Chapter 39 Day 6 Treasure Hunt
I looked around the table with satisfaction. Everyone (including the reclusive Dyn) except the active watch, Vynnia, Kie and Myes (who'd eaten just prior to going on watch) were seated around the saloon table chatting away. We'd just finish the midday, 3rd watch meal, one of two hot meals served in the day, and were relaxing with our desserts. Min, who I was most concerned about, was happily talking with Molaye and Rafe at her end of the table – the far end. She would extend a brief word to acknowledge me when we met, (when other crew members were around, otherwise she never saw or heard me) and she'd answer any direct question, but otherwise kept out of my way. Still, everything and everyone was functioning smoothly, so I was happy enough not to let that bother me. Too much.
Sailing under power is demanding work for the entire crew. Eight of the twelve hours of duty owed the ship are spent actively working at your specialty. Pilots on the bridge, controlling the rockets and keeping the ship on course, the engineers monitoring the engine performance while the electrical and environmental engineers looking after their systems. Our systems techs each stand a watch as lookouts as well as looking after our computer and control systems, while our chefs keep us fed, and this captain, anyway, worries and pitches in where he sees a need.
In addition, everyone stands a less intense four-hour watch where they do general labor about the ship, ranging from repairing equipment in the engineering shop to doing the ship's laundry and weeding the moss garden. Everyone has one free eight-hour double watch that most use for a long nap and one free four-hour watch to eat, relax or nap again.
The upside is that we get to enjoy meals which are hard to prepare and eat in free fall, like the one we'd just had, pasta with midnight mushrooms in a savory red sauce and fresh vegetables, fresh baked rolls and now a dessert of crisp apple fruit and blue berries in a cool sauce, with wine, cha or kaf to drink.
'I say Skipper,' said Tenry from midway down the table. 'What would you say about organizing a scavenger hunt to dig out that drone you claim to have on board after we've finished our dessert? I know Vyn is anxious for us to get working on the drones as soon as we've finished with the engines.'
'Sounds like an adventure. It's listed on our inventory, and I'd say the only place it could be is in that pile of Four Shipmates' memorabilia on the mezzanine of no. 4 hold. Can't think of another place it'd be.'
'Oh, it's up there, sure enough,' spoke up Riv. 'But I'm not sure how easy it'd be to dig it out under power. Rather buried, not that I'd know, first hand like,' he added with a laugh. 'It might be wise, however, to wait until we're in free fall to get at it.'
'Still, I'd like a look at it to see what shape it's in to get an idea if or how it can be modified with our new sensors. Vyn is pretty insistent that we get those drones up and running as soon as possible, standard Patrol operating procedure,' said Tenry. 'Even in well charted space lanes.'
'I see the wisdom in that, we'll be flying half blind soon enough, so having one ahead suits me as well,' I replied. I glanced down to table to see Min watching me. 'With your permission, of course, Tallith. I believe you inherited all the 'Shipmate's souvenirs with the ship so everything up there is your personal property.'
'By all means, Captain. Find and remove the drone.' she replied.
'Care to join us and survey your collection of strange and exotic vehicles, pieces of undefined machines and mounds of mysterious crated memorabilia?'
'Thank you, I'm looking forward to doing that some day when I've more time, but I believe I'm slated to help Saysa refine our bio-waste and use it in the nutritional synthesizer to restock our staples pantry this watch. I'd hate to miss that.'
'Ah,' I said, unable to suppress a slight smile. Briefly, the duty involved emptying the bio waste compost tank by running the sludge through a refinery machine which separates its components into pure products that are used as fertilizer for the moss garden and ingredients by the nutritional synthesizer to make things like flour, various faux grains, tubers, sugars, spices and more complicated food like pasta and faux vegetables and such used in cooking.
'First, please note that that duty is scheduled, after we eat... And secondly, I assure you that particular duty is assigned automatically by the crew list rotation, not on an individual basis.'
'If that's your story, Captain, I'd advise you to stick with it,' she replied dryly, with a very straight face. Everyone else was smiling and watching us. They thought it cute.
'Oh, I intend to,' I assured her with a smile.
I can claim no extensive personal knowledge of the other sex, but after serving for 15 years on a ship with a mixed crew, and with Riv and Lilm as a reference point, I knew enough to get a sense that things were slowly on the mend between Min and me. Oh, she was still mad at me, but no longer angry, if you get my drift. Still, I'd no intention of pushing things along, we'd a five-month passage ahead of us and I'd let the easy camaraderie and quiet routine of the ship do its job.
'Right. If anyone else cares to join this expedition, feel free,' I said to the rest of the gang.
