Grallt children were around, laughing and playing games in the corridors, and a good-sized compartment was set up as a gym and playroom, full of toys and exercise equipment, painted and decorated in bright colors. They didn’t inspect every living compartment they came to—not enough time, and Peters wanted a quick look—but by the time they got to the engine room he was confident that there was no compartment aboard Trader 1049 analogous to the Hellhole they’d found on the pirate vessel.
The engine room was amidships, and according to Fredik—they’d progressed to first names—was in the geometric center of the ship. “That isn’t strictly necessary,” the ferassi explained, “but locating the zifthkakik off center wastes some of the field volume. Keeping them in the center uses it more efficiently.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to build the ship in the shape of a sphere or spheroid? That way you could fill the field volume almost completely.”
Fers laughed. “It’s not that important, and it’s a lot easier to build a rectangle. Imagine all the curves and odd-shaped pieces!” Peters thought back to the bilges and bow area of the carrier, the slippery ovoids of submarines, and compound curves on the bows and sterns of cheapjack rustbucket freighters, and wondered.
The zifthkakik were the same type the pirate ship had used. He didn’t comment on that, only asked, “Why two? Wouldn’t it be better to have a single larger one?”
“Larger ones are rare,” Fers explained. “We only get two and eight per uzul of the large size you saw below. Besides, using them in pairs makes certain motions of the ship easier to control.” He explained that, using technical terms that glazed Peters’s eyes after the first sentence or so. He noticed, and grimaced. “Never mind! It’s just handier in some ways.”
“I can accept that,” Peters said with a grave expression, and Fers grinned at him.
Gell had been mistaken; the ship did have accommodation for smaller vessels, eight of them. Fredik explained that they docked in niches cut away from the corners of the long sides. “When they’re docked, they look like part of the ship. That’s probably where your friend got the impression that we don’t have any.”
“What about atmosphere flyers?”
“There are two of those, kept all the way forward topside. Their bays have doors, so again you wouldn’t see them from outside the ship.”
“Could I see one?”
He frowned. “They aren’t secrets, but you’d have to go get your suit set up. The atmosphere controls are on the default setting, and you wouldn’t be comfortable.”
“I’ve already adjusted that,” Peters said offhand. “It’s set for the mix I like. Thank you for calling up the Grallt programming, by the way. I would never have been able to do it otherwise.”
“When did you do that?”
“In the food room, back aft in the Grallt section. We stopped for a snack, and you excused yourself to use the toilet, remember?”
Fers looked at him, body still, eyes serious. “You programmed your suit atmosphere in the time it took me to urinate and wash up?”
“Well, yes.” He held up his arm. “I couldn’t have done it that quickly to the Grallt suit. It’s much handier to have the controls where they’re easily accessible.”
The ferassi just shook his head, expression serious, and indicated the passageway. “We go that way.” For the next few tle he seemed thoughtful, a bit pensive, but by the time they’d looked at a few compartments—food storage, here, and preliminary preparation—he had recovered his former demeanor, brisk and not quite deferential.
All the way forward was where Trader 1049 most resembled the pirate vessel. There was more space between decks, and the fittings were more elegant and luxurious. Fers knocked on compartment doors before entering; he hadn’t noticed that before. Occupied compartments yielded raised eyebrows and other puzzled expressions; Peters was addressed matter-of-factly by several people, and his failure to respond had to be explained each time. That slowed them down, and in more than one case he caught movement out of the corner of an eye as a ferassi they’d spoken to left his compartment to confer with another.
Forward and below was the weapons bay, which held half a dozen breakbeam generators and a store of the thin cylindrical objects that had puzzled them on the pirate ship. Fers used a word in his language to describe them. “There’s no word in the Trade for these, because we don’t sell them; they’re incredibly rare. They’re alive, or so we suppose.”
“Oh? What do they do?”
“When launched they always hit their target,” Fers said seriously. “If there is something in view when they emerge they’ll follow it, and they never fail to catch up. They carry a charge of explosive, and are extremely destructive.”
Peters opened his mouth to talk about guided missiles, then changed his mind and said only, “Remarkable.”
“Yes, it is,” Fers agreed. “And as I said, they’re incredibly rare. We’d like to have more of them, of course, but we never get them, so they’re only to be used as an absolute last resort.”
“I can see that.” Idiots! A weapons system they’re trained not to use? I reckon we ought to be thankful. Zifthkakik-driven missiles could’ve been a real problem, an’ that’s a fact.
A ferassi had come in while they were looking over the missiles; he gestured and said something. Fers responded, then turned to Peters: “It would appear that Horsig has returned from his mission. We are required in the office of the ul’ptarze, the First of the ship.”
Peters nodded. “Show the way.”
Fers gestured at the newcomer. “This is ptarze Brendik Jons, Second for ship-management. Ptarze Jons, this is—” he hesitated a beat “—ze Peters, of whom you may have heard. Ze Peters doesn’t speak Language, but he knows the Trade very well.”
Peters had a hunch. “Ptarze Jons,” he said briskly, accompanying it with a slight nod.
The other nodded back, cracking the most minimal smile possible, and spoke in his own language. Fers responded, and the officer—had to be, Peters was almost homesick—spoke at some length. “What is your rank, ze Peters?” he asked when he’d finished conferring with the junior officer.
“I am a zerkre of the third precedence of Llapaaloapalla, ptarze Jons.”
The officer was blond; his nearly invisible eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “So you do know what the suit pattern means,” he said with a trace of incredulity. “The reports were difficult to credit.” He spoke at some length to Fers, who pronounced a short phrase ending with “—ptarze Jons,” then gestured quickly, palm forward, hand over his mouth. The officer responded with a similar gesture of his own, sketchier, and looked expectantly at Peters.
Peters nodded, received a nod in return, and the officer turned and left, with a parting sentence aimed at Fers. He thought he’d caught something familiar in that, and asked, “What did he say at the last?”
Fers produced one of his thin smiles. “Ptarze Jons says that my tame khuma has better manners than any trader-Grallt of his experience. Ul’ptarze Troy may be less unhappy than expected.”
“When the cap’n ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” Peters murmured to himself. When Fers looked up, with a puzzled expression on his face, he explained: “An appropriate aphorism in my language, probably untranslatable. Are we to see the ul’ptarze now?”
“Yes. He is waiting, with Horsig and the other agents.”
Peters grimaced. “Then let us go, by all means. We shouldn’t keep the captain waiting.”