And once I was inside, I could see that the dome was all beat-up and battered. The walls and the curved ceiling were full of nicks and dents and smudges, where cargo had collided hard against them.
“Not during take-off or landing,” said Danny Shaker. He had followed my eyes and my thoughts. “Those are as smooth as you could ask. The dents happen during careless loading.” He sat down before a whole bank of switches and dials. “All ready? If you are, sit down there.”
“Ready for what?” I sat down, hurriedly.
“For a little trial run.” His grin took a lot of my worry away. “I know that you’re like most Downsiders, you’ve never been up before. So I thought we’d lift now, just a little way. Then when it’s the real thing tomorrow, with Doctor Xavier and your friend Duncan, you’ll be an old hand and know just what to expect.”
He didn’t actually give me a choice. Before I could say anything he had thrown four switches, and I heard a distant wailing.
“Sirens outside the ship,” Shaker explained. “That’s to warn Tom Toole and anyone else to stay clear. Not that he needs it. See, he’s away already.”
He pointed to screens set spaced around the circular control room. They showed the deserted flat plain of concrete outside the ferry ship. Somewhere, although I had never seen a sign of them, cameras must be fixed to the exterior of the ship, pointing outward and down.
“Now we’ll have half a minute of the flashing warning underneath the launch grid,” went on Danny Shaker. “Then we’ll be off.”
My stomach gave a little warning quiver, like the time one summer when I drank too much cold lake water and it went right through me. But before anything horrible could happen I felt a faint discomfort in my ears, and Shaker said calmly, “And we’re off. Take a look.”
It was like a dream. We were not moving, we couldn’t be. But the view on the screens was changing. The flat concrete had been replaced by domes and hangers and sky towers. We were looking down on them, and every second they were farther below us.
The strange thing is, I had none of the dizzy feelings that had so upset me when I was climbing to the top of the water tower. Even when the domes dwindled and dwindled below us until I could see across Lake Sheelin all the way to Toltoona, there was never the sensation of height. It was like sitting in a solid building and watching a moving picture.
“All right?” asked Shaker.
“I’m fine.” I laughed. “This is wonderful. Will space be like this?”
“I’m afraid not. Much more boring—during launch or landfall there’s always something to look at. In space there’s nothing to see, sometimes for months. Well, I guess that will do.”
Shaker flipped another set of switches. After a few more seconds the pictures on the screen stopped shrinking and began to grow. Soon I could again see the towers and domes of Muldoon, moving closer and closer.
“How high did we go?” The last thing I wanted to do was land.
“Half a kilometer. Not high enough?” Shaker smiled at me, reading my disappointment. “Don’t worry. You’ll get the rest of it tomorrow—all the way to space.”
We landed, as smoothly as we had taken off.
That was it, the whole thing. My first ride: not to space, but toward space. It may not sound like much as I’ve described it, and the whole rest of the day was spent hauling supplies with Tom Toole, who I don’t think spoke ten words to me more than he needed to.
But it was a lot to me, and something must have showed. Because late that night, when Doctor Eileen came back from her trip around Lake Sheelin, I was still up, sitting in the apartment at Muldoon that we were sharing between the three of us. She took one look at me and said, “What’s so wonderful, Jay?”
“Daniel Shaker.” Uncle Duncan replied for me. “Took him for a joy ride in a ferry ship. Made him into a Shaker fan.”
“I believe it. I’m close to being one myself.” Doctor Eileen took off her coat and helped herself to a hot drink. I didn’t blame her. The night outside was the coldest of the year.
“Daniel Shaker is a thinker,” she went on, “and that’s a rarity—especially among spacers. I’ll bet he’s a reader, too. How did you find him, Duncan?”
“Find him?” Uncle Duncan looked vague as ever. “I don’t know. Asked around Muldoon. Talked to people. There isn’t really much choice at this time of year. Not many crews want to go out, and not many ships are available to take them.”
It was a typical nondescript Unkadunka reply, but it seemed good enough for Doctor Eileen.
“So we were lucky.” She settled with a sigh into a chair, and sipped her drink. “That’s good. I talked to Molly, and she didn’t mind much that she isn’t going. She has more than enough to do back home. But she did say that she was worried about Jay. I told her not to worry, we were in good hands. It’s nice for once to know that it’s true.”
Chapter 11
We were all ready to go, but then came one last hitch. The next morning, when Danny Shaker was away from Muldoon, Doctor Eileen asked me to take her over to meet Tom Toole. When we got there she told him that two more people would be coming with us into space.
“The devil they will!” Tom Toole, unlike Daniel Shaker, was the sort of spacer I was used to, raw-boned and tough and glowering as he put his hands on his hips and tried to stare her down.
He towered over Doctor Eileen by a head and more, but she did not budge. “The devil they will, indeed,” she said. “They are necessary.”
“Necessary for what? The Cuchulain has a full crew.”
“Necessary as my assistants.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. We can’t add new passengers now.”
“I don’t see why not. I’ve certainly paid for ample supplies, Mr. Toole—enough to cruise the whole Forty Worlds.”
“It’s not supplies I’m talking about.”
“So what is it, then?”
Tom Toole shook his head. “The chief knows nothing about this.”
“So you can tell him.”
He turned his head away from Doctor Eileen. I could see his face, and it had on it the oddest expression, an absolutely sick look. “I can’t do that. We’ve had enough changes. Who are these people?”
“If you won’t tell Captain Shaker about them, I don’t see much point in my telling you. But they are scientists, from the university over in Belfast. Both of them men, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“Oh, scientists. “Tom Toole said the word as though he was spitting, but his face was back to normal. “Useless dead weight.”
“That’s your opinion. It’s not mine.”
They stared at each other. I could see that Doctor Eileen and Tom Toole were going to get on together like fire and water. At last he said, “I’ll tell the chief you want to talk to him about it. If he agrees with you, all right. And that had better be the last of the surprises.”
He turned and strode away without another word. But I couldn’t forget that odd spasm of discomfort on his face. What was he afraid of? Giving Danny Shaker new information that might annoy him?
“Doctor Eileen,” I said, “if a man were to lose his arm in an accident, is there any way that it could be regrown?”
She stared at me. “Jay, if there were a prize for asking the oddest question, you’d win it hands-down. What are you talking about?”
I felt like a moron, but there was no way I could take the question back. I told her about Paddy Enderton, and what he had said about Dan and Stan, and one having no arms and the other no legs. “And Tom Toole seemed really scared just now,” I added. “As though he’s afraid of Danny Shaker.”