“Hello, Peters,” Gell said as they approached, without coming out of his slouch. “I take it we have another of your superiors to instruct.”
“Yes, this is Commander Bolton, the first in precedence of all of us.”
Gell looked the commander over. “An impressive specimen, especially with that look on his face. Does he lunch on ship metal, or only on his subordinates?”
“I can’t answer that. I haven’t the precedence to dine with him.”
“Kh-kh-kh! I believe you are about to find out.”
“What’re you gabbing about?” Bolton wanted to know.
“I introduced you to him, and told him who you were, sir,” Peters explained. “Commander Bolton, sir, this here’s Gell, he’s the second most senior pilot on Llapaaloapalla, sir.”
“Tell him I’m pleased to make his acquaintance.”
“Yes, sir.” To Gelclass="underline" “I told him you are second ship operator of Llapaaloapalla. He says it gives him honor to be presented.”
“I’ll just bet,” said Gell cheerfully. “Are we ready to go? The other officer are already aboard. I don’t see your associate.”
“Todd isn’t with me today. This is Mannix, another friend. He’ll ride along with us.”
“Pleased know you,” Mannix managed. Peters hadn’t realized he could do that much.
“And I you.” Gell looked the group over, made an ushering gesture. “Let’s get aboard. We’re losing time.”
Peters nodded. “Gell’s ready for us to go aboard, sir.”
“About time.” Bolton adjusted the angle of his cap, looked over the scene of enlisted sailors loading seabags and boarding the other dli, and followed Gell through the hatch. Peters fell in behind when Mannix gestured, and the First Class brought up the rear as they worked their way up the aisle.
Gell turned to speak over his shoulder when they’d reached the operators’ compartment. “I’m feeling lazy today,” he said. “Commander Bolton will take the operator’s seat, and you’ll take the left, Peters. Then I can sit back and relax.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“I’m in charge here,” Gell said in a tone more amused than irritated. “Don’t argue with me.” He gestured that Bolton should take the pilot’s chair, took the port aft seat, and assumed a pose of exaggerated relaxation.
“What’s this?” Bolton asked.
“Pilot Gell says that he understands you are an extremely experienced pilot, sir. He says for you to take the right front seat, that’s the command chair, sir, and I’ll be in the left front so I can translate easily.”
Bolton stared for a long moment, then shook his head, adjusted his hat again, and sat. He scanned the panel for a long moment, then looked up. “All right, sailor, what’s first on the checklist?”
“Well, sir, first is the activator. Button just to the right and down from the right-hand instrument, sir.” Bolton found the control and looked at Peters, who nodded. “Yes, sir, that’s it,” he confirmed. “Hold it down ‘til the meter just above it’s all the way to the left, sir.”
“That got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’ll probably want to turn down the compensator,” Gell interjected. “It takes more experience than he has to operate a dli on full compensation.”
“Yes, I was about to offer him the choice.” Peters turned back to his CO. “Sir, most folks need to be able to feel the motions of the ship, ‘specially in atmosphere. If you want to do that, you should turn the, ah, Gell calls it the compensator, you should reduce the power setting to it, sir.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Buttons here, sir. Top one increases, bottom decreases. The meter just above ‘em shows the level, sir, but backwards to what we’re used to.”
Bolton looked over his shoulder at Gell. “If this thing’s like the planes, full power’d mash us flat. This compensator thing reduces that effect?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could we get something like that installed on the airplanes?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ll ask Gell.”
The Grallt pilot raised his eyebrows when the question was passed. “The compensator is part of the zifthkakik.”
Bolton’s eyebrows went up at that. “Do tell,” he murmured. “Apparently we weren’t told everything… what setting should I use?
“Ms. Collins ran the dli with it set to about half, sir,” Peters advised.
“I’ll go with that.” Bolton thumbed the button until the meter was near the middle of its range, then glanced back at Gell. Peters took a moment to do the same, finding the Grallt sprawled in his seat, eyes slitted, a secretive smile playing across his face.
“That’s it for the startup procedure, sir,” Peters advised. “Now it’s just take the andli, the arrowhead-shaped thing there, and fly it, sir.”
“I see.” Bolton grasped the andli, a bit more gently than Collins had the first time. “Straight up to clear the landscape, then forward, right?”
“That’s the way all the Grallt I’ve watched did it, sir.”
“Then we’ll try it.” Bolton gingerly operated the control; the dli leaped vertically, stopping to bob a bit at about a hundred meters altitude. “Touchy,” the commander remarked, and very carefully began to feed in forward motion. That was more successful; after a moment he echoed Collins: “It’s flying. That’s better.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Next problem: how do we find the ship?”
“Right now we don’t, sir.” When Bolton looked at him Peters flushed. “First thing is to get up real high, sir, then we can start lookin’ for the ship. At the speed these things go, it don’t take long to get where you need to go, sir.”
“I suppose not. Commander Collins said the left-hand instrument was the navigation reference.”
“Yes, sir, the left-hand cross shows the way to whatever zifthkakik it’s set to home on, and right now that’s Llapaaloapalla, sir. But it only shows the straight line, and the dli ain’t powerful enough to go there in a straight line.”
“I see.” Bolton eyed the cross. “If I read this thing right, we’re a little off course to the left and the ship is above us.”
“Yes, sir, so if you just go on the way you’re goin’, by the time we get around the planet it oughta be just about right.”
Bolton grinned, an expression Peters had never before seen him assume. Suddenly he looked more like a mischievous kid than a Naval officer. “Handfly it to orbit, eh? Well, I’ll be damned. You should have seen all the calculations we had to go through to get the planes up to the ship. Ten decimal places and split-second timing.” He looked at Peters, then back at Gell. “Hold on, sailor. I’m going to try some things.”
“Some things” included left and right turns of increasing steepness, Dutch rolls around the axis, and finally one revolution of barrel roll with a large enough diameter that they were simply pressed into their seats, even at the top. The sky around them went darker and darker, the stars came out, and the horizontal bar of the navigation instrument flipped from top to bottom.
Peters looked around when that happened, but Gell was apparently asleep. Mannix wasn’t; his eyes were wide and his face pale, but he didn’t say anything.
Peters tapped the nav instrument. “That’s got it, sir. Now we coast for a while and wait, sir.”
Bolton nodded, released the andli, and leaned back in his seat. “Nadine told me,” he mused, then looked over at Peters. “Commander Collins told me it’d be more a case of getting flying instruction from you than it would be you translating. I see she was right.”