Todd and Peters looked at one another. “Hell, I dunno,” Peters admitted. “I was assumin’ it was steel. That’s what it looks like, anyway.”
“A steel spaceship? Now I know you’re full of shit,” Warnocki observed.
Nobody was pleased by the time difference. “That’s going to be tough,” Chief Gill told them. “People can manage twenty-five or twenty-six hour rotations pretty easy, but thirty?” He shook his head. “Right off the top of my head, I’d say we’re gonna have to rotate rest days, and short-handed as we are, that could be a problem.”
“I’ve worked forty-eight at a stretch before,” Chief Joshua objected. “Even seventy-two sometimes.”
“Sure. I’ll bet everybody here has. But thirty hours, every day, for two years?” Gill shook his head again. “I’ll look it up and get back to you.”
“That reminds me. Got a job for you, Hernandez.” Peters unstrapped Dee’s watch and passed it to the programmer. “What can you do with that?”
Hernandez inspected it dubiously. “Not much, I don’t think.” He tapped it, held it to his ear. “Dios mio, this thing’s mechanical! Is it some kind of joke?”
“No joke,” Peters assured him. “It keeps their time. We’re gonna need a conversion program, our time to theirs. Among other things, I know what time they’re comin’ back for us by that thing, but I don’t know what it’ll be in our time. You figure that out and let me know.”
Hernandez still looked dubious, but he pulled out a handheld, bigger and fancier than the one Peters was still carrying, and started pressing keys. “Stopwatch function, to get the basic interval. Never mind this thing,” with a wave at the desktop computer, “it’s like cracking a nut with a sledge hammer. While we’re waiting, I haven’t heard you say anything about what kind of computers they’ve got up there. I’m interested, you might say.”
“You’re lookin’ at it,” Peters told him.
“What?”
“That’s right,” Todd confirmed. “The most complicated gadget we saw is a one-way PA system, and I’m not even sure it’s electronic. We never heard it work.” He glanced at Peters. “They don’t even have a radio on the dli, the shuttle they ride up and down.”
Into the resulting, unanimous, stunned silence Peters said to Joshua, “That’s what I meant about radios, Chief. Earbugs for everybody, spares, talkies, spare batteries ‘til Hell won’t have ‘em. Radios to talk to the planes, and power supplies to run ‘em, and battery chargers.” He waved at Hernandez. “Computer types’ll have to take our own along. What we need’s a radioman. Got one on the list?”
“Highest rate’s a Third Class,” said Joshua grimly. “That may have to change.”
“No network?” Hernandez was incredulous.
“How loud can you holler?” Peters asked. The others chuckled, but Hernandez was wide-eyed, holding onto the mouse like it was a lifeline. He probably hadn’t been away from a high-speed network for more than a few hours for the last ten years.
Chief Joshua looked at his watch. “That’s enough for now,” he said. “Let’s break for lunch.” He glanced around the room, eyes resting at the last on Todd. “We’ll go to the EM club, everybody can get in. I’m buying. I take it you two don’t have any money on you?”
Peters flushed slightly. “We can buy our own lunch, Chief,” he said, shushing Todd when he tried to object. “Not much more than that, though,” he admitted. “Not much call for money in outer space.” He would remember that, much later.
Lunch in a room full of people with noses was a relief. The food wasn’t much, mystery meat with green beans and mashed potatoes, but it was familiar and therefore comforting. They didn’t discuss their business at the table, confining themselves to chitchat about the world in general and the Navy in particular. Things hadn’t changed much, and Peters realized that it was only Thursday, after alclass="underline" they’d been away only three days.
Back at the hangar, Hernandez went straight for his desk and started punching keys, and Chief Joshua called the rest to order. “OK, action assignments. Gill, you’ll be checking into medical consequences of the long days, right?” When the Chief Corpsman nodded, Joshua went on, “Warnocki, I’m gonna depend on you to scare up welders and briefing chairs. I’ll have my hands full chasing down radios.” He shook his head. “Hernandez, come out of that for a minute, will you?”
“Sure, Chief,” the programmer said. “What’s up?”
Joshua snorted. “Programmers. You know anything about setting up a network?”
Hernandez shook his head. “I could program one, no problem, but I don’t know much about the hardware. You need Interior Communications for that.”
“Don’t I know it.” Joshua sighed heavily. “I’ll look down the roster, see what I can come up with. Howard, I want you to get with our boys here and see how much of the language they’ve learned.”
“Aye, Chief.” The CT spared Peters a look that wasn’t too pleased.
“Take about an hour at it,” Joshua went on, oblivious to Howard’s attitude. “By then we’ll have a first cut at making a list and working out how to fill it. You may get interrupted, so don’t waste time.”
“Aye, Chief,” Howard said sourly. “Come on,” he told Peters and Todd. “We’ll use the old SDO’s office.”
They sat on straight chairs with split upholstery in the cubicle that had once housed the Squadron Duty Officer, discussing the Grallt language and discovering in the process that, first, neither Peters nor Todd really knew all that much, and, second, that Peters in particular was a lousy teacher. It may have been personality. Howard wasn’t easy to like, and neither Peters nor Todd saw any particular percentage in investing the effort.
The only interruption came when Hernandez took Peters’s handheld. Peters paid nearly no attention until they’d broken with Howard and gone back into the main room. “There you are,” the programmer said, holding the gadget up for display. “Call up the time function like normal. Then push ‘G’ for Grallt and it shows the Grallt time on a graphic like this.” He held up Dee’s watch. “It’s probably as good as this mechanical thing. To set it in Grallt mode, push up-arrow for forward and down-arrow for back, then enter to confirm. It’ll adjust itself if you set it once in a while.”
“How do I get normal time back?” Peters was alert enough to ask.
“Just push the time function again,” Hernandez shrugged. “Hey, it isn’t fancy, but it’ll get the job done. I’ll do something better when we get aboard.”
“Can it convert a future time?” Peters asked. “I still don’t know exactly when the dli is comin’ to pick us up.”
Hernandez stared into space. “Sure,” he said finally. “Just act like you’re setting it until you get the right time display, but don’t push enter. Then when you push G it’ll show the converted time. Push time once more, and it goes back to the current time. I didn’t design it to do that, but it ought to work. Give it back; I want to try it. What time do you need to convert?”
“Fourth utle of the sixth ande.” When Hernandez looked blank, Peters shook his head. “Sorry, that’s the names of the time units. Big needle on this mark here, and the middle one here.” He indicated it on Dee’s watch.
“That’s the other way, but it still ought to work.” Hernandez played with keys. “Yep, it works,” he said with satisfaction. “Not too handy, but like I said, I’ll do better when I have the time. And it looks like your ride will be here a little before 2030.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent in discussion, sometimes descending to raucous argument, of what the detachment would need for the voyage. Joshua didn’t have many questions, but he did have a few acerbic comments. His attitude puzzled Peters a little, until he realized that the basis of it was simple: he and Todd didn’t have enough chevrons for the Master Chief to take them seriously.