Honeymoon
Anne McCaffrey
“May I come aboard, Helva?”
Helva said yes without thinking because the traffic in technicians and Base officials attending to her refitting was constant. Then, she checked identity because while the voice was familiar, no technician would have couched such a formal request. Rocco, Regulus representative for Mutant Minorities, was her unexpected caller. With the easy manner of one used to the protocol of brain-brawn ships, the Double M man saluted her behind the central column and sauntered into the lounge, looking about him with interest at the choice artifacts Niall had introduced, the circuit prints and cables draped about the control console, the pattern of dust and grit leading toward her engineering and cargo compartments.
“I’ve stopped apologizing for the mess,” Helva said, “but the galley’s intact if you don’t mind serving yourself while Niall’s not here …”
“I’m here because he isn’t, Helva,” Rocco said, refusing her hospitality with a courteous gesture and seating himself facing her panel.
“In which capacity? Double M, or Rocco?”
“Unofficially, but Rocco is always willing.” Then he hesitated, biting the comer of his lip while Helva waited, amused that the suave, fashionably attired troubleshooter for Double M was at a loss for words. He’d had no block a scant seven days ago when he’d been needling Chief Railly before she’d extended her Central Worlds contract.
“Let’s just say that I had an interesting conversation yesterday which leads me to beg the indulgence of a chat-an unofficial chat-with you.”
“On what subject?”
“Coercion?”
“Whose?” Helva was amused.
“Yours, primarily. Parollan’s . . man can take care of himself.”
Helva chuckled. “Now, Mr. Rocco, you were in Chief Railly’s office that day.”
Rocco impatiently brushed that side. “Yes, I heard the official line. They got you to extend your original contract with them . .. which was almost legal.”
“Very legal, Rocco. I did some surreptitious checking myself. And I got them …”
Rocco held up his hand, peremptorily cutting her off. “Did or did not Railly deploy a detachment around you, effectively preventing you from lifting off if you’d so desired? And did or did not Parollan have to short out a perimeter fence to get to you?”
“There was a little misunderstanding …”
“Little?” Rocco’s swarthy face darkened to emphasize that single explosion. “My dear Helva, I have my sources, too. Railly had the entire planetary security force, civilian and service, looking for Parollan.”
“I had Broley on my side.” Helva chuckled for the city shell person’s cooperation had been involuntary. Broley still wasn’t speaking to her because she hadn’t opted for independent status and taken on one of the clients he bad lined up for her.
“So you did. Do you now?”
“Oh, he’ll sulk a while longer, I expect.”
Rocco hitched himself to the edge of the couch. “Now, look, Helva, I know what it says on paper but I also know that Parollan’s resignation from the Service is still in effect. Oh, he’s brawning you to Beta Corvi, but there isn’t anything contractual after that.”
“So?”
“Helva, I don’t mean for you to be left high and dry. Especially with an incredible extension of debt which you must work off. And with Chief Railly overtly your enemy because of Parollan. Now that guy may have been a brawn-brain ship supervisor for the last twelve years, and bloody good at it from what I hear, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be a good brawn. By anything left holy, Helva, it’s a long way from telling to doing.”
“Do you remember my last brawn, Teron of Acthion, that well-trained, physically stalwart twithead?”
Rocco gave a long sigh that ended with a grudging grin. “Okay, so he was a dud that BB School turned out by mistake. You can go too far in the opposite direction.”
Obviously Rocco felt she had with Parollan. “Seriously, Helva, that contract extension makes my skin crawl. You’re committed to repaying almost 600,000 credits … by the latest figuring.”
“You do have good sources, Rocco.”
He grinned again, maliciously. “In Double M, I’ve got to. Look, there’s a lot more to this whole affair than the fact that in a scant ten years you paid off your original indebtedness to Central Worlds for your early childhood care, the initial shell, education, the surgery needed to fit you into this ship, maintenance, and so forth.”
“I paid off partly due to Niall Parollan, remember?” “Granted, granted.” “And when this cycle-variant drive we’re taking back to Beta Corvi gets approved, we’ll be out of debt in next to no time.”
“Not when, Helva. If. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I saw the reports on that cycle-variant drive, Helva. I heard what happened to the manned test ship.”
Helva snorted with contempt. “Ham-handed fools.”
Rocco would not be diverted. “I don’t mean the fact that they inadvertently cycled the power source too high, Helva, I mean that curious discharge that is worrying the nuclear boys juiceless.”
“Why do you think we’re taking it back to Beta Corvi?”
“And thank the gods that you are.” Rocco recrossed his neatly booted legs in a nervous fashion. “Whatever that particular force is, it’s bloody dangerous. And no one seems to know why or how.”
“They’ll tell me.” At least, she amended privately, she thought they would. If only because the use to which humans put their minor form of stabilized energy 268 amused them. (And what did you do on Beta Corvi for an encore, Helva?) She was far from happy about having to go back to Beta Corvi, but the ends justified the means … she hoped. To have a warp drive in her bowels! To soar when she’d been forced to plod in a plebeian fashion. And the hell with Rocco’s “if” … although the if was a valid consideration. Still, she trusted the Corviki: she’d been a Corviki. “Look, Rocco, that drive is worth a great deal of hassling and stress. Niall knows it. I know it.”
“Why?”
“The cycle-variant is faster than light drive, it’s warp. By being able to stabilize an unstable isotope at just the moment it is releasing its tremendous quantity of energy, the cycle-variant drive captures all that energy because the isotope doesn’t dwindle downscale to a useless half-life. It remains at the constant high-energy peak. That output is controlled in its cycle of peak energy, and the rate of thrust-the speed of the ship powered that way-is determined by the ratio of cycles used at any given time. True, you can’t lift off-planet on c-v drive, and a ship has to be structurally reinforced.”
“And that odd trail of particles?” Rocco asked sardonically. “Those unknown thingies that have thrown communications haywire, loused up astrogational equipment, not to mention the solar phenomena recorded in the systems through which that test ship ran?”
Helva was silent. She was less certain of how the Beta Corviki could cope with those emissions. Unless there’d been a simple perversion of the data?
“Then there’s the old philosophical question: Is this trip really necessary? Is man ready for this sort of progress?”
“Rocco! I’d thought better of you.” Helva was surprised as well as scornful. ” ‘If man were meant to fly, he’d’ve been given wings.’ “
Rocco regarded Helva with great tolerance and some sadness. “Helva, in my job, I become painfully aware that some progress costs too much in terms of human adjustment, or emotional, psychological, or even phys-iological stress.”
“On the pro side, look at the exploration potential for a hundred different minorities.”
Rocco sighed. “I suppose we’re committed to progress at any cost. Onward and upward for bigger, better, faster, smaller, tougher. However, back to my original topic, your coercion.”