Godspeed

by Charles Sheffield

  The hearing began half an hour later in the main control room, with Pat O'Rourke as a kind of prosecutor and no one assigned to help me out. The other crew sat like a jury in a neat row, with arms folded. Connor Bryan, William Synge, Rory O'Donovan, Dougal Linn, Tom Toole, Robert Doonan—everyone was present except fat Donald Rudden.

  Danny Shaker sat at the end, a little apart from the others. Surveying the line, it occurred to me that Shaker's biggest critics, Sean Wilgus and Joseph Munroe, were both dead. Shaker's own job might be easier.

  But that wasn't likely to help me. Pat O'Rourke got down to business right away, and there was no doubt how he felt.

  "Joe Munroe was an old shipmate of mine," he began. "He served with me on the Cuchulain for fourteen years, and before that on the Colleen and the Galway. He was a good crewman, one who knew ships and the Forty Worlds like the back of his hand. Now he's dead and gone, God rest his soul. Jay Hara"—he turned to glower at me—"shot him. Shot him over and over, 'til Joe had more holes in him than Middletown Mere. You all saw his poor body. Do you admit that, Jay Hara? If you do, now's your chance to tell us why you did it."

  "I do admit it. I had to do it to defend myself. He'd already beaten me and knocked me out and nearly broken my skull against the stairs. He thought I had valuables with me that I'd found on Paddy's Fortune, and he said if I didn't give them to him he'd make me breathe vacuum. When he came at me again, I shot him."

  Pat O'Rourke nodded and pointed to Connor Bryan, who stood up and came forward to where I was sitting.

  "Don't move," Bryan said. He was the Cuchulain's next best thing to a medic, and according to Doctor Eileen he knew a fair amount in a rough and ready sort of way. Now he felt my head and jaw, then nodded. "A big lump here, right enough, and the skin broken under the hair. He's had a good bash or two, and it's recent."

  O'Rourke nodded again. "And Joe thought you had valuable things, from Paddy's Fortune," he said to me. "Did you?"

  Mel wasn't a thing. "No, I didn't," I said clearly.

  "We'll see about that." As O'Rourke was speaking, Donald Rudden came ambling into the room, slow-moving and deliberate as always. He set Mel's pink flashlight down in front of Pat O'Rourke, then went to sit down with the rest of the crew. After a few seconds he lumbered to his feet again. "I looked," he began.

  "Not yet, Don." O'Rourke cut him off. "You'll get your turn." He turned to Robert Doonan. "You first, Robbie. Tell us what Joe Munroe told you and showed you."

  "Aye. He showed me that light. Said he found it on the cargo beetle, after we left that little world back there. I'd never seen anything like it before, nor had Joe. He said it must have been brought aboard by Jay Hara, and where it came from there had to be more stuff."

  "This light here?" O'Rourke held up the pink ring.

  "Aye, that's it."

  Donald Rudden heaved himself to his feet again. "I've—" he began.

  "In a minute, Don. Bide your time. Jay Hara, what do you have to say?"

  I suddenly realized what had been going on during the past half hour. All the crew members were supposed to be present at a hearing. But while we had been getting started, Donald Rudden had been absent—and my bet was that he had been in my quarters, searching. Doing what I should have been doing, when I had the chance. Instead I had sat and stared at Joe Munroe's dead body.

  The question was, had Mel, in her hurry to get out of there, left something behind that didn't belong on the Cuchulain? Had Donald Rudden found something damning?

  If he had, that was the end of me. Unfortunately I had no way of knowing.

  "I brought that light aboard the cargo beetle, that's quite true," I said carefully. "I found it on Paddy's Fortune, and I assumed one of you must have dropped it there. I didn't say anything about it, because I didn't realize it was anything special. I don't see why it is special—I mean, it's just a light. And I didn't bring anything else with me from Paddy's Fortune. Not a thing."

  "What about the gun?"

  "That was Walter Hamilton's. I took it after Sean Wilgus killed him." I realized where they could go with that, if they knew what weapon had shot Wilgus. But Danny Shaker didn't seem worried, so chances were no one else had seen the gun after Walter Hamilton had it on his belt.