Ten minutes later, an intrepid band of explorers – Riv and Lilm, Rafe, Molaye, Lili, Barlan, and the hounds, of course, had all found the time to join Tenry and me around the main access well, armed with torches, ready to brave the spider webs. (Yes, spiders do actually make a living on space ships. Some things you can't escape. Bugs being one of them.)
As we were under power, we trooped up the circling staircase and through the wide companionway separating the two strong rooms and under the mezzanine into the hold proper. The two quarter boxes piled in the far corner and the two drones secured to the deck beside them is more cargo that I've ever seen in no. 4 hold. Besides using the mezzanine as the ship's attic, we used the large hold – nearly 3 decks high and as wide as the ship – for team sports and games like laser tag and glider/drone/miniature space ship battles.
The mezzanine itself, however, has always been strictly off limits throughout Miccall's reign as captain, though I'm certain everyone has at one time or another, conducted their own secret and likely brief survey of what lay tumbled together piled high above the strong rooms. Of course, the larger items, the battered flier, the wheeled land car, and the floater or zep gondola were all more or less visible amongst the piles of junk secured for free fall by cargo nets, but what lay within those cargo nets, the crates and stuff remained, I think, a mystery to us all. Miccall in his time – especially when angry – was not someone to be taken lightly, and unless you were a very old shipmate – and very old shipmates were shipmates who didn't get caught – you'd find yourself on the beach at the next planet if he caught you poking about the ship's attic.
I was brave enough to conduct a brief survey only after Miccall's death and as acting captain, but I didn't press far into the dark, spider and cat infested maze. Little could be made out under the nets, boxes, crates, bits and pieces of machines and robot parts and who knows what else? I didn't linger long, and to tell the truth, having used my privilege as captain once, I've been too busy and too superstitious, to pursue any further investigation. It has a sort of graveyard of memories feel to it, not only of the Four Shipmates, but of other crew members over perhaps hundreds of years, who have for one reason or another, abandoned things aboard the Lost Star.
Without actually organizing it, we set out in parties of two, climbing the ladders set in the strong room bulkheads and over the top and into the narrow dark nooks and crevasses between the vehicles and junk as the nearly feral cats watched from the shadows and the hounds barked instructions from below. Exploring the maze would've been a lot less work in free fall since under power we had to crawl or climb over piles of junk, which limited our search to the lower levels of collection that reached two decks to the hold's ceiling. However, all of the larger, more interesting things were buried on the lower level, so we inspected the battered and strangely styled flier and found another one deeper in, both seemingly scarred by plasma fire. And
there's that wide, six wheeled land vehicle and at least five one person rocket boards, some in pieces, which drew Molaye's full attention, plus the large, 12 meter by 9-meter cylinder, with a streamlined, windowed cockpit forward and twin enclosed propellers aft, half buried in cargo nets. The windows of the passenger compartment were too dirty to see more than vague outlines of objects within the locked fuselage even using the powerful torch lights.
'It's not a zep gondola,' declared Riv, surveying it next to me.
'It certainly wouldn't be able to fly unaided with those two stubs of a wing,' I said studying it. 'I suppose the rest of the wings could be buried somewhere, but what makes you certain it's not a lighter-than-air flier?'
'Well, Skipper, I grew up on a pioneer planet. We'd no surface roads to speak of, so we did all our traveling about in zeps. You knew how to fly a zep by the time you were twelve. I know zeps and this isn't a zep gondola. The balance is all wrong to begin with, and there's half a dozen other little things that don't add up either.'
'The wings and tail seem incomplete. Couldn't the gas bag attachments be fitted on to them?'
He shook his head, 'The wings are too far back and with no nose attachment, the whole rig would be out of balance. And look at the way it's built. It's far too heavy and too securely sealed to be a zep. Neb, those bulges might even be weapon pods, and believe me, you don't fight air battles in a zep... I'm not sure what it is. I'm thinking it might be some sort of boat or submarine, though the propellers look wrong for that...'
'I think I found it!' called out Tenry. In fairness, he was likely the only one actually looking for the drone.
I edged my way back through the narrow crevasses to join Tenry along the edge of the mezzanine to where he was standing looking at a fuselage about a meter in diameter. Both ends were hidden in unruly piles of boxes held together by cargo nets, but it seemed unlikely to be anything but the drone.
