Meet Me at Infinity

by James Tiptree Jr.

  He set down his box and started in, trying not to rub his white shoulders against the flex. The tube ended in an open lock which gave directly into a small wardroom cluttered with parcels and used drinking bulbs.

  Quent coughed. Nothing happened.

  He called out.

  A confused sound erupted from the shaftway opposite. It was followed by a massive rear end clad in shorts and a shaggy gray parka. The newcomer turned ponderously. Quent looked up at an ursine muzzle set in bristly jowls, a large prune of a nose.

  “Who you?” demanded the ursinoid in thick Galactic.

  “Lieutenant Quent, First Officer, reporting,” said Quent.

  “Good,” rumbled the other. He surveyed Quent from small bright eyes and scratched the hair on his belly. Quent had erred about the parka.

  “You know refrigerate for storage?”

  “Refrigerant?”

  “Come. Maybe you make some sense.”

  Quent followed him back into the shaftway and down a dark ladder. Presently they came to a light above an open hatch. The ursinoid pointed to a tangle of dripping tubes.

  “What’s it for?” Quent asked.

  “Make cold,” growled the other. “New model. Should not slobber so, vernt?”

  “I mean, what’s it refrigerating?”

  “Ants. Here, you take. Maybe better luck.”

  He thrust a crumpled folder into Quent’s hand and shouldered past him up the ladder, leaving a marked aroma of wet bear rug.

  The leaflet was titled: Temperature-Controlled Personnel System Mark X5 Series D, Mod., Appvl. Pdg. Quent peered into the hatch. Beyond the pipes was a dim honeycomb of hexagonal cubicles, each containing a dark bulge the size of a coconut. He heard a faint, chittering sound. Quent began to examine the dialed panel beside the hatch. It did not seem to match the leaflet diagram. Somewhere above him the ladder clanked.

  “Futile,” hissed a voice overhead. Quent looked up. A thin gray arm snaked down and plucked the folder from his grasp. Quent had a glimpse of bulging, membranous eyes set in a long skull, and then the head retracted and its owner clambered down. It, or he, was a lizardlike biped taller than Quent, wearing a complicated vest.

  “You are Quent—our new first officer,” the creature clacked. Quent could see its tongue flicker inside the beaked jaws. “I am Svensk. Welcome aboard. You will now go away while I adjust this apparatus before the captain buggers it completely.”

  “The captain?”

  “Captain Imray. Hopeless with mechanisms. Do you intend to remain here chattering until these ridiculous ants decongeal?”

  Quent climbed back to the wardroom, where somebody was trying to sing. The performer turned out to be a short, furry individual in officer’s whites with his hat on the back of his head and a bulb of greenish liquor in one brown fist.

  “II pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut dans la ville,” caroled the stranger.

  He broke off to pop round yellow eyes at Quent.

  “Ah, our new first officer, is it not? Permit me.” Incisors flashed as he grabbed Quent by the shoulders and raked sharp vibrissae across Quent’s cheeks. “Sylvestre Sylla, at your service.”

  Quent exposed his own square teeth.

  “Quent.”

  “Quent?” Sylla repeated. “Not Rathborne Whiting Quent, Junior?” he asked in a different tone, touching a black tongue to his incisors.

  Quent nodded, coughing. The wardroom seemed to reek of musk.

  “Welcome aboard, First Officer Quent. Welcome to the Ethel P. Rosenkrantz, patrol boat. Not, of course, the Sirian,” Sylla said unctuously, “but a worthy ship, voyons. I trust you are not disappointed in your first assignment, First Officer Quent?”

  Quent’s jaw set.

  “No.”

  “Permit me to show you to your quarters, First Officer.”

  Sylla waved Quent to the upper ladderway, which opened from the wardroom ceiling. Above the wardroom was a section of cubicles for the crew, each accessible by a flexible sphincter port. Beyond these the shaftway ended in the bridge.

  “Here you are, First Officer,” Sylla pointed. “And your luggage, sir?”

  “I left it outside,” said Quent.

  “Doubtless it is still there,” replied Sylla and dived gracefully through another sphincter.

  Quent climbed down and exited from the tube in time to rescue his dittybox from a grapple. As he wrestled it up the shaftway he could hear Sylla promising to defeather Alouette.

