“No one did. The engines are in awful shape, we’ve had to travel really slow.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, and I knew it. Mel was on the boil, and if I stayed around I was going to be the one that got the heat. “I’ll go and ask Doctor Eileen,” I said hurriedly. “She might be able to tell us something.”
“Never mind something.” Mel glowered at me. “Find out how long it will be before we get to Erin.”
“Right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” (After we return from Godspeed Base).
I escaped before Mel could have another go at me. When I arrived at the bridge there was just one person present. Donald Rudden was settled in the most comfortable chair, staring at the displays. A monstrous multilayer sandwich waited on a tray in front of him.
“Where is everybody?” I said.
“Eh?” He turned to frown at me. “Why, they’ve gone, that’s where they are. All but me.” He pointed a stubby finger at the screen. The middle part of the space structure on the display made me squint and blink. Flickering surges of light ran around it, and I couldn’t bring it into focus.
“What’s that? I can’t see anything.”
“Because you’re staring at the wrong bit. Don’t try to see the middle lump, you’ll go cross-eyed. Look there.” He jabbed his finger onto the screen, and I saw a humpbacked cargo beetle, heading for the big ovoid that formed the solid bottom of the figure-eight space structure. “There they go.”
“What about me?!”
“You’re here.”
“But I was supposed to go with them!”
He seemed puzzled, and stared at his sandwich for inspiration. “Well, you weren’t here, were you?” he said at last. “How could they take you, if you weren’t here to be taken?”
It was no good arguing with him, the great pudding. I fled back to Mel. At least she would feel better, knowing that the two of us were in the same boat.
Apparently she did feel better. In fact, when I told her what had happened to me she started to laugh like a lunatic, rolling round and round the cabin.
Sometimes you have to think that the rule, No women in space, is an excellent idea.
Chapter 27
It’s a strange thing, but one person can enjoy an experience, while another sees the same event only as a source of irritation.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
One of Donald Rudden’s defects had become a virtue: Sit him in a comfortable chair with adequate supplies of food and drink, and an earthquake wouldn’t budge him. I decided that since he was nicely settled, Mel and I could safely go to the observation bubble on the topmost level of the living quarters. We sneaked up there together and I turned the highest magnification scopes onto the cargo beetle.
Or rather, we turned them onto where the cargo beetle had been. We were just in time to see it nuzzling in to a rendezvous with a port on the side of the structure’s big lobe.
Mel, sitting beside me, gasped. So did I. When the Cuchulain was far from the space base there had been no way of judging its size. Now we were closer, and the cargo beetle provided a direct standard of scale.
The base was monstrous. I estimated that the fat ellipsoid that the beetle was entering had to be at least as big as Paddy’s Fortune. It was a world of its own. Even the “tiny” third lobe on the top end of the figure-eight would be big enough to house the Cuchulain. As for the middle section, it still defeated my eyes. There was a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t quality that might make you think that our ship’s screen wasn’t working—except that everything else on the display appeared normal. I decided that the middle part of the base must be transparent, and lit from within, like a hollow ball of glass with a continuous lightning storm going on inside.
The beetle vanished quickly into the side of the base. Mel continued to study the display with every sign of interest, enjoying her first look in weeks at open space. But I, as an experienced and blasé space traveler, watched with huge frustration—because I should have been there, inside Godspeed Base, not hanging around on the Cuchulain while nothing happened.
In the middle of that thought, something very definite did happen. I heard a noise like the clatter of boots on the stairway that led up to the observation bubble.
Mel heard it, too. She turned to me. “You said that the man who was left behind—”
“I know. He never moves if he doesn’t have to.”
Except that the sound was definitely louder. Someone was ascending the staircase. I stared around, and saw what I should have noticed the moment we came in. The observation bubble had only one exit. It also had no place to hide.
“Mel,” I whispered. “The gun that I gave Doctor Eileen. Did she pass it on to you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Let me have it.” I had fired it once. If I had to I could do it again.
She stared at me in dismay. “I don’t have it, Jay. As soon as I had that gun in my hand I knew I could never bear to shoot anyone. I gave it to Duncan West…”
…and left us totally helpless. The footsteps were right at the top of the staircase. The only thing left was surprise.
I launched myself feet-first toward the doorway. If I were lucky and timed it right, I would hit the intruder at chest level.
“No, Jay!” The shout came from Mel behind me.
I just had time to bend my legs and draw them up toward my body. I still hit the newcomer, right in his midsection, but I had softened the impact. I saw a mop of flaming red hair above Jim Swift’s startled face as he staggered, made a wild grab at the doorway, and barely avoided being thrown back down the staircase.
He must have reached out from pure reflex, because my driving feet had knocked all the wind out of him. For the next half minute he grovelled on the floor, struggling for breath, while Mel and I hovered uselessly around him.
At last Jim raised his head and croaked, “What the hell?”
It was all he could say before he ran out of air again. Mel lifted him up, while I gabbled explanations and excuses.
After a while he nodded. “All right, all right. You didn’t mean it. But you sure as hell did it.” He straightened up, winced, and felt his midriff.
“But why aren’t you on the cargo beetle?” I said. I couldn’t believe he had missed the boat, too.
“Because they’re dummies, that’s why!” Anger did him more good than apologies. The color came rushing back to his face. “Total idiots. I tried to warn that stupid crew, and all they did was say that I didn’t know about space. Me!”
“But you told me that you don’t,” said Mel. “You insisted that the trip on the Cuchulain was your first time in space.”
Jim Swift had probably told her exactly that, but he didn’t want to know it. His face became redder. “I don’t know about space. But I know a hell of a lot about space-time, more than the rest of them put together will ever know.”
Mel put her hand on his arm. “Calm down, Jim.”
It was the perfect way to make him do the opposite. “What’s knowing about space-time got to do with you not going with them now?” I asked hurriedly.