Venture science fiction.., p.23
Venture Science Fiction: The Complete Fiction, page 23
“Look at him, Chan! He’s a kid . . .”
Chan shrugged. “You knew that before. You got the papers . . .”
Impatiently, she shook her head. “I know. But look at him . . .”
“I wasn’t any older—” Chandra began.
“Yes you were! I don’t know what your papers said, but—look at him. And you weren’t an IBMan. And we were all younger then. And—darling, you were a man.”
He laughed and stood up, rumpling her hair as he passed. “Well, if that’s all that’s eating on you, babe—hell, four of us kept you happy half-way home.” He ducked through the bunk-room door as she started to rise. “Don’t shoot,” he called back.
“It ain’t so funny, honey.” She stood watching the screen. “What’s bothering me is, who’s going to keep him happy?”
Terence Hugh Carnahan, Lieutenant, U.N.N. Reserves, was twenty-four years old and newly commissioned. He was stuffed to the gills with eight full years of Academy training, precision, and knowledge. The shiny new stripes on his sleeve and the dampening papers inside his breast pocket were the prizes he’d worked for and dreamed of as long as it mattered. The fruits were sour now, and the dream was curdled. A man might approach the Lady incited by lust to a venture of greed; but the sight of her was enough to wipe out the last visions of glory.
The Lieutenant moved on, more slowly. He stopped as a three-wheeled red-and-white-striped baggage truck swung out in a wide crazy curve from behind the Navy ship to the left and careened to a stop at the Lady’s side.
A tall thin man in rumpled full-dress whites leaped out of the bucket, swinging a canvas suitcase in his hand. He climbed aboard the ship’s waiting elevator and it started up.
Terry walked on and waited beside the truck for the cage to come down. When it did, he produced his ID card, got inside, and rode up in silence.
In the open lock, the man in the dirty whites was waiting for him. He held out his hand, and for the first time Terry saw the pilot’s jets on his lapels; and the boards on his shoulders spelled Commander.
“You the new IBMan?” the pilot asked. “Where’s your gear?”
“I sent it on this morning.” They shook, and the pilot’s slim fingers were unexpectedly cool and dry.
“Welcome to our happy home,” he said. “Glad to have you aboard. And all that sort of tiring. Manuel Ramon Decardez, at your service. They call me Deke.”
“I’m Terry Carnahan.”
“Come on in. I guess they’re all waiting.” Deke led the way through the open inner valve.
In the suit room, the pilot turned back. “Just take it easy, kid,” he said. “It ain’t like the Navy in here.”
It wasn’t.
The Lieutenant had been on merchant ships before. It was part of his training to know the layout and standard equipment of every jump-ship ever made. He had been on inspection tours; and a Lady class ship was still in Academy use for cadet instruction trips. But that one was Navy-maintained and Navy-staffed.
This Lady had left the service thirteen years back. The crew quarters had been torn out to make an extra hold, and the rule book had gone by the wayside along with the hammocks.
“Up here,” Deke said, and Terry followed him up the ladder to Officers’ Country. Then he stood in the wardroom doorway and stared at the crazy carnival scene.
To start with, the overheads were off. The only fight was diffused U-V out of the algy tanks that cut two-foot swaths along opposite bulkheads. In the yellowgreen dimness, the scattered lounging chairs and coffee cups and a tray with a bottle and glasses on the table, gave a ridiculous cocktail-bar effect to the whole place. And the first thing he saw was a hippy blonde, in tight black slacks and a loosely tied white shirt, who detached herself from the arm of a chair—and from the encircling arm of what looked like a naked brown-skinned man inside the chair. She ran across the room to fling herself on Deke, who picked her up bodily, kissed her with gusto.
“Where did you sneak in from?” she demanded. “We were waiting for—”
“Whoa, babe,” Deke started. “If you mean—” He started to turn, began to move forward, to let Terry in, but from a shadowy corner a wiry little man in coveralls, with grease-stains on his hands and his hair and his face, broke in.
