Passage at Arms Read online

  “And I thought we had it bad in the bombards.”

  “That’s right. The Old Man said you were in destroyers back when. Did my original active duty there. Luxury liners compared to this. Hello, Commander.”

  “There’s got to be a better way.”

  The Commander shrugs as if to say that’s a matter of complete indifference to him. He smiles a thin, grim smile that seems carefully studied, the secretive smile of a Commander on top of it all and mildly amused by the antics of the children in his charge. “Nature demands. her price. Board all squared away, Mr. Westhause?”

  “I’m just starting my check sequence, Commander.”

  I take the hint. I’m in the way here. Everyone else is busy, too. The compartment is in a state of chaos. The sleeping arrangements seem fairly well settled. The men are slithering over and around one another to examine their duty stations. Despite the care the ship has received in wetdock, they want to double-check everything. It isn’t that they mistrust the yard-birds’ competence. They just want to know. Their lives depend on their equipment.

  As I wander, I ponder the mystery of the Old Man. If anything, he’s more taciturn, more remote, now that we’ve boarded the ship. He changed masks when he passed through the entry hatch. He turned on some sort of Commander’s personality engineered to fit a profile of crew expectations. Strong and silent, competent and confident. Tolerant of infractions in the personal sphere, strict regarding anything that might affect the welfare of the ship. I’ve seen the act before, on other ships. Never have I seen it assumed with such abruptness, such cold calculation. I hope he mellows out. I hope he doesn’t exclude me from his thoughts entirely. He’s half the story here.

  Westhause changed, too, when the new Commander passed through his orbit. In moments he was oblivious to anything but his astrogational toys.

  There must be a magic in the Climber. The Old Man and Westhause went away. First Watch Officer arrived. Lieutenant Yanevich is treating me like an old friend. Who else shifted personalities at the hatchway? Bradley? I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since we came aboard. I don’t know any of the others.

  I get out of their way in Ops by going exploring below. I don’t run into anyone with the time or inclination to talk till I reach the bottom of the can. There I meet Ambrose Diekereide, our Engineer-in-Training.

  I spend an hour talking the man’s speciality. He loses me after the first five minutes.

  Surviving Academy requires an acquaintance with physics.

  1 got through the courses on stubborness and an elaborate system for memorization. I have a mind which surrounds itself with armor plate when it’s faced with a physics more subtle than that imagined by Isaac Newton. I guess I really do see the fuzzy outlines of what Einstein said. Reinhardt and hypermechanics I take on faith. Despite Diekereide’s heroic effort and all my pre-reading, null and Climbing will remain pure witchcraft till the day I die.

  Diekereide says it’s possible to look at our universe from a continuum of viewpoints. Classical. Newtonian. Einsteinian. Reinridter. All points on the spectrum, like the central wavelength line of each color cast by a prism.

  The defining parameter of the Einsteinian view is the constant c, c being the velocity of light in a vacuum.

  Then along comes Reinhardt, who turns it all over by saying

  2+2 =4 sometimes, and c is a constant only under certain special conditions, although those conditions obtain almost everywhere almost all the time. He conjured functions to demonstrate that gravity is the real universal integer.

  Somewhere between those two views is where I start finding moss on both sides of the trees.

  Diekereide tells me to imagine the universe as an orange. Okay. That’s easy enough, even though my eyes tell me the universe is infinite. Hyperspace, where the Newtonian and Einsteinian rules break down, is the rind of the orange. Fine and dandy. Now friend Diekereide grips the orange like a baseball and throws the hard slider. He tells me the rind exists everywhere coequal with the universe it contains. An orange that is part rind all the way to the pips. Relates back to the curvature of space, where, if you head off on a straight line and stick with it long enough, you get back to where you started. Only, using Reinhardt’s math, you can take shortcuts because in hyperspace every point touches every other point. In perfect hyperspace, which seems to be as mythical as perfect vacuum, you can travel the light years between point A and point B in no elapsed time.

