“Not in space,” the big man said. He had the gravel voice and breathy wheeze of a spacer, and with your eyes shut you might have taken him at first for Paddy Enderton.
“You ought to have told us what you had in mind when we started,” he went on angrily, “so we could have stopped then and there. You say you can’t change the deal. Well, neither can I. If you want to take a woman on board the Cuchulain, that’s up to you. But I certainly can’t agree to it. You know about women and space. You’ll have to talk to the chief, see what he says. He’ll be back down here tomorrow.” He stared down his long, thin nose at me. “And what’s this, then? Another winter surprise?”
“No. This is Jay Hara. I told you he was on the way.” Duncan turned to me. “Jay, meet Tom Toole, purser of the Cuchulain. You’re going to be working with me and him on the supplies.”
Toole made no move to shake my hand, but he did give me a much longer, thoughtful stare. “Jay Hara,” he said after a few moments. “You’re a young ’un. But I started young myself. Can you organize a list of items by their masses?”
“Sure.” If I couldn’t, I was going to learn fast.
“Here, then.” He handed me a long printed list. “You locate these items on the pallets over there, and you set them in order, most massive first. Then you wheel them to the ferry ship. They get loaded that way, see, heaviest near the ferry’s center line.” He turned back to Duncan accusingly. “If you can’t change the deal at your end, who can?”
“Doctor Xavier. Doctor Eileen Xavier. I’ll make sure she’s here tomorrow to meet with your chief.”
“Is she one of the women who wants to go up?”
“Yes. One of two.”
“How old is she? The chief is sure to ask me.”
“Pretty old. Maybe sixty-five.”
Tom Toole grunted. “That’s one bit of good news. How about the other one?”
“A lot younger. Thirty-five.” Duncan seemed ready to say more, but he noticed that I was still listening. “Here, get to work, Jay. I didn’t ask you to come over to Muldoon to stand there gaping.”
I began to walk slowly across toward the pallets and the cargo loading area. As I did, I heard Tom Toole say, “In her thirties. And pretty, I suppose. Now that’s damned bad news. Your doctor and the chief are going to have a good go-around on that one, I’ll tell you.”
Doctor Eileen and the Cuchulain’s chief did have a good go-around, just as Tom Toole had predicted.
I was there to hear it, but in a sense I missed the first minute or two, because of how it began.
Doctor Eileen had arrived at Muldoon sometime during the night. The next morning she was having breakfast with me and Uncle Duncan, at Muldoon Port’s one open winter cafeteria, when Tom Toole came in. He had with him a slender man who wore his long brown hair carefully tied back behind his head. I wouldn’t have taken him at all for a spacer, because he breathed normally and easily and neither his cheeks nor his bright grey eyes showed any sign of broken veins. But he did wear a blue spacer’s jacket, plain of all decorations and molded to his shoulders and chest without a wrinkle.
They halted in front of us. “Doctor Eileen Xavier?” asked Toole. He sounded very quiet this morning. “This is the head man on the Cuchulain, Chief Daniel Shaker.”
The slender man held out his hand to Doctor Eileen. “Better just Dan Shaker,” he said. And, as I froze, “Pleased to meet you, doctor.”
His voice was clear and musical, with no sign of spacer’s lungs. But I hardly noticed that, because inside my head Paddy Enderton’s voice was whispering, “If it’s Dan, see, then it’s God help me. And it’s God help you, Jay Hara. And it’s God help everybody.”
After a few seconds my brain came back to my head. I stared at Daniel Shaker’s outstretched hand as it shook Doctor Eileen’s and saw that it was perfectly normal.
“Well, doctor,” Shaker was saying. “I’m sure we’ll be able to work together well, and have a successful voyage. But according to Tom here we have a few things to work out before we start. Let’s talk.”
He nodded at Tom Toole, with hardly more than a half-inch up-and-down motion of his head, and the other man at once turned and started to leave the restaurant.
Daniel Shaker nodded, just as casual, to Uncle Duncan. “In private, Mister West, if you don’t mind.” And as Duncan stood up, and I started to do the same, Shaker gave me the friendliest smile, one that lit up his sparkling grey eyes and his whole face, and said, “You must be Jay Hara. Looking forward to going to space, I’ll bet. I know I was at your age.”
“He can’t wait,” Doctor Eileen said. “But off you go,”
“Oh, that’s all right.” Daniel Shaker pointed to my plate, where half my breakfast was still uneaten. “Let him stay and finish. I remember my own appetite at sixteen.”
Doctor Eileen hesitated a moment, then she shrugged. “I’ve certainly got nothing secret to say. But Duncan West tells me you have certain concerns about this trip.”
“I do indeed, Doctor Xavier.” Shaker took a roll of bread and broke it in two, but I noticed that he did not eat it. He just crumbled it in his fingers. “I have concerns,” he went on, “but not on my behalf. On yours, and on behalf of my crew. Tom Toole says you want to take women to space.”
“Just two women. Myself, and Molly Hara.” Doctor Eileen nodded her head at me. “Molly Hara is Jay’s mother.”
“It doesn’t matter who she is. You know that women in space are supposed to be bad luck.”
“I do. And I know that is nonsense.” Doctor Eileen smiled at Daniel Shaker. “You strike me as a very sensible man, Captain Shaker—”
“Not captain. The captain of the Cuchulain died in a space accident on the last voyage. I am serving as chief, but only until the owner brings in a new captain.”
“So until then I’ll call you captain. Anyway, I feel sure you know why women don’t go to space. It’s nothing to do with bad luck—that’s only superstition. It’s the same reason women don’t have dangerous jobs, on Erin or off it. Do I have to say why?”
“Women are too precious. Too valuable to be risked.” Daniel Shaker never looked away from Doctor Eileen, but I somehow felt that he was also keeping his eye on me. Except for his hands, absently crumbling bread, he sat perfectly still. “Women must be protected. Women must be guarded, kept away from all danger. And space is dangerous.”
“You seem to have survived it very well.” Doctor Eileen scanned him with a physician’s eye. “If I didn’t know it, I’d never suspect you were a spacer. You show no signs of vacuum exposure, in skin or voice or lungs.”
“I take care. A man can be careful, in space or out of it. But I’ve had my share of accidents, even if they don’t show.” Shaker shook his head slowly, as though remembering, and finally went on, “I say it again, from personal experience: Space is dangerous.”
“I’ll accept that. But you agree with me, it’s nonsense to say that women bring bad luck in space.”
“I can say it’s nonsense.” Shaker put down the bread roll and crossed his arms, so both his hands were squeezing the opposite biceps through his jacket in a gesture that I was to see a thousand times. “And you can say it’s nonsense. But what you and I think, doctor, that’s not important. I’ve got a crew to manage, and there’s no doubt how they think. And in practice, they are right. Women in space—especially young women, and attractive women—cause trouble for other reasons. My crew are young men, most of them. They’re letting off steam now, after Winterfall, and they might be all right for a few days. But I suspect we could be away a good deal longer than that. And after a while a young woman on board would be a disaster. That’s not superstition. It’s hard fact.”