That got a stare. “You can do this?”
“Easily.” Peters thought about that. “Perhaps ‘easily’ is the wrong word, but it is a normal thing for us to do. Our water ships use many gears, and sometimes they break and must be repaired.”
“I must see this,” Dhuvenig breathed in a voice not meant to be responded to. “How long will it take?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I will ask.” He switched languages. “Hey, Chief, how long do you reckon this’ll take? Dhuvenig here wants to inspect it when it’s done.”
Warnocki didn’t look away, just spoke into the stem of his earbug. “Tollison, how’re you doing up there?” Pause. “OK, how much longer, do you think?” Longer pause. “He says maybe another five minutes to finish the welding, then half an hour or so to get the tooth ground down to the right shape.” He spared a glance for the Grallt. “Tell Mr. Dhuvenig he can inspect it when Tollison’s finished and brings the bucket down.”
Peters relayed that as “…about four eights of tle, or a few tle more.” Dhuvenig nodded sharply and didn’t reply, just stood with arms folded and a dubious expression until the sound of the die grinder finally died and Tollison brought the bucket down, leaving the welder attached to the overhead.
As soon as Tollison was clear the Grallt was scrambling into the bucket. “Come,” he said peremptorily, and Peters came, finding the bucket tight but passable for two people. Dhuvenig raised it more smoothly than Peters could, and brought it to a stop in the area where Tollison had been working. “Show me what he did,” he demanded.
It was pretty obvious. The faces of the new tooth were smooth, but shinier than the old ones, and Tollison hadn’t bothered to make the cheeks perfectly flat. “Not believable,” the Grallt breathed. “How did he get it so perfect? It looks exactly the same shape as the others.”
Peters looked around, spotted and retrieved a blob of hard plastic lying on a flange. “With this,” he told Dhuvenig. “Look, he put this over a good tooth while it was still soft, and removed it when it became hard. Then he used it as a pattern to make the new tooth.”
“Yes, I see. And the colored stuff—Oh. If you put that on the pattern, and put the pattern on the point, the color will appear on any place that’s too high.” Dhuvenig shook his head. “This is a wonderful technique.”
“You don’t do this?”
“No, never.” Dhuvenig looked around. “We don’t have the machine to add the metal. How does it work?”
Dhuvenig appeared to follow along, nodding, as Peters explained a Laser Inert Gas welder as best he could. “Wonderful,” he said at the end. “We normally pay many ornh for the ship-repair people to do this type of work. How much will you charge for this?”
Peters shrugged. “We consider ourselves part of the crew of the ship. Repairing things is normal work. There won’t be a charge.”
“That’s good for us, but it doesn’t seem correct.” Dhuvenig frowned. “I will consult with the first crewman and the first trader. Something will be arranged.” He started the bucket down. “Tell your man he does excellent work.”
“I will.” Peters looked at the Grallt. “Does this mean we may continue this repair?”
“Isn’t it finished?”
“No, not at all.” The bucket grounded. “Tollison will now check the other points, to see if any might break soon, and repair them as necessary. Then we will clean the machine, and apply liquid to the parts that move, so that it runs more smoothly.” Peters grinned and shook his head. “Then we will probably paint it. It’s something we do fairly often.”
“’Liquid’? Oh, you mean grease.” The word was the same one used for the goo the sailors had been calling ‘butter’. Dhuvenig glanced at the overhead. “Do you have enough?”
“We probably have enough for this job, if we use only what is needed.” Peters smiled again. “If you have more, we can use it. It’s a big ship.”
Dhuvenig grinned back. “Yes, it is.” He looked around. The working party had formed a ring around them. “Tell your superior thank you, and that you may definitely continue the repair. Let us know before you start another one, though. Heelinig was very irritated.”
“Yes, I noticed that. We will consult in the future.” Peters looked at Warnocki, back at the Grallt. “How much longer will it be before the door is needed? We should know, to plan the work.”
Dhuvenig waved that off. “It will be at least two llor, probably three, before we come down from high phase, and another llor before we need to use the door. You should have enough time.”
“Is it safe to test it during high phase?”
“The aft door, yes. Don’t try it on the forward one.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Ssth. Thank you, Peters.” The Grallt looked over at Chief Warnocki, who seemed about to explode with curiosity. “Get to work,” he said.
After dealing with Dee, that kind of joke was no problem. “Aye, sir,” he said in English, and Dhuvenig didn’t reply, just gave a nod and took himself away. “Well, that went well, I reckon,” he said as the Grallt disappeared into the elevator.
“What the Hell is going on, Peters?” Warnocki demanded. “You’re supposed to share this shit with your Chief, dammit.”
Peters flushed. “All set, Chief. Number One Attaboy for Tollison, he does good work. And we’ve got about three days to finish up.”
“No objections to us fixing this thing?”
“Not now, Chief.” Peters looked around. “Matter of fact, I reckon we can fix anything we want, now that Dhuvenig’s signed off on us. We’re supposed to check with the brass before startin’ anything new, though.”
“Glad to hear it. Can we move the geartrain? Test it? We don’t know what it’s like outside.”
“Dhuvenig says that’s OK on the aft door, but don’t open the forward one. He didn’t say why.”
That got a ghost of a smile from Warnocki. “OK. Tollison, you got a good handle on this?”
“Yeah, Chief,” was the reply. “We won’t finish up this watch, but we’ll be ready to cycle the door to test it by the end of the next one.”
“Carry on,” Warnocki told him, and pulled Peters aside as the others began swarming over equipment. “Peters, it occurs to me that we’ve never had that little talk about Off Limits areas, and now we’ve got a little more ground to cover than that. You want to come up to my quarters and fill me in a little?”
“Yes.” Peters flushed again, shook his head, and said in English: “I mean, Aye, Chief.”
“Getting a little confused, are you?”
Peters shook his head again and sighed. “You don’t know the half of it, Chief.”
They weren’t quite as meticulous this time, but the ship was about to do something major, and old habits die hard. Planes and equipment were chained and boomed, gear was stowed, and the humans were all in their quarters, waiting for the ship to end “high phase.” The runner who brought the word had asked for Peters by name, and Peters in turn had translated the message, in longhand, before taking it to Chief Joshua.
The aft doors definitely worked better. The relay contacts were solid blocks of silver alloy, and at Schott’s urgent advice they’d left them alone, so they still started up with a crash and a flash like God’s camera, and nothing was going to stop that honker of a motor from sounding like a C-22 with the fan cowls off when it wound up. But the groans and shrieks of dry bearings were gone, as was the irregular thump as the geartrain jumped the missing tooth.
Howard hadn’t joined them this time. The CT was getting better in Grallt, but still hadn’t achieved Peters’s fluency, and found that highly frustrating. Peters and Todd watched the stars flee from the center of their field of view, and this time they were close enough to the window to see that they bunched up and changed color, yellow shading to deep red forward, green shading to electric blue aft. Something about that seemed wrong, but neither one knew enough to figure out what. Again there was the peculiar feeling of lightness, this time directed aft, not nearly enough to push them off their feet; then the ship was stable again, stars shone in the window, and Peters turned away. “That’s all of that, I reckon. Let’s go, I’m starvin’.” The change had happened just before a meal, which had been delayed to accommodate it.