Passage at Arms Read online

  “After the water is salvaged, our wastes, including the carbon from the air, get compressed and jettisoned. No room for fancy recycling gear.”

  “Hang on to it,” the Old Man says. He turns to me. “Can’t you picture it? The mother plowing along in norm surrounded by a cloud of shit canisters.” He smiles, munches his apple. Just when I give up on hearing the rest, he says, “A million years from now an alien civilization will find one. It’ll be the biggest puzzle in their xenoarcheological museum. I can see them putting in fifty thousand creature hours trying to figure out its religious significance.”

  “Religious significance? Is that a private joke?” The Old Man waves his apple core at the First Watch Officer. Yanevich says, “He’s laughing at me. I help poke around the pre-human sites on leave.”

  The Commander says, ‘They’re old, and nonhuman, and Mr. Yanevich’s friends have an explanation for everything there. Unless you ask the wrong question. If they tell you something had ritual or magical significance, they’re really saying they don’t know what it is. That’s the way those guys work.”

  My surprise must be obvious. Yanevich wears one of his delighted smiles when he looks at me. People are infinite puzzles. You put together piece after piece after piece, and you still have hunks that just don’t fit.

  The battle alarm shrieks.

  It makes a bong-bong-bong sound not especially irritating in itself. But you respond as if someone has dragged their nails across a blackboard, then fired a starter’s pistol beside your ear.

  The wardroom explodes. I’m a little out of practice, a little slow. I try to make up the difference with enthusiasm as I pursue the more able men upward. I happen to glance down as I reach the hatch to Weapons.

  The Commander is staring at a watch and grinning.

  “A drill. A goddamned drill right in the middle of supper. You sadistic bastard.”

  The gimp leg betrays me. The Ops-Weapons hatch slams before I get to it. So there I hang, a great embarrassed fruit dangling from the compartment ceiling.

  “Come down here,” Piniaz says in a too-gentle tone. “You can’t reach your station in time, I’ll put your dead ass to work. Take that goddamned magnetic cannon board. Haesler. Energy board.”

  Crafty little Ito. He covers his most useless weapon with a spare body, then shifts Leading Spacer Johannes Haesler to the system he’s supposed to be learning anyway.

  The all clear comes in five minutes. Piniaz turns the compartment over to his Chief Gunner, Holtsnider. I follow him to the wardroom.

  “Your buddy ain’t too nimble,” he growls at the Old Man. His attitude toward the Commander is one millimeter short of insolent. The Commander tolerates it. I don’t know why. Anyone else would find himself hamstrung.

  “He’ll loosen up.” He smiles his thin, shipboard smile.

  I grab a squeezie of orange juice and start nursing. Kriegshauser puts the drinks up in “baby bottles” because parasite gravity is too treacherous for normal cups. It varies according to some formula known only to the Engineering gang aboard the mother. Once Diekereide and I were playing chess when the pieces just up and roamed away.

  “Damned drills,” I say, feeling no real rancor. “I forgot about that crap. Never did get used to them. Your mind says they’re necessary. Your gut keeps saying bullshit.”

  “A bitching spacer is a happy spacer,” the Commander observes.

  “You’ll find me a very happy-type fellow, then.” I try to laugh. It doesn’t come off. Piniaz’s snake-eyed stare makes me nervous.

  The next drill comes while I’m asleep.

  They put off fueling again, so I decided to grab some hammock time. No go. Wearing nothing but shorts, I give it my best go. And barely make it to Weapons. Shaking his head like a disappointed track coach, Piniaz points to the cannon board. He doesn’t say a word. Neither do I. I’m the only man aboard sleeping outside the compartment containing my duty station. Isn’t that excuse enough? No. You don’t make excuses in Navy. Not if you don’t want a crybaby reputation. “Hello, board. Looks like we’re going to be friends.”

  The show of good humor is just that. A show. I rumble. I fume. I try hard to remember that I vowed that if I blew up, it wouldn’t be over something beyond my control, or because of conditions I accepted beforehand. I’ll gut it out. If my leg makes it harder for me, I’ll just try harder. My companions are gutting something out, too.