“What the hell! These two give me a pile of pitch about haulin’ myself up here to give the new kid a big hello, and all I find is this old s.o.b. instead!” These two appeared to be the blonde and the naked man. Deke was the s.o.b.
“You bitchin’ again, Mike?” The voice was a bull-roar; it came from the only member of the Lady’s crew Terry had met before. The Captain came down the ladder from Control, sneakers and rolled-cuff workpants first, and then the tremendous bulk of chest and arms, bristled with wiry curling red-gold hair. The room had looked crowded before. With Karl HillStrom’s two-hundred-twenty pounds added, it was jammed. “Relax,” he said. “Have a drink and relax. Nita said she saw the kid comin’ . . .”
Deke had given up trying to interrupt. He turned back to Terry and shrugged. “I told you—” he started, and just then the blonde saw him.
“Oh, my God!” she said, and broke into helpless laughter; so did Deke. She took a step forward toward Terry, trying to talk. He ignored it.
“Captain Hillstrom?” he said formally, as loud as possible. He felt like a school-kid in a lousy play, doing a bad job of acting the part of the butler at a masquerade.
The big man turned. “Oh, there you are!” He held out a burly hand. “You met Deke already? Anita, this is our new IBMan, Terry Carnahan. Anita Filmord, our Medic. And Mike Gorevitch, our Chief—” that was the grease-stained one—“and Chan—Chandra Lal, our Biotech.”
Terry fished in his pocket for the orders the. Captain had failed to request, and noted with relief meantime that the Biotech, Chan, now unfolding himself from his chair, wasn’t entirely naked after all.
It wasn’t till then that he fully realized the hippy blonde was nobody’s visiting daughter or friend, but a member of the crew and an officer in the Naval Reserve.
The blonde officer put a drink in his hand, and his last clear thought that night was that Deke was quite right: it wasn’t like the Navy. Not at all.
When they gave him his commission, at the Examiner’s Board, they had also delivered elaborate and resounding exhortations about the Great Trust being placed this day in his hands: how the work of an IBMan on a merchant ship was both more difficult and more important by far than anything done by an officer of equivalent rank on a Navy ship.
He knew all that. The ranking IBMan officer, on any ship, was fully responsible for the operation and maintenance of all material connected in any way with either solar navigation or space-warp jumps. On a tramp, there was likely to be just one IBMan to do it all; Navy Transports carried a full complement of four officers and five enlisted men. Fresh Academy graduates came on board with j.g. status only, and worked in charge of an enlisted maintenance crew on the “jump-along”—that abstract mechanical brain whose function it was to set up the obscure mathematic-symbolic relationships which made it possible for matter to be transmitted through the “holes” in space-time, enabling a ship to travel an infinite distance in an infinitesimal time.
On a Navy transport, a full Lieutenant IBMan would be in charge of SolNav only, with two petty officers under him, both qualified to handle maintenance, and one at least with a Navy rating, capable of relieving him on duty at the control board during the five or twelve or twenty hours it might take to navigate a jumpship in or out of the obstacle course of clutter and junk and planets and orbits of any given System.
Even the senior officer, on a Navy Transport, would never have to jump “blind,” except in the rare and nearly unheard-of instance of an analog failure; only tramps and Navy Scouts ever jumped willingly on anything but a ’log-computed course. The stellar analog computers were the Navy’s Topmost Secret; when you used one, nothing was required except to make sure the jump-along itself was in perfect condition, and then to pull the switch. The ’log did the rest.
Merchant ships carried ‘logs for their chartered ports of call—the Lady had two—but the charter ports were the smallest part of a merchant trip. The number of destinations for which Navy analogs were available was hardly a hatfull out of the galaxies. Without a ’log to point the way for him, it was up to the IBMan to plot coordinates for where a hole ought to be. With luck and skill he could bring the ship out into normal space again somewhere within SolNav reach of the destination. With the tiniest error in computation, a ship might be lost forever in some distant universe with no stars to steer her home.
