“I see your point,” Doctor Eileen said. “If there were as many women as men born on Erin, the way there used to be, we might see as many women in space as men. And then there would be no problem. But as it is…” She glanced at me, then back to Danny Shaker. “Young women, you said, and attractive women. That lets me out. I assume you have no objection to my going?”
Shaker gave a little jerk of his head, as though he was surprised. “That’s not what I meant, Doctor Xavier. But I can’t argue with your logic. With no disrespect, you’re at an age where you ought to be safe enough on board. I can live with that. The crew will grumble some, but a crew always needs something to complain about. Better that than some other things.” Still massaging his own biceps, he pointed one finger at me. “But not Jay’s mother. We’re agreed, aren’t we, that taking Molly Hara would be asking for trouble?”
It’s a funny thing, but the expression on Doctor Eileen’s face seemed more like relief than anything else when she nodded, and said, “I suppose so. It’s a pity, but I’ll make it my job to tell Molly, and I’ll explain your reasons.”
I wondered if Doctor Eileen had already been worrying about Mother’s effect on the crew. I had never thought of my own mother as “young and attractive,” but she certainly seemed to be popular with spacers, judging from the number of them who had been to stay at our house. But I didn’t have time for many of those thoughts, because Daniel Shaker was rising to his feet.
“It’s a deal, then, Doctor Xavier,” he said. “Now, if we’re to lift tonight and have the Cuchulain ready to leave the day after tomorrow, there’s a thousand things to be done.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Come on, Jay Hara. You’re a spacer now. Tom Toole says you’re a useful extra pair of hands, and I need all the help I can get.”
I had managed to listen and eat at the same time, and my breakfast was all gone. Even if it had not, I would have been more than happy to go with Danny Shaker. You’re a spacer now. And the fact that Mother would not be going to space with us did not upset me at all. It pleased me. I wanted to be seen as a spacer, not as somebody’s child.
It was a long time before I realized that Danny Shaker, even more than Doctor Eileen and me, had achieved just the result he wanted from that first meeting.
Chapter 10
I felt poised on the brink of space, but before I get there, I have to talk about the Muldoon Spaceport and the ferry launch system.
I had visited the port half a dozen times, and thought that I knew it well before ever I met Danny Shaker. Ten minutes with him taught me otherwise. I had seen things from the outside, so to speak, like a person who sees just the walls and windows and roof of a house, but doesn’t realize there are people and furniture inside. Now I was going to be allowed in through the front door.
We went straight to the ferry site. It was a monster flat circle of concrete, with a ferry ship already sitting on the metal grid at its center. When the weather was bad the whole thing could be covered by a great sliding dome, and it would sit that way through most of the winter. But at the moment the sky was bright and clear, and everything lay open.
The place was almost deserted after Winterfall, but Shaker said that was no problem. “The only reason you need people here is to load cargo. Once that’s done, the launch system is automatic. When we’re ready we’ll be carried to Upside rendezvous.”
“What’s that?”
“Upside. The rest of Muldoon Spaceport. It’s up in stationary orbit. There’s as much there as here—maybe more.”
“But where’s the crew?” I could see Tom Toole, pottering about with his back to us over on the other side of the circle, and that was all.
“Enjoying the last bit of their Winterfall holiday, most of them. They’ll stay on Erin to the last minute, then join us on the Cuchulain. Come on.”
He whistled through his teeth, an odd sound like a fluting birdcall. Tom Toole turned and nodded in greeting, but he did not move to join us as Shaker led the way across the concrete circle. I paused, suddenly nervous. Surely Daniel Shaker wasn’t proposing to use the launch vehicle now, before Doctor Eileen or Duncan West were here?
I was reassured by the thought that it was morning, and all launches took place after sunset. I followed him. He had gone all the way across to the central metal grid. Now he was standing on it, staring downward. As I came up to him, stepping carefully, he pointed down.
“See that?”
I followed the line of his arm, and saw circles of dull red beneath the grid.
“If you’re ever here when they start to flash on and off, run for it. It means the launch grid is going to operate in the next minute. If you were standing here when that happened, you’d die but no one would have to bury you. You’d go like a puff of smoke.”
And we were going to space in a ship sitting on top of that lethal grid.
“Why doesn’t it vaporize the ferry ship?” I didn’t want information. I wanted reassurance.
“Because of this,” Shaker said. He stepped forward, to the great pie-shaped cushion plate sitting beneath the ship. “It can stand pressures and temperatures better than anything ever built on Erin.”
“This wasn’t built on Erin? Where was it built?” For the past few minutes I had been asking question after question, but Danny Shaker didn’t seem to mind. He was so friendly and easygoing, it was hard to see him as a spacer captain. Captains ought to be gruff and tough and rigid, not smiling and softspoken.
“No one knows quite where—or when.” He slapped his open palm hard on the cushion plate, and it rang with a high-pitched sound like a gigantic crystal glass. “But it’s all ancient,” he went on. “From before the Isolation.”
His voice was quite matter-of-fact. There was clearly no doubt in his mind that the Isolation was real. There had once been travel to the stars, and a known universe far beyond the Forty Worlds, and that was that.
“But it works perfectly well,” he continued. “Safer than anything we build today. In fact, there’s no way we could build anything like this now. We don’t have the tools, or the materials, or the knowledge. Erin is really lucky to have it. Without the ferry system I doubt we’d ever have been able to get off planet to scavenge the Forty Worlds. And without the light elements we get from them, Erin would be in real trouble.
“Ever see the inside of a ferry ship? Come on.” He did not wait for an answer, but went right to the ramp that carried cargo and passengers up into the ship.
Seen from a distance on the great circle of the launch site, as I had always seen them, the ferry ships had appeared big, but not really enormous. Each one was a silvery half-sphere, without windows or any other features, sitting above its cushion plate. At the very top of each ship was an antenna like a black hoop. It was easy to imagine the ship as a great serving dish, to be lifted away from the cushion plate using the hoop above.
I knew that was wrong, because the ship and cushion plate had to remain strongly bound together unless they were deliberately released in orbit. But what I did not realize, until I stepped inside a ferry ship, was just how huge it was. I followed Danny Shaker at least ten paces to a central control room, through a narrow corridor higher than his head. The internal partitions were transparent, and we were surrounded on all sides by great bales of stacked cargo.