at this table!" Her finger stabbed at the air above Sarah.
There was a silence. Sarah's coffee spoon fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Suddenly three voices spoke at once.
"Why, so she is!"
"What a great idea!"
"Kary, you're right on, for once!"
Other comments followed but they passed Sarah's ears unheeded. She sat in her chair very quietly, stunned motionless by Kary's suggestion. Only her eyes moved, flitting in amazement from one enthusiastic face to another.
"So how about it, Sarah?" She recognized Castilo's voice. "Would you be interested in joining the Beth as the ship mechanic for about a year?"
Slowly she turned her head to face him. Her eyes had started to shine by the time she looked at him.
"Of course I would," she said.
Kary started to cheer but the Captain silenced her with a gesture.
"What about your work contract?" he asked Sarah.
"Damn the work contract. Do you think I could stand another eight months on XER knowing that I could have shipped out on the Beth? Besides, Kalso and Marchaisie will be glad to see me go."
*****
The confrontation with the Head Mechanic and the Manager of the Maintenance Sector went more or less according to Sarah's expectations. Both men ranted at her about the inviolability of work contracts, and Kalso told her that he would make certain, if she insisted on leaving before the agreed upon release date, that she would never again find work through the Confederation Employment Services. However, she could see the relief in both pairs of eyes, and hear the insincerity of the raving voices. She nearly burst out laughing when Kalso, in the middle of a speech detailing how poor a view the Employment Service took of workers who broke their contracts, hurriedly pushed at her the forms which she had to fill out, as if afraid that she might be persuaded to change her mind.
"That's one thing
that really bothers me about going," Sarah sighed as she described the event to Matty later.
"Kalso and his corner-cutting, that is. I feel like I'm leaving him an open field to do as he pleases - yet I don't see what good I could have done by staying."
She stared at the youth with troubled eyes.
"I wish - Matty, you don't think there's anything you could do, is there? You're going to be here for a while, aren't you, and if some investigators do come around maybe you could talk to them - or something?"
Matty grinned, ever cheerful.
"I probably could talk to them - or something," he said. He looked around at the screens separating them from their neighbours - they were in the Central Caf, as usual - and leaned closer towards her.
"Sarah," he said in a low, serious tone, "leave Kalso to me. I haven't said anything to you, but I guess I can, now that you're going to be gone anyway. I do more than just break the rules of the XER Authorities to make a few lives more tolerable. I can't explain but I've already passed the word on Kalso, and I think it's highly likely that he will find himself under investigation. So don't worry about him, just enjoy your once-in-a-lifetime adventure."
Her eyes searched his face; then she nodded.
"So," she murmured. "Well, you begin to make sense finally, now that I'm ready to go. But, thanks. I really appreciate you setting my mind to rest."
Later, on their way home she stopped him before they split for their separate living quarters. Shyly she grasped one of his hands in hers, determinedly ignoring the stares of the locals walking by. Public body contact of any kind between the sexes was forbidden on XER.
"I'm going to miss you, Matty," she said. "There's not much on this space station that I'm going to miss, but I will miss you."
"Thanks, Sarah. This place won't be the same without you. Still, I'm glad to see you go. You'll be much happier on the Beth than you've been here. This place isn't good for you."
She nodded and turned to go. Walking alone, she remembered another boyish face. She understood then why she felt so sad to leave Matty even though she was headed for adventure. He reminded her of the brother who had shared her plan to leave Earth for space, but who had not been there to do so when she had left.
Chapter Four
The days slipped by while Sarah worked hard to repair the damage that the Beth had sustained. At last, however, the job was done. She cheerfully thumbprinted the vessel's shipcard, thereby releasing it to Dav Castilo who immediately took it to another Sector to be provisioned.
"Get your things ready, Sarah," he said to her when he climbed into the ship. "We're leaving as soon as she's ready to go. Everybody's anxious to get away from this space station."
Sarah quickly gathered her few belongings from the corners of the shoe box that had been her residence for the past four months. She was trying to call Matty to say good-bye when her communicator unexpectedly beeped.
"Damn!" She switched channels. There was a message requesting that she find a comlink and contact a particular code. Puzzled, she gave up on the elusive Matty, picked up her bag and hurried to the Port, glad that the only comlinks on XER were on the way to the Beth.
"This is the Confederation Employment Service, Ms Mackenzie," the bureaucrat at the other end of the connection said after Sarah had punched out the given code and identified herself. "According to the reports that I have here, you have had some problems on your work assignment, and have chosen to break your contract."
"That's right. A short time ago I filed a complaint against Sector Manager Kalso who, I believe, had filed a citation of insubordination against me."
"Indeed," responded the bureaucrat. "At the moment we are trying to decide whether or not the situation warrants an investigation. We cannot refer employees to employers who require that their workers break Confederation law. We would like to know if your decision to break your work contract was prompted by some further events similar to the one you described in your complaint?"
Sarah considered this for a moment.
"No," she answered finally. "I don't think Kalso would ever have tried to bully me about that again. But I do think that there's a very good chance that he is bullying other mechanics, and I expect that he'll try it on whoever replaces me. You might consider warning my replacement.
