“Are you free?” asked Alex.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Meet me in my quarters.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
Lourier shook his head, tossing his heavy hair off his forehead. Glanced once more at the gluon streams and left the camera’s field of vision.
He was apparently an excellent engineer. Young, but familiar with this very reactor. Burning with enthusiasm. What more could a captain hope for?
Alex threw his coat off, rolled up his shirtsleeve, and looked at the Demon. The little devil was wincing. Sad and hopeless, as though a nameless ache was gnawing at him.
“I sense it,” Alex whispered. “I really do feel it. Something’s wrong.”
A spark of curiosity appeared in the Demon’s eyes.
“I don’t know what it is yet…” Alex confided. “But I swear I’ll figure it out!” The Demon probably had little faith left in his promises, but its tiny, cartoonish face did look slightly more relaxed now.
A door signal beeped, and Alex hurriedly rolled his sleeve back down.
“Captain?” Paul hesitated at the threshold.
“Come in.” Alex waved him to a chair, suggesting with his entire manner that the talk would be informal. “Want some coffee? Wine?”
Paul nodded awkwardly. By tradition, as they came off duty, engineers were used to having some dry red wine. But he apparently did not consider himself off duty just yet.
“Coffee, please.”
Alex waited a few more minutes, exchanging small talk with the engineer. And only when the fellow seemed to have relaxed a bit did he bring up the serious business.
“I was really surprised by what you said before, Paul.” The engineer looked at him questioningly. “Tell me how you got onto this ship the first time. Why were you let go?”
The young man was silent for a second, obviously formulating his answer.
“I graduated from the university in Lyon, got my engineering degree. We had been warned that finding a good job while still on Earth would be difficult. And I’d already been thinking about a trip to some outlying parts to look for a position. But then this trip turned up… a one-time thing, one-way. To take a yacht called the Intrepid over to Quicksilver Pit. I checked it out in the handbooks—there’s a huge transport crossroads here, and speshes are in high demand. But the planet’s own academy is rather small. The trip over was uneventful, just three people aboard—a master-pilot, a navigator, and me. Got our pay here… it was all legit. Started looking for the next job, and met you.”
“So there was nothing unusual?” probed Alex. Paul looked at him in surprise.
“What could be so unusual about driving a ship from one planet to another?”
“Well, the fact that you all were dismissed, and a whole new crew had to be found. Why?”
Paul shrugged his shoulders.
“Were you bringing anything to Quicksilver Pit? Cargo? Passengers?”
“No.”
“Were there accidents during the flight? Non-compliance with orders?”
“Not at all!”
“Who recommended this trip to you? Who hired you on?”
“A fellow graduate from the academy. He had gotten a job on a military cruiser… well, you know… he has family connections…. As for hiring, it was done through the net, as usual. I sent an inquiry to the Freight Company, then got the contract…”
“The Freight Company?”
“Yes. It’s a small company, specializing in incidental deliveries and driving ships from planet to planet. The company is affiliated with the lunar shipyard, the one where this ship was built.”
Alex was silent. Everything Paul told him was plausible. The surplus of speshes on Earth wasn’t at all surprising, and neither was the custom of driving empty ships from place to place.
One problem remained. Driving crews were never formed for only one trip. To hire three people only to dismiss them—what for? Why not keep the three of them aboard and hire the rest of the crew on Quicksilver Pit? Or even hire the entire crew on Earth in the first place?
There was a possible answer, but it was way out of the ordinary.
“Forgive my questions, Paul, but I am a bit uneasy about this whole thing.”
He watched the youngster’s face closely, but Paul just smiled a shy smile.
“I’m not all that experienced in these matters, Captain.”
That made sense. Stupid of him to seek advice from a greenhorn. His communicator beeped. The sound was soft, so it wasn’t a secret call.
“Yes?”
“Captain”—the voice of the ship’s service program was soft, soothing—“the co-pilot Xang Morrison has arrived on board, sir.”
“Thank you.” Alex switched off the connection. “Paul, go to the cargo bay. Welcome the co-pilot aboard, give him a tour of the ship, and show him to his quarters.”
Paul nodded, getting up from his chair. Alex hesitated for a moment, and added:
“Oh, and please don’t scratch your name on the john anymore. Or on your bed. Despite the tradition. All right?”
He was curious to see the engineer’s reaction to his words.
Paul smiled and left.
Alex sat for a time, staring at the closed door. You should never enter a place without knowing how to exit. Or whether there is an exit. Or what awaits you outside.
But he’d already entered. Breaking the company contract was impossible without forever ruining his chances of other employment.
“Increase plating transparency,” he said, getting up from behind the table. The outer wall of his cabin vanished, opening a vista of the spaceport.
A boundless concrete field, with various vessels scattered here and there, big and small, old worn-out orbital clunkers and new interstellar liners. Though not too many of them…
And above it all, a gray sky. A sagging layer of dirty gray clouds and smog, several miles thick. How could anyone stand living here?
It suddenly occurred to him how richly the planet deserved its name of Quicksilver Pit. Not only because of the huge mercury deposits of the south continent: the famous Mirror Lakes, as beautiful as they were deadly. Those lakes had become the foundation for the entire planetary economy and killed off tens of thousands of workers. But the planet’s sky was also a quicksilver pit. It was beautiful, in its own way, and just as merciless. The lid of a gravity well with a teeming mass of millions of people, both speshes and naturals, forced together at the bottom.
“I’m so ready to get out of here,” Alex whispered to himself.
Gray clouds swirled into washed-out spirals. A fiery needle cut through the sky—somewhere far away, a tiny orbital ship had been launched. Alex followed it with his eyes, until the tiny flame was engulfed by the clouds.
Then he turned around and went to the bathroom unit. Took down his pants, sat on the toilet. Turned his head and cast a gloomy look on the pristine, white plastic wall. The laser in his Swiss Army knife was very weak, even at the maximum setting. Alex had to apply himself.
“Took on the rank of Captain,” he scrawled on the wall, and then added his signature, clear and easy to read.
Alex conducted their first drill late that night. Kim and Janet, of course, were not fully involved. The crew took to their battle stations according to the ship’s schedule, but Alex had no intention of putting the ship’s weapons systems on line. Some jumpy spaceport security officer might take it the wrong way.
Morrison took his pilot’s chair first—Alex didn’t mind. Let the co-pilot get used to the ship. He’d had it pretty rough lately…. Alex stood at his pilot’s chair in front of the control panel and watched its tiny flashing lights. The engineer was at his station. The navigator went to his. So did the co-pilot. And only when all battle stations had reported ready did the captain lay down in his chair.