  O'Rourke gave a noncommittal grunt. "Why did you shoot Joe so many times?"

  "I didn't mean to." (True enough!) "I'd never fired an automatic before—never fired any gun. Once it started I couldn't stop it, not even after Munroe had a lot of shots in him."

  O'Rourke nodded, and Donald Rudden stood up for a third time. I held my breath. This was it. "Well, Don?" rumbled Pat O'Rourke. "Nothing." "Nothing at all?"

  "Not one thing that you wouldn't expect to find. And I took my time looking."

  I didn't doubt that. Donald Rudden looked too fat to move, but when he started on a job he was a bit like Duncan West taking apart a clock. He was completely methodical, he lost track of time, and he didn't move or stop until the task was done.

  There was a sort of collective sigh, and everybody sat a little differently in his seat. It was the turning point, and I realized it when Pat O'Rourke said to me, "Jay Hara, what do you mass?"

  It was a weird question. "I'm not sure. Back on Erin, last time I weighed myself, I was fifty-one kilos."

  He nodded, and turned to the others. "Joe Munroe, for my guess, was about a hundred and ten. More than twice as much as Jay Hara. Anyone else want to say anything or ask anything?"

  Heads shook along the line.

  "All right, then." O'Rourke clumped across and sat down with the others, at the opposite end of the line from Danny Shaker. There was a long, brooding silence, when no one spoke and I was left wondering what came next.

  Finally O'Rourke stood up again. "All right, then," he repeated. "That ought to be enough time. Let's get to it. In order, as you're sitting. Connor Bryan?"

  "Justified killing, in self-defense," Bryan said. "No punishment. And I have to say, Joe Munroe was a fool. He told me—"

  "No speeches," O'Rourke interrupted. "You know the rules. Tom Toole?"

  "Justified killing. Self-defense."

  "Robert Doonan?"

  "Justified killing," Doonan's words sounded dragged out of him, but they came. "In self-defense."

  It went along the line. Justified killing in self-defense. O'Rourke stopped short of asking Danny Shaker. Instead he shook his own massive head and said, "I don't like it, but evidence is evidence. So I'll make it unanimous. Justified killing, in self-defense. And I have to say, if you can tell me a more stupid, misguided idiot than Joe Munroe, going off half-cocked the way he did, and then being bested one-on-one by a young 'un who's hardly clear of the ground, and letting him—"

  "No speeches, Pat," said Tom Toole. "Remember?" He didn't laugh or smile, but with those words the whole atmosphere changed. The crewmen still looked grim, and no one would meet my eye, but a lot of tension had vanished from the room.

  "That's it, then," O'Rourke said. "You, Jay Hara, you're free and clear. And I'm going to say it one more time, no matter what the rules are: Joe was a damned fool." He walked across to me, and after what looked like a big internal struggle reached out and shook my hand. "But that's no fault of yours. This hearing's officially over. It'll be back to work as normal for you, next shift."

  He nodded, and headed for the cabin exit. I half expected that the others would come over and say something, too, but they didn't. Without looking at me they filed out one by one, until I was alone in the room with Danny Shaker.

  "It's not really over," I said, "no matter what Patrick O'Rourke says. They're all still angry as can be."

  "Quite true. But it's over, all the same." Shaker hadn't said one word during the whole proceeding. Now he was lolling back comfortably in his chair. "You don't understand spacers, Jay. They're upset, and they're angry. But they're not mad at you. They're mad at Joe Munroe. He embarrassed them all. Even his best friend, Pat O'Rourke, is angry with him. From their point of view, what he did wa
s stupid in more ways than you can count. First, he didn't think to frisk you. A gun won't beat a working brain, but it will beat a fist any time. Second, he lost out to a Downside kid, half his mass and less than half his age. Think what that does to the spacer image." Shaker stood up. "You've been lucky today, Jay, in three different ways. With Munroe, with me, and with the hearing. Luck's important. Just don't start to count on it. Because if you do, that's the time it won't work."

  He headed for the door, too. "Busy day, eh?" he said over his shoulder. "But you've not helped the Cuchulain any. Extra work hours for you next shift, to make up. If you wanted to report sick because of that bash on the head, you should have done it sooner."

