Thanks to Explorer programming, Yarrun was just as obsessive in keeping his clothes mussed as I was in keeping my hair parted straight.
I inflated a chair and sat down beside him. "Are they close?" I asked in a low voice.
He shrugged. "Since I arrived, the captain has shouted, 'You almost had it!' three times."
"Has she called him a fool yet?"
"No."
"Then they aren't close."
Yarrun and I had spent a lot of time waiting in that room. We knew each bleep, chirp, and fribble the machinery could make. We knew each bleep, chirp, and fribble a tail-operator could make. After a while, the noises blended into a harmonious whole.
"You almost had it that time, Harque! Can't you be more careful?"
"Sorry, captain."
The observation deck where we sat was a U-shaped mezzanine around the actual transport bay, twelve meters below and separated from us by thick pink-tinted plastic. The walls around us sported rainbow-striped jacaranda trees; this was the first area most visitors saw when they came on board, and Prope was desperate to make a jaunty impression.
The control console occupied the base of the mezzanine U. Opposite it, down in the bay, was the Aft Entry Mouth, a circular aperture leading out of the ship and into the Sperm-tail. At present, the Mouth was closed with an irising mechanism that bulged slightly outward under the air pressure of the ship. When the iris opened, anything in the transport bay weighing less than twenty tonnes would be propelled out the Mouth and spat through the tail like phlegm.
It wasn't an elegant way to travel — Admirals usually arrived in trim little shuttles, as did delicate cargo shipments — but receiving such deliveries meant dropping our Sperm field, then waiting twelve hours while the forward Sperm generator rebuilt the envelope. It only took a second to reestablish the field itself… but aligning the tail to surround the ship rather than drift off on its own demanded extensive calibration efforts that always left the crew in a foul mood. Either the High Council of Admirals had decided not to put the Vac-hands through that strain, or Chee's business with the Jacaranda was too urgent for any delay.
I was glad it was Chee being transported, not me. Though I had squirted through the tail more than a hundred times, I never enjoyed it. Some Explorers did. Yarrun said it felt like a ride at an amusement center: your feet swooped out from under you, your brain dimmed to black, the space-distorting forces in the tail twisted you through a few hyperdimensions, and then you slid out the other end like sound emerging from a trumpet. Dozens of people had done it without even wearing an impact suit (despite safety regs). The death rate was lower than any other form of transport used in the Outward Fleet.
And yet…
When I stood down there in my suit, waiting for the blue light that said the tail had been secured, I sometimes prayed something would save me from that five second ride. "Sorry, Festina, all a big mistake, you don't have to go today."
I was a child who never believed in fairies, but still told herself fairy tales.
Then the light went on, and I would look around one last time, at the rainbow jacarandas, at Yarrun counting the seconds until our ejaculation, and at the iris that waited, eyelike, ready to open.
I always faced that iris full on. No tail-operator ever saw me flinch. Only Yarrun knew that I closed my eyes.
The Arrival
"Got it!" Harque cried with relief.
"About time," the captain growled. She twisted a knob on the console and spoke into a filament microphone. "Golden Cedar, this is Jacaranda. We have established connection."
There was a pause of several seconds as our computer coded the captain's voice for transmission, squirted it to the Golden Cedar 20,000 klicks away, received an answer, and decoded it into sound. "Connection acknowledged. Prepare to receive."
As Yarrun and I moved to the observation window, the iris blinked open with the speed of a bubble popping. The plastic in front of us, thick as it was, jerked slightly as the air on the other side exploded into the tail, and one of the windows boomed like a drum. Harque and Prope ignored the sound, so Yarrun and I did too.
"Mouth open and ready to receive," Prope said into the mike. She said it with a straight face. Pause. "Acknowledged. Stand by." Harque stifled a yawn as Prope looked at her watch. She pursed her lips in annoyance, then suddenly drew up into her most heroic stance, a calm smile taking possession of her face. "Let's look alive, people," she intoned, her voice half an octave lower than when she was kibitzing over Harque's shoulder.
Beyond the open Mouth, the milk white Sperm smeared itself over the black of space. Shimmering distortions rippled through the tail's surface like heat waves. At the heart of the aperture, like a fly floating on cream, lay the black gap through which the admiral would arrive.
A light flashed orange on the console and soft beeping filled the room. Harque murmured, "Five seconds."
The gap in the center of the hole suddenly expanded like a throat, vomiting out a figure in an impact suit that shone a burnished gold. The suit shot half the length of the room before landing chest first on the floor and skidding to a stop.
Harque leapt back to the console and spun some dials. The iris blinked shut soundlessly. "Pressurizing now," Harque said in a loud voice that clearly wanted someone to pay attention. But the captain was too busy posing: hands on her hips, and feet spread wider than I, for one, would find natural.
The figure on the floor rolled onto his back and went into a convulsion. His legs shook with quick little kicks and his hands clapped together again and again. "Oh shit, he's hurt," Prope said, breaking her stance and pressing her nose against the window. "Harque, buzz the infirmary and tell them to get their asses here on the double. Fast and quiet — the rest of the crew isn't supposed to know about this." She closed her eyes and whispered, "Don't die on my ship!"
As air rushed into the transport bay, the sound of metal clapping on metal became audible over the speakers monitoring the area. Ringing above the clapping was a tinny cry. At first it sounded like screeching, but then it solidified into something like "Wheeeeeee!"
I looked at Yarrun. He looked back, eyebrows slightly raised.
Down in the transport bay, the admiral scrambled to his feet and tossed off the helmet of his impact suit. He turned to the four of us standing at the window and shouted, "See? Like Jonah and the whale." He pointed to himself. "I'm Jonah." He pointed to the Mouth. "That's the whale. A sperm whale. Jonah comes out of the whale. See?" He hugged himself with a clang of metal gloves against the suit's chestplate.
Prope stared blankly at the wild old man. Harque, at her side, whispered, "Should I cancel the call for the medical team?"
"Not on your life," she answered.
My Second Admiral
Harque turned a dial and the observation deck began to descend, lowering itself to match levels with the transport bay. As we sank, doors within doors were revealed in the plastic separating us from the bay: a large door that could be opened to receive huge, heavy equipment; a medium door, just the lower half of the largest one, but still big enough to let robot cargo-haulers pass through; and a baby door, set into the medium one, just right for humans.
Prope was obviously reluctant to open any of those doors until the medical team arrived. With her heroic stance abandoned, she shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the other, probably wondering how to preserve her dignity while dealing with a madman. On the other side of the door, Admiral Chee had begun clinking the metal of his pressure suit with his finger, idly checking which surfaces made which tones. He may have been trying to tink out a song, but I didn't recognize the tune.