Asimov's SF, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  As soon as she was in her seat, I ordered the passenger hatch to be sealed. Once Lucy was airtight, I pressurized the compartment, then got on the comlink and requested gantry roll-back. Bright sunlight streamed through the cockpit windows as the shuttle emerged from beneath the tower's shadow; through my headset, I could hear the crosstalk among the ground crew as they cleared the pad. A few minutes later, traffic control informed me that airspace was clear and I had permission to launch.

  One last check of all systems, with Ted making sure I hadn't forgotten anything, then I entered the flight program into the nav system and initiated the final launch sequence. At this point, I could have just as easily switched to autopilot, but I didn't do that. Loose Lucy was new to me, and I didn't know how much I trusted her. Besides, I wanted to show my new captain that I wasn't some rookie who'd leave everything to the comps.

  So I cranked my seat back into reclining position, pulled the lapboard closer to my chest, and grasped the yoke with my left hand and the throttle bar with my right. When I had green lights across my console, I flipped open a candy-striped panel and pushed the big red button beneath it.

  Loose Lucy might be an old bird, but she was no turkey. She rose from the pad quickly and smoothly, g-force pushing us back in our seats. The hull shook and rattled a bit as the shuttle began its ascent, but the noise quickly subsided as I shoved the stick all the way forward, replaced by a loud roar as the main engine went full throttle. The clouds above leaped toward us, then the shuttle punched through them.

  The sky gradually grew darker, blue fading to black, until stars began to appear. And then we were in space, on our way to orbit. I throttled back the engine, then fired the RCS thrusters to roll the craft to starboard.

  Through the forward windows, Coyote hove into view, a vast hemisphere of white-flecked green, the Great Equatorial River visible as a broad blue band that stretched to the distant horizon. Beyond the limb of the moon, Bear rose as an enormous crescent, its rings jutting out into space. A hell of a sight; I found myself wishing I wasn't a pilot, so that I could simply sit back and take it all in.

  I didn't have that luxury, though. Using the nav system to get a precise fix on our target, I found the Pride of Cucamonga right where it was supposed to be, parked in stationary orbit several thousand miles above the equator. I could have shut down the engine and simply allowed Lucy to coast the rest of the way to her mother ship, but that would have meant that we'd have to orbit Coyote a few times, adding six to eight hours to our trip. The gauge told me that we had more than enough fuel for a direct ascent, so I kept the engines throttled up one-quarter percent, and programmed the comp for a trajectory that would get us there in just a couple of hours.

  Once I was satisfied that everything was copasetic, I switched to autopilot, then returned my seat to upright position. “Everyone okay back there?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder. “Wasn't too rough, I hope."

  A mumble from Rain that might have been a complaint, but I couldn't quite make out her words. “Gordon passed out,” Emily said, “but otherwise he's all right."

  “Gordon? Who's Gordon?"

  “She means Ash. That's his first name.” Ted cranked his own seat to horizontal position. “Good flying, kid. You can keep your job.” He looked back at our passengers. “Mr. Goldstein? Jas? How are you doing?"

  “Fine. Just fine.” Judging from Morgan's tone of voice, I didn't have to see his face to know that it was probably a pale shade of green. “Jas is..."

  “I am comfortable.” If there was any emotion in hisher voice, the translation device of hisher suit masked it. “Thank you, Mr. Truffaut. I compliment your skills as a pilot."

  I liked that. If the Prime Emissary didn't have any complaints, then Rain was in no position to argue. As usual, Ali remained stoical, although I wouldn't have expected otherwise. Pilots respect each other when they're behind the stick; if he had any criticism to offer, he'd tell me once we were out of the cockpit.

  “Thank you, Jas. I appreciate it.” I checked the comp again. “ETA in about two hours, thirty-six minutes, folks. So just sit back and enjoy the ride."

  * * * *

  VII

  Two and a half hours later, we rendezvoused with the Pride of Cucamonga.