  The cubicle proved to be slightly smaller than his cadet quarters on the Adastra. Quent sighed, sat down on his hammock gimbal, took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He put his hat back on and took out his pocket recorder. The recorder had a played message tab in place. Quent flicked the rerun and held it to his ear.

  Ping-ping-ping, went the official channels signal. He heard a sonorous throat-clearing.

  “Congratulations on your Academy record, Lieutenant. Your mother would have been, um, proud. Well done. And now, good luck on your first mission. One that will, I trust, profoundly enlighten you.”

  The recorder pinged again and cut off. Quent’s frown deepened. He shook his head slowly. Then he took a deep breath, opened his dittybox and rooted through a bundle of manuals. Selecting one, he pushed out through the sphincter and climbed up to the bridge.

  In the command chair the ursine Captain Imray was flipping fuel selectors and grunting into the engineroom speaker. Quent looked around the small bridge. The navigator’s console and the computer station were empty. A little old man in a flowered shirt sat in the commo cubby. He glanced around and batted one baggy eye at Quent, without ceasing to whisper into his set. He had a gray goatee and yellow buck teeth.

  The first officer’s chair was beside the shaft ladder. Quent removed a parcel from the seat, sat down and opened his manual. When the captain ceased grunting Quent cleared his throat.

  “Shall I take over the check, sir? I gather you are going through phase twenty-six.”

  The ursinoid’s eyes widened.

  “Some help I get,” he boomed. “Sure, sure, you take.”

  Quent activated his console.

  “Gyro lateral thrust, on,” he said, manipulating the auxiliary. There was no reply from Engines.

  “Gyro lateral thrust, on,” Quent repeated, thumbing the engine-room channel.

  “Morgan don’t say much,” remarked Captain Imray.

  “The engineering officer?” asked Quent. “But—but you mean he would respond if the function were negative, sir?”

  “Sure, sure,” said Imray.

  “Gyro torque amplifiers, on,” said Quent. Silence. “Primary impel-lor circuit, live,” he continued grimly and worked on down the check. At: “Pod eject compensator—” a brief moan came from Engines.

  “What?”

  “Morgan says don’t bother him, he done all that,” Imray translated.

  Quent opened his mouth. The main voder suddenly began barking.

  “Control to peebee Rosy! Pee bee Rosy, prepare to clear dock at this time. Repeat, peebee Rosy to station north, gol Peebee Kip four-ten, repeat, four-ten. Control to peebee Kip, dock eight-two now clearing. Repeat, peebee Kip green for dock eight-two.”

  “Morgan, you hear?” boomed Imray. “We green for go, Morgan?”

  A faint squeal from Engines.

  “But Captain, we’re only at check-phase thirty,” said Quent and ducked as Lieutenant Sylla hurtled out of the shaft to land in the navigation console with a rattle of claws. Sylla slapped the screens to life with one hand while punching course settings with the other. Imray and the commo gnome were yanking at their webs. From below came the clang and hiss of the disengaging lock, and the next instant the station gravity went off.

  As Quent pawed for his own web he heard Imray bellowing something. The auxiliaries let in and the Ethel P. Rosenkrantz leaped to station north.

  Quent hauled himself down to his chair, trying to orient the wheeling constellations on the screens.
r />   “How’s she look, Morgan?” Imray was asking. “Green we go out?”

  Another hoot came from Engines. Sylla was smacking course settings with one furry fist.

  “Svensk! Appleby! You set?” Imray bawled.

  “But Captain—” Quent protested.

  Sylla kicked the fix pedal, twiddled his calibrator and dropped the fist.

  “Gespriich!” roared Imray and slammed home the main drive.

  Quent’s head cleared. He was crosswise in his seat.

  “With no web is risky, son,” said Imray, shaking his jowls.

  “We weren’t due to go for forty-five minutes!” expostulated Quent. He righted himself as acceleration faded. “The check is incomplete, sir. Control had no right—”

  “Apparently the first officer did not hear the four-ten,” said Sylla silkily.

  “Four-ten?”

  “Four-ten is ship in bad trouble, must dock quick,” Imray told him.

  “But that should be three-three-delta-ex-four-one-otto point with the vessel’s designation.”

  “Doubtless in the star class vessels First Officer Quent is used to,” said Sylla. “Here he will find life less formal.”

  “What was the four-ten, Pom?” called a clear, sweet voice.