  He was gone, before I could frame the reply I wanted.

  Busy day? It seemed years since I had run into Uncle Duncan on the stairway. It had been—I struggled to work it out— no more than three hours. A couple more days like this, and I'd feel as old as Doctor Eileen.

  CHAPTER 25

  "Life in space," Tom Toole said cheerfully, "is like life in war. You go muddling along for ages with nothing much happening, and you're bored as all get out; then something happens, and all of a sudden you're so busy you don't know which way to turn."

  I was scraping a grease-coated wall of the cargo hold, in a place where cleaning machines, despite Duncan West's best fix-it efforts, refused to go. I grunted, and went on scraping. It was a rare philosophical statement from Tom, made as he watched me labor. I knew nothing about war, and hoped I never would, but the two weeks that followed Joe Munroe's death had taught me that Tom was wrong about space. I wasn't bored, even though we were crawling slower than ever toward our new destination. I didn't have time to be. I was kept busy from the moment I got up to the time I collapsed into my bunk. Between them, Tom Toole and Pat O'Rourke never gave me a moment's peace—particularly since every job took me three times as long as they said it ought to. It had to be intentional on their part. Thinks he's a spacer now, does he? Well, we'll show him. He still has a lot to learn.

  I could have complained to Danny Shaker. I felt like doing it a dozen times, but I didn't. I just gritted my teeth, swore under my breath, and stuck at it while the rest of the crew took it easy.

  There was a bonus side to all my labors. I was learning about the workings of the Cuchulain in a way that no talking or lessons could ever have given me. But I didn't realize how fast my hard work was making time fly by, until I heard an odd, fluting whistle over the communications system.

  Tom said at once, "All hands call. Drop that. We have to get to the bridge."

  He set off at once and without waiting for me. I, full of worries of onboard disaster, hurried after him to the main control room.

  "Can't tell what it is." Danny Shaker was at the controls when we entered, juggling displays. "It's strange, I show a target when I use ultralong radio waves, but nothing on visible or infra-red, or on regular radar."

  "What are you going to do?" Pat O'Rourke asked. All the crew were crowding around.

  "Keep flying and wait for a better signal. We're still at extreme range, but we're closing fast." Shaker saw that I had joined the huddle. "Score one for the navaid, Jay. I don't know if that's the Net and the hardware reservoir we're looking for, but something is just ahead with the orbital elements and motion you specified. Go get Eileen Xavier. We'll be arriving in an hour or two. She'll want to take a peek at this."

  Arriving. At Godspeed Base?

  I hurried away, wondering again about Danny Shaker. He had been careful to keep me away from Doctor Eileen and the rest of the Erin party, so I had no idea how they were doing. But now, with the crew certain to stay around the control room for a while, he was in effect inviting me to go along and tell Doctor Eileen and the others anything that I liked.

  Why? I didn't know. I understood the ship's workings a lot better after all my work, but I sure didn't understand Dan Shaker. As Tom Toole had said, he was a deep one. I could now dismiss all the "two-half-man" stuff that had given me nightmares before, but I couldn't get rid of the thought that Shaker might be testing me in some way that I couldn't guess.

  It was this feeling, more than any shred of fact, that made me cautious. I intended to do just what Shaker had directed: Find Doctor Eileen, and bring her back to the control room. And if we talked on the way? Well, that wasn't ruled out in his instructions.

  I intended to do that. What I hadn't allowed for was the possibility that I would run into Mel Fury the moment I entered Doctor Eileen's quarters.

  She must have been hiding away and somehow watching the corridor, because she popped out in front of me as soon as I came through the door.

  "Hi,Jay!"

  "Hey!"

  We stood staring at each other in pleasure—and something else, too, at least in my case. Concern.

  "Mel, for God's sake—you're supposed to try to look like a boy."

  With her fair hair growing and combed loose in a different style, she was far more female than she had ever been. She would have been accepted as a girl, even by the primped and pampered primadonnas of Erin.

  Mel shook her head, and her lengthening hair floated around it. "I can't, Jay. I mean, I can try to look boyish, but I can't succeed. Doctor Eileen says that any man on board would know, even if I cut my hair again. She says the trick is not to let anybody see me."