'Can't be anything else, can it?' I said after a quick inspection. It showed the wear you'd expect to see on something that spent a great deal of time pushing through the dust clouds of the drift. I glanced around considering the options for shifting it to the deck. It'd be a lot easier in free fall and we'd not have time to work on it until then. Still, I did have this big crew on hand whose supposed purpose was to find it, so I called them together and we set out to rig a scheme of cargo handling cables to lift off the cargo netted boxes off and then, after releasing the drone from the cables that secured it to the deck, lift it up and off the mezzanine and on to a makeshift frame on the hold's deck next to the other two – all of which took several hours and struck me as a study in inefficiency. If I didn't know they were all just having fun cursing and arguing with each other about the best way to do everything the whole time, I'd be pretty nervous about the competence of the crew I was sailing with.
As Riv and I were making a final check of the drone's lashings and cradle, he asked with a grin, 'When are you and Tallith going to make the announcement?'
'What announcement?' I asked, absently.
'Oh, you know. I've a high spirited woman of my own, Skipper, so I know how things are. I can see things aren't quite right with you two at the moment, but that'll blow over. Though it'll happen faster if you were to go crawling back to her, begging for forgiveness.'
I gave him a look. He was only half kidding.
'Well, Chief, I've not your vast experience in crawling back for forgiveness. However, I can assure you we settled all the issues between us on day one, so there's no need for anyone to be begging forgiveness,' I replied as we turned for the access well. 'And I can't begin to imagine what sort of announcement you expect.'
Actually, I could and it made me rather angry. You have to put up with a lot of guff from your chief engineer, but I rather felt this fell outside of what was required. It's customary aboard many ships for crew members in a relationship to openly declare that relationship. Declared shipboard partnerships are considered inviolable in the hope of keeping the tiny isolated society of a space ship more or less on even keel. Spaceers who violate this custom – and of course there are those who do – are usually sent ashore at the next planet of call. So if the crew suspected some sort of romantic entanglement between Min and myself, they'd also expect that it would be announced sooner or later as demanded by the age old custom. This, as I had feared, is what that little hint of Min's from the Yacht Club to keep Vynnia and Tenry from asking questions has led too. Though in fairness, shanghaiing Min may have rather confirmed this expectation, so I was not entirely blameless. Still...
'Perhaps you know best, they're all different,' he continued, turning a blind eye to my sarcasm. 'But from what I can see, everything's not been settled. The sooner we get this settled, the better it'll be, so don't hesitate to crawl back. Makes 'em feel good. And trust me, it's well worth it.'
'I'll keep that sage wisdom in mind for some time, in the far distant future, when it may come in handy. However, for your information, Riv – and get this straight – Min and I have an understanding that requires no announcement, she employs me as the captain of her ship. That's the beginning and end of it. Am I making myself clear?'
He gave me a look. 'Then why are you getting so angry? You never get angry.'
'I'm getting angry because you – and anyone else who thinks like you – must think I'm a complete fool. I resent that.'
'Awe, come now Skipper. You can't fool us. She may be giving you the icy shoulder at the moment, but we can tell. All you need do is make the first move. Why put it off?'
A rocket flared.
'You're making book on this fantasy, aren't you?'
'Why Skipper, I'd never make a book on something like that...'
'Then you've got a pool up and running.'
'I've not, and well, I don't know why you'd get that idea, anyway,' he said going for an innocent look which didn't make orbit.
'You're evading my question, so put me down for never. How much do I owe you?'
'Awe, come on, Skipper. Don't get mad. We're just having a little fun.'
'Refund the credits. It isn't going to happen. The whole idea is ridiculous. Think about it, mate. How'd it look for a captain sleeping with his owner, or an owner sleeping with her captain? Both of them would be suspected of being weak or a fool and neither would be respected. This misunderstanding has grown way out of proportion.'
'You carried her off against her will... You're not one to take a chance like that just to enforce a contract... We know you too well to believe that for an instant.'
'Listen carefully. Here's the deal. Prior to her inheriting the ship I'd offered her the pilot's berth promising her we'd make a tramp spaceer out of her while giving her the chance to meet all of her Min & Co.'s clients while doing so. After she learned the ship was hers, she decided she needed to learn ship owning by serving aboard and so she signed on with the understanding that she'd be a pilot first and a ship-owner only when needed. And that's how things stand.'
'And she changed her mind and you kidnapped her.'
'I chose to enforce my Guild contract with her because I'd come on hard evidence that she was in immediate danger from the people who killed her folks and knew I hadn't the time to convince her of that before we sailed. She knows she's a target and didn't want to put us in danger by serving aboard. I think we can deal with it, so I acted as I did. Don't read more into than that.'
'Well, don't get so mad about it. You'd be more convincing. And when you do decide to take the plunge, just give your old shipmate a wink.'
I sighed. Back in the old days, before the robots revolted, I wouldn't have needed a chief engineer... We live in dark times.