  Go explain me a cloud. Go out and explain me one of those great wads of wool called cumulus or cumulonimbus. Look it up in a book, how it works. Take that on faith. When I look at a cloud, I always wonder why the son of a bitch doesn’t fall like a rock. Like a big hunk of iceberg, down, scrunch!

  There is no pure hyper because it’s polluted by leak over of time, gravity, and subnuclear matter, though the matter is not really matter in that state. Quarks and such, which aren’t allowed to exist there, sit around shifting charge in zero elapsed time-----

  Reinhardt’s hyperspace math depends on the universe’s being closed and expanding. I gather that in that someday when we begin the collapse back toward the primal egg, hyperspace will undergo some sort of catastrophic reversal of polarity. Or, if Diekereide is right, the reversal will initiate the collapse.

  That’s why I can’t get a handle on physics. Nothing is ever what it seems, and less reliably so with every passing day.

  Again, gravity is the key.

  One common fiction is to picture hyperspace as a negative image of the universe we see, inhabited by such woolly beasts as, contra-charged subnuclear binding energies, and anti-gravitons and anti-chronons.

  Now that he has set it up, Diekereide throws the smoker up and in. He says a Climber takes it from there, in a direction “perpendicular” to hyperspace, into what is called the null.

  Ain’t no moss on the trees now. Ain’t no trees around here. And he just kyped my compass.

  In hyper 2+2 doesn’t equal 4. All right. My mother used to believe wilder things in order to receive communion. But... in null, e is only a second cousin of me2. In hyper c varies according to e in relation to a constant, m. In null even c2 can be a negative number.

  My opinion? Another triumph for the people who blessed us with V-1.

  I lost my faith in God as soon as I was old enough to discern the rampant inconsistencies and contradictions in Catholic dogma. My faith in the dogma of physics went when, after having been browbeaten with the implacable laws of thermodynamics for years, I discovered the inconsistencies and contradictions involving neutron stars, black holes, hyper, and the Hell Stars. I just can’t buy a package of laws that’s good every day but Tuesday.

  But I believe what I see and feel. I believe what works.

  As a practical matter, to make the ship Climb, or go null, Engineering pumps massive energies into the Climber’s torus, which is a closed hyper drive. When the energies become violent enough, hyper cannot tolerate the ship’s existence. It spits the tub out like a peach pit, into a level of reality wherein nothing outside the toroid’s field responds to ordinary physical law.

  I’m reminded of those constructs topologists love to play with on computers. They don’t try for just fourth-or fifth-dimensional constructs, they go for eighth or fifteenth. The ordinary mortal mind just can’t encompass that.

  Welcome to Flatland.

  I’m an observer. A narrator. I should observe and report, not comment. As a commentator I tend to become flip and shallow.

  Diekereide is a babbler, as mouthy as Westhause is off-ship. He meanders deeper into the forest. I hear the latest gossip about matter without fixed energy states, the new rumor about atoms with the nuclei outside. He gives me a blushing peek through the curtain at non-concentric electron shells and light hydrogen atoms where electron and proton are separated by infinity. He whispers that matter in null has to exist in a state of excitement cubing that the same atom would have at the heart of a star. I don’t ask which star. He might give individual specs. />
  Strange and wonderful things. I glance at the opening leading to Ship’s Services and wonder if it’s the same hole Alice tumbled down. I decide to keep an eye peeled for a talking rabbit with his nose in a wacky watch.

  Diekereide has more secrets to share.

  The more energy fed to the torus, the “higher” into null a Climber goes. Altitude represents a movement across a range of null wherein the physical constants change at a constant and predictable rate, for reasons as yet unknown.

  “Oh, really?”

  Diekereide is deep into his mysteries. He only catches the edge of my sarcasm. He gives me one puzzled glance. “Of course.”

  One of my nastier habits. If I don’t understand, I tend to mock. I caution myself again: Observe and report.

  Jokingly I ask, “What would happen if you threw the whole thing in reverse?”

  “Reverse?”

  “Sure. Sucked power out of the torus. Right out of the fabric of the universe.”