  The other breed of sleep disturbance has ceased. I guess Kriegshauser passed the word.

  This crew has a strong respect for the Commander. That’s how it’s supposed to be, and here it works well. It encompasses the new men as well as those who have served with him before. I suspect it has to do with survival. The Old Man brings his Climber home. That, more than anything else in this universe, impresses the men.

  I’ve begun to note quirks. Fisherman, who is hyped on Christianity, brought tracts in his fifteen kilos. Chief Nicastro gets furious if anyone passes him to the left. Better you ask him to drop what he’s doing and let you by. Kriegshauser never removes his lucky underwear.

  The Commander himself has a rigid ritual for rising and departing his quarters. Faithfully observed, I suppose, it guarantees the Climber another day of existence.

  He wakens at exactly 0500 ship’s time, which is TerVeen standard, which in turn is Turbeyville and moon time. Kriegshauser’s helper has a squeezie of juice and another of coffee waiting. He passes them through the curtains. At 0515 the Commander emerges. He says, “Good morning, gentlemen. Another glorious day.” It’s customary for the watch to respond, “Amen.” The Commander then descends to Ship’s Services and the Admiral’s stateroom, which is never occupied. He washes up. He accepts another squeezie of coffee from the cook, along with whatever is on the breakfast menu. He then makes his way back to Ops and his quarters, where he secures his copy of Gibbon, ousts the Watch Officer from his seat, and reads till precisely 0615, when the morning reports come in, fifteen minutes before they’re technically due. Following morning reports, he goes over the previous day’s decklog, then the quartermaster’s notebook. At 0630 he lifts his eyes and surveys his kingdom. He nods once, abruptly, as if to say we villeins have pleased him.

  Remarkably, the men give a collective sigh. It begins with those who can see the Old Man and spreads around the Can and into the inner circle. Our day is officially begun.

  We keep our rendezvous with the CT tanker our fourth day out of TerVeen.

  We begin by undertaking the long, arduous process of rigging for operational mode. A lot of the hardware, including my little nest, has to be realigned for the new gravity.

  As senior vessel, by right of having survived sixteen patrols, our ship will fuel first. To do so we’ll stand off the mother a thousand kilometers. If there’s a screwup, only we, the tanker, and anyone else nursing will blow. Several ships will fuel at the same time.

  The reorientation for operational mode is complete. I have fed myself and cleared my bowels. We’ll go to action stations before fueling, so I saunter on up to Ops and cunningly occupy my seat before the exterior screen. That’s a difficult task now, what with the gravity still aligned parasite. Crafty operator that I am, I’m going to be on time.

  The Old Man ambles by. “You won’t see much from here. Go on down to Engineering.”

  I like the idea. I love to observe from the heart of the action. But that means wasting the on-time coup. “I’d just get in their way.”

  “Mr. Varese says there’s room.”

  “Really?” I can’t picture Varese making room for me, or inviting me down. We haven’t warmed toward one another. This thing sounds arranged.

  “Go on down.” His tone is a little more forceful.

  Varese is waiting at the Engineering hatchway. He wears a smile that’s painted on. “Good morning, sir. Glad to have you. We’ll give you the best show we can. I do want to ask you to help by staying in the background.” He talks like that most of the time, like he’s trying to keep his temper, a
nd still I get the feeling he did invite me, that I’m not here entirely at the Commander’s insistence. Varese doesn’t want me underfoot, yet wants me to watch his crowd in action. A quaint character. A proud papa. “This’s a good place here, sir. The view will be somewhat limited, but it’s the best we can provide.”

  His strained affability and politeness is more disconcerting than his usual hostility.

  The seat is a good eight meters around the curve from the center of action. Still, I could be trying to follow the fueling from Ops.

  “Take notes if you like, but save your questions till we finish. Don’t move around. There’ll be some hairy moments. We can’t be distracted.”

  “Of course.” I’m no moron, Varese. I know this will be delicate.

  The anti-hydrogen has to be transferred without losing an atom. The tiniest whiff might pit or scar the Climber’s CT globe. Even if the tank weren’t breached, the risk of its being weakened is so feared we would have to return to TerVeen for repairs. Command has geniuses creating new miseries to inflict on crews who make that sort of mistake.