  Perhaps I was spoiled. The Robert E. Lee, after all, was a streamlined beauty to behold, and even cycleships like the Victory possessed a certain elegant symmetry. By comparison, the Pride was as ugly as a crowbar. About four hundred feet in length, the freighter was comprised of cylindrical subsections arranged in tandem, with the hab module at the bow and its massive fusion engine at the stern. Two enormous cargo modules, each resembling giant drums, protruded at perpendicular angles from either side of the hub just aft of the hab module, giving the ship a cruciform appearance. The service module at the midsection was jammed with maneuvering thrusters, auxiliary tanks, and radiators, while the deflector array stuck out from the prow like an immense wok.

  As we drew closer, it became clear that the Pride was a spacecraft with more than a few billion miles to its logbook. Here and there along its hull, I spotted plates that were of a slightly different color than the ones surrounding them, an indication that the ship had recently undergone major refit. There were blackened scorch marks beneath the thrusters, and the telemetry dish appeared to be a replacement.

  I wasn't the only one who noticed these things. Ted studied the ship as I matched course with it, then looked back at Morgan. “Tell me again why we didn't rate a new ship."

  “For its class, it's the best one available.” Morgan unclasped his harness and pushed himself out of his couch. “Everything else in the Janus fleet is currently committed to other contracts. Besides, my engineers told me that it would be easier to refit an older vessel than build a new one."

  “Refit ... you mean repair, don't you?” I didn't look away from my controls.

  “No, I mean refit. There were certain modifications that needed to be made for this mission ... particularly to the navigation system.” Taking hold of the back of my couch, Morgan pulled himself closer to the windows, inserting himself between Ted and me. “Once we show a profit, the company will have the capital to construct a new ship specifically designed for..."

  “Mr. Goldstein, please...” Ted reached up to gently push the boss away. “Give us a little breathing room, okay?” He glanced at me. “How are you doing there?"

  “So far, so good.” Keeping one eye on the lidar and the other on the comp screen, I fired the pitch and yaw thrusters to put Lucy on a direct line with the main docking port, located on the hub between the two cargo containers. Once I was holding station about five hundred feet from the ship, I touched my headset wand. “Pride of Cucamonga, this is Loose Lucy. Do you copy?"

  A moment passed, then a gruff male voice came through. “Affirmative, Lucy. Have you in sight, and you're clear to dock."

  That had to be the chief engineer. I guessed that he was on the bridge. Obviously a man of few words. “Roger that, Pride,” I replied. “Thank you."

  “Need any help?” Ted asked quietly.

  “No, thanks. Got it covered.” To tell the truth, I was nervous as hell. Everything about both Lucy and the Pride gave me the uncertain feeling that neither craft was one hundred percent dependable, regardless of whatever Morgan had to say. Too late to chicken out now, though, so I opened the nose faring to expose the docking collar, and once I had the Pride's hub port lined up within the crosshairs of the forward radar, I fired aft thrusters and gently moved in.

  I shouldn't have worried so much. Lucy was a good girl; she behaved herself as I coaxed her toward the docking port. Even so, I didn't breathe easy until the forward probe slid home and I felt the telltale thump of the flanges being engaged. An enunciator buzzed, confirming that we'd made a solid connection.

  “Nice job,” Emily said. “Couldn't have done better myself."

  “Thank you.” I safed the engines, then reached up to pressurize the forward airlock. “We're here, ladies an
d gentlemen ... um, no offense, Prime Emissary."

  “None taken.” Again, the short, cat-like hiss that I'd learned to recognize as the hjadd equivalent of a chuckle. “My kind answers to both."

  That earned a couple of laughs from everyone except Rain and Ash. I didn't have to look back to know that she continued to be unimpressed with me. As for Ash ... well, he probably needed to either throw up or have a drink, whichever came first.

  “All right, we're here.” Ted unbuckled his harness, then pushed himself out of his seat. “So let's go aboard and see what this tub is made of."

  * * * *

  EIGHT

  Doc at the airlock ... Rain in space ... a definition of the blues ... great minds think alike.

  * * * *

  VIII

  The Pride of Cucamonga looked a lot better inside than it did on the outside. For a freighter that had put in plenty of time on the Jovian run, it was in pretty good shape. Nonetheless, with the chipped iron-grey paint of its bulkheads and exposed conduits running across low ceilings, no one could have mistaken it for a passenger liner. The Pride was a workhorse, plain and simple.