  The man has no sense of humor. He fires up Engineering’s main computer and begins pecking out questions.

  “I wasn’t serious. I was joking. For God’s sake, I don’t want to know. Tell me more about altitude.”

  Altitude is important. I know that from my pre-reading. Altitude helps determine how difficult a Climber is to detect. The higher she goes, the smaller her “shadow” or “cross section.”

  Enter the rabbit. His name is Lieutenant Varese, the Engineering Officer. He indicates that Diekereide is late for a very important date and takes over the explaining. He has a whole different style.

  Our paths have never crossed before, in this life or any other. Still, Varese has decided he isn’t going to like me. He sends a clear message. It won’t help even if I save his life. Diekereide, on the other hand, will remain my comrade and champion simply because I nod and “Uh-huh” in the right places during his monologues.

  Varcse’s unflattering estimate of my mental capacity is nearer the mark than his assistant’s. He gives me a quick PR handout of a lecture.

  He says the Effect, by which he means the Climb phenomenon, was first detected aboard overpowered singleships of the unsyncopated rotary-drive type. “The Mark Twelve fusion drive?” I ask brightly.

  One sharp nod. “Without governor or Fleet synchronization.” Scowl. Fool. You can’t buy into the club that easily.

  Pilots claimed that sudden, massive applications of power caused their drives to behave strangely, as if stalling, if you think in internal combustion terms, or temporarily flaming out, if you favor jets. Something was going on. External sensors recorded brief lapses of contact with hyper, without making concomitant brushes with norm.

  Those reports came out of the first few actions of the war. The problem didn’t arise earlier because in peacetime the vessels weren’t subjected to such vicious treatment. There were apparent psychological effects, too. The affected pilots claimed that their surroundings became “ghostly.”

  Physicists immediately posited the existence of a state wherein fusion couldn’t take place. The overexcited pilot would jam himself into null, his drive would cease fusing hydrogen, his ship would fall back...

  Frenetic research produced the mass annihilation plant. Contra-terrene hydrogen, mixing with terrene in controlled amounts, can bang out one hell of a lot of energy in any reality state.

  Demand produced a CT technology almost overnight. The first combat Climber went on patrol thirteen months after the discovery of the Climb phenomenon.

  End of PR statement. Thank you very much for your kind interest. Now will you please go away? We’re very busy down here.

  Varese doesn’t use those exact words but makes his meaning perfectly clear. I don’t think I’m going to like him much, either.

  My second hour aboard. I’ve learned a valuable lesson about serving in the Climbers. Don’t try to meet everybody and see everything right away. I’ve made myself odd man out in the hammock race.

  I returned to Ops figuring I’d take whatever was left over, once everything was settled down. There isn’t anything. The enlisted men are eyeing me. I don’t know if it’s apprehension they feel, or if my response will give them some measure of me as a man.

  This ship has no Officers’ Country. No Petty Officers’ Quarters. No Chiefs’ Quarters. The wardroom is a meter-long drop table in Ship’s Services. It doubles as a cook’s bench and ironing board. Everything has its round-the-clock use.

  I work my way through Weapons without finding a home. Feeling foolish, I’m working my way through Ship’s Services, to continuous polite negatives, when I notice Bradley watching. “Charlie, this scow is too damned egalitarian.”

  “I saw your problem coming, Lieutenant. Made you a place. Ship’s laundry.”

  The ship’s laundry is a sink-and-drainboard arrangement that doubles as a wash basin and sick bay operating table. Bradley has stretched an extra hammock in the clear space overhead. I up my estimate of the man. This is his first mission. He knows little more about the ship than I, yet he has identified a problem and taken corrective action.

  “I won’t get much sleep here.” Under ship’s gravity the nadir of the hammock should dip into the sink.

  “Maybe not. It’s the only basin aboard. But consider the bright side. You won’t have to share with anyone else.”

  “I’m tempted to throw a tantrum. Only I think I’d get damned unpopular damned fast, throwing my commission around.” A couple of Bradley’s men are watching me with stony faces, waiting for my reaction.

