“…not put your butts in the ‘cycler!”
Sarah Krater’s soprano voice rang out, echoing off hard surfaces of the ship’s interior and rising toward an unpleasant screech. From the context of her complaint, Jared Cuiller could identify without effort both her location and the object of her wrath. Callisto’s communications officer, linguist, and fourth crew member had cornered Hugh Jook in the cocoon that was fitted out for the combination ship’s head and recycler unit.
“Now, Sally,” the Wunderlander’s voice began in his usual, joking defense. “I’ve told you a dozen times that cocasoli is a perfectly harmless alkaloid derivative, which the ‘cycler absorbs completely. The carrier is a totally organic fiber which is likewise converted. You can’t be tasting it.”
“Wrong!” she barked. “It makes lime gel taste like wet leaves.”
“Then the machinery must be a tad out of adjustment.”
“I checked. It isn’t. If you would just not put your butts down the can -“
Which was where that conversation had started, Cuiller thought. It looked like time for him to intervene officially. The captain unhooked from the forward control yoke and exchanged glances with Gambiel, who was strapped in beside him.
“Better you than me,” the Jinxian said quietly.
Cuiller did not reply. But he took a leisurely pace, choosing his handholds carefully, as he worked his way downship.
Four people should not be asked to seal themselves in a glass bottle and venture beyond the magnetosphere of a G-type sun, he told himself. They should not have to hurl themselves through a dimension of the universe that had no dimension. And even though they dropped out of hyperdrive regularly to examine new systems, prepare charts, and leave probes, four people should not have to go for months with no other distractions than they could devise for themselves inside a crammed hull.
But four people was optimal minimum crew size, or so the Bureau of Personnel had ruled. Four was the minimum of personality variations, sleep cycles, pairs of hands, and skill levels required for an extended patrol A crew of four has the available brain capacity and viewpoints to interact as a population. And when disagreements arose, as now, four allowed for a referee, a judge and jury, or even an innocent bystander.
Four was the optimal minimum-if, Cuiller reminded himself; you had the right four.
It took a lot, Cuiller knew, to break through Jook’s easygoing persona. But even as a failed aristocrat, the Wunderlander had developed habits and tastes certain to bring out the worst side of people who had not enjoyed parallel advantages. Like Sarah Krater, who had been brought up under the strict air disciplines of a Belter mining cooperative. She would react instinctively against anyone who wanted to burn fibers and chemicals in the open, and draw the residue into his lungs, just for the psychological effects, no matter how harmless the substances under discussion.
Rather than change his behavior to suit her, Jook had simply adopted a light and laughing tone. His personal defense mechanism was to let others go their own way, and he only asked the same of them in return. Nothing seemed to bother him too much. And the navigator did have his good points. Jook was levelheaded and philosophical, with a bent for mathematics and ship propulsion technologies.
Krater, by contrast, was touchy and aggressive. A perfectionist in her work, she was always finicky about her personal surroundings and was quick to note the shortcomings of others. That sort of tightass was out of character for a trained xenobiologist. Perhaps greater perspective did not, as Cuiller had once thought, provide for greater tolerance. But then, Belters could be strange. She was also ambitious and, from her first day aboard had made clear that she did not intend to stay with “this bucket of a patrol ship” for very long. Krater wanted a command of her own, and to get that she would have to transfer aboard a bigger vessel and begin working her way up into the command structure. As Callisto had no formal wardroom and was not going in any direction that would win ship and crew much distinction -at least, not on a peacetime patrol-Krater’s frustrated ambitions spilled over into her personal contacts.
Double that frustration once she had learned that both Cuiller and Jook had served on those bigger ships and then been rotated down to Callisto. She was begin-fling to realize that accidents can happen in a Navy career, even hers.
And, much to the frustration of the three males in the crew, the willowy Belter had also announced her intention of keeping all her shipboard contacts purely professional. She was married to her career, she pointedly told them, and didn’t fool around on the side. But that was hard if you were a healthy young man sharing less than 12,000 cubic meters of mostly machinery-filled space with a healthy young woman whose eyes were a lovely shade of violet, whose cheekbones stood out above a full and pouting mouth, and whose long, blonde roostertail haircut begged to be stroked.
When Cuiller reached the cocoon’s dilated sphincter, he found Krater and Jook floating practically nose to nose. They were about three seconds from an exchange of blows.
“Do you two want to go back to the gym-bag and strap on the pads?” he asked.
Jook half-turned away at the sound, but Krater remembered her basic training and never took her eyes from the vacant point off her opponent’s left shoulder.
If it came to hard-edged hands, Cuiller would bet on the woman. Growing up in a near-weightless environment, she had the reach on Jook and was strong from an early life of wrestling rock drills and mandibles. The navigator once boasted that he had never lifted anything heavier than a booktape, a fork, or a squinch racquet.
“I guess not, Cap’n.”Jook shook his head. “Any time, boy,” Krater said into his ear.
“Cut some slack, Lieutenant,” Cuiller told her. “… And that’s not a suggestion.”
“Yes, sir.” And still she did not relax the position of her limbs.
“Now, Lieutenant! Make space!”
Her hands flexed out of their semi-rigid, thumbs-in shape and her arms came down. Krater pirouetted a half-meter away from the navigator.
“That’s better… Sarah, I think you ought to take that ‘cycler apart and find out why it’s making you sick. Adjust it to your own taste specs, if you like.”
If that means I’ve got to clean out his shit, Captain-”
“It means you’ll tend to the equipment, Lieutenant. Your turn on the roster.”
She glared at him, then lifted her chin. “Aye, sit” “Jook, take station forward and get me a report on our mission profile to date.”
“That I can tell you at once. We’re only -“
“With a detailed threat analysis, based on all reported contacts logged throughout the Chord. Don’t rush yourself. Do it right. Work on saving our asses.”
“But, sir! We know the kzinti aren’t coming through here. That cyber projection is just-”
“Just the reason we’re out here. But I don’t want you taking an expert system’s analysis on faith. Do your own homework. Down in the library Move it.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
With Jook and Krater moving in different directions, on assignments that would occupy each of them for an hour or more, Cuiller could relax for a bit-unless Gambiel wanted to pick a fight, too. The commander drifted back up to the control yoke.
“Get it all settled?” Gambiel asked.
“Not that it’s your business,” Cuiller said shortly.
“Sorree!”
Nyawk-Captain awakened slowly. He spat the rusty taste of fear out of his mouth as soon as his brain had caught up with local reality and he could herd the monkeys back to their secret hiding places.
He checked the navigational repeaters at his station, verifying that Weaponsmaster had not let them drift off course during his watch at helm. No, Cat’s Paw was still headed far out into neutral space, away from the network of manned patrols and passive trip-monitors that the humans maintained along their nearer borders with a much-reduced Patriarchy.
The course his ship was following had evolved among the Patriarch’s closest strategists. These were kzinti so highly placed that each one had a full name, and it was death ever to speak of them as mere “strategists,” even in the aggregate. Except that they and their counsels were secret, and thus Nyawk-Captain and his crewmates could not know their names, and so could never speak of them. Clever.