Starliner

by David Drake

  "Unlocked it?" Ran said. He shook his head to clear it and found right away that had been a bad idea.

  Because of the disorientation it caused, many people refused to use a hypnogogue. Virtually all the knowledge that fitted Ran for his present position came out of one, though. His father had brought home a teaching unit and a university data base of software . . . from Hobilo, loot gathered when Chick Colville served there as a mercenary.

  The elder Colville had never touched the hypnogogue, except to demonstrate it to his son. But on the long nights of Bifrost's winter, the unit had hammered Ran Colville through a template of civilized knowledge.

  "That's right," Babanguida replied. "I know I'm off duty, but I asked them what they were doing and they told me to stuff it. I, ah, couldn't follow them through the hatch."

  Balls. Babanguida had chips to every door in the Empress of Earth or Ran was badly mistaken. The rating had quite reasonably figured this was a good problem to pass off.

  It was nice to know that Babanguida hadn't simply ignored the oddity, though. Lots of people would have done just that.

  "Right," Ran said aloud, wishing that he felt all right "How'd they come aboard, do you know?"

  "By the main gangway," Babanguida said. "Cooper was on duty. He says he checked their passes and they were fine, so what's the big deal. Cooper!"

  "And didn't inform Ms. Holly?" Ran said. He was too fuzzy to have remembered whose shift this was, but Cooper was on Wanda's watch.

  "That's a negative," Babanguida agreed. "You know Cooper. He figures any day he doesn't put his pants on back to front, it's a win."

  "Roger, I'll handle it from here," Ran said. "Over. Bridge, give me a time plan of hatches opening from Corridor Twelve into officers' country and doors in officers' country. Starting ten minutes back."

  He closed and rubbed his eyes for a moment That helped a little, but he continued to have flashbacks of still-faced Szgranians dancing while their arms swayed together like the limbs of mating spiders. Ran sighed and got to work again.

  The Empress of Earth had visual monitors only in the Third Class spaces. There were times that a full-ship system would have been useful—this was one of them—but neither passengers nor the vessel's officers would have stood for it. For that matter, records of who went to which cabin with whom were an incitement to blackmail by entrepreneurial crewmen, which wasn't the sort of thing Trident Starlines needed either.

  Ran's terminal now displayed an alternative. Corridor Twelve was one of those running the full length of the vessel. Going forward from the Embarkation Hall, it passed through First Class and then, through separate locked hatches, gave access to the crew and officer accommodations.

  A pair of engineering officers had entered or left their cabins recently, but that was several minutes before the most recent use of the Corridor Twelve hatch. The only cabin opened after that point was Commander Kneale's, two doors down from Ran's own.

  "Bridge," Ran asked. "Where's the commander?"

  "Commander Kneale left the ship three hours and seventeen minutes ago," the AI replied. "He has not as yet returned. I have no information on his present whereabouts."

  "Right," said Ran. It sure didn't feel right. "Request Second Officer Holly to meet me in the commander's suite soonest. I'm headed that way now."

  Ran stood up, wobbled in a flurry of false six-armed memories, and went out the door. He paused to put on his hat.

  He thought of taking the pistol in the locked drawer beneath his terminal; but if that was the way the situation had to be solved, Ran Colville wasn't in any condition to solve it.

  The corridor was empty as usual. Trident Starlines didn't stint their crews. Officers' cabins on the Empress of Earth were of First Class quality, and the corridor walk were programmed with a holographic reproduction of sea grasses moving beneath a Tblisi lagoon.

  Ran would just as soon have had gray paint. He wasn't afraid of water, exactly, but he caught his breath every time he stepped out of his cabin.

  He walked past Lieutenant Holly's door and stopped at Kneale's. Setting his ear to the panel didn't tell him anything, not that he'd have expected it to. Worth trying, though; and it took up a moment before he had to act.

  Ran set his ID chip against the lock plate. An officer could open any door on the ship, even the one to the captain's suite. Of course, Ran could knock instead, but he figured he'd learn more this way.