  Which was exactly what I had been saying, from the moment she came on board the Cuchulain. I could tell from the way Mel said "Doctor Eileen" that she had been added to the list of Eileen Xavier worshippers, and Doctor Eileen's word was sacred. Even so, the way Mel had jumped out at me didn't suggest great caution. Suppose some crewman had come in right after me?

  "Mel, I want you to carry Walter Hamilton's gun around with you. Just as a precaution."

  She pulled a face. "I hate guns. I'll think about it. Where is it?"

  "Back in my quarters. I'll give it to Doctor Eileen, and ask her to pass it on to you. Where is she?"

  "Gone to get Jim—you know, Dr. Swift."

  I didn't like that, either. Jim Swift used to be my buddy, but from the familiar way she dropped his name, he was now hers.

  "I have to find the doctor," I said. "At once. She and I are urgently needed in the main control room."

  It was designed to impress, but it didn't work.

  "Phooey," Mel said. "If they want you urgently, it's to make tea. What happened to your voice? You sound husky and creaky, like one of the crewmen."

  "My voice is fine. And I am a crewman."

  "Playing at being one is more like. Listen, Jay. I've been working on the navaid with Jim Swift—he's really sharp—and we're coming up with something that may be terrifically important. Remember the 'Slowdrive' that you tagged in Walter Hamilton's notebook? Well, I cross-referenced it in the navaid—"

  "You can tell me about that some other time. At the moment I'm busy. I must find Eileen Xavier, and I must take her with me to the main control room."

  And I swept grandly out, before Mel could say another word.

  All right, so I was miffed, and what I did was stupid. But I couldn't forgive her that crack about making tea, and not being a real crew member—maybe because I suspected it was true. So although I felt sorry that Mel and I hadn't had a real chance to talk, I didn"'t "go back. Instead I found Doctor Eileen and headed for the ship's bridge.

  I really wanted to talk, to tell her what had been happening. The trouble was, she didn't choose to listen. She wanted an audience of her own, so she could ramble on with her worries. If I had changed, Doctor Eileen had changed, too, in the few months since we lifted off from Muldoon Port. I had always thought of her as old, but old like something that has always been around and will be around forever. Now Doctor Eileen looked tired, peevish and depressed.

  "The Net, eh?" She laughed, but it was a harsh, barking cough without any humor in it. "The great hardware reservoir. Well, maybe. I've talked enough to Mel to know that Paddy's Fortune was set up as a self-sustaining biological reservo
ir. What comes next?"

  "The Needle, The Eye, Godspeed Base—and a Godspeed Drive."

  "You think so? It's great to be young. You know, Jay, I've thought a lot since we left Erin. About space, sure, but about Erin, too, and what we are. I used to think of the Isolation as some sort of pure accident, something that couldn't have been prevented. Now, I'm not so sure. I don't think that humanity before the Isolation was just one big happy family. Maybe at one time, during the early, sublight colonization. But then I think that the people who developed the Godspeed Drive came to regard themselves as special, superior to planetary colonists and settlers. The Godspeed Drive was so powerful, it made them feel like gods themselves and they wanted to keep it that way. They left the colonies ignorant. And we've stayed ignorant. They placed their supply and maintenance facilities deep in space. No one on Erin knew how the drive worked. No one knew that Paddy's Fortune even existed. No one would know it today, if Paddy Enderton had gone overboard that night on Lake Sheelin."

  "You think the people with the Godspeed Drive stopped coming to the Forty Worlds on purpose?"

  "Oh, no. That wasn't planned. I'm sure there was a monstrous accident, a catastrophe of some kind. But Erin wouldn't be in the mess it's in today if the group who controlled the Drive hadn't wanted to feel superior. It's a story as old as history, from water control to drug prescription to access to space: The people with the treasure want to keep the keys of the treasure-house to themselves. What they never dream is that one day they might not be around to use them. So they don't plan for that."

  Talking about the past, Doctor Eileen sounded like a defeated woman. Maybe Duncan West had it right: Live in the present. If you started to dwell on history, you would find a thousand ways to make yourself miserable.