  Quent twisted. Looking up from beside his elbow was a dazzling girl-face framed in copper curls. Quent craned further. The rest of her appeared to meet the wildest demands of a man who had spent the last year on a training ship.

  “Huh?” he asked involuntarily.

  “Hi,” said the apparition, waving her hand irritably in front of Quent’s nose and continuing to gaze at the commo officer.

  “The Kip,” said the little man over his shoulder. “That’s the pee-bee Kipsuga Chomo, sir,” he waggled his goatee at Quent. “Three hundred hours with some contaminant gas. They sealed up in the bridge but Ikky had to bring ‘em in by himself. Not much air in these here peebees.”

  He turned back to his board.

  Quent glanced around. Three hundred hours was over two weeks. He shuddered.

  “But why didn’t—”

  “Why did not someone come to their rescue?” Sylla cut in. “The first officer forgets. Patrol boats are the ones that go to the rescue. Who comes to aid a patrol boat? Only another patrol boat—in this case ourselves, who were sitting at Central awaiting our new first officer. Tant pis, they were only a gaggle of Non-Humans—”

  Imray swatted the air crossly.

  “Now, now, Syll.”

  “Soup’s hot,” said the girl. “Ooh! My jam.”

  She reached a slim white arm around Quent’s ankles. Quent tracking closely, saw that the parcel he had displaced had collided with the gimbals—together with his hat—and was exuding a rosy goo.

  “Tchah!” She snatched it up and departed down the shaft.

  Quent picked up his hat and shook it. Jam drops drifted onto his leg.

  Captain Imray was clambering into the shaftway.

  “The first officer will take the first watch, is that not correct?”

  Without waiting for an answer Sylla sailed past the captain and vanished. Only the commo officer remained absorbed in his inaudible dialog.

  Quent collected the floating jam in his handkerchief and wedged the cloth under his seat. Then he kicked off on a tour of the cramped bridge. The screens were, he saw, inoperative under drive. He pulled up to the library computer and signaled for their course data display. Instead of the requested data the voder came on.

  I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

  Is a wild call and a clear call—

  Quent reached for the erase.

  “Don’t do that, sir,” the commo man said.

  “Why not? I want some data.”

  “Yes, sir. But that’s Lieutenant Sylla’s setup, sir. Very fond of water poetry, he is. Just leave it, sir, Lieutenant Svensk will get whatever you want.”

  Quent glared at the computer, which was now reciting:

  Degged with dew, dappled with dew,

  Are the groins of the braes—

  He switched it off.

  “Perhaps you would be so good as to inform me of our course and of the parameters of our patrol sector?” he asked icily. “I am Lieutenant Quent, First Officer.”

  “Yessir, Lieutenant.” The little man’s face split in a grin that sent his goatee pointing at his buck teeth. “Pomeroy here, sir. Lester Pomeroy, Ensign. Sure is good to see a fellow Human aboard, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Not at all, Ensign,” said Quent.

  “I guess maybe you feel a bit put out, sir,” Pomeroy went on in a confidential tone. “Them en-aitches prob’ly never even introduced themselves—right, sir?”

  “Well, I haven’t had time to look over the roster yet.”

  “What roster?” Pomeroy chuckled. “Anything you want to know, sir, just ask Pomeroy. You want to know the gen? Well, there’s Captain Imray, he’s from Deneb way. Navigator, Lieutenant Sylla—I don’t know exactly where he’s from. He’s what they call a lutroid. Puts out terrible strong when he’s wrought up. And Lieutenant Svensk, he’s Science when he’s set low of course, and conversely he’s Guns when the need arises. His vest, see? And then there’s me for Commo and Morgan for Engines—he don’t say much. Wait till you meet Morgan. And there’s our combat team—but they don’t count.”

  “Why not?” asked Quent dazedly.

  “They’re froze, that’s why. And froze they’ll stay. Nobody wants to get them boys out.” Pomeroy gave a nervous giggle.

  “But I know the one you’re itching to meet, Lieutenant, sir. Miss Mellicent Appleby, Logistical supply. Ain’t she a treat? Cooks up a storm, too. But there’s one thing she don’t supply, I better warn you, sir.” His grin faded. “She don’t supply no Appleby. So far, anyhow.”

  Pomeroy paused, waited. Quent said nothing.

