Rams checked the ballast tank when he returned to the ship. According to the leveling mark on the wall of Primrose’s berth, she was riding low—just a little too heavy probably from the extra cargo he’d taken on. He switched on the heaters in the ballast tank. That would create enough steam pressure to drive the excess ballast out, lightening the ship. When Primrose’s bull’s-eye was almost up to the mark, he turned the heater off. In a few moments more she was floating level with the station.
“Ready to cast off!” Rams said over the intercom. He listened for the ’master to loose the clamps that held Primrose in the station’s embrace. Four loud bangs resounded through the pressure hull as the clamps released. Rams immediately felt the ship list to starboard as she drifted backwards into the fierce winds of Jupiter.
Primrose heeled as it caught the full force of the wind. Rams braced himself, checked the instruments, and then turned the ship downwind as it emerged from the lee of the station.
The station’s infrared image quickly faded as they exceeded the viewer’s range. A few seconds later the sonar return vanished as well. Only a fuzzy radar image, quickly dissolving into a cloud of electronic noise, told him where the station rode. Even that image would fade once he got more than a kilometer away. After that he’d be sailing blind.
Primrose ran with the wind as he lowered the keel. He pointedly ignored the keelmeter as the diamond mesh ribbon uncoiled from its housing. The thousand-ton weight at the keel’s end started its familiar swinging motion as the keel was unwrapped from its spindle. Primrose rocked in response to the motion. The pendulum’s swing slowed as the ribbon paid out farther and farther into the thick soup of the atmosphere.
Finally the rocking motion dampened and Rams halted the winch, locking it in place. Only then did he check the keelmeter. Although he relied more on the feel of the ship’s trim when setting the keel depth, he liked to assure himself of the setting.
A single glance told him that his instincts had been correct. He’d halted the keel at 1,400 meters, one hundred meters shy of the theoretical setting the station master had calculated. He let an additional fifty meters of the mesh keel pay out; it wouldn’t hurt to have Primrose a little bottom-heavy on an upwind run.
Rams reached for the sail controls. Primrose was being blown downwind at thirty meters per second, relative to the station. The station he’d just left plodded along slower than the wind, held back only by her massive drogues—a fancy word for sea anchors. The drogues that swung beneath the station’s bulbous form created drag and provided a measure of control. It was sailing, but using anchors to steer instead of sails.
Rams hit the switch to release his mainsail from its housing on the main mast and braced himself. The ship tilted even further to starboard as the wind bit the suddenly increased surface area. He immediately played out the traveler, letting the main find the angle that would allow the fierce wind to flow across the sail’s face. He kept a careful eye on the pressure gauges from both sides of the wishbone that constrained the sail, adjusting the sail’s angle to maximize the front-to-back pressure differential. He wanted to get as much lift as possible from the airfoil effect.
Primrose finally stopped rocking and curved into the wind as Rams adjusted the line. Primrose was running at about sixty degrees to the wind when she finally balanced out and was making an appreciable sixty meters per second.
“All right, girl, let’s show old man Jupiter what we can really do,” he said, deploying the jib from its housing at the prow. There was a hellacious rattling from forward as the chain hoist protested the way the wind whipped at the small jib and smashed it against the pressure hull. Rams winched the line back until the jib sheets were taut and the small forward sail was funneling the wind along the back of the mainsail, forming a venturi between them.
Primrose heeled even more as the force on her increased from the additional sail surface exposed to the wind and turned tighter into the face of the wind. She was now running at about a forty degree angle. Rams grinned in satisfaction as her speed increased proportionally. He watched the knotmeter rise past seventy, seventy-five, and settle at nearly eighty meters per second.
He checked his location on the inertial positioning display and made a minor adjustment to the rudder, then adjusted both the mainsail and jib to account for the new angle of attack.
“Clipper Ship Primrose out at 1400 hours, under way and on course for Charlie Sierra Four Two,” he said into the radio. The station master probably wouldn’t be able to hear the formal sign-off, given the usual overwhelming amount of static in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, Rams was always careful to observe the formalities.
As Primrose pulled steadily away, Rams made a thorough examination of the ship. He wanted to ensure that everything on board was shipshape. He double-checked the straps and buckles on all of the cargo crates, just to make sure they’d been properly secured.
Next he checked the topside sail locker, taking care to see that the spare sails were properly stored and ready for deployment when the need arose. If all went well he wouldn’t have to replace the sails on this trip, which would help his profit margin. Having them fabricated in orbit and brought down by elevator was bloody expensive.
He swung the power-lifters from their clamps and started working on the new sail. He strained against the resistance of the tough foil of the sail as he refolded it. Even so, he tried to keep from flexing the thin metal more than was necessary.
As soon as he had the sail properly folded and secured, he moved it into its canister. His arms ached as he struggled to get it into the correct position, cursing the financial situation that forced him to fire his crew three months before and the expediency that kept him from having the time in dock to do this sort of housekeeping. One person could barely cope with the bulky sails against the drag of Jupiter’s heavy gravity. Even with the one hundred-to-one ratio of the lifters, he still had to depend on his own muscle to force the cumbersome rig into the canister.
Finally the sail was loaded. He stowed the lifters and rubbed his aching back before fastening the heavy chain lines at the head end of the sail; one line that would lift it into place on the mast and another to connect it to the traveler that limited a sail’s movement across the top deck.
Whenever he had to blow the main its lines would go with it. The lines were another expense he wished that he could avoid. But the only way to save them was to suit up, climb out onto deck, and try to disconnect them while fighting hurricane force winds. Only a fool went outside without a backup crew, no matter how securely he was clamped to the deck! The lost money for lines wasn’t as important to him as his life.
By the time Rams worked his way back to the cockpit, Primrose had moved far north of the station. From this position he could start to tack without the risk of running into it. Just to make certain of his clearance, he peered at the screen, cranking the radar to maximum sensitivity to check.
The screen showed a uniform blur of undifferentiated noise; not even a shadow that could be suspected of being something other than the swirling electronic mist of atmosphere.
Rams and Primrose were now completely on their own and, in five days, more or less, he hoped to see the faint, white heat signature of his destination. He hoped that the storm wouldn’t spoil his plans—he needed the money to make the next payment!