There's something about having somebody else cut you off that does things to your mind.
The folks back home don't hear the disadvantages. The holonets concentrate on swaggering leavetakers and glory stuff that brings in the volunteers.
Climbers are the only Navy ship-type spacing without integrated crews. No other vessel produces pressure like a Climber. Adding the volatile complication of sex is suicidal. They found that out early.
I can understand the reasons. They don't help me like it any better.
I met Commander Johnson and her officers in Turbeyville. They taught me that, under like pressures, women are as morally destitute as the worst of men, judged by peacetime standards.
What are peacetime standards worth these days? With them and a half-dozen Conmarks you can buy a cup of genuine Old Earth coffee. Price six Conmarks without—on the black market.
The first dropship whips in along the carrier's backtrail, taking us by surprise. Her sonic wake seizes the vehicle, gives it one tremendous shake, and deafens me momentarily. Somehow the others get their hands to their ears in time. The dropper becomes a glowing deltoid moth depositing her eggs in the sea.
"There's some new lifters that'll need to be built," Westhause says. "Let's hope what we lost were Citron Fours."
My harness is suddenly a trap. Panic hits me. How can I get away if I'm strapped down?
The Commander touches me gently. His touch has a surprisingly calming effect. "Almost there. A few hundred meters."
The carrier stops almost immediately. "You're a prophet." It's a strain, trying to sound settled.
That damned open sky mocks our human vulnerability, throwing down great bolts of laughter at our puniness.
A second dropper cracks overhead and leaves her greetings. A lucky ground weapon has bitten a neat round hole from her flank. She trails smoke and glowing fragments. She wobbles. I missed covering my ears again. Yanevich and Bradley help me out of the carrier.
Bradley says, "Bad shields on that one." He sounds about two kilometers away. Yanevich nods.
"Wonder if they'll ever get her back up." The First Watch! Officer commiserates with fellow professionals.
I stumble several times clambering through the ruins. The boom must have scrambled my equilibrium.
The entrance to the Pits is well hidden. It's just another shadow among the piles, a man-sized hole leading into one of war's middens. The rubble isn't camouflage. Guards in full| combat gear loaf inside, waiting to clear new debris when the last dropship finishes her run, hoping there'll be no work to do.
We trudge through the poorly lit halls of a deep subbase-j ment. Below them lie the Pits, a mix of limestone cavern and wartime construction far beneath the old city. We have to walk down four long, dead escalators before we find one still working. The constant pounding takes its toll. A
series of escalators carries us another three hundred meters into Canaan's skin.
My duffel, all my worldly possessions, is stuffed into one canvas bag. It masses exactly twentyfive kilos. I had to moan and whine and beg to get the extra ten for cameras and notebooks. The crew—including the Old Man—are allowed only fifteen.
The last escalator dumps us on a catwalk overlooking a cavern vaster than any dozen stadia.
"This is chamber six," Westhause says. "They call it the I Big House. There are ten all told, and two more being excavated."
The place is as warm with frenetic activity. There are people everywhere, although most of them are doing nothing. The majority are sleeping, despite the industrial din. Housing remains a low priority in the war effort.
"I thought Luna Command was crowded."
"Almost a million people down here. They can't get them to move to the country."
Half a hundred production and packaging lines chug along below us. Their operators work on a dozen tiers of steel grate. The cavern is one vast, insanely huge jungle gym, or perhaps the nest of a species of technological ant. The rattle, clatter, and clang are as dense as the ringing round the anvils of hell. Maybe it was in a place like this that the dwarfs of Norse mythology hammered out their magical weapons and armor.
Jury-rigged from salvaged machinery, ages obsolete, the plant is the least sophisticated one I've ever seen. Canaan became a fortress world by circumstance, not design. It suffered from a malady known as strategic location. It still hasn't gotten the hang of the stronghold business.
"They make small metal and plastic parts here," Westhause explains. "Machinedparts, extrusion moldings, castings. Some microchip assemblies. Stuff that can't be manufactured on TerVeen."
"This way," the Commander says. "We're running late. No time for sight-seeing."
The balcony enters a tunnel. The tunnel leads toward the sea, if I have my bearings. It debouches in a smaller, quieter cavern. "Red tape city," Westhause says. The natives apparently don't mind the epithet. There's a big new sign proclaiming: WELCOME TO
RED TAPE CITY
PLEASE DO NOT
EAT THE NATIVES
There's a list of department titles, each with its pointing arrow. The Commander heads toward Outbound Personnel Processing.
Westhause says, "The caverns you didn't see are mainly warehouses, or lifter repair and assembly, or loading facilities. Have to replace our losses." He grins. Why do I get the feeling he's setting me up? "The next phase is the dangerous one. No defenses on a lifter but energy screens.
Can't even dodge. Shoots out of the silo like a bullet, right to TerVeen. The other firm always takes a couple potshots."
"Then why have planetside leave? Why not stay on TerVeen?" The shuttling to and fro claims lives.
It makes no military sense.
"Remember how crazy the Pregnant Dragon was? And that place was just for officers. TerVeen isn't big enough to take that from three or four squadrons. It's psychological. After a patrol people need room to wind down."
'To get rid of soul pollution?"
"You religious? You'll get along with Fisherman, sure."
"No, I'm not." Who is, these days?
The check-in procedure is pleasantly abbreviated. The woman in charge is puzzled by me. She putzes through my orders, points with her pen. I follow the others toward our launch silo where a crowd of men and women are waiting to board the lifter. The presence of officers does nothing to soften the exchange of insults and frank propositions.
The lifter is a dismal thing. One of the old, small ones. The Citron Four type Westhause wants scrubbed. The passenger compartment is starkly functional. It contains nothing but a bio-support system and a hundred acceleration cocoons, each hanging like a sausage in some weird smoking frame, or a new variety of banana that loops between stalks. I prefer couches myself, but that luxury is not to be found aboard a troop transport.
"Go-powered coffin," the Commander says. "That's what ground people call the Citron Four."
"Shitron Four," Yanevich says.
Westhause explains. Explaining seems to be his purpose in life. Or maybe I'm the only man he knows who listens, and he's cashing in while his chips are hot. "Planetary Defense gives all the cover they can, but losses still run one percent. They get their share of personnel lifters. Some months we lose more people here than on patrol."
I consider the obsolete bio-support system, glance at the fitting they implanted in my forearm back in Academy, a thousand years ago. Can this antique really keep my system cleansed and healthy?
"You and the support system make prayer look attractive."
The Commander chuckles. "The Big Man wouldn't be listening. Why should he worry about a gimplegged war correspondent making a scat fly from one pimple on the universe's ass to another? He's got a big crapshoot going on over in the Sombrero."