  “Now, you ask about our patrol beat—no, sir,” he broke off as Quent moved to the display tank. “No use to try that, sir. Svensk has it stressed up as a psoodospace—some crazy snake game. But it’s simple. We’re Sector Twelve, like a big piece of cake, see?” He gestured. “Here we are at the point. That’s Base Central. First stop is right close in—that’s Strugglehome. If they’re all green we go on to Davon Two. If they’re not hurting we swing over to Turlavon and Ed. And if nothing comes up we dock in at Midbase. If they haven’t any grief we hang around and check Route Leo—service the beacons and so forth—and then we hit the Chung Complex. That’s a mess. When we’re through there we make the long hop out to Farbase—and if they’re all quiet we start on around through Goldmine and Tunney and Sopwith and so on, back home to Central. Eighteen mail colonies, one route and two bases. Takes about a hundred and twenty days, provided nothing comes up.”

  “What sort of thing is apt to come up, Mr. Pomeroy?”

  “Distress calls, wrecks, jitney duty for some royal groundhog going from here to there, wonky beacons, exploding mail, field freeze-ups, ghost signals, flying wombats—you name it, we get it sooner or later.” His poached eyes rolled mournfully. “We’re the boys that do the dirty, sir, you know. If it’s too clobby to mess with, lay it on the poor old pee-bees. Take our last tour. Everything was tight till we hit the Chung Complex. They got a crustal instability on a little water planet and both their big ships blowed out on the other side of the system. So we have to ferry the bleeders off—and they won’t go without their livestock. Thirty-three days hauling octopuses, that’s what.”

  Quent frowned. “In a Space Force vessel?”

  “Ah, them en-aitches don’t care,” Pomeroy grimaced.

  Quent kicked back to his chair in silence.

  “Never you mind, Lieutenant sir,” the little man commiserated and hoisted an amber bulb, his wrinkled neck working.

  He wiped the bulb with his shirttail. “Have some Leo Lightning, sir?”

  Quent jerked upright. “Drinking on the bridge?”

  Pomeroy winked broadly.<
br />
  “Captain Imray don’t care.”

  “Mr. Pomeroy,” said Quent firmly. “I appreciate your intentions—but there will be no drinking on this bridge while I am O.C. Kindly stow that bulb.”

  Pomeroy stared blankly.

  “Yes, sir,” he said at last and turned to his board.

  The bulb remained in plain sight.

  Quent opened his mouth, closed it. Muscles flickered in his square unhandsome countenance. A clamor was rising from the wardroom below: Svensk’s clack, Sylla’s waspish tenor, mingled with the captain’s boom. The words could not be distinguished, but his fellow officers were clearly not a harmonious team. Presently they subsided, and the ladder clanked as they retired to rest.

  Quent sighed through his teeth and picked up the jam-spattered manual. The Ethel P. Rosenkrantz, of which he was first officer, was in full star drive with twenty-three essential operational procedures, all his responsibility, unchecked.

  Five hours later the ladder clanked again and the hulk of Captain Imray heaved up to the bridge. He was followed by Lieutenant Sylla in free glide. The lutroid landed in his console with a passing flick that made Pomeroy jump for his bulb.

  “Twenty-twenty hours, First Officer Quent relieved by Captain Imray,” said Quent formally to the log.

  “Sure, sure, I take her, son,” chuckled Imray, settling himself.

  “You go look Appleby, vernt?”

  “I am going to make a preliminary inspection of the ship, Captain.”

  “Good.” Imray beamed. “See how conscience the humans, Syll? From them example you could learn.”

  “Sans doute,” snarled Sylla. “It is also possible that our first officer feels a need to familiarize himself with the humble patrol boat, which perhaps did not engage his attention during his training as a future star-class admiral.”

  “Now, Syll,” growled Imray.

  “Come on, Lieutenant, sir,” Pomeroy pulled Quent’s sleeve.

  Quent’s right fist unbailed slowly. He followed the little man into the shaft.

  In the wardroom Pomeroy helped himself from a net of wrapped sandwiches and settled down with his bulb at the gimbaled table. Quent surveyed the room. It was a cylinder with walls composed of lockers in which, according to his manual, were stored suits, tools, repair and grappling rigs, fuse panels, and the oxy supply. These could be checked later. On his left was the lock and a slave screen, now blank. Across from the lock was a pantry cubby and the shaftway down which he had first followed Imray.