“Understood. Are you permanent pilot or Meld?”
“Meld.”
“Then please disengage now. We can not dock you unless we have full navigational controls.”
“I know the routine. Disengaging and standing down.” Chung felt the sense of regret and loss as she initiated the disengagement procedure. It always was hard to let go; it was like a god suddenly becoming mortal and puny, and the mind fought it even as training did what was required.
She punched the intercom. “All passengers please strap in. You have three minutes to get ready and show ready on my board. You can not land until it is done. They will not land you. Is this understood?”
Maslovic and Murphy had no problems, but the girls were fidgety and didn’t like the idea of wearing the basic weblike restraints even though they were hardly uncomfortable. They didn’t like being confined.
Still, it was necessary. Even though Chung had brought up the gravity slowly over the past few hours to equal that of Barnum’s World and had also begun the slow adjustment to a Barnum’s World atmospheric mixture, it still was bumpy and often uncomfortable coming in for a real planetfall.
Once free of the Meld, Chung went through a series of breathing exercises to adjust her mind and body back to being merely human again and proceeded with some isometrics to insure that her muscles and reactions remained in good shape.
Then, even as the spaceport took control of the shuttle’s systems to bring it in, the pilot checked to see that the system was acting as programmed. Then she turned in her chair, still webbed in, and began a series of manual instructions in a code only she currently knew and of which she would be wiped clean once it was fully executed so that even she would have no further knowledge of it nor lingering subconscious memories of her actions that might be picked up by suspicious types below, insured that all was going nicely according to plan, and settled back for the landing.
The authorities on Barnum’s World would not have approved, but she didn’t care. They were a bunch of biologists and tree huggers; this was military business.
It took under half an hour to bring them down in their own lane and put the shuttle gently into an enclosed horizontal ground bay. The angle of entry and speed made sightseeing not really possible, but everyone on board did get a glimpse for a fraction of a minute of the city below and the deep green world, distant mountains, and swirling clouds.
The sensation was similar to a flight simulator used in training; a bit on the queasy side for those not used to it, barely noticeable for those like Chung or Murphy who had done it more times than they could count. There were also some bumps in the lower atmosphere and some really violent sways as the shuttle actually entered the parking bay and settled in on standardized rails.
There was a sudden cessation of all movement and all external sounds. They were now parked on Barnum’s World.
The webbing automatically retracted and they were all free to move again. Chung leaned forward, stretched in place, and then hesitantly got up, holding on to the chair with her left hand. It was odd to be walking again, feeling all those moving parts of the body, and trying to regain a comfort level. Still, training was everything, and within a minute or two she felt much like her old self again. She went over and removed the programming module from the bridge controls and put it in a small compartment inside her flight suit, and then she picked up her small case and walked back towards the lounge.
The others were already up and about, and the girls were more than ready to go. Still, Mary Margaret at least seemed surprised to see the pilot come aft, as if she’d forgotten that somebody real was actually up there. It wasn’t, after all, like they’d just had a long time in transit with Chung as company.
“Gee, I thought they was all big brutes,” she whispered to Irish O’Brian. “Most of the women we saw looked more like the men back there. She’s tiny.”
“Aye, but still bald, muscled, and with the expression of a stone carvin’,” O’Brian whispered back. “I guess they built her for speed or somethin’.”
“Naw. They’re gonna build her into the ship sooner or later, you wait and see!”
Murphy couldn’t help but notice that the girls already seemed to have put aside their fears and uncertainties and gone back to the banal. In a way, he envied them that. His stomach was already turning and he could use a good slug right about now, and he knew Barnum’s World and where he was headed. At least he hoped he did. These girls seemed to have the damndest knack of destroying his plans.
Lieutenant Chung went back to the airlock and pressed her palm on the identiplate. The lock hissed but turned, almost lenslike, then moved aside. The second did much the same, and when it, too, moved out of their way, the strong smells and hot heavy air of Barnum’s World came in, enveloping them like an invisible blanket.
“Jeez! The whole place smells like cow poop!” the normally quiet Brigit Moran commented in that high, breathless voice of hers.
“Yeah, smells like home,” Irish responded.
Murphy chuckled. “Ah, that magnificent scent of this here world isn’t just mere cows, girls, although there’s sure some of ’em about, nor horses, neither. You’ll see once we get out into the open and past these formalities.”
Some illuminated arrows on the wall of the docking bay indicated direction, and they turned, Chung as pilot leading the way, and headed for the customs symbol. Murphy went behind, then the three passengers, with Maslovic bringing up the rear. The sergeant wanted to make good and sure that he had the whole party in sight the whole time, even though he knew that any modern freight terminal like this one had to have full monitoring. He had seen these girls disappear from the state of the art in monitors before.
You could certainly tell that they had landed in the industrial part of the spaceport, if indeed there was any other part. The place was dirty, stained with who knew what on the floors and walls, and it looked like you could take your fingernail and run it across any point and come up with a large glob of unknown composition.
Once out of the bay and into the loading dock area, they had to go slowly and carefully to keep out of the way of robotic vehicles moving containers full of goods or running empty ones back to the various ships. There were also some really nasty-looking creatures about, most quite small and trying to feed on the dropped matter without getting squashed. These included millipedelike insects so large that a few were the size of human arms, with ugly pincers at their heads and giving off threatening looks; huge hairy spiders; lots of flies and roaches; and quite a number of scuttling things that looked not even close to anything any of them had seen before. The one thing that struck them all, though, was that the seamier side of wildlife on Barnum’s World seemed to be oversized.
“Yuk!” Mary Margaret McBride said over the din of port business. “I suddenly feel like things are crawlin’ all over me!”
“Just don’t step on anything livin’ or the remains of somethin’ live in them bare feet,” Murphy warned. “Some of these got poison. Otherwise, just ignore ’em and they’ll ignore you for the most part. They got their business here and we got ours!”
The arrows ended mercifully at a large set of double doors that slid open as they got to them and remained open long enough for them all to get inside.
“Ow!” Irish O’Brian exclaimed as her foot hit the point where the door met the floor. “What the hell was that?”
“Critter barrier,” the old captain told her. “Just don’t step right on that place where the door’s kinda rubbed from openin’ and closin’ so much and you’ll be fine. It’s just a mild shock to keep them things from comin’ in with us.”