  The man who was leaning against the inside of the door staggered backward when the panel withdrew into the coaming. Ran stepped around him, moving fast so that he was past the entry and bathroom before the man he'd passed grabbed him from behind and another rammed a sub-machine gun into his chest. Together they slammed him up against the wall.

  "Who the hell is he?" another man demanded.

  All six of the strangers wore civilian clothes, but that was as far as "civilian" went. Both the men holding Ran had gun muzzles against his body. For all his strength, he couldn't have broken free if he'd tried, and he was pretty sure either of them could have handled him alone.

  Bare-handed, at any rate. With a Cold Crewman's adjustment tool or even a shovel—maybe not.

  Three of the others had shifted Commander Kneale's terminal into the center of the floor. They were wiring a panel into the bulkhead behind it. That was fast work, even with a modular system, but the technicians were obviously pros—as were the two holding Ran, in their own fashion.

  The sixth man, the one asking the question, was in his late 40s, with iron-gray hair and a face to match. He hadn't drawn a gun when Ran burst in, but he certainly looked as though he'd seen his share of sight pictures over the years.

  "I'm Third Officer Colville," Ran said. One of the men held Ran's face hard against the wall so that he couldn't look around at the work going on. "And who are you, gentlemen?"

  "Let him go," the man in charge said abruptly.

  The guns and gripping hands fell away. Ran turned slowly. He was going to have a stiff neck in a day or two. The panel the technicians had been working on was hidden behind a holographic screen. With the hologram projector working and the terminal slid back to where it belonged, the additional panel would be completely hidden.

  "Mr. Colville," said the man in charge, "we're here on company business." He offered Ran an ID chip embossed with a gold trident. "Check this with your reader, please."

  Ran obeyed because that was simpler than refusing. His commo link trilled in his ear, "John Brown, Central Office. Bearer is authorized to enter all Trident Starlines locations. Direct any questions to Department Five, Central Office."

  Ran handed the chip back without comment.

  "Colville," said the man whose name was as likely Brown as he was likely a Trident employee—not very, "you probably think you were doing your job. We are doing ours. Get out of here now and forget all about it Otherwise, you won't have a job with this company or any other that lifts off of Earth."

  Ran didn't doubt that the cold-voiced statement was a promise rather than a threat, nor that it was a real one. But why was the government of Federated Earth installing a—

  "Freeze!" ordered Wanda Holly from the open doorway where she stood with her right hand in the pocket of her coat as though she was pointing a pistol. "Drop those guns now!"

  "It's all right!" Ran shouted. He didn't step toward the Second Officer because the gunmen might use the cover of his body to swing their weapons up and—

  "Lee, Damson!" snapped the man in charge. "Don't move." When he was certain that his subordinates had heard him, he added like the rustle of a bullwhip, "Since you left the damned door open."

  "Wanda, it's all right," Ran said in a calmer tone as he stepped quickly toward the corridor before "Brown" decided to hold them. "These gentlemen are from Central Office. They've got a perfect right to be here."

  "Colville," said Brown. He paused for a moment, got an unheard prompt and continued, "Ms. Holly. Don't talk about this, don't even remember it Right?"

  "Rig
ht," Ran said. He keyed the door shut behind him. For a moment he was afraid that the government gunmen were going to follow him out, but the door stayed dosed. He guided Wanda quickly back to his own cabin.

  "What was that all in aid of?" she asked, speaking more calmly than Ran could have done, but the guns hadn't been pointed at her.

  "The government—the Federation—is installing an autopilot in the commander's cabin," Ran said. "I'll check that he knows about it, but I don't think it would be a great idea to say anything more about what happened."

  "I'll check," Wanda said. "Since it happened on my watch."

  "Look, Babanguida called me because Cooper didn't see anything to report, even when Babanguida brought it up," Ran muttered defensively. "And just as a suggestion, that sort of fellow doesn't bluff worth a damn with a hand in the pocket."

  "I'll remember that the next time I bluff somebody," Wanda said. She lifted the flat pistol from her jacket pocket, put it on safe, and dropped it back where it came from. "And I'll take care of Cooper. He's got a great career back in Maintenance where he came from."