"I broke the contract because clearly things were going to be very difficult if I stayed, and because I happened to get a wonderful chance to ship away from here on a private vessel." She decided not to offer any further details.
"All right." The person at the other end of the link sighed. "Perhaps we will have to look into the matter."
Sarah grinned to herself.
"I urge you to do so," she said. This was good. The more pressure there was on Kalso the better.
"Those damn computer-bound idiots at the Employment Centre," she muttered as she headed for the ship launch area, "don't they care that there's very likely people dying? Hasn't anybody thought to check if ships are disappearing in omega-space after having been maintained here?"
Outside the Beth Sarah ran into Matty.
"So here you are," she chided him. "Meanwhile I wasted precious minutes trying to get hold of you! But I suppose that I should have guessed that this is where you'd be!"
"I wanted to say good-bye to the crew - and you," Matty explained, smiling as usual. "But what kept you? Everyone else has already boarded. You're holding up the launch."
"I had to stop at the comlinks to talk to some idiot at the Employment Service. Wanted to know if Kalso had repeated his threat, and if that was why I broke the work contract.
“But, Matty, miracle of miracles, she said that they were going to investigate. Maybe something will get done, after all."
"Good. See, it's worth it to have some faith in institutions," laughed Matty. "You'd better climb aboard the Beth, though, or she'll leave without you."
"Okay." Sarah leaned over to give Matty a peck on the cheek and a hug. "Take care," she admonished him.
"Good-bye, Sarah," Matty said giving her a warm squeeze.
"The adventure begins," she said with a slightly nervous laugh as she turned to climb into the ship. Matty cheered as he watched her go.
Inside the Beth, Cherrie had been waiting to greet Sarah. "Welcome aboard, Sarah," she said, "I'll show you to your sleeping cubicle. We'll go to the lounge afterwards so you can have some coffee if you want to."
Sarah followed the little girl down corridors which were familiar to her from the time that she had spent repairing the Beth. Cherrie opened the door of a tiny apartment and Sarah tossed her bag on the floor, glad to take up Cherrie's suggestion to have coffee in the ship's lounge. Planet-born, she had found the living quarters on XER claustrophobic; the cubicle assigned to her on the Beth was smaller yet. She knew that she would not be tempted to spend many waking hours there.
"So Cherrie, I know that you're the 'ship's kid', but I don't know who your parents are." She tried to make some cheery conversation with the child. "Who do you belong to, anyway?"
"Oh, Dav's my dad and Ginette's my mother," the girl explained readily. "Except that Ginette's not really my mom and I was actually born on a planet, and not on this spaceship."
"Oh?" Sarah had wondered about Cherrie ever since she had first met her. Spacers rarely conceived children together - spending a lifetime on space stations and spaceships seemed to harm the human reproductive system in some way. However, they were very fond of children and it was not uncommon for them to get a little help from planetbound friends when necessary.
"I was born on Kordea," Cherrie explained proudly, "and my mom and dad say that I'm really part Kordean. Like I'm not all human - " she lowered her voice into a theatrical whisper, " - 'cause my birth mother was half-native."
Sarah's eyebrows shot up and she took a good look at the slight figure skipping beside her. She could see nothing extraordinary in the girl's appearance, however. Like Sarah, the child had dark hair and a pale complexion, yes, but that did not necessaril
y indicate anything unusual. People descended from Earth stock varied tremendously in skin and hair colour.
Yet, the Witches of Kordea, for Kordea was the famous planet of the Witches, were tall women with milky white faces and masses of black hair. What business, asked Sarah of herself, did an Explorer ship have on Kordea? And how did an Explorer ship captain manage to father a child with a half-native Kordean woman? After all, the Kordeans were notoriously contemptuous of anyone not of their stock.
They reached the lounge. Cherrie eagerly ran to fetch coffee while Sarah crossed the room to join Jaff. The medic was busy checking the contents of the first aid kits. Kary and Jodi were sitting at a nearby table, absorbed in a game.
"Hi, Sarah," Jaff greeted the new ship mechanic. "How are you at sorting pill bottles and ointment tubes? I could use a little help with the mess that the XER stores gave us."
He pointed at a box half full of medical supplies. Apparently the supplies had simply been dumped into it. Sarah glanced at the confusion and shrugged.
"I've never tried sorting medicines," she said, "but I can sort wrenches with the best. I suppose the difference isn't that great."
She dug into the box with both hands, glad to have something useful to do. Space travel could be very monotonous on a small ship like the Beth, which provided its passengers with few of the distractions offered by the huge trans-galactic liners.
"So how do you pass the time when you're travelling through space?" she asked Jaff. "It must get pretty boring after a while."
"We make diversions." Jaff nodded towards the table at which Kary and Jodi sat. "Pretty soon the card players will gather in here, and there are always the vid-scanners if all else fails. We have a fairly extensive library on board if you're interested in exploring it. If there's any briefing to be done, Dav and Ginette usually try to do it in space - they'll likely have a session with you before we make a planet fall."
Cherrie arrived with Sarah's coffee. "Roger's coming," she said to Jaff in a low voice. "He's in the caf getting a snack. I think I'm going to see Mom and Dad in the Control Room."