  Varese will command the Climber during fueling maneuvers. He’s closer to the action, knows best what needs doing.

  We commence our approach before the general alarm. Varese opens communications with Ops.

  “Range one thousand meters,” Ops reports. That sounds like Leading Spacer Picraux speaking. “Range rate one meter per second. Activating spotter lights. Secondary conn stand by to assume control.”

  Varese responds, “Secondary conn, aye.” He surveys the idiot lights on a long board, points to one of his men. Engineering’s one viewscreen lights up. Outside, directed by Fire Control, searchlights are probing the tanker. She’s too close for a good overall view. She’s a huge vessel. Her flanks show luminescence in coded patches.

  Our computers guide the approach with a precision no human can match. They have us in a groove that’s exact to a millimeter. And every man here is sweating, holding a hand poised should Varese order manual control. No spacer ever completely trusts a computer.

  “Range, five hundred meters.” That’s the First Watch Officer. “Range rate one meter per second. Secondary conn assume control.”

  “Secondary conn, aye. This is Mr. Varese. I have the conn.” He lifts a spring-hinged safety bar, trips three safety switches. Diekereide repeats the process on his own board. Varese inserts a key into a lock on a dramatically oversized red switch handle.

  All that redundancy says even the ship’s designers respected the hazards of CT fueling.

  The computers, communing with their tanker kin, ease the Climber into position beneath a vast, pendent flying saucer of a tank.

  “Second Engineer. Commence internal magnetic test sequence.”

  “Aye, sir.” Diekereide bends over his board like an old, old man trying to make out fine print. “Shahpazian. Activate first test mode.” He begins a litany which includes primary, secondary, and emergency tubes; elbows; valves; junctions; skins; generators; control circuits; and display functions. Most involve shaped magnetic fields like those containing the plasma in a fusion chamber. I note that this system is also triply redundant.

  “Activate second test mode.” The litany begins anew. This time Diekereide counterchecks the test circuitry itself.

  Meanwhile, Lieutenant Varese satisfies himself that his Climber had adopted the most advantageous attitude in relation to the tanker. “Stand by the locking bars,” he orders, speaking to someone aboard the other vessel. “Extend number one.”

  I lean forward as much as I dare, trying to see the viewscreen better.

  A bright orange bar slides out of the tanker’s hull like a stallion’s prang, gently touches the Climber’s globe. Varese studies his side displays, gives a series of orders which move us less than a centimeter. The locking bar suddenly extends a bit more, penetrating its locking receptacle. “Number one locked. Extend number two.”

  There’re three bars. They’ll hold the Climber immobile with respect to the tanker.

  “Maser probe. Minimum intensity,” Varese says. In seconds his boards show a half-dozen green lights. “Maser probe. Intermediate intensity.” More green. The pathway for an invisible pipeline is being created.

  Varese double-checks his board. There’ll be no redundancy to the ship-to-ship. “Bring your probe up to maximum. Mr. Diekereide, how do you look?”

  “All go here, sir. Ready to flood.” He returns to his ongoing checklists.

  “Stand by.”

  “Aye, sir. Shahpazian. Arm the hazard circuits.”

  “Achernar, Subic Bay, we have a go on one. I say again, we have a go on one,” Varese says. “Subic, standing by for your mark.”

  “Subic, aye,” a tinny voice replies. “Clear from Achernar.

  Thirty seconds. Counting.”

  The flashing lights have me hypnotized. I stop taking notes. There’s little enough to record. Too much takes place out of sight.

  “Thirteen seconds and holding.”

  “What?” The hypnosis ends. Holding? Why? I stifle a surge of panic. Print data rush across the viewscreen. It says another

  Climber is maneuvering nearby, approaching another tank. Achernar wants her a little farther along before letting the tanker nurse us.

  “Thirteen seconds and counting.” Then, “... one. Zero.”

  “I have pressure on the outer main coupling,” Diekereide says.

  “Very well,” Varese replies. “She looks good. Open her up. Commence fueling.”

