Bergen pointed the big laser at my chest and waved me inside with his free hand “You are to please keep your hands away from your body where I might see them.” The little dyed tufts of his asymmetric beard made Bergen look like a goat I had once seen at a zoo in Tiamat.
“I understand your caution,” I said. Reassuring tone, bland face. All the while, my wife’s voice and children’s faces were in my heart like a knife. I spread my hands carefully and stepped inside the slowboat. The airlock cycled shut behind me, sealing with a hiss like an angry kzin.
Bergen watched me and took a few steps backward. He handed the welding laser to the woman. She braced herself in marksman position, trim and efficient. He whispered to her, then came toward me again, magnetic soles of his shipshoes clicking on the deck. He reached into a toolpouch on his belt.
“It is good to see you again, my friend,” I said easily Too friendly? Got to get the right tone.
Bergen ran a small box with blinking lights over the outlines of my shipsuit and carryall, looking for energy weapons or inappropriate electronics. He grunted approval and put the box away. The woman with the welding laser did not relax.
“Trust is a wonderful thing,” I observed. Ironic? Witty? What character was I playing here? No one replied.
I popped my helmet and left it on a Velcro patch near the airlock I picked up my carryall and raised an eyebrow at Bergen in question. A nod. He escorted me toward the doorway. The silent woman came behind us. I could feel the itch of a laser sight in the small of my back. The shot would flash-boil the water in me like a steam jet.
Suspicious elitists, yes. But then, they would soon discover that they had reason to be suspicious. Not that the fact made me feel any better.
Feynman had been designed to run nearly automatically. Crew of three to five, carrying well over three hundred coldsleepers, with a sizable cargo bay. The life support sections we walked through were therefore small and cramped. Huge slowboat, tiny lifebubble. Well kept, though, even neat. Large wallscreens with complex automated monitoring readouts caught my eye as we passed.
The 0.1 g was enough for a strong up-and-down orientation. Magnetic shipboots kept us from leaping like Wunderland zithraras down the hallways. Soon, I could see the slight curve to the main ring corridor, which gave true perspective to the size and bulk of Feynman.
It felt huge, empty lonely. Dim corridor lights, chilly echoing halls. Walls stained by time, stinks flavoring the air, aromas both biological and mechanical. Only a few crew could be awake on Feynman; life support systems couldn’t handle more. Many doors and hatches were closed along the main ring corridor, some with oxidized seals. Some led to the cargo bay, I knew, and others to ship function areas. A few would lead to the liquid nitrogen chambers.
Coldsleep. There had to be a passenger manifest somewhere. I had sworn to myself that I would have a little talk with my cryogenically suspended mother at some point soon. I wanted her to see where her cowardice had led.
We stooped through one low hatchway and down a short corridor. It opened to the small control room for the slowboat. An old woman sat in front of a console, her face dimly lit from the control boards. On one of her screens I could see a wide spectrum scan of Victrix running. The old woman looked up, eyes tired.
“You are Hochte?” she snapped. A voice cracked and brittle. Her hair was ice-white and thin. This woman had taken no anti-aging drugs. Time had carved deep lines into her face, which was dark and leathery with a fusion drive tan. She must have spent too much time at the core of Feynman, monitoring the fire fed by the ramscoop fields. But her eyes were bright and alive.
I kept my smile intact. “That is correct, Madame. And to whom have I the pleasure to speak?” She carried herself like an old-school Herrenmann women, like the great aunts I met while my parents were alive, or some of the collaborationist doyennes I had seen in Munchen. No jewelry, a wiry frame in a simple shipsuit. Her expression was more than merely haughty, though. There was another quality to it, one I could not quite name. Disturbing.
She stared at me coolly for a moment, then chuckled low in her throat. “I am Freya Svensdottir. I command on this shift. You have met Klaus Bergen, and his silent but efficient wife, Madchen Franke.”
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” Murmured pseudo-formalities took a moment while our eyes assessed each other. There could only be one or two more crew awake, if that. The lifesystem capacity was small. This would be simpler than I had planned. But something about the woman made me edgy, eager to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Her expression did not change. “And you bring us news that the ratcat kzinti have been defeated? Driven from Wunderland?”
I nodded. “It is my distinct pleasure to tell you so.” Gesture with the carryall. “May I?”
She nodded. I opened it and removed the items that Jacobi and Kraach-Captain had so carefully prepared during the voyage out to Feynman. Holocubes. False historical records. Even the loop of kzinti ears I had shown Bergen earlier over tightbeam. Kraach-Captain had earned those himself, dueling for authorization to form his expedition to the slowboat.
For the next hour, I explained about the mythical Free Wunderland Navy and its equally mythical victories. About driving the ratcats out of Wunderlander space. Great stories. I had spent plenty of time on them.
If only they had been true.
The crew had no way of knowing the truth, after all. There had been no attempt by the slowboats to contact Wunderland. Sol had not been in contact either, so far as any human knew. Hard to do, through the plasma plume and the forward bow shock.
We Wunderlanders had been left on our own by our so-wise Solar brethren. This slowboat was in the same predicament.
Bergen grew slowly enthusiastic as I told my stories. His wife simply stared at me. Maybe the isolation of the slowboat crew shift did not agree with her psyche. Svensdottir stared at me, too, but with a weighing gaze; she was clearly in command, the one to convince.
I told my hosts about the vessel some distance out from Feynman that had carried me here. I explained how it would retrofit Feynman with a gravitic polarizer drive, allowing the slowboat to make it the rest of the way to Sol in a matter of weeks.
Bergen stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So we would need to deactivate the ramscoop fields, yes?”
I nodded agreement. “The tender vessel is large. I don’t think that it could work its way through the fluxlines, even with the protective field from the gravitic polarizers.”
“This would take time,” Svensdottir said. ‘We must avoid instability of the field as it is being shut down. The fusion drive is most delicately balanced.” She stood. “I will go below and begin programming the shutdown mode.”
I blinked. I had anticipated some more doubt, maybe even opposition, debate. But then, they were desperate in here. The long years had worn them. Then I knocked on their door, bringing safety freedom, hope.
I swallowed what I was feeling. Concentrated on images of innocent faces, a woman’s severed hand.
After the old gray woman left I looked over at Bergen. “She seems a bit hard edged.”
That is true. But she has kept Feynman going, all this time.” He smiled a bit, against his innate Herrenmann sobriety.
“You mean she’s been on duty the entire trip?”
He nodded. “From the time we boosted away from Wunderland, just ahead of the kzin. She took one look at the destruction of the Serpent Swarmer fleet behind her, and refused coldsleep.” Bergen looked pensive. “Since the lifesystems on board don’t work terribly well, we take frequent shifts. But the old woman… well, she has stayed on shift for nearly forty years.”
“Odd,” I replied.
“Space is deep, Herr Hochte. We are the same age, she and I,” Bergen said. “I slept most of the time.”
“Could you have not talked her into shifts? After all, spending one’s life this way… “I pursed my lips, gestured around me at the slowboat.