"Can’t do it," Sergeant Aarhus said, "even if we wanted to. No spacesuits."
"Why do you need spacesuits?" Bell snapped.
"Don’t like breathing vacuum," Aarhus answered. "I hate the part where my eyes get freeze-dried. So while the admiral is gone, let’s just mosey on down to where the Explorers keep their suits."
"No, no, no," Bell interrupted, "you won’t need suits. Unfettered Destiny is docked directly outside. An airtight link." She waved her hand toward the exit hatch. "You can go over right now."
"So why are you and Rye wearing suits?" Uclod asked.
Lady Bell made another whooshing sound with multiple orifices. "We didn’t know how much air you’d have," she said. "You were floating derelict, no FTL field, no electrical readings… for all we knew, you might not have oxygen either."
"Exactly," Lord Rye agreed. "We didn’t know you’d fried your own ship; we thought maybe all your power systems had been disabled by that thing on your hull."
For a second, nobody spoke. Then we all howled in unison, "What thing on our hull?"
"I don’t know," Lord Rye said. "It looked like a big stick."
Questions Of Security
Lajoolie fairly threw herself against Uclod, as if the little man was the only creature in the universe who could protect her; she nearly bowled him over, but somehow he stayed on his feet. He put one arm around her hips and gave a comforting squeeze… but his eyes turned toward the exit airlock as if he desperately wished to run for it.
The rest of us were unencumbered by large timid women. We did run for the airlock — not because we were fleeing cowards, but because the foolish human ship had no means of looking at its own exterior. I wanted to see with my own eyes what this big stick looked like. Nimbus and Aarhus clearly felt the same.
"Where are you going?" Lady Bell asked as we passed her.
None of us answered. I reached the airlock first, with Nimbus gusting straight behind me, and Aarhus pounding through the hatchway a moment later. The sergeant grabbed the door as he passed; with a strong yank, he slammed it shut while the Cashlings still gaped at us from outside.
"Spin that wheel," Aarhus yelled, pointing at a spoked metal ring that stuck out of the wall. I grabbed the wheel and heaved; it moved so grudgingly, I was not certain I was turning it in the correct direction, but one does not like to embarrass oneself by sheepishly switching to go the other way, so I just pulled the wheel harder. Much harder.
The floor lurched beneath our feet.
"Hey," Aarhus said, "take it easy!"
"I did not do anything," I told him, "I just turned the wheel."
"The wheel’s attached to gimbals," he said. "They change our orientation to match the direction of gravity on the other ship — the last thing we want is to step out of the airlock and plummet straight up toward the floor."
"Why are spaceships so complicated?" I grumbled. "If I were in charge of the galaxy, I would pass a law that all ships must fly flat and level instead of at odd angles."
But I spun the wheel more slowly after that. I could feel the airlock chamber rotating and rolling in accordance with the wheel’s revolution… but the direction of down continued to be more or less beneath our feet, as if gravity was continually rearranging itself to match our gyrations. Quite possibly, if I had been patient enough to move the wheel at a snail’s pace, we could have turned completely upside-down while barely noticing the change.
"You know," Aarhus said as he watched me work, "technically speaking, what we’re doing could be considered hijacking. Boarding someone’s ship without permission."
"Do not be foolish," I told him. "The Cashlings can follow us as soon as we have gone through."
"I know that. But what will the Cashling security systems think? When strangers show up unaccompanied, the ship might consider us illegal intruders."
Nimbus made a dubious noise. "In my experience with Cashlings, half the time they forget to activate security systems when they leave the ship."
"That leaves the other half of the time," Aarhus said. "The half of the time when the ship-soul incinerates your ass and stomps on the cinders. Anyone know what anti-personnel weapons are popular in the Cashling Reach?"
"Gas," Nimbus answered immediately. "Doesn’t hurt Cashlings because they adapt so quickly to airborne contaminants… but with humans, it makes you retch till you pass out from the dry heaves."
"Lovely," Aarhus muttered.
"Do you wish to go back?" I demanded. "Do you relish groveling before Lady Bell and apologizing for your rashness?"
"Nope," Aarhus said. "I just want to know what might happen when that door opens."
The wheel in my hands clicked and stopped turning. Aarhus smiled at me, then at young Starbiter inside the cloud man’s stomach. "I’m tempted to say women and children first," Aarhus murmured, "but AdmiralRamos would never let me hear the last of it."
He grabbed a lever on the airlock hatch and threw the door open.
Why It Is Good To Have Airlocks
For a moment, I feared we were under attack by some noxious gas — a foul stench assailed my nostrils, like midsummer swamp rot combined with the scent of skunks and boar feces. Of course I held my breath; but even without inhaling, I could feel the horrid reek pressing in upon my nose, like the sharp tip of a knife just waiting to plunge to the hilt.
"God damn!" Aarhus cried, throwing up his hand to cover his mouth and pinch his nostrils shut. "Holy fucking shit!"
He reached out to close the door again, but Nimbus said, "Wait." The cloud man’s top half separated into a dozen foggy ribbons, while the lower half of his body — the part containing baby Starbiter — retained a vague eggly shape. "Wait. Wait. Wait."
Nimbus swirled out of the airlock, his upper half combing the air in long strips, turning a full circle horizontally, then rotating back in the reverse direction. At first, I did not understand what he was doing… but then I remembered how he had originally sensed me as a "chemical imbalance" (hmph!) back on Starbiter Senior. His little misty bits must possess the ability to analyze the air for toxicity; now he was testing to determine if the smell was harmful or just foul.
After another two circles, the streamers of his upper body coalesced into his former egglike shape. "The air’s not dangerous," he told us. "Not in the short term anyway. It’s just putrid as hell."
"But why?" Aarhus demanded… though it is difficult to sound truly demanding when one is muffling one’s mouth with one’s hand. "Have they sprung a leak in their sewage recyclers?"
"No. Cashlings simply have an impressive capacity to counteract atmospheric pollutants. Their stibbek automatically compensate for extreme degrees of… uhh… odorous infelicity. Therefore, I’ve noticed — in the times I’ve served on Cashling ships — they don’t maintain high standards of sanitation."
The sergeant’s expression turned aghast. "You mean they leave garbage lying around?"
"Anything and everything. They simply can’t be bothered to clean up after themselves. If they’re eating something as they walk down a corridor, they’ll drop whatever they don’t want and leave it to rot. Then they’ll step over the mess for weeks afterward, rather than bend down and pick it up. As for personal hygiene…" A shudder went through Nimbus’s body. "You don’t want to know. Every few years, they have to dock their ships at an orbital station and get robots to scour all exposed surfaces. You and Oar should watch your step; personally, I intend to hover at least half a meter off the floor."