  Ran swallowed. "Look," he said, "I'm shook. I was on a hypnogogue learning Szgranian when the call came, and getting slammed up against a bulkhead didn't help a lot I screwed up and I'm sorry."

  Wanda started to giggle. "You're shook?" she said. "Can't imagine why. Me, I'm going to go change my pants, because I'm afraid I had a little accident when I saw those sub-machine guns."

  She sobered. "You saw a problem and you fixed it, Ran," she said. "It's a pleasure to serve with you."

  The way Second Officer Holly said that, Ran thought as his door spread shut behind her, he'd have kissed her if she weren't a fellow crewman.

  * * *

  The bridge of the Empress of Earth was in the center of the vessel, to make the current path for the controls as nearly as possible the same for each bow and stern pairing. The internal walls were real-time holograms fed by sensors on the Empress's skin. The members of the Ship Side command group could watch a panorama of Port Northern, marred only by seams between the holographic panels.

  The officers were all familiar with the illusion, but even Captain Samuel Kanawa paused on occasion when he caught the scene out of the corner of his eye and the wonder of it struck him anew.

  The Empress of Earth was moments from undocking. Kanawa looked around deliberately now, a tall, spare figure with the mahogany complexion of his Maori ancestors. His blue Ship Side uniform was tailored so perfectly that it might have been cast as a part of his body.

  On even the finest ship, in the best-appointed port in the known universe, there was a possibility of disaster on lift-off and landing. Kanawa never forgot that. Before every undocking, he let his eyes feast on the world that he might be leaving in a metaphysical instead of the planned physical sense.

  The sensors ignored the Empress herself, so the eight tugs lashed to the starliner's bitts stood like great stones in a neolithic astronomical temple. The tugs were squat and as ugly as toads. Backwash from their own motors had blackened and rippled their skins, and multiple lift-offs and landings every day inevitably torqued their frames.

  Appearance mattered only to passengers watching from the terminal as the tugs crawled into position. That wasn't important enough for the port authorities to attempt the impossible job of maintaining cosmetic beauty in the brutal conditions under which the little ships worked. Function was another matter. To the extent that any human contrivance was trustworthy, Port Northern's tugs could be trusted not to fail at the moment their thrust was most needed.

  The Empress's autopilot had checked the tugs' location, then calculated the precise vector for their motor outputs based on the thrust each had developed during its most recent use. When the tugs lighted up for undocking, Bridge—the artificial intelligence, not the physical location—would make such corrections as it found necessary.

  Seligly, the new First Officer, had checked all Bridge's calculations. She'd captained an Earth-Martinique shuttle, and before that served as First Officer of the moderate-sized starliner Queen of Naples. Though Bridge had never failed and Seligly's background was beyond cavil, Captain Kanawa rechecked the figures. All were in order.

  "Three minutes, sir," murmured the Third Officer from his console. The seventeen officers and ratings on the Empress's bridge were all seated, with the exception of Kanawa himself. It was the captain's choice to remain standing while his ship entered or left a gravity well, despite company regulations to the contrary.

  "Very good, Mr. Rigney," Kanawa said. "Stay alert, ladies and gentlemen. Remember Captain Stoltzer."

  The Empress of Earth's own magnetic motors had been a low-frequency rumble for several minutes. Now they were joined in pairs by those of the tugs—the quick shock of lighting, a rising pulse as Bridge ran them up to test their response to its control, and then back to idle as another pair came on line. Bright blue light glimmered through the holographic panels, mimicking what was reflected from the frozen soil.

  All eight tugs were ready. The Empress quivered like a horse at the starting post. Kanawa glanced down at his terminal. Actual outputs were all within one percent of those calculated. He noted with approval that Seligly was checking also.

  "Are you familiar with Captain Stoltzer, Ms. Seligly?" Kanawa asked.

  His First Officer looked up at him from her console. "No sir, I'm not," she admitted.

  "Then you should have asked," Kanawa chided. "Never be afraid to ask for clarification. It might mean all our lives some day."

  "Two minutes, sir," the Third Officer said, speaking into his console so as not to seem to be interrupting his captain.