  “True.” He’s begun whispering. “The Old Man says seeing how much the new officers will take is their favorite sport.”

  “You and me against the universe, then. Thanks. If there’s a next time, I’ll know better than to play tourist.”

  “It’s your time outside the Service, I guess. Dulled your instincts. I caught on right away.”

  He’s skirting the edge of a painful subject. I beat the wolf down and reply, “The instincts better come back fast. I don’t want to be the poor relation at the feast forever.”

  The watchers are gone. I’ve passed the first test.

  “The Old Man says first impressions are critical. Half of us are outsiders.”

  “We’ll all know each other better than we want before this’s over.”

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” someone shouts through the hatch to Weapons. “The Old Man wants you on the Oh-one.”

  O-l. That’s Operations. O-2 is Weapons. And so forth.

  I dump my gear into my hammock and hand-over-hand up hooks welded to the keel. When we shift to operational mode, they will become hangers for slinging hammocks and stowing duffel bags.

  Getting through the hatches is miserable in parasite mode, even under minimal gravity. The hatches are against the hull, not near the keel. You have to monkey over on bars welded to the overhead. They’ll become a ladder to the keel when the vessel goes operational.

  Once at the hatch I have to hoist myself through, then repeat the process getting to Operations.

  “The man who designed this monster ought to be impaled.”

  “An oft-heard suggestion,” Yanevich says. “But the son of a bitch has gone over to the other firm.”

  “What?”

  He smiles at my expression. “That’s why we’re all so gung ho. Didn’t you know? We can’t lay hands on the bastard till we win the war. Only then we’ll have to fight over who gets to do what to him first. You want your shot, you’d better put in your paperwork now. Just don’t count on too much being left when your chit comes up.”

  “There’s got to be a better setup.”

  “No doubt. Actually, it’s a computer design. They say the programmers forgot to tell the idiot box there’d be people aboard.”

  “The Commander sent for me.”

  “Not a command performance. Just so you can watch departure if you want. We’re moving now.” He nods toward the cabin. “The Old Man is up there. Here. Take my screen. It’s on forward camera. This’ll
do as your duty and battle station for now.”

  “Not much to see.” The bearing and tilt on the camera tell me nothing. Forward. It should be staring at the wall of the wetdock. Instead, the screen shows me an arc of darkness and only a small amount of wall. The lighting seems brilliant by contrast with the darkness.

  High on the wall, at the edge of the black arc, a tiny figure in EVA gear is semaphoring its arms. I wonder what the hell he or she is up to. I’ll probably never know. One of the mysteries of TerVeen.

  A martial salvo from French horns blares through the compartment. The Old Man shouts, “Turn that crap down!” The march dwindles till it’s barely audible.

  Damn! How imperceptive can one man be? We’re moving out. We’re under way already. Must have been for quite a while. That creeping arc of darkness is naked space. The mother is crawling out of TerVeen’s backassward alimentary canal. “They didn’t waste any time.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” The man on my left offers a questioning look. A Tachyon-Detection Specialist, I see.

  “Thinking out loud. Wondering what the devil I’m doing here.” I catch the strains of the horns. “Outward Bound,” I realize. I’ve never heard them sung, but I hear some idiot has put words to an ancient march, retitled it, and made it the official Climber battle hymn. Full of eagerness to be at the enemy. A nitwit’s delight.

  Someone in the inner circle reads my mind and breaks into song. “Outward Bound,” all right. I recognize the version I beard being sung by bunny hoppers in the ruins. From somewhere else an authoritative voice says, “Stow it, Rose.” This isn’t a voice I recognize. Someone I haven’t yet met.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine our departure as it would appear to an observer stationed on the wall of the great tunnel. The Climber people come hustling in, hours after the mothercrew has begun its preparations. They swarm. Soon the mother reports all Climbers manned and all hatches sealed and tested. Her people scamper over her body, releasing the holding stays, being careful not to snap them. Winches on the tunnel walls reel them in.