“That Uncle Duncan is the best eater and sleeper she ever met.”
“We should all be so lucky.” Doctor Eileen stood up. “I’ve got to lie down for a few minutes myself, or I’ll fall apart. You two can stay if you like, I don’t mind.”
She wandered away into one of the rooms equipped with a couple of bunk beds. Mel and I were left to sit and stare at each other. Doctor Eileen must be feeling really out of it, because she knew as well as we did that Mel had to stay here. She couldn’t safely go anywhere else in the Cuchulain.
We went through the other sleeping area and locked the door. Mel turned off the lights, and each of us climbed onto one of the side-by-side beds. We lay there in shuddering darkness, for so long that I began to think that Mel had fallen asleep despite the vibration from the engines. I envied her. For more than twenty hours the two of us had been busy with hardly a break, and now my brain would not stop running. I kept reliving the discovery of the Godspeed Base, and our decision to fly to it. My hands were again on the cargo beetle’s controls, guiding us to our rendezvous in space.
Finally Mel said softly, “Jay?”
I came back from miles away. “What?”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’ll be fine. Girls and women on Erin do very well. They are treated as something really special and precious, unless they happen to be like my mother and won’t put up with it. And when we get there we’ll all be rich. You can make trips to Paddy’s Fortune as often as you want.”
The snort in the darkness could have been disgust or frustration. “I’m not thinking of Erin, you dummy—or of Paddy’s Fortune. I’m worrying about the next few days. If the Cuchulain is in as bad condition as everyone says, it won’t be able to fly to Erin. And you’ve seen the Godspeed ship. The living space on it is tiny. Maybe the ship can reach Erin in record time, but I don’t see a hiding place on board for me.”
Mel was right, and I was the world’s prize idiot. I could blame Doctor Eileen a little for not seeing the problem either, but I was the one who had allowed Mel to guide me to the cargo beetle, back on Paddy’s Fortune, and let her stay there. Looking back on it I decided that I should have insisted that she leave me, the moment that I caught sight of the beetle.
“Well?” Mel said at last.
“I’ll ask Danny Shaker. I’m sure he’ll have an answer.”
“You mean you’re sure you don’t.”
“Maybe the engines on the Cuchulain just need a thorough overhaul to carry us home.”
Mel didn’t comment on that. A dreadful shudder through the whole ship did it for her. The engines sounded ready to die. But I had no more thoughts to offer.
We lay there without speaking, in an uneasy darkness thick enough to feel. At last I did what I most needed to do. I fell asleep.
Chapter 29
“Jay?”
I awoke from deep-down slumber. Sensations cut in, one after another. Free-fall. Darkness. Silence. A cold hand touched my face.
“Jay!” It was Doctor Eileen’s voice, insistent, whispering close to my ear.
“What’s wrong?” The ship’s engines been turned off.
“Nothing. Shh! I don’t want to wake Mel. Come on.” She tugged at my sleeve.
“Wait a second.” I had to disentangle myself. Mel was sleeping with one arm across me. As soon as I was free I drifted after Doctor Eileen, out into the general living area.
“What’s happening?” I saw that the lighting level had been cut way back, and the little blip of the communicator was like a winking red eye in the darkness.
“You didn’t hear it?” Doctor Eileen was no longer whispering. “I wish I could sleep like you and Duncan. I gave him a good shake, but he went right back to sleep. A call came through two minutes ago. We’re clear of the Eye. Captain Shaker wants us in the control room.”
“But why were you whispering?”
“Do you want to explain to Mel why she can’t go along with us to the bridge?”
And I thought I was the one who found her hard to handle.
“We may have a real problem coming up.” I followed Doctor Eileen outside, and locked the door of the living quarters. “If the drive on the Cuchulain isn’t able to take us back, we’re going to have trouble with Mel.”
As we started toward the control room I explained that the Godspeed ship was far too small to conceal a stowaway, even for a minute.
Doctor Eileen listened, but I think that her mind was mostly somewhere else, because when I was done she said, “You’re overreacting, Jay. If we fly back to Erin in the ship with the Godspeed Drive we won’t need to hide Mel, because we’ll get there in no time. And the crew aren’t animals, you know. They’ve had the excitement of finding the Base and the Godspeed Drive, and their mood must be a lot better than it was when they were plowing through the mud on Paddy’s Fortune. I’m sure they’ll treat Mel with respect when they find out she’s on board.”
There was no point in arguing. Doctor Eileen hadn’t seen Joe Munroe’s face after he ripped away Mel’s shirt. She hadn’t heard Rory O’Donovan and Connor Bryan talking about women. If the crew weren’t animals, it was because animals were better behaved.
The trouble was, Doctor Eileen took her cues as to what spacer crew members were like from Danny Shaker, and he was simply not typical. When we entered the control room he was standing relaxed by the pilot’s chair, his smooth face thoughtful and his long hair neatly pulled back and tied. Tom Toole was at his side. The screens behind them showed open space, with the Godspeed ship hanging close to the Cuchulain.
“Just the people I wanted to see,” Shaker said affably. “Let me bring you up to date. First, the Godspeed Drive. It’s over there in the corkscrew ship. It works, and we know how to use it. That’s the good news. Now for some bad news: the Cuchulain. The engines still work, after a fashion, but neither I nor anyone else believe the ship is in much shape to fly us back to Erin.”
Doctor Eileen looked puzzled. “That doesn’t sound like bad news. Can’t the Godspeed ship find room for everyone?”
“It can.” Danny Shaker was talking to Doctor Eileen, but he was staring at me in an odd, speculative way. I got goosebumps. Something had changed. I could see it in Tom Toole as well as in Danny Shaker. Tom was grinning at some private joke, and eyeing Eileen Xavier.
“It has enough room,” Danny Shaker said. “And even if it didn’t, you could make ten trips to Erin and back in the time we’d take to overhaul the engines once on the Cuchulain.”
“So what’s the problem?” Doctor Eileen’s voice had changed. She was beginning to sense something offkey.
“It’s the crew. You see, they’ve had a meeting. And they don’t like the deal we made. Don’t like it at all.”
“Ah.” Doctor Eileen went forward, and sat down uninvited in the pilot’s seat. “So that’s it. A little bit of blackmail. I have to agree to better terms for you, right, or you won’t agree to fly us back? Well, Captain Shaker, I don’t know if you’re in on this yourself, or if it’s really all the crew’s doing, the way that you say. But either way, it’s no deal. We needed you to fly us to Paddy’s Fortune, and to get us here to the Needle and the Eye. But we don’t need you now. James Swift assures me that he is perfectly capable of flying the Godspeed ship himself. Do you disagree?”
“I believe that James Swift knows how to fly the Godspeed ship.”