Suzanne’s husband looked up in surprise when his secretary ushered Suzanne into his office. He frowned on seeing who it was, then came around from his desk and put a concerned hand to her shoulder. “What’s up, hon?” he asked. “Is there something wrong?”
“There’s nothing wrong,” she assured him. “I’m here for the guided tour.”
He turned away and swore under his breath. Striding across to his desk, he jabbed a finger down at his intercom. “Nirmala,” he snapped. “I’m going to be out of the office for—” He glanced back over his shoulder at Suzanne, who was smiling uncertainly— “For about thirty minutes,” he said. “Maybe an hour.”
Returning to Suzanne, he added, “I don’t know why you want to see the docks. You won’t understand anything, and I’m really busy at the moment. I wish you women could have picked a better time.”
“Is it because of Project Philadelphia?” she asked.
He glanced at her sharply. “How do you know about that? It’s supposed to be top secret.”
“Kristin told me.”
“She shouldn’t know herself. But I guess that’s her husband’s problem.”
They left the office and took an elevator to a higher floor, which was obviously for senior management: the linoleum floor was now carpeted and the walls were covered in discreetly patterned wallpaper. They stopped before an imposing double-door and, after a nod at the secretary sitting behind a desk to one side, the door swung open. This was the office of Kristin’s husband, and it was three times the size of a project engineer’s, with a deep carpet, a large polished steel desk, some upholstered plastic chairs, and a wall of television screens giving views over the entire spaceyard. Standing before the desk were three men and four women. Suzanne recognised Kristin straightaway, and with her were Eniola, Layla and Aiko. Their husbands were project engineers too, and they were the only other wives who had declared an interest in a tour of the docks. Kristin’s husband had agreed to it because, she claimed, he couldn’t refuse her anything.
Kristin’s husband, who had been sitting behind the desk, rose to his feet and led the small party out of his office, into an elevator, and out of the building onto the large open area fronting the docks. There were fifteen docks arranged in three rows. To the right were workshops and hangars and that single solitary dock, and to the left storage yards and tank farms.
After being led past docks one through five, while their husbands explained the progress of each spaceship and its construction, and then back up past docks ten to six, Suzanne had to admit she was bored.
“Is that Project Washington?” Suzanne asked her husband, pointing at the spaceship in a dock to one side of the other fifteen.
“Philadelphia,” he snapped, “it’s Project Philadelphia. And yes, it is.”
“Can we have a look at that? It sounds really exciting—an invisible spaceship!”
After some discussion, Kristin’s husband decided it was permissible for the women to be shown around the Project Philadelphia spaceship. In fact, since there was no work being done on the spaceship at the moment, it was the perfect time for a tour of her interior.
She was far from prepossessing. Her sleek hull was battered and streaked, and the great round engine bells of the spacedrive were blackened and charred. The five women stood at the railing beside the entrance ramp to the spaceship and gazed, puzzled and a little fearful, at its battle-scarred bulk.
“The United Earth Space Ship Aldridge,” said Kristin’s husband. “She’s a Procyon class destroyer. Normal crew is sixteen, but we only use six for this project.”
“To make her invisible?” asked Suzanne.
“Yes, to make her invisible. I won’t explain how it works.” He gave a forced laugh. “You have to let us keep some secrets, you know.”
“Let’s go aboard,” one of the other men said.
Suzanne’s husband led the way up the ramp and through the open airlock into the UESS Aldridge. Both airlock hatches had been left open, and from the inner one a straight passage led both forward and aft. The party headed toward the bow. The interior of the destroyer was exactly how Suzanne had pictured it: grey metal decking underfoot, grey metal walls to either side, light-fittings enclosed in grey metal guards, grey metal hatches every ten feet. She felt a little silly, walking along that grey military gangway in her burgundy peplum jacket and matching skirt. All five of the women wore brightly-coloured outfits: burgundy and orange and scarlet and lilac and aquamarine. It was as if a flock of tropical birds had invaded the spaceship.
The party came to a steep staircase, a “ladder”, and the wives halted in consternation. It looked too steep to climb in high heels, but the women were reluctant to remove their shoes because they might get a run in their nylons. Since they had no choice, the wives ascended the ladder as carefully as they could.
“We should have put them in overalls,” complained one of the husbands.
The men all laughed.
At the end of the upper passage, they stepped through a hatch and onto the ship’s bridge. It was a cramped space, filled with acceleration couches and consoles, with readouts and dials and buttons and switches on every available surface. Suzanne’s husband leaned forward and flicked a set of switches on an instrument panel on the roof. There was loud thunk, causing a couple of the women to give muted shrieks, and then a horizontal line of bright light appeared at the front of the bridge. It slowly widened, dispelling the dimness, until a wide forward-looking viewport was revealed.
“Armoured shutter,” explained Suzanne’s husband.
He took her elbow and directed her further forward between two of the acceleration couches. “The pilot sits here and the astrogator here. Over there is where the sensor tech sits, and behind him is the engineer. The captain sits at the back there, and beside him is the head gunner, the torpedo man and the fireman for the space lance.”
Suzanne had to admit this tour was proving less interesting than she had expected. She only hoped it would make her husband feel more comfortable talking to her about his work, so he wouldn’t lock himself away in his study every evening. Nonetheless, she smiled and tried to appear engaged but, looking about the bridge, she saw exactly the same expression on the other wives’ faces.
Something began to make a noise outside, a strange whoop-whoop unfamiliar to Suzanne.
One of the men swore: “What the hell’s going on?”
Kristin’s husband pulled a porta-phone out of his pocket and spoke quickly into it. “There’s a fire in workshop thirty-two,” he informed the other men.
“That’s right next to tank farm fourteen!” exclaimed Eniola’s husband.
“If that goes, we lose half the stores,” Layla’s husband pointed out.
The men pushed their way to the bridge hatch.
“What about us?” asked Kristin.
“Stay here,” ordered her husband. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll send someone to come and fetch you.”