  "Thank you, Mr. Rigney," Kanawa said. The rhythm of the motors was building. There was an occasional jolt and flash as an output antenna cleared its throat of debris.

  "It happened seventy years ago, Ms. Seligly," Kanawa resumed. "The captain under whom I trained, Captain Kawanishi, was on the bridge of the Ensign with Stoltzer when it happened. She told the story at every docking or undocking, and I've tried to keep it current in my time."

  "I've heard of the Ensign, sir," Seligly said apologetically.

  "Yes, of course," Kanawa agreed. "A record holder in her day, though The City of New York had just bettered her time on the Earth-Harkona run. That was the prime route of the day."

  Seligly nodded. The deck had a queasy feel, and the tugs could be seen to bob as their thrust edged toward perfect dynamic balance with the Empress's mass.

  "One minute, sir."

  Kanawa cleared his throat. "Yes, thank you, Mr. Rigney," he said. He glanced at the levels on his display, then the lambent fury of the tug motors in holographic image.

  "The Ensign was in Earth orbit, maneuvering to attach her tugs," the captain continued, "when Captain Stoltzer disengaged the autopilot and engaged the backup system. The Ensign began to drop out of orbit on her own. The First Officer just gaped. Captain Kawanishi—Third Officer she was then, of course—tried to take manual control, but Stoltzer grabbed her."

  Kanawa chuckled. "That was back in the days when some people didn't think women were tough enough to be Ship Side officers. Kawanishi had her captain's ear in her mouth before they hit the deck together, but that wouldn't have helped a lot if the Second Officer hadn't switched the main autopilot back in and brought the Ensign to orbit again."

  "Had he gone out of mind?" Seligly said in amazement.

  "Exactly!" Kanawa said, beaming. "He was mad as a hatter. He'd programmed the backup system to drop the Ensign squarely onto New York City with no more braking thrust than it took to drop them out of orbit."

  "That would have killed a hundred thousand people!" Seligly said.

  "That would have killed tens of millions of people," Kanawa corrected. "The Ensign massed some forty kilotonnes—only a fraction of our size, but still enough to turn the whole metropolitan area into a crater if it hit at orbital velocity. It turned out—"

  Kanawa paused to smile brightly at the horror o
n the First Officer's face.

  "—that Captain Stoltzer was so disturbed at The City of New York bettering his Ensign's time by six hours that he'd determined to wipe them off the face of the Earth. Not the ship but the city itself."

  Seligly shook her head.

  "Lift-off," said Rigney. Bridge raised the tugs' motors to full thrust over a ten-second span, while the Empress's own motors built up power at a cautiously greater rate. The huge vessel vibrated but did not seem to move.

  "So watch me, ladies and gentlemen!" Captain Kanawa shouted over the bone-deep throb of the magnetic motors. "Because anyone on the bridge, myself included, may be every bit as crazy as Captain Stoltzer!"

  With a roar like rising thunder, the Empress of Earth mounted toward the stars.

  IN TRANSIT:

  EARTH TO NEVASA

  It was barely ship's midnight, but more than half the celebrants had melted away in pairs and larger gatherings from the whirl of First Night. Ran Colville had danced two numbers out of every three, chatted to a circle of passengers—mostly female—during every break; and turned down at least a dozen propositions, ranging from the subtle to the extremely direct, also mostly involving women.

  This was the first chance he'd had to draw a deep breath. He did so, standing beside the holographic facade of the Aemillian Basilica, as he looked over the double ring of tables and out onto the center of the huge room cleared for dancing.

  The gaiety in the Social Hall wasn't far removed from the orgies of delight at the end of a major war. In the course of a voyage, a starliner became a solid and permanent world by implication. At the first undocking, though—no matter how experienced the traveler—there was a pang as the planet vanished, leaving the passengers with only the work of human hands between themselves and the void.

  First Night was an affirmation of life regained. Strait-laced passengers abandoned caution for one night, while those who looked for thrills of every persuasion found rich pickings.

  "Sighting in on one for later?" Wanda Holly asked unexpectedly from beside Ran's shoulder.