Terry Carnahan had been hoping desperately for a Navy transport job—but only because it was the route to the Scouts: the Navy’s glory-boys, the two-bunk blind-jump ships that went out alone to map the edges of man’s universe. It was the Scout job he’d worked for those long eight years—and dreamed about five years before, while he sweated for credits to get into Academy.
He didn’t argue with his tramp assignment; nobody argued with the Board. He knew that most of the men who drew Navy assignments would envy him; the money was in the Reserves. And most of the rest, the ones who drew Transport and liked it, were there because they couldn’t jump blind, and they knew it.
He knew all that. But when his orders came, and they told him he drew a tramp because he was tenth in his class—that’s what they said: tramp work was the toughest—he also knew how close he had come to the dream, because he also knew that the top five men had been sent to Scout training.
Eight years of the most he could give it just wasn’t enough. The answer was NO! For good.
But you didn’t throw out eight years of training for a good job either. Terry went for his psychs and medics, and met Captain (U.N.N. Reserve) Karl Hillstrom; he took his two weeks’ leave and reported for duty.
That first night, he fell asleep with the bunk-room spinning around him, and an obvious simple solution to the whole mess spinning with it, just out of his reach, no matter how fast he turned. When he stopped whirling, the dreams began, the dreams about naked crewmen, one of whom might have been him, and a terrible wonderful blonde in a sea of stars, winkin’ and blinkin’ and nod in a herring tramp to the smiling moon-faced girl who asked him in . . .
In the morning, Captain Karl Hillstrom showed him around Control. It was ship-shape and shiny up here, and the IBMan plunged gratefully into routine, checking and testing his board, and running off sample comps. He allowed himself only the briefest inspection of the jump-along and the keyboard and calckers attached. His first job, would be solar navigation. Once they were clear of the System, there’d be three weeks on solar drive before they jumped—plenty of time to double-check the other equipment. Right now, the standard computers and solar ’log were what counted.
He worked steadily till he became aware of the Captain at his side.
“How does it look?”
“Fine so far, sir.” Terry leaned back.
“Anything messed up there, you can blame it on me. I worked that board coming in.”
Terry remembered now—they had lost their IBMan on Betelgeuse IV, last trip, and come back short-handed, and with half the trade load still in the holds. Since no one but an IBMan could jump blind, they’d had to come back to pick up a new man—Terry.
“I haven’t found anything wrong, sir,” Terry said.
“You can drop the ‘sir.’ We go mostly by first names here.” There was an edge of irritation in the Captain’s voice. “It’s chow time now. You want to knock off?”
Terry hesitated. This wasn’t the Navy; it was a lousy tramp. If the pilot was drunk half the time, and the Chief had a dirty neck, and the Captain looked like a pirate or stevedore (the first of which he was, and the second had been), the IBMan was certainly free to work or eat when he chose.
“I’d just as lief stick with it for a while,” Terry said cautiously.
“Sure. Suit yourself. Galley’s open. Take what you want when you want it . . .”
He disappeared. For a blessed two hours, alone with machines he knew and trusted, Terry ran off tire standard tests and comps, noting with trained precision each tiniest deviation from perfect performance. The computer had never been built that could navigate without error. Maybe only in the tenth decimal, but that was enough for disaster. You had to know your ’log and your board and machines, and make your adjustments as automatically as a man makes allowance for the sights on a rifle he’s known and shot for years.
It took Terry four hours to learn this board, and he had started his first dry-run when the sandwich appeared on his armrest. A tall plastic glass with a straw in the top and a tempting froth came next.
“Well, thanks,” he said, “but you didn’t have to—”
“It’s chocolate,” she told him. “I ordered strawberry when your papers came in, but they haven’t sent it yet.”
“Chocolate is fine,” he said weakly, and let himself look.
The loose-tied shirt and tight-fitting slacks of the evening had been replaced by standard-issue summer-weight fatigues. The blouse was zipped up, and she seemed to be wearing a bra underneath. Her shorts displayed no more than a reasonable length of shapely leg. She wore no makeup, and her face looked scrubbed and clean. You could hardly get mad at a woman for being good-looking. The sandwich looked toasted and crisp, and he found he was very hungry.
