Fearless twitches disdainfully, resumes his snooze.
I don't know why I've been selected main friend for the patrol. I can put up with cats, but comprehend them no better than women. This one lives like a prince. He has forty-nine lackeys keeping his castle for him.
I scratch his ears. He rewards me with a gravelly purr and a few gentle nips at my finger.
The shrill cry of the general alarm shatters our interlude.
I make Ops with time to spare, wondering how I slept through the alarm when we dropped hyper.
I didn't. The story I get is, Westhause was whipping the ship through complex search loops as he approached the new operational area. Fishermen got something on screen.
I didn't expect such quick results.
Glancing over Junghaus's shoulder, I see that we have not lucked onto our quarry.
Of course not. The target would generate no tachyon disturbances running in norm. "One of ours?" I slide into the First Watch Officer's seat.
Fisherman smiles. Yanevich grins. The Commander says, "Very good. Which one?"
I shrug. "A Climber, but I've only seen textbook plates. They just show the basics."
"Johnson's. That teensy lump on the arch of the fourth feather."
I glance at Westhause. He's pounding program keys like a mad organist.
Climbers have no instel. Smart operators communicate, in pidgin at close ranges, with behavior and the detection gear.
I give the Old Man a look.
"No hanky-panky, sir. Wouldn't think of it. There's a war on, you know. That's serious business."
Yanevich whispers, "We'll drop hyper and trade search patterns. Two of us working will find where she isn't real quick."
"How can we learn anything without going norm?"
He looks at me oddly. "We're norm now. Hadn't you noticed? We've been norm one minute in five for the last six hours. We're not up to the mark yet, but we thought we'd get the routine pat. Haven't you been paying attention?"
"The alarms..." Better keep my mouth shut. I slept through one of my watches.
"Jesus. You think I'm going to bang that mother all year long? Screw the regulations. People have to sleep. Speaking of which—where were you on the eight to twelve?"
What can I say? There's no excuse.
"Not to worry, Mr. Better-Late-Than-Never. The Recorder hears the alarm. That's good enough for us." Yanevich manages the grin the Commander can't quite produce. "You learn these little tricks.
The Recorder remembers what we want it to remember. They know what's going on at Mission Review.
They've been out here, too. As long as it doesn't endanger the ship, and doesn't leave out anything important, they let it slide. Got to be flexible. That's what they told us in Academy, wasn't it?"
"Maybe. This isn't the Navy I knew."
"Yeah?"
"I thought wartime would get the regs pushed harder."
"You're in the Climbers now." He laughs. "What's it matter? Long as we don't buy you a seat on Hecate's Horse? At least you got some sleep." His smile grows thin. "I'll get that back. Stand watch and stand again till you catch up."
It's not as bad as I expected. Piniaz is the sort of watch officer who stays out of the way. He makes his presence felt only when he joins Chief Nicastro hi making sure Westhause's preprogrammed jumps are putting the ship into the right places hi the search pattern. The astrogator can't be on the job all the tune, though he does sleep less than anyone else.
Yanevich's shipboard title is a misnomer this patrol. The Commander himself has taken the first watch. Yanevich really has the second. Piniaz has the third. In Line ships the Astro-gation Officer normally stands the third watch. In Climbers that usually falls to the Ship's Services Officer. The Commander is kept free.
The Old Man thinks our Ensign too green. In the quiet passages, though, he brings Bradley hi for a watch. He hands it to me at times, too. Sometimes Diekereide takes a turn— "just in case." The Commander has even dragged Varese in on rare occasion. One of an officer's unwritten duties is to learn everything possible. It may save your ship someday.
Watch schedules don't mean much aboard a Climber, except to officers, who assume four-hour chunks of responsibility. The men come and go. In Ops Chiefs Nicastro and Canzoneri just make sure that the critical stations are manned. In Weapons Chiefs Bath and Holtsnider do the same.
In Engineering, where they stand six on and six off and most of the stations must be continuously manned, life is more structured.
Our first program, beginning at the target's last known position, yields nothing. Westhause develops another while we wait for Johnson. It's a waste of time. Johnson got a sniff of neutrino emissions.
The news subtly alters everyone. Within minutes the men are near their combat stations again. The banter fades to an occasional obscene remark, either too loud or too forced.
Boredom is dead. The men have a sharper edge than past appearance would suggest. The Commander has done his job well.
Westhause exchanges professional chatter with his colleague aboard the other Climber. The Old Man and First Watch Officer hover close.
Two hours later. We begin quartering the region where Johnson got her neutrino readings. She dances with us, our two radii of detection barely overlapping.
I'm alert and interested, though not in my screen. I want to catch every nuance in each man's stance, movement, expression. I want to see the subtle alterations in speech patterns that betray emotion.
The Commander demonstrates the most marked change. It's a matter of intensity. Some internal switch has closed. Suddenly, he has a truly commanding presence. The men respond without words being spoken. Their eyes flick to bun, then back to then" work.
The Climber has come ah've. The shark has caught the smell of blood.
This new Commander is the man I came to Canaan to see, the man who was usurped by a bitter, unfathomable stranger sailing without a compass. The doubts and fears and alum-flavored selfdespite have been set aside.
He has his effect on me, too. My nerves settle. He will get us through.
What's happening inside his head? Has he set it all aside and let duty take control? His thinking remains impenetrable even during his most open moments. For all I know, he's scared shitless.
The new search program has both ships covering a tiny chunk of space in one-minute hyper translations, and closing the communications gap each half hour.
During the first half hour we get a dozen neutrino readings.
"Intensity?" the Commander demands after the last.
"High, Commander."
"Direction? Estimated course line?" This is tricky business here. Like cutting the beam of a handflash at a kilometer, at an angle, in a microsecond, and trying to guess where the flash is and where it's heading if it's moving.
Rose and Canzoneri curse and mutter incantations over their thinking devil. The devil puts numbers into the Chief's mouth.
"Put it in the tank," the Old Man orders.
The display tank flickers to a slight adjustment. It gives a skewed view, with the Climber at one boundary. The ship casts a thin cone of red shadow across the tank.
"Got her within twenty degrees of arc," Canzoneri says. A thin black pencil stroke lances down the heart of the red cone. "Baseline within three degrees of Rathgeber."
"Range?"
"Indeterminate." Of course. We'd have to know what kind of ship she is to guess her distance from the intensity of her neutrino output here.
"Very well. Mr. Westhause, let's see what the Squadron Leader has."
The net is closing. Johnson's data should pull it tighter.
Time drags. I fidget. Two hunting Climbers leave a lot of tachyon traces. Those people hear us coming. They'll be on their toes. Right now they're filing their teeth and calling their big brothers.
The Commander grins as if reading my thoughts. "Don't worry. Our team is sending in the best we have."
"Waiting gracefully isn't one of my virtues."
The others are more patient. They've been schooled for this. As I should know by now, 99 percent of Climber duty consists of waiting.