Chapter 53 Day 163 Getting by to Zilantre
I don't know what I would have set down, if I'd found time to write during the turmoil precipitated by Dyn's disappearance, compounded by the effects of the wyrm weather on us all. Writing about them now I find I can describe the events rather dispassionately, but this account would likely have read quite differently if I'd written it twenty-nine days ago.
The sleep machine gave me four hours of solid sleep, and so when I was awakened by Vynnia to be informed that Dyn, by his vid account, had somehow left the ship, I was able to react decisively. I decided to keep my meeting with Dyn a secret. While I could trust my shipmates with the ring and the book, I couldn't trust them not to spin yarns about them. If Miccall's darq gem ring, and the Travel Book of Faylyen became common knowledge in the various Spaceer's Rows, I feared we'd all become targets of thieves and pirates, especially if we had to operate in the drifts for a while. Dyn's advice to follow the Four Shipmate's policy of keeping secrets by not telling them, seemed wise.
While Dyn's farewell to his shipmates included his use of the book to leave the ship, he left no proof of its existence, keeping it mythical. I ordered a complete search of the ship, stem to stern, inside and between hulls, including the between the hull and hold section that houses the fuel tanks and is in hard vacuum. Knowing how susceptible I am to the effects of the wyrm, I couldn't be certain of what actually happened in the strong room. Miccall's ring was still in my pocket when I awoke, so that much seemed real, but as for the rest, even his departure for Faylyen could have been a wyrm weather vision. I half expected to find him holed up somewhere within the ship, but two days of searching yielded nothing.
I also ordered the techs to conduct a full review of the ship's environmental data and a physical check of all the sensors installed at the airlocks and other access points to see if we could locate Dyn or find a believable way that he could've left the ship undetected.
None of the sensors appeared to have been tampered with but the bio data did provide one – uncomfortable – lead.
'Well Willy, I've gone over the environmental data, and I may have found one rather strange bit of data,' said Rafe, with a curious glance to me.
'And that would be?' I asked carefully.
'The ship's environmental tracking data suggests the presence of a person within the strong room on the night Dyn disappeared, even though there's no sensor data to indicate the door was opened, which is very strange,' he said watching me. 'I suspect that Dyn can move about the ship without leaving a trace if he cares to. He is rather one with the ship...'
'Well they searched the strong room, the safe and all the boxes large enough to hide in... So have there been any other indications since?' I asked, thinking hard on how much I'd have to tell Rafe. And how believable it might, or might not, be.
He shook his head, 'No. And it just seemed to blink out early in the sixth watch, though not before a jump in activity, consistent with several more people.'
'Cats,' I said. 'Only me and the cats.' If he wanted to, and may have, he could comb through the ship's environmental monitoring system and track me as I moved through the ship. Lying wasn't an option.
'And Dyn?' Rafe asked quietly.
'And Dyn. He was waiting for me, knowing my habit of making the rounds before I retire for the night,' I admitted. 'We had a short talk, essentially along the lines of his vid, which is to say how very unhappy he was with Fen gone, and he'd discovered a way out using The Travel Book of Faylyen. Apparently the thin reality within a wyrm singularity lowers the bar enough to physically travel to Faylyen via the pages of the book. Or so he claimed. And so he had to act or miss this chance.
'As you know, I'd already seen the ghost of Glen Colin, so I make no pretense of being a reliable witness, but as far as I could see, he simply opened the book and vanished. The cats and I sat around for a time trying to make sense of it, without any success. Last night was the strangest night of my life and, well, I really don't want to add to my reputation as a medium of the supernatural. Glen Colin is enough, so I've kept Dyn's apparent supernatural departure to myself, since disappearing into a fabled book is no real explanation but brings my sanity once more into question,' I said, hoping that Rafe would either fail to notice or decide not to ask whether the book went with Dyn or not since it was safer for the book to remain a myth – though I would trust Rafe to keep the secret if it came down to that.
Rafe considered that for a while, and sighed, 'Willy, my lad, we're in strange space, and as you say, it doesn't make things any easier to accept. But you did see him vanish before your eyes?'
I sighed, 'Rafe, I thought I did, but I'm not a reliable witness, I saw a number of things during the night that I know now where not real, so meeting Dyn could easily be part of that sequence of fantasy, or at least a mixture of the real and the wyrm.'
'Aye, I guess it's best left unsaid. An undetected exit via an airlock, or a hidden hole somewhere amongst the fuel tanks is perhaps the best guess, for those who don't care for the supernatural...'
We left it at that, though I've a feeling Rafe was simply being discrete. Someday I'll have to spin my yarn to him, but he left it for saner times.
On awakening, I also ordered the engine saddle extension to be reinforced along Glen Colin's suggestions. Lilm, who I gathered, had argued for a wider safety margin was on board, but Riv and Myes rather resented a mere ship's captain poking his nose into what was seen as the engine room's concern.
Riv made that clear to me.
'I tell you Skipper, the extension is solid enough,' he said urgently, red in the face, after having tracked me down.
'Perhaps. But I want it to be super solid enough,' I replied, resigned to this meeting since I made my decision. 'Better safe than sorry.'
'All because of some dream or hallucination or even the ghost of Glen Colin telling you so?'
'Yes.' I wasn't an engineer, so there was no point claiming any expertise on my part.
'I've been a ship's chief engineer for more than a century. I think I know something about engines and ship design, and I'm telling you that that saddle extension is more than what we need as it is. And I resent being second guessed by a still wet behind the ears bridge officer. If you don't trust my judgment, maybe you should find yourself a new chief engineer.'
'Well, I'm lucky that I have three others on board to choose from. But I'm not replacing you. I'm giving you your orders, Chief. Maybe I haven't been giving you enough of them for you to get used to it, but get used to it you must. As for the source of my concern, well, I'm no more superstitious than the next spaceer, but when I have a dream, or a hallucination, or a visit by the ghost of Glen Colin warning me to reinforce the saddle extension, I take it. No questions asked. And so would you,' I replied. It was, at least amongst spaceers, a telling argument. You may find less superstitious people downside, but not in space.
He considered that, opened his mouth, and thought better of it, and with a sulky shrug asked, 'Where am I to get the D-Steel to do the job?'
'Use the new drone davit to start. If you need more, we'll cut some out of the dismantled bulkhead.'
'The davit we spent half a voyage building?'
'I know it's our pride and joy, and a marvel of ingenuity, but we need to get to Zilantre and we're going to have to use the cut down engine hard to get there on time. I'm sure we'll have time to rebuild the davit...'
'If I have to design and rebuild the saddle it'll delay decel and we won't make Zilantre on schedule.'
'No it won't. We've still two days left to finish cutting the bell. And after that we'll slowly work up the engine. You'll have time to design and install the additional supports as we go along. You can draw on the crew to help. I want that 5x safety margin. Jump to it' Chief.'
He glared at me for several moments. And grinned. 'Right.' he said and with a wink turned to go.
You don't spend 16 years cooped up in a space ship with someone without arriving at a pretty fair und
erstanding of your shipmates. Riv had to object to my interference in his domain. He also knew it was my right to do so. But he had to test me as well. And then, too, he's no more superstitious than the next spaceer himself.
And then there was the encounter with Min. That was entirely a wyrm experience, since Min was in her room and asleep. The wyrm weather had apparently allowed me to overturn a rock in my unconscious mind to project what was underneath it as a vivid dream. I'm not sure – or at least not willing to admit – that the wyrm vision really represents my true feelings. I wonder if it might've included something of Min's actual attitude, since she didn't appear as I'd have thought I'd project her in a dream. I gave it a lot of thought and turned that particular rock back over again. In any event, it didn't seem to affect Min, who treated me no differently, that hidden reserve remaining, which I appreciated a lot more, after my imaginary encounter.
Everyone gave me grief about not only meeting the ghost of Glen Colin, but for my forcing the engineers to follow his advice. Still, while none of them are more superstitious than the next spaceer – you do have to pay attention to the omens, and well, we could hardly go wrong strengthening the saddle extension. Safety first. All, in all, it's another yarn that I, unfortunately, can add to my growing collection of old spaceer claims yarns that I'll be able use to entertain (or bore) my downside friends – if I should survive long enough to become Ol'Captain Wil, the cha planter...
I logged the wyrm weather and Dyn's vid and fruitless search without comment. The Guild and Unity authorities can make what they will of it. The wyrm weather persisted for the better part of a week, though its intensity slowly declined after Dyn's disappearance, and while the moving shadows and the feeling of not being quite alone as we should have been persisted, knowing their source went a long way towards making them less stressful. In the end, it seemed that Min, Riv, Lili and Kie were unaffected by the wyrm, Lilm and I were the most affected, and everyone else more or less suffered the moving shadows effect at least in the heart of the storm.
As a side note I should mention that while I have not remained quite the patron saint of the cats of no. 4 hold since the end of the wyrm weather, they have remained friendly with me, greeting me casually when I make my rounds or pass the time of day with me when I'm up in no. 4 hold to work out or fence with Barlan, Molaye and Kie.
Our service bot finished severing the bell two days after Dyn's disappearance and we secured the severed section in no. 2 hold. Within hours we began test firing the main rocket, and slowly began our decel using our balancing rockets. Everything went smoothly, allowing Lilm to oversee the redesign, construction and installation of additional braces and cross braces to the saddle extension while the engine testing was ongoing. Once we got the engine up to half force, we did indeed find, as predicted by Glen Colin, that we'd get persistent flow and vortex irregularities that rattled the engine until stepped down and back up again. Nothing we couldn't handle, but the engine now needed to be watched very carefully. Riv pointed out that its subtle twisting and rough running never exceeded the limits of the originally installed extension, but it certainly made running the rockets more comfortable knowing we had a margin of error to work with. As far as I'm concerned, we owed Glen Colin.
Five days after we started testing the engine, and once we had the reinforced extension fully installed, we began decelerating at full force, riding the sometimes rough and touchy main engine at about half force and using the balancing engines nearly flat out to deceleration hard in order to not over run Zilantre and make our deadline. The nine engines running hot for the next twenty-four days kept the engineers busy, but we managed to slip into Zilantre orbit with half a day to spare – 163 days out of Sanre-tay orbit.
The LinTin Chartered Trading Company’s tug will be here within the hour to collect the first of their two boats and Limai & O've Mining Chartered tug is on its way to collect one of its boats too, so I won't have time to write much more for at least several days. Riv has already requested the gig to visit the asteroid based shipyards that circle Zilantre to see