“What did you say?” Ander asked, and Peters had to wave her to silence as the earbug said, “Spaaaaaace Pirates,” with an extended sardonic lilt. He glanced to his right. Alper Gor had taken the instruction to “show herself” literally, and was disrobing, her kathir suit already down to her waist. “I see you acquired some pirate treasure in the process of escaping,” the Hornet pilot said, her tone laden with skeptical disapproval.
“Sorry ‘bout that, ma’am, I told the ladies to show themselves to you, and Ms. Gor done mistaken my meanin’. Wait one, please, ma’am.”
“Standing by,” said the pilot.
“Put your suit back on,” he told Alper, who had peeled down as far as the knees. She looked up, surprise on her face, and Peters gestured out the viewport. “Dress yourself,” he repeated. “The person making inquries wishes only to know who is present. She doesn’t need or want that level of detail.”
Alper lifted her eyebrows questioningly but began pulling her suit up, and Ander grasped his elbow. “You’re speaking to the person operating that ship?” she asked, indicating the Hornet.
“Yes. The operator is a human female, one of my superiors in our precedence structure.”
“An osfer, if I remember.”
“Officer. Yes, that’s correct.”
“We wondered what that thing was,” she said, indicating his head and by implication the earbug. “So it’s a communication device. It’s hard to believe that anything so small could do that.”
“Yes,” Peters agreed. “It’s part of what we had hoped to sell, to earn ornh for spacecraft of our own.” He touched her shoulder. “Patience. I need to speak with my officer again.” She stood, doubt and a trace of fear on her features, and Peters touched her cheek with his forefinger and said into the earbug, “I been talkin’ to my passengers, Two Oh Two, and I reckon we got it straight now.”
“Understood, Three Seven. Are these individuals in any way related to the unfortunates we found aboard the pirate ship?”
“That ain’t got a straight answer, ma’am.” He thought for a split second. “I reckon you might call ‘em graduates of a similar program, ma’am, but they’re free individuals and are here of their own will.”
“I’ll be checking on that, Three Seven. You might say I’ve got a personal interest.”
“Any time, ma’am.”
“I’ll hold you to that. You’re cleared to land, Three Seven. Don’t break anything.”
“Understand that Green Three Seven is cleared to land, Hornet Two Oh Two. I’ll be careful.”
The Hornet pilot returned the two tongue-clucks that substituted for clicking the mike button, and Peters looked first at Ander Korwits, then at Alper Gor. Alper had dressed herself, and Peters sighed. “Please be seated,” he said. “I’ve done this before, but this is a strange ship, and I’m not an expert. Be on your guard.”
They acknowledged with murmurs. A pair of Tomcats came into view, their velocity low relative to his own, drifting from overhead to stations ahead and to right and up. He viewed them with a combination of appreciation and disfavor. The help would certainly be both effective and welcome if needed, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit like an athletic performer with expert judges waiting on the sidelines to offer their evaluation of his performance. Wiping out against the aft face of the ship would surely be a one-oh or worse… he set himself.
Llapaaloapalla was a distinct rectangle, and Peters began adjusting his vectors. He’d done this before, all right, and in the freight hauler, which was a good bit bigger than the ferassi auxiliary, but the controls were strange and the situation stranger, and he wanted to do it right. It took longer than it should have, and he had a couple of nervous moments when the landing-director lights broke into bars to indicate that he needed to make a course correction, but finally the boat flashed across the threshold into the retarder fields. He cut power and lowered to the deck, hitting with a crunch of abused sheet metal because the control position was higher than he was used to.
“It’s very different,” Ander whispered.
“It’s just a ship,” Alper contradicted, her nervous expression belying her bravado. “Will we have comfortable quarters, John?”
“I thought you could stay with me, at least for a while. My quarters are fairly comfortable, but you won’t have servants in the way you’re accustomed to.”
Ander looked alarmed. “Only for a while? What happens afterward?”
“Calm yourself,” Peters told her. “You can stay with me as long as you wish; that’s a personal promise from me to both of you. Never doubt that for a moment, but if I understand the usage correctly you have now joined the human ptith. We do things differently, and you have the power to decide for yourself where you sleep, not to mention who you sleep with.” He grinned. “You may very well find someone you like better.”
“I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“You haven’t met anyone else from our group yet… come. They’re waiting for us to come out, and they’ll get suspicious if we delay too long.”
“I like this one,” Ander said, fingering a bit of fabric, and Peters looked up to see what it was she thought well of.
“No, no,” Dee reproved. “It’s much too bright and garish.” There had been a little trouble when the Grallt girl was pressed into service as advisor in aesthetics. Ander and Alper had tended to treat her as a servant or worse, issuing brusque commands and being oblivious to her preferences.
That had lasted a tle or less. With two hundred sailors who regarded her as something between a trusted shipmate and a baby sister backing her up, Dee was a person of consequence and knew it. She’d handled the situation with grace and aplomb.
“But I like bright colors,” Alper objected. “Everything back home was so bland and dull.”
“Yes, so do I, but bright colors should be used as accents,” Dee explained reasonably. “You’ll be living here. If you make it garish with colors and designs you won’t be able to sleep or rest.”
Alper said something else, but Peters had gone back to his list-making. Their new apartment, in the luxury section at the bow, had four bedrooms and a central salon. The salon and two of the bedrooms had windows, with shutters that would be closed at High Phase. There were many things he might have imagined himself doing in outer space, but picking out window curtains hadn’t been on that list until very recently.
“There’s someone at the door,” Ander Korwits said. “Shall I respond?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Peters told her absently, entering another item on the list: pillows.
“Alper, get out of sight,” Ander instructed sternly, and Dee covered her mouth with her hand, eyes dancing. The blonde woman giggled and sauntered toward the bedchambers, and Peters almost involuntarily followed her with his eyes. After much negotiation Alper Gor had consented to cover herself in public, but refused to do so within their living quarters. “You say I am a free person, able to make my own choices,” she’d pointed out with mischievous logic. “I choose to go bare. I find it comfortable, and besides, it’s an advantage to you. It unsettles your visitors and puts them at a disadvantage in discussions.” The “unsettles” part was certainly true. He thought, ultra-privately, that Ander was prettier, but a meter eighty of streamlined blonde in the altogether tended to have an effect on guests, especially male guests, more commonly associated with blunt instruments.