Their escort looked at Peters. “I don’t know,” he confessed.
“Can you babble the time?”
That word had to be estimate; Peters said cautiously, “Two…” he broke off and said in English to Se’en, “I don’t know that form. Tell her I think two or three llor.” Se’en translated that, and Peters listened closely.
“Yes,” said their escort. “Dhuvenig, the humans will be using the practice room for four llor.”
“Yes,” Dhuvenig responded. He pulled a book from a stack and began writing in it, and their escort turned to Peters. “If you have not finished in that time, come here and tell Dhuvenig,” she said. “If you finish before four llor, come and tell him that also.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Peters said, then flushed again, and said in Grallt: “Yes.”
“Good.” The officer flashed a brief smile. “I think you said what you would say to your own superior,” she commented. “Thank you. Now I must return to my work.”
“Yes. Thank you,” Peters told her, and nodded. She replied with a nod and another brief smile, and went back to the bridge.
Se’en took his arm and urged him back toward the entrance. “You did not need me,” she accused as they started down the stairs.
“I mighta got by, but I’m damn glad you came along,” Peters told her. “It woulda taken twice as long, at least, if I’d had to do that by myself.”
She puffed out a breath. “Pah. I did almost nothing. You speak better than you think. Heelinig is right, you have a very good accent.”
“Is that her name? Who was that we were talking to?”
“Heelinig is the Captain’s assistant.” Se’en paused. “We say ‘the Second of Llapaaloapalla’. I don’t know how to say it in English.”
“Second, eh? Then Heelinig would be called ‘Executive Officer’ or just ‘Exec’ in English. Sometimes we say ‘XO.’”
“Yes, I understand,” said Se’en. She glanced at him with a smile. “I have received my lessons for today after all. Were you not, ah, a little frightened to be visiting the ship-control room?”
“Nervous? No.” Peters thought about that as they clattered down another flight. “Hm. I probably shoulda been nervous, but I wasn’t. It was like home, a little, you know?”
Se’en stopped with her hand on the railing, looked back at him with wide eyes. “We do not like to deal with the zerkre,” she said. “They very often say hard things, insults, to us.”
“Well, Se’en, you’re good folks and I like you a lot,” Peters drawled. “But I have to admit I can understand that. Go on, go on. Todd’ll be wonderin’ if I been keelhauled and scuppered.”
“OK, folks,” Peters said to the group; he wanted to say “listen up,” but there were too many First Class among them for that. “This here’s the kathir suit practice room. When we get inside, I’d take it kindly if you’d stay together and not get scattered around. Suit practice can be fun, but you gotta learn the basics first.”
“Get on with it, Peters,” said a tall, round-faced First Class Peters had noticed before.
“Aye, aye,” Peters responded calmly. This was going to take all llor, if that was any sample. “First thing is, everybody skin outa them dungarees. You don’t wear nothin’ but the kathir suit in the practice room.”
“Chief said Commander Bolton ordered us to wear dungarees,” the big First Class challenged, and now Peters remembered his name: Tollison.
“He told me the same thing,” Peters retorted. “Trouble is, the captain of this here spaceship said the practice room’s for kathir suits only. If you’d like to argue with the skipper, I’ll be glad to introduce you.” Tollison didn’t respond, but didn’t lose his belligerent look; after a moment Peters went on, “You can stash your dungarees in these here lockers. We only got four llor to get this done, we need to get a move on.”
“Come on, Tollison, let’s get this evolution under way,” said another First Class. “Peters is just doing his job.” He started pulling off his dungaree shirt. “There’s enough lockers for everybody to have one. This one’s mine.”
Tollison scowled but started untying his shoes. Everybody but Peters was wearing boondockers, another thing he’d forgotten. The sailors shucked their denims and stowed them in the lockers, laid their hats carefully on top, and assembled by the door. Peters worked the latch and led them through.
“First thing is, everybody comfortable?” he asked when the hatch was dogged.
“Not sure I understand the question,” said the First Class who’d argued with Tollison.
“The kathir suit’s supposed to be real comfortable,” Peters told them. “In fact, it oughta feel like you wasn’t wearin’ nothin’ at all. Trouble is, they’re made special for each person, and if you try to wear somebody else’s suit, it won’t work right, and it’s gonna feel like sandpaper skivvies. We hadda run you folks through pretty fast, there’s a chance there was a mixup, so anybody don’t feel good in the suit, sing out.” He paused a moment, but nobody spoke up.
“Real good. All right, first thing is, I’m gonna let the air out,” he told them. “You gotta know, without air you can’t talk to one another unless you get close—Oh, shit!”
Tollison had taken up a sullen, wall-leaning stance, arms folded. Another sailor had jostled him a bit; he fell sideways, across the window-control lever. The windows rotated open, and the air blast caught a Second Class who was standing too close. Peters saw the man’s face, mouth an O of horror, in the instant before he vanished out the window.
He was diving after him before he thought about it. The man was only a few meters away, and Peters caught up before he could get any farther. He grasped him around the waist and and manhandled him around until he could force the head bubbles together. “All right, dammit, grab hold. I gotta work the suit, and I can’t do that while I’m holdin’ onta you.”
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” the other was reciting. It took two or three repetitions of “hold on, dammit” to get him to grab onto Peters’s back, arms around his chest. Then he could look around.
They were rotating, adding to the disorientation, and Peters decided that the first order of business was to stop that. He fiddled with the buckle buttons, eventually stopping the spin, but could not bring himself to do so facing the ship; their feet ended up pointing toward it, which felt more comfortable for some reason.
After that it was a matter of mashing buttons and waiting. He tried to talk to the other sailor, managing to find out that his name was Nolan; he was an ET(A)2 nominally assigned to VFA-97, twenty-six years old, from Ohio. The conversation took Nolan’s mind off their situation a little, and his sobs tapered off to an occasional choke. Peters could probably have been more reassuring if he hadn’t been distracted. He’d gone out without thinking—the only thing on a ship needing more immediate attention than man overboard is live bomb on deck—and now that he had a bit of time, his perception of his surroundings was shifting wildly.
The ship was down, he decided. That helped. The windows of the practice room were only a few meters away, maybe fifty, the only openings nearby in the “floor.” He mashed buttons to start a drift in that direction. Once the windows were obviously getting closer he let off the button and waited.
It felt like a long time, but was probably only a minute or so, before the windows were close enough that he felt like starting to slow down, at the same time correcting his course a little to head for the opening. The suit could push any direction and turn any way, and while that brought its own set of complications, once you figured it out it was pretty easy. He hit the window opening he was aiming at—