“Eh?” Blaine frowned. There was a spark of life in his eyes. Renner held his breath,
“Yeah, but Kevin, what went wrong? If the Brownies got to the boats they’d have designed them right. Besides, there’d be controls; they wouldn’t make you reenter.”
Renner shrugged. “Can you figure out Motie control panels at a glance? I can’t, and I doubt that the middies could. But the Brownies would expect them to. Captain, maybe the boats weren’t finished, or got damaged in a fire fight.”
“Maybe—”
“Maybe a lot of things. Maybe they were designed for Brownies. The kids would have had to crowd in, rip out a dozen fifteen-centimeter Motie crash couches or something. There wasn’t much time, with the torpedoes due to go in three minutes.”
“Those goddamn torpedoes! The casings were probably full of Brownies and a rat ranch, if anyone had looked!”
Renner nodded. “But who’d know to look?”
“I should have.”
“Why?” Renner asked it seriously. “Skipper, there’s—”
“I’m not a skipper.”
Aha! Renner thought. “Yes, sir. There’s still not a man in the Navy who’d have looked. Nobody. I didn’t think of it. The Tsar was satisfied with your decontamination procedure, wasn’t he? Everybody was. What bloody good does it do to blame yourself for a mistake we all made?”
Blaine looked up at Renner and wondered. The Sailing Master’s face was slightly red. Now why’s he so stirred up? “There’s another thing,” Rod said. “Suppose the lifeboats were properly designed. Suppose the kids made a perfect reentry, and the Moties lied.”
“I thought of that,” said Renner. “Do you believe it?”
“No, but I wish I could be sure.”
“You would be if you knew Moties as well as I do. Convince yourself. Study the data. We’ve got plenty aboard this ship, and you’ve got the time. You’ve got to learn about Moties, you’re the Navy’s heaviest expert on them.”
“Me?” Rod laughed. “Kevin, I’m not an expert on anything. The first thing I’ve got to do when we get back is convince a court-martial—”
“Oh, rape the court-martial,” Renner said impatiently. “Really, Captain, are you sitting here brooding over that formality? God’s teeth!”
“And what do you suggest I brood over, Lieutenant Renner?”
Kevin grinned. Better Blaine irritated than the way he’d been. “Oh, about why Sally’s so glum this afternoon—I think she’s hurt because you’re mad at her. About what you’re going to say when Kutuzov and Horvath have it out over the Motie ambassadors. About revolts and secessions in the colony worlds, or the price of iridium, or inflation of the crown—”
“Renner, for God’s sake shut up!”
Kevin’s grin broadened. “—or how to get me out of your cabin. Captain, look at it this way. Suppose a court finds you guilty of negligence. Certainly nothing worse. You didn’t surrender the ship to an enemy or anything. So suppose they seriously want your scalp and they hang that on you. Worse thing they could do would be ground you. They wouldn’t even cashier you. So they ground you, and you resign—you’re still going to be Twelfth Marquis of Crucis.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“So what?” Renner was suddenly angry. His brows knitted, and one fist clenched. “So what? Look, Captain, I’m just a merchant skipper. All my family’s ever been, and all we ever want to be. I put in a hitch in the Navy because we all do—maybe back home we’re not so thick on Imperialism as you are in the Capital, but part of that’s because we trust you aristocrats to run the show. We do our part, and we expect you characters with all the privileges to do yours!”
“Well—” Blaine looked sheepish, and a little embarrassed by Renner’s outburst. “And just what do you see as my part?”
“What do you think? You’re the only aristocrat in the Empire who knows a bloody thing about Moties, and you’re asking me what to do? Captain, I expect you to put your arse in gear, that’s what. Sir. The Empire’s got to develop a sensible policy about Moties, and the Navy’s influence is big— You can’t let the Navy get its views from Kutuzov! You can start by thinking about those Motie ambassadors the Admiral wants to leave stranded here.”
“I’ll be damned. You really are worked up about this, aren’t you?”
Renner grinned. “Well, maybe a little. Look, you’ve got time. Talk to Sally about the Moties. Go over the reports we sent up from Mote Prime. Learn about them so when the Admiral asks your advice you’ll have some sensible arguements to give him. We’ve got to take those ambassadors back with us—”
Rod grimaced. Moties aboard another ship! Good Lord—
“And stop thinking like that,” Renner said. “They won’t get loose and multiply all over Lenin. They wouldn’t have time, for that matter. Use your head, sir. The Admiral will listen to you. He’s got it in for Horvath, anything Doc suggests the Tsar’s going to turn down, but he’ll listen to you…”
Rod shook his head impatiently. “You’re acting as if my judgment were worth something. The evidence is against that.”
“Good Lord. You’re really down in the dumps, aren’t you? Do you know what your officers and men think of you? Have you any idea? Hell, Captain, it’s because of guys like you that I can accept the aristocracy—” Kevin stopped, embarrassed at having said more than he intended. “Look, the Tsar’s got to ask your opinion. He doesn’t have to take your advice, or Horvath’s, but he does have to ask both of you. That’s in the expedition orders—”
“How the devil do you know that?”
“Captain, my division had the job of rescuing the logs and order books from MacArthur, remember? They weren’t marked SECRET.”
“The hell they weren’t.”
“Well, maybe the light was bad and I didn’t see the security stamps. Besides, I had to be sure they had the right books, didn’t I? Anyway, Dr. Horvath knows all about that regulation. He’s going to insist on a council of war before Kutuzov makes a final decision on the ambassador question.”
“I see.” Rod fingered the bridge of his nose. “Kevin, just who put you up to coming in here? Horvath?”
“Of course not. I thought of it myself.” Renner hesitated. “I did have some encouragement, Captain.” He waited for Blaine to respond, but got only a blank stare. Renner snorted. “I sometimes wonder why the aristocracy isn’t extinct, the lot of you seem so stupid sometimes. Why don’t you give Sally a call? She’s sitting in her cabin with a bleak look and a lot of notes and books she can’t get interested in right now—” Renner stood abruptly. “She could use some cheering up.”
“Sally? Worried about—”
“Jee-sus Christ,” Renner muttered. He turned and strode out.
41. Gift Ship
Lenin moved toward the Crazy Eddie point at one and a half gees. So did the gift ship.
The gift ship was a streamlined cylinder, swollen at the many-windowed nose, like a minaret riding a fusion flame. Sally Fowler and Chaplain Hardy were highly amused. Nobody else had noticed the clumsy phallicism—or would admit to it.
Kutuzov hated the gift ship. The Motie ambassadors could be dealt with simply by following orders, but the gift ship was something else again. It had caught up with Lenin, taken station three kilometers away, and broadcast a cheery message, while Lenin’s gunners tracked it helplessly. Kutuzov had told himself it couldn’t carry a large enough weapon to penetrate Lenin’s Field.