“Well, thanks,” he said again, and took a bite, and picked up the pencil with his other hand.
“Karl had to go down to Ad,” she said. He took his eyes off his paper, and figured that out. Administration office, she’d mean.
“They called him to bring down the Beetle ’log papers,” she said. “He asked me to let you know—it’ll be back in the morning.”
He nodded, trying to match her casual air. The Betelgeuse analog was coming back from the shop tomorrow. And IBMan Carnahan would be due for his first installation—the first on his own command. . . . . we could finish your med-check in time for dinner,” she was talking still. “You want to knock off up here pretty soon?”
He nodded again, and glanced over his board. The run he’d started would take most of an hour. Then some time for adjustments. . . . “Sixteen hours all right?” he asked.
“Fine. Dinner’s at nineteen.”
He sat there and stared at his sandwich and thought it all over, including the staggering fact of the Commander’s silver leaves on the woman’s faded green shirt collar.
The milkshake turned out to be good; the sandwich delicious. The run on the board got fouled up, and after a half an hour of grief, he had to admit his mind wasn’t on it. There was a Manual on the wardroom shelf below, that would tell him the things he wanted to know. He switched off the board, and went down.
Page 532, Section six, was explicit. The Medical Officer for a six-man crew had to have junior psych, as well as a senior pharmacist’s or nurse’s rating—besides being qualified sub for the Biotech. With Commander’s rank, it meant she likely had more actual years of training than he did. And: “The Medical Officer shall be supplied with dossiers . . . psych ratings and personality profiles . . . responsible for wellbeing of personnel . . .”
It explained some things: the milk shake and strawberry order, for instance; and why she should bother with either one. It did nothing to change the first impression of last night; or to make him forget his dreams; or—certainly—to make him feel any more at ease with Commander Anita Filmord. There were some things a woman shouldn’t know about a man . . . or at least some women. . . .
There was very little Anita Filmord didn’t know about Terry Carnahan three hours later. For the first half-hour she took smears and samples and scrapings with deft impersonal proficiency. Each labeled slide or tube went into its own slot or niche or clamp; then she threw a switch, and sat down to confront him with a questionnaire. To the familiar humming background of the diagnostics, she asked him all the questions he had answered twice a year for the past eight years.
“They put me through all this when I got my orders,” he said at the end. “How come . . .”
“We do it every time you come on board. I’ll have to run samples on Karl this evening too.” The machine had run itself down. She pulled out the tape, tossed it onto her desk for reading later. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing the past two weeks,” she pointed out, and he felt himself flush at the certainty of what she meant. “And we’ve got a good long time to be shut up on this ship together.” She stood there looking at him. Her smile faded. “The prospect isn’t too appealing, is it?”
“You are!” he might have said. This wasn’t the Navy. The way she was dressed last night, the way she acted . . .
Last night—was it one of those dreams? He couldn’t be sure, but the memory came clearly. . . . He had heard a door close, and the murmur of voices, one high and one low. Before he fell asleep again—or in his dream?—a tall figure had entered the bunkroom and flopped in the last empty sack.
Five men and one woman . . .
“You’re goddam right it’s not!” he wanted to say, but he shifted his gaze four inches, and the leaves on the collar of her short-sleeved shirt were still a Commander’s.
He threw out all putative answers, and retreated to subordination.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said blank-faced. “It surely is, ma’am.” Five men and one woman . . . and Deke had it all tied up I . . .
“I’m glad to hear you say so, Lieutenant,” she answered dead-pan. “But if anything should turn up—any problems or questions or troubles of any kind—remember, that’s why I’m here.” Her smile was just a bit mechanical this time. Good!
“Just come if you need me,” she said. “Any time . .
Five men and one woman . . . and come, she said, any time . . . maybe it wasn’t just Deke. Maybe . . .