  “Opening outer main valve. I have pressure on number two main valve. Opening number two main valve. I have pressure at primary tank receiving valve.”

  “We’re looking good.” Varese moves across the compartment, toward me. “This’s a tricky spot. His first time doing it himself. Got a good go, so I’ll leave him to it.” He grasps a cross-member and stands beside me, watching his apprentice.

  “He has to bleed it to a few moles at a time to begin. To annihilate any terrene matter inside the tank. No such thing as a perfect vacuum. It’ll be hotter than hell to there for a few minutes.”

  “You travel with the tank open?” That hadn’t occurred to me.

  He nods. “Space is the best evacuator. Another reason we fuel so far from anywhere. Not much interstellar hydrogen around here. Comparatively speaking.”

  I try guessing how much energy might be blasting around the tank’s interior. Hopeless. I don’t have the vaguest notion of the hydrogen density in this region.

  Deikereide opens the final valve. We all tense, waiting for something to go boom.

  The tanker constricts her internal tank field. Diekereide bombards the compartment with a barrage of pressure reports. And then it’s over. Almost anti-climatically, it seems. I was so tense, waiting for something to screw up, that I feel let down that it hasn’t.

  Disengagement reverses the fueling process. The only tricky part involves venting the CT gas still in the ship-to-ship coupling.

  The cycle, from Varese’s assumption of the conn till he yields it again, takes a little over two hours. When we finish, he and Diekereide shake hands. Varese says, “Very good show, men. The best I’ve ever seen.” He must mean it, so seldom does he have anything positive to say.

  “We were lucky,” Diekereide tells me. “Usually takes three or four tries to get a go. The Old Man will be pleased.”

  The Engineers commence operational routine. I don’t pay much attention. Diekereide has launched one of his long-winded and rambling explanations. “When it comes time to Climb,” he says, after telling me things I already know about the tank atop the vane and the magnetics which prevent the CT from coming in contact with the ship, “we bleed the CT into the fusor, along with the normal hydrogen flow. Instead of fusing, we annihilate, then shunt the energy into the torus instead of the linear drives.”

  I don’t pay much attention. The way to listen to Diekereide is through a mental filter. Let most of the chatter slide, yet catch the gems.

&nb
sp; “There isn’t any way to beat the fogging. It’s because the ship is separated from the universe. If you can’t stand it, stay out of null.”

  He’s describing the subjective effects of Climb. When a vessel goes up, its crew experiences a growing insubstantiality in surroundings. From outside, the vessel becomes detectable only as an apparent minuscule black hole. There’s a continuing debate over whether this is a real black hole or just something that looks and acts like one. It has moments when it violates the tenets of both Einsteinian and Reinhardter physics.

  In essence, a ship in Climb can’t be seen from outside, which is valuable in battle. Unfortunately, said ship can’t see, either. Astrogation in Climb is tricky work. Which explains Westhause’s ardent affair with his Dead Reckoning tracer

  In null you have no referents, but you can maneuver. Even if you do nothing, you retain our norm inherent velocity and whatever weigh you put on in hyper. It vectors. You have to keep close track unless you don’t mind coming down inside a star.

  “That’s really no problem, though,” Diekereide says. “Unless you’re operating in a crowded system, you won’t come down in the middle of anything. The statistical odds are incredible. Build yourself a dome on a one-kilometer radius. Paint the inside black. Have a buddy take a blackened pfennig and stick it on the dome somewhere while the lights ate out. Then put on a blindfold, pick up a target rifle, and try to hit the coin. Your odds are better than ours of hitting a star by accident. The real danger is heat.”

  Every machine, even the human machine, generates waste heat. In norm and hyper ships shed excess heat automatically, by leakage through their skins, and, especially in Climbers, through cooling vanes. Our biggest such vane supports the CT tank. There are others on both the can and torus. The vessel has lots of lumps and bumps waiting its basic can and donut profile.

  In null we can’t vent a calorie. There’s no place for the heat logo.

  Heat is the bane of the Climbers, and not just because of the comfort factor. Virtually all computation and control systems rely on liquid helium superconductors. The helium has to remain at temperatures approaching absolute zero.