A shadow crosses his almost cherubic face. He doesn't want to remember, and can't help it. His effort to stay here with me produces a visible strain.
"Engineering supposedly has better protection. Guess that's where you can get killed the quickest."
He startles me, using the word killed. He looks calm enough, but that betrays his turmoil. He's talking about the traumatic experience of his life.
I try to envision the terror, inexorably fading into hopeless resignation, aboard a vessel that's lost power and drives. Those who survived the initial disaster would depend entirely on outside intervention. And Climber paths seldom cross.
Give Command this: They try to find out why when a vessel stops reporting.
"You didn't blow the bolts?" I'm curious about those bolts. They're a facet of the ship wholly new to me, a nifty little surprise that must have all its secrets exposed.
"Blow them? Out there? Why? They can find a ship. They usually know where to look. But a section... They almost never find them. You don't break up unless the ship is going to blow." His final sentence has the ring of an Eleventh Commandment.
"But with the power dwindling and all that unmonitored CT hanging there..."
"The E-system functioned. We made it. Don't think we didn't argue about separating." He's becoming defensive. I'd better change my style. You can't grill them. You have to get them to volunteer.
"Really, you can't separate unless you know they'll pick you up right away. Only Ship's Services can last more than a few days after separation."
"That's what I call gutting it out." How did they take the pressure? With nothing to do but watch the power levels fall and bet on when the magnetics would go. "I don't think I could handle it."
"Acceleration hi ten seconds," the relay speaker tells us. "Nine. Eight..."
The acceleration alarm yammers. Everything is supposed to be secure. Don't want anything rocketing around, smacking people. The hatch to Weapons clunks shut. Yanevich gets down on his stomach to examine the seal.
The Old Man glares at the compartment clock. It says we're nineteen hours and forty-seven minutes into Mission Day One. Down on Canaan, at the Pits, it's the heart of night again. I search with my camera, and there's the world, immense and glorious, and very much like every other human world.
Lots of blue and lots of cloud, with the boundaries between land and sea hard to discern from here. How high is TerVeen? Not so high the planet has stopped being down. I could ask, but I really don't care. I'm headed the other way, and an unpleasant little voice keeps reminding me that a third of all missions end hi the patrol zone.
"Where're the plug-ups?" the Commander demands. "Damn it, where the hell are the plug-ups?"
"Oh." The man doing the relay talking hits a switch. Little gas-filled plastic balls swarm into the compartment. They range from golf-ball to tennis-ball size.
"Enough. Enough," Nicastro growls. "We've got to be able to see."
A new man, I decide. He's heard about the Commander. He's too anxious to look good. He's concentrating too much. Doing his job one part at a time, with such thoroughness that he muffs the whole.
The plug-ups will drift aimlessly throughout the patrol, and will soon fade into the background environment. No one will think about them unless the hull is breached. Then our lives could depend on them. They'll rush to the hole, carried by the escaping atmosphere. If the breach is small, they'll break trying to get through. A quick-setting, oxygen-sensitive goo coats their insides.
The cat scrambles after the nearest ball. He bats it around. It survives his attentions. He pretends a towering indifference.
He's a master of that talent of the feline breed, of adopting a regal dignity in the face of failure, just in case somebody is watching.
Breaches too big for the plug-ups probably wouldn't matter. We would be dead before we noticed them.
Satisfied with the hatch, Yanevich rises and leans past me to thumb a switch. "Ship's Services, First Watch Officer. Commence conversion to patrol atmosphere."
The ship is filled with the TerVeen mixture, which is nominal planetary. Ship's atmosphere will be pure oxygen at twenty percent of normal pressure. That reduces hull stress and potential leakage and eliminates useless mass. Low-pressure oxygen is standard Fleet atmosphere.
The convenience has its drawbacks. Care to avoid fires is needed.
That madman, the Commander, brought a pipe and tobacco. Will he actually smoke? That's against regs. But so is a ship's cat.
"Radar, you have anyone from the other firm?"
"Nothing immediate, sir."
That's a relief. I won't get my head kicked hi during the next five minutes.
Why does Yanevich bother? In parasite mode the vessel's only usable weapon is mat silly magnetic cannon.
Out of nowhere, Junghaus says, "The Lord carried us through. He stands by the Faithful." It takes me a moment to realize that he's returned to our earlier conversation.
A trial shot, I suppose. To see how I react. It'll build to full-scale proselytization if I don't stop it now. "Maybe. But it seems to be he spends a lot of time buddying up with the other team."
"That's 'cause they've got the aged whiskey," someone hoots. Junghaus stiffens. I glance around, can't identify the culprit. I didn't realize that our voices carried that well.
It's very quiet in here. The equipment makes almost no noise.
Junghaus persists. I guess that's why they call him Fisherman.
It seems like forever since I've encountered a practicing Christian. They just don't make them anymore. The race has nd need for its old superstitions out here. New faiths are still in formative stages.
"We're being tried in the crucible, sir. Those who are found wanting will perish."
That same voice says, "And the Lord saith unto him, verily, I shall tax you sorely, and tear you a new asshole."
Nicastro snaps, "Can the chatter."
Was Fisherman a believer before his toe-to-toe with death? I doubt it. I can't ask. The directive to silence includes myself, though the Chief would never be so irisubordinate as to tell an officer to shut up.
"Increasing acceleration to point-two gee in two minutes."
"Contact, by relay from tender Combat Information, desig Bogey One, bearing one four zero right azimuth, altitude twelve degrees nadir, range point-five-four million kilometers. Closing.
Course..."
Here we go. The beginning of the death dance. They've spotted us. They'll throw everything but the proverbial sink. They don't like Climbers.
I missed something while trying not to panic. From the talker's information Yanevich has deduced,
"It's just a picket boat. She's staying out of our way. Carmon, warm the display tank."
I sneer at that toy. On the Empire Class Main Battles they have them bigger than our Ops compartment. And they have more than one. For a thrill, hi null grav, you can dive in and swim among the stars. If you don't mind standing Commander's Mast and doing a few weeks' extra duty.
TerVeen slips past the terminator. Canaan is barely visible. No evidence of human occupation.
Surprising how much effort it takes to make human works visible from space, considering them with the eyeball alone.
I adjust the camera angle. Now I see nothing but stars and a fragment of mother-ship frame almost indistinguishable in the darkness. Doubling the magnification, I set a visual search pattern. I catch a remote, traveling sparkle. "Watch Officer."
Yanevich leans over my shoulder. "One of ours. Putting on inherent velocity. Probably going to check something out."