"Permission to jettison waste," Bradley asks in a transparent effort to attract the Commander's attention. If the Ensign has a weakness, it's this wanting to be noticed by superiors. I look round to see who'll explain what he's talking about. He does the honors himself.
"After the water is salvaged, our wastes, including the carbon from the air, get compressed and jettisoned. No room for fancy recycling gear."
"Hang on to it," the Old Man says. He turns to me. "Can't you picture it? The mother plowing along in norm surrounded by a cloud of shit canisters." He smiles, munches his apple. Just when I give up on hearing the rest, he says, "A million years from now an alien civilization will find one.
It'll be the biggest puzzle in their xenoarcheological museum. I can see them putting in fifty thousand creature hours trying to figure out its religious significance."
"Religious significance? Is that a private joke?" The Old Man waves his apple core at the First Watch Officer. Yanevich says, "He's laughing at me. I help poke around the pre-human sites on leave."
The Commander says, 'They're old, and nonhuman, and Mr. Yanevich's friends have an explanation for everything there. Unless you ask the wrong question. If they tell you something had ritual or magical significance, they're really saying they don't know what it is. That's the way those guys work."
My surprise must be obvious. Yanevich wears one of his delighted smiles when he looks at me.
People are infinite puzzles. You put together piece after piece after piece, and you still have hunks that just don't fit.
The battle alarm shrieks.
It makes a bong-bong-bong sound not especially irritating in itself. But you respond as if someone has dragged their nails across a blackboard, then fired a starter's pistol beside your ear.
The wardroom explodes. I'm a little out of practice, a little slow. I try to make up the difference with enthusiasm as I pursue the more able men upward. I happen to glance down as I reach the hatch to Weapons.
The Commander is staring at a watch and grinning.
"A drill. A goddamned drill right in the middle of supper. You sadistic bastard."
The gimp leg betrays me. The Ops-Weapons hatch slams before I get to it. So there I hang, a great embarrassed fruit dangling from the compartment ceiling.
"Come down here," Piniaz says in a too-gentle tone. "You can't reach your station in time, I'll put your dead ass to work. Take that goddamned magnetic cannon board. Haesler. Energy board."
Crafty little Ito. He covers his most useless weapon with a spare body, then shifts Leading Spacer Johannes Haesler to the system he's supposed to be learning anyway.
The all clear comes in five minutes. Piniaz turns the compartment over to his Chief Gunner, Holtsnider. I follow him to the wardroom.
"Your buddy ain't too nimble," he growls at the Old Man. His attitude toward the Commander is one millimeter short of insolent. The Commander tolerates it. I don't know why. Anyone else would find himself hamstrung.
"He'll loosen up." He smiles his thin, shipboard smile.
I grab a squeezie of orange juice and start nursing. Kriegs-hauser puts the drinks up in "baby bottles" because parasite gravity is too treacherous for normal cups. It varies according to some formula known only to the Engineering gang aboard the mother. Once Diekereide and I were playing chess when the pieces just up and roamed away.
"Damned drills," I say, feeling no real rancor. "I forgot about that crap. Never did get used to them. Your mind says they're necessary. Your gut keeps saying bullshit."
"A bitching spacer is a happy spacer," the Commander observes.
"You'll find me a very happy-type fellow, then." I try to laugh. It doesn't come off. Piniaz's snake-eyed stare makes me nervous.
The next drill comes while I'm asleep.
They put off fueling again, so I decided to grab some hammock time. No go. Wearing nothing but shorts, I give it my best go. And barely make it to Weapons. Shaking his head like a disappointed track coach, Piniaz points to the cannon board. He doesn't say a word. Neither do I. I'm the only man aboard sleeping outside the compartment containing my duty station. Isn't that excuse enough?
No. You don't make excuses in Navy. Not if you don't want a crybaby reputation. "Hello, board.
Looks like we're going to be friends."
The show of good humor is just that. A show. I rumble. I fume. I try hard to remember that I vowed that if I blew up, it wouldn't be over something beyond my control, or because of conditions I accepted beforehand. I'll gut it out. If my leg makes it harder for me, I'll just try harder. My companions are gutting something out, too.
The other breed of sleep disturbance has ceased. I guess Kriegshauser passed the word.
This crew has a strong respect for the Commander. That's how it's supposed to be, and here it works well. It encompasses the new men as well as those who have served with him before. I suspect it has to do with survival. The Old Man brings his Climber home. That, more than anything else hi this universe, impresses the men.
I've begun to note quirks. Fisherman, who is hyped on Christianity, brought tracts in his fifteen kilos. Chief Nicastro gets furious if anyone passes him to the left. Better you ask him to drop what he's doing and let you by. Kriegshauser never removes his lucky underwear.
The Commander himself has a rigid ritual for rising and departing his quarters. Faithfully observed, I suppose, it guarantees the Climber another day of existence.
He wakens at exactly 0500 ship's time, which is TerVeen standard, which in turn is Turbeyville and moon time. Kriegshauser's helper has a squeezie of juice and another of coffee waiting. He passes them through the curtains. At 0515 the Commander emerges. He says, "Good morning, gentlemen.
Another glorious day." It's customary for the watch to respond, "Amen." The Commander then descends to Ship's Services and the Admiral's stateroom, which is never occupied. He washes up. He accepts another squeezie of coffee from the cook, along with whatever is on the breakfast menu. He then makes his way back to Ops and his quarters, where he secures his copy of Gibbon, ousts the Watch Officer from his seat, and reads till precisely 0615, when the morning reports come in, fifteen minutes before they're technically due. Following morning reports, he goes over the previous day's decklog, then the quartermaster's notebook. At 0630 he lifts his eyes and surveys his kingdom. He nods once, abruptly, as if to say we villeins have pleased him.
Remarkably, the men give a collective sigh. It begins with those who can see the Old Man and spreads around the Can and into the inner circle. Our day is officially begun.
We keep our rendezvous with the CT tanker our fourth day out of TerVeen.
We begin by undertaking the long, arduous process of rigging for operational mode. A lot of the hardware, including my little nest, has to be realigned for the new gravity.
As senior vessel, by right of having survived sixteen patrols, our ship will fuel first. To do so we'll stand off the mother a thousand kilometers. If there's a screwup, only we, the tanker, and anyone else nursing will blow. Several ships will fuel at the same time.
The reorientation for operational mode is complete. I have fed myself and cleared my bowels. We'll go to action stations before fueling, so I saunter on up to Ops and cunningly occupy my seat before the exterior screen. That's a difficult task now, what with the gravity still aligned parasite. Crafty operator that I am, I'm going to be on time.
The Old Man ambles by. "You won't see much from here. Go on down to Engineering."
I like the idea. I love to observe from the heart of the action. But that means wasting the ontime coup. "I'd just get in their way."
"Mr. Varese says there's room."
"Really?" I can't picture Varese making room for me, or inviting me down. We haven't warmed toward one another. This thing sounds arranged.