"Negative. Interested?"
"Just like that, huh? First mate?"
"Yep. Just like that. Except from now on you gotta call me 'sir'!"
She chewed that over, then nodded. "I guess I could get used to that."
"Sir," Sten reminded.
"Sir," she said.
"By the way, what's your name?"
"Luz, Luz Tapia. Oh, clot, I mean Luz Tapia, sir."
With one shot, Sten had solved the problem of the Richards and his doubts about Estill.
Only the problem of a skipper for the Claggett remained. But so far the last hurdle seemed insurmountable. Alex and Sten gloomed over the few remaining names on their list.
"What a sorry lot," Alex said. "Ah wouldnae make ae of these clots cap'n ae a gravsled."
Sten had to agree. To make matters worse, he was quickly running out of time. And Doorman hadn't been making things easy for him. His aides had been swamping Sten with regular calls asking for status reports and issuing thinly veiled threats.
For one of the few times in his life, Sten found himself stumped.
There was a loud scratching at the door.
"In!" Sten shouted.
There was a pause, and then the scratching came again, louder than before.
Sten jumped to his feet. "Who the clottin hell..." He slapped at the button, and the door hissed open. Sheer horror looked him in the face. Sten whooped with delight.
"What the clot are you doing here?" he yelled.
"Heard you were looking for a captain," the horror replied.
And Sten fell into Sh'aarl't's arms and arms and arms.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Even as he walked under the baroque gates into the officer's club grounds, Sten began calling himself several kinds of a dumb clot. Across the vast pampered garden—which Sten was sure was tended by poor swabbies pressed into service by their superiors—he could see the palatial and sprawling building that housed the club.
Even by Prime World standards it would be considered posh. The building was many-columned and pure white. It was lit by constantly playing lights. The central structure had a copper-yellow dome that looked suspiciously as if it had been gold-leafed. Sten gritted his teeth as he thought how many ships could have been outfitted at the obvious cost.
He could hear the sounds of his partying brother and sister officers. Somehow the laughter seemed a little too loud, the howls of enjoyment a little too shrill.
Sten almost turned back. Then he thought, To hell with it. He had come here to celebrate with a by-God decent meal and a few too many drinks. He walked on, determined to have a good time. Besides, everybody on van Doorman's staff couldn't be clots, could they? There were sure to be a few interesting beings, right?
Just to his left was a large tree, cloaked in darkness. As he passed it, a figure came out of the shadows toward him. Sten pivoted, his knife sliding into his palm. The figure seemed to lunge for him, and just as Sten was about to strike, he smelled a strange mixture of strong alcohol and heady perfume. Instead of striking, he caught—and his arms were suddenly filled with surprising softness.
The young woman bleared up at him and then gave a slightly twisted grin of faint recognition. "Oh, s'it's you," she giggled. "Come to give me a cuddle, huh?"
It was Brijit van Doorman. The admiral's daughter. And she was quite drunk.
Sten desperately tried to push her upright and away—doing his best, but failing, to keep from touching places he ought not to touch. Visions of firing squads danced in his head.
"Was'a matter?" Brijit protested. "Din't ya ever see a girl get a tiddle little, I mean a little tiddly, before?"
"Please, Ms. van Doorman..." Sten fumbled.
She collapsed against him; as Sten clutched at her, she slid out of his arms as if she were greased and tumbled to the lawn. She was suddenly stricken by a mixture of laughter and hiccups.
"Had a hic con—con—contest. Drinking con—hic—test. I won."
"So I see," Sten said.
"He didn't like it."
"Who's he?" Sten asked.
Brijit became very formal. "He is my fiancй . Old whatis-bod. Rey. Right, Rey Hall—uh, Halldor. My true true true love."
The firing squad disappeared from Sten's mind to be replaced by a small figure being keelhauled. The figure looked very much like Sten.
"Why don't I go get Rey?" Sten said.
"No, no, no. He's with Daddy. Daddy doesn't like me to drink either."
This was all just as clotting wonderful as it could get. At least that was what Sten thought until Brijit started to cry. Not nice, soft little ladylike sobs either, but a loud bawl. Sten saw several people peering curiously out the window.
"Let me take you home," Sten said.
She stopped crying immediately. She gave him a little conspiratorial look. "Right. Home. Then nobody will ever know."
"Absolutely," Sten said. "No one will know. Okay, up we go, now."
It took him a good five minutes to get her to her feet. But that didn't do much good, as she kept sagging toward the ground each time. Finally, Sten picked her up and carried back along the path and through the gates to his gravcar.
He had barely cleared the ground when she lapsed into total unconsciousness. Sten was about ready to explode. Of all the clotting little... Ah, what the hell. He'd find the way. He punched her name into the gravcar's directory, found her address, and set the autopilot.
As they swept through the city, he took a good look at her. Except for a slight flush in her features and a bruised look about her mouth, no one could tell she had a load on.
What the hey, so she got a load on? Sten imagined that it wasn't very pleasant being related to van Doorman. So she wanted to kick her heels up a little? She had a right to, didn't she?
Asleep, Brijit seemed very peaceful, little-girl-innocent and... and... Get a hold of yourself, Sten. So she's a knockout. She's also the admiral's daughter, remember? Do not think those thoughts. Do not think them at all.
Brijit never woke up when they reached her house, and Sten had to carry her in and tuck her into bed. He palmed a switch to turn off the lights, sighed, and let himself out.
He found a furious blond man waiting for him at his gravsled. The man was in uniform and wore the insignia of a commander. The last time Sten had seen him had been outside van Doorman's office—he'd been wearing shorts and accompanying Brijit. It did not require much of Sten's deductive powers to figure out who the man was.
"So, there you are, you clot! I'll teach you to—"
The man swung at Sten, starting at his knees and coming straight up. Sten stepped back lightly, and the man almost fell from the force of the swing.
"You must be Rey Halldor," Sten said. "Brijit's fiancй."
"You're clotting right I am," Halldor said, swinging again.
Sten ducked, holding out both hands, trying to make peace. "Listen, Halldor. I didn't have anything to do with it. She got drunk. I found her. I took her home. Period. That's it. Nothing else happened."
Halldor charged, windmilling. Sten tried to dance aside, but one of the blows caught his ear. It hurt like hell.
"Okay, you clot," Sten said.
One arm stiffened. A hand connected, and the man found himself lying on his back, looking foolishly up at Sten.
"You... you hit me," said an astonished Halldor.
"You're clottin' right I hit you, Commander," Sten said. "And if you get up, that's not all I'll do."
"I want your name. Now, you clot."
"The clot you are speaking to is Commander Sten, at your service."