  One of the luxuries it didn't have was artificial gravity. Since the ship wasn't equipped with diametric drive, it also lacked a Millis-Clement field generator. And although the hub could be rotated to provide centrifugal force to the cargo modules, since we weren't carrying livestock the modules would be locked down for the duration of the journey. I was glad that I'd brought along a new pair of stickshoes; all the ones aboard had been used by the previous crew, and their insoles looked like fungal colonies.

  The chief engineer met us at the airlock: Doc Schachner, a stocky gent in his mid-sixties who'd lost the hair on top of his head but made up for it with a thick white beard that went halfway down his chest. Doc knew Goldstein, and called him by his first name, something that Morgan seemed to tolerate only barely; I'd later learn that Doc had a history of disagreements with his boss that might have gotten him canned a long time ago were it not for the fact that the chief was almost always right.

  And for good reason. I eventually learned that Edward J. Schachner had earned his nickname along with the doctorate in astronautical engineering he'd picked up at the University of Edinburgh. After spending a decade designing spacecraft for Janus, he'd decided that he'd rather fly spaceships than a drafting board. The Pride was one of the ships he'd built, and there probably wasn't a wire or rivet aboard that he didn't know like the back of his hand.

  Doc wasn't one for small talk. A brief self-introduction was all we got before he escorted us from the airlock to the central access shaft that led through the ship's core. As he led us from the hub into the hab module, Doc paused every now and then to open pressure hatches leading from one deck to the next. As the last person in line, I quickly learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of his temper; when I neglected to close a hatch behind us, he made me go back and dog it tight, and after that made sure that each hatch was shut before we moved on. Ted might be the captain, but the Pride was clearly Doc's ship, and he didn't leave anything to chance.

  Deck Two contained the crew quarters, but before we got there, Doc stopped at Deck Three. Opening the hatch, he asked Jas to accompany him; during the Pride's refit, a separate cabin had been added specifically designed for hjadd passengers. So we waited in the shaft while Doc showed the Prime Emissary to hisher stateroom; when he returned a few minutes later, he took us the rest of the way to Deck Two.

  Our quarters were located along a ring-shaped corridor that wound its way around the inside of the hab module. They were larger than the first-class cabins aboard the Lee, but not much; instead of bunks, we had sleep-sacks that could be strung up to form hammocks, and lockers instead of closets and shelves. No furniture, of course—a chair was unnecessary in zero-g, a desk worse than useless—but at least I had my own privy, even if the toilet had vacuum hoses and the bath stall was equipped with hot and cold running sponges. As luck would have it, my cabins were located next to Ash's; noting that the walls weren't very thick and that there was a vent between our rooms, I hoped that he didn't snore.

  I didn't get much of a chance to make myself at home. I'd just swapped my boots for my stickshoes when Rain knocked on my door. Time to unload Loose Lucy, and she needed me to fly the cargo pod. So off I went to earn my paycheck.

  And that's when my troubles began.

  * * * *

  IX

  Never take a job if you know you're going to be working for someone who has less experience than you do.

  Although the Pride was a civilian ship, nonetheless there's a certain hierarchy aboard merchanteers that's quasi-military in nature. In this instance, the quartermaster outranks the shuttle pilot when it comes to taking care of the payload. Therefore, Rain was my boss for this particular chore. Under any other circumstances, that wouldn't have been a problem, but from the moment we suited up for EVA, I knew working with her would be difficult.

  The Pride's secondary airlock was located on the opposite side of the hub from where Lucy was docked. Before you cycled through it, you entered the ready room where the EVA gear was stowed. Prepping for a spacewalk isn't for the modest; it entails stripping down to your birthday suit in order to put on the one-piece undergarment that, among other things, collects your sweat and urine to be recycled as water and oxygen for the life-support system. If nudity is a problem, then you can always keep your back turned ... but nonetheless, in a compartment little larger than a closet, it's hard to keep from bumping into the other guy.

  Rain wasn't willing to trust me, despite my promises that I'd keep my hands to myself and not sneak a peek. Can't say that I blamed her; in zero-gee, it can be hard to be gallant, especially since you're having to use both hands to pull on the overgarment while attaching all the necessary lines and hoses. I had to wait outside while she suited up. That was my first indication that she had precious little experience, because nearly an hour went by before she let me in ... and then, as soon as I saw her, I noticed that she'd missed a couple of steps, not the least of which was neglecting to close the zipper on her left wrist, something that might have caused a blowout.

  Rain didn't like it very much when I pointed this out to her, nor was she appreciative when I properly attached the electrical line from her backpack to her chest unit. In fact, she squawked as if I was trying to grope her, until she realized what I was trying to do and why. Then she insisted on waiting for me in the airlock while I suited up ... a violation of safety protocols, since the buddy system calls for no one to enter an airlock alone.

  Prude. I took my time getting into my gear, meaning that I was ready to go in twenty minutes. A final checkout of each other's suits, followed by a comlink test, then we put on our helmets, pressurized our suits, and voided the airlock.

  The cargo pod was docked on the hub's outer hull. It was almost identical to the one I'd operated on Highgate, so nothing about it was unfamiliar. Nonetheless, I waited until Rain attached her safety line to a hook just outside the airlock, then made her way hand-over-hand along the outside of the hub until she reached Loose Lucy, before I climbed into the cockpit. She spacewalked well enough, but nonetheless I couldn't help but notice a certain clumsiness in the way she moved. It was obvious that she hadn't spent a lot of time in EVA.

  Rain was ... how old? Nineteen, maybe twenty? I had time to think about this while I waited for her to find her way to the shuttle. How much previous experience could she have had before Morgan hired her? Probably very little ... especially since the Federation Navy only consisted of a handful of small ships, plus the Lee. So how come someone so young had gotten the job of quartermaster aboard a freighter, particularly one vested with such an important mission?

  A bad sign, indeed. And it only got worse.

  The way we were supposed to work was that, once Rain opened Lucy's cargo deck and climbed inside, she'd untie each bale and, one at a time, push them to the hatch. I would then use the pod to transfer the bales to t
he cargo modules, alternating between Cargo One and Cargo Two so that the payload would be evenly distributed on either side of the ship. Once the bales were aboard, Rain and I would enter the modules and tie them down, making sure that they were securely lashed to the inside decks before we closed the hatches.

  It should have been a simple operation, one that would've taken a few hours at most. If I'd been working with a seasoned grunt, that is. But Rain seemed to have little idea of what she was doing. She struggled to untie lines, tumbled the bales toward the hatch and swore at me when I had trouble catching them with the pod's manipulators, and she frequently forgot the order in which we were supposed to reload them aboard the modules. Three times, I returned to the shuttle only to discover that she'd already pitched out another bale; on one occasion, I had to chase after a bale that had floated away from Lucy, barely managing to retrieve it before it drifted too far to be rescued.

  None of these problems were her fault. They were always the result of my incompetence and stupidity. I was an oaf, an idiot, a doofus, an amateur, a complete zero, and God only knew how she'd been saddled with the likes of me. Even after Ted, overhearing her more unkind remarks over the comlink, told her to calm down and cooperate with me, she continued to insist upon doing things her way.

  It wasn't until Emily suited up and came down to give us a hand that we finally managed to get the shuttle unloaded. I docked the pod, but instead of helping them secure the bales, I went straight to the bridge. Didn't bother to take off my suit; simply shelved the helmet, plugged the backpack into its recharger unit, took off my gloves, then hauled myself up the access shaft to Deck One.

  The command center was a circular compartment ringed by rectangular portholes, with a hexagonal control console dominating the center of the room. A hologram image of the Pride floated above the table, with close-up views of the ship displayed on flatscreens suspended from the low ceiling. Ted was at the engineering station, peering over Doc's shoulder as they ran through a systems check; on the other side of the table, Ali was seated at the helm. Everyone looked up as I entered through the floor hatch. The women's voices were coming through the ceiling speakers, so no doubt they'd heard everything that had gone on between Rain and me.