New writer Charles Coleman Finlay made his first sale last year to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and has since followed it up with three more sales to that magazine, including the taut and suspenseful story that follows, which takes us on a deeply hazardous top secret mission into deep space, with a hard-pressed crew who soon discover that for all the dangers outside, the biggest dangers may be the ones that lurk within…
Finlay lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio.
Laxim Nikomedes saw the other man rush toward him but there was no room to dodge in the crate-packed corridor. He braced for the impact. The other man pulled up short, his face blanching in the pallid half-light of the “night” rotation. It was Kulakov, the chief petty officer. He went rigid and snapped a salute.
“Sir! Sorry, sir!” His voice trembled.
“At ease, Kulakov,” Max said. “Not your fault. It’s a tight fit inside this metal sausage.”
Standard ship joke. The small craft was stuffed with supplies, mostly food, for the eighteen-month voyage ahead. Max waited for the standard response, but Kulakov stared through the hull into deep space. He was near sixty, old for the space service, old for his position, and the only man aboard who made Max, in his mid-forties, feel young.
Max smiled, an expression so faint it could be mistaken for a twitch. “But it’s better than being stuck in a capped-off sewer pipe, no?”
Which is what the ship would be on the voyage home. “You’ve got that right, sir!” said Kulakov.
“Carry on.”
Kulakov shrank aside like an old church deacon, afraid to touch a sinner lest he catch the sin. Max expected that reaction from the crew, and not just because they’d nicknamed him the Corpse for his cadaverous and dead expression. As the political officer, he held the threat of death over every career aboard: the death of some careers would entail a corporeal equivalent. For the first six weeks of their mission, after spongediving the new wormhole, Max had cultivated invisibility and waited for the crew to fall into the false complacency of routine. Now it was time to shake them up again to see if he could find the traitor he suspected. He brushed against Kulakov on purpose as he passed by him.
He twisted his way through the last passage and paused outside the visiting officers’ cabin. He lifted his knuckles to knock, then changed his mind, turned the latch and swung open the door. The three officers sitting inside jumped at the sight of him. Guilty consciences, Max hoped.
Captain Ernst Petoskey recovered first. “Looking for someone, Lieutenant?”
Max let the silence become uncomfortable while he studied Petoskey. The captain stood six and a half feet tall, his broad shoulders permanently hunched from spending too much time in ships built for smaller men. The crew loved him and would eagerly die-or kill-for him. Called him Papa behind his back. He wouldn’t shave again until they returned safely to spaceport, and his beard was juice-stained at the corner by proscripted chewing tobacco. Max glanced past Lukinov, the paunchy, balding “radio lieutenant,” and stared at Ensign Pen Reedy, the only woman on the ship.
She was lean, with prominent cheekbones, but the thing Max always noticed first were her hands. She had large, red-knuckled hands. She remained impeccably dressed and groomed, even six weeks into the voyage. Every hair on her head appeared to be individually placed as if they were all soldiers under her command.
Petoskey and Lukinov sat on opposite ends of the bunk. Reedy sat on a crate across from them. Another crate between them held a bottle, tumblers, and some cards.
Petoskey, finally uncomfortable with the silence, opened his mouth again.
“Just looking,” Max pre-empted him. “And what do I find but the captain himself in bed with Drozhin’s boys?”
Petoskey glanced at the bunk. “I see only one, and he’s hardly a boy.”
Lukinov, a few years younger than Max, smirked and tugged at the lightning-bolt patch on his shirtsleeve. “And what’s with calling us Drozhin’s boys? We’re just simple radiomen. If I have to read otherwise, I’ll have you up for falsifying reports when we get back to Jesusalem.”
He pronounced their home Hey-zoo-salaam, like the popular video stars did, instead of the older way, Jeez-us-ail-em.
“Things are not always what they appear to be, are they?” said Max.
Lukinov, Reedy, and a third man, Burdick, were the intelligence listening team assigned to intercept and decode Adarean messages-the newly opened wormhole passage would let the ship dive undetected into the Adarean system to spy. The three had been personally selected and prepped for this mission by Dmitri Drozhin, the legendary Director of Jesusalem’s Department of Intelligence. Drozhin had been the Minister too, back when it had still been the Ministry of the Wisdom of Prophets Reborn. He was the only high government official to survive the Revolution in situ, but these days younger men like Mallove in the Department of Political Education challenged his influence.
“Next time, knock first, Lieutenant,” Petoskey said.
“Why should I, Captain?” Max returned congenially. “An honest man has noth ing to fear from his conscience, and what am I if not the conscience of every man aboard this ship?”
“We don’t need a conscience when we have orders,” Petoskey said with a straight face.
Lukinov tilted his head back dramatically and sneered. “Come off it, Max. I invited the captain up here to celebrate, if that’s all right with you. Reedy earned her comet today.”
Indeed, she had. The young ensign wore a gold comet pinned to her left breast pocket, similar to the ones embroidered on the shirts of the other two officers. Crewmen earned their comets by demonstrating competence on every ship system-Engineering, Ops and Nav, Weapons, Vacuum and Radiation. Reedy must have qualified in record time. This was her first space assignment. “Congratulations,” Max said.
Reedy suppressed a genuine smile. “Thank you, sir.”
“That makes her the last one aboard,” Petoskey said. “Except for you.”
“What do I need to know about ship systems? If I understand the minds and motivations of the men who operate them, it is enough.”
“It isn’t. Not with this,” his mouth twisted distastefully, “ miscegenated, patched-together, scrapyard ship. I need to be able to count on every man in an emergency.”
“Is it that bad? What kind of emergency do you expect?”
Lukinov sighed loudly. “You’re becoming a bore, Max. You checked on us, now go make notes in your little spy log and leave us alone.”
“Either that or pull up a crate and close the damn hatch,” said Petoskey. “We could use a fourth.”
The light flashed off Lukinov’s gold signet ring as he waved his hand in clear negation. “You don’t want to do that, Ernst. This is the man who won his true love in a card game.”
Petoskey looked over at Max. “Is that so?”
“I won my wife in a card game, yes.” Max didn’t think that story was widely known outside his own department. “But that was many years ago.”
“I heard you cheated to win her,” said Lukinov. He was Max’s counterpart in Intelligence-the Department of Political Education couldn’t touch him. The two Departments hated each other and protected their own. “Heard that she divorced you too. I guess an ugly little weasel like you has to get it where he can.”
“But unlike your wife, she always remained faithful.”
Lukinov muttered a curse and pulled back his fist. Score one on the sore spot. Petoskey reached out and grabbed the intelligence officer’s elbow. “None of that aboard my ship. I don’t care who you two are. Come on, Nikomedes. If you’re such a hotshot card player, sit down. I could use a little challenge.”
A contrary mood seized Max. He turned into the hallway, detached one of the crates, and shoved it into the tiny quarters.
“So what are we playing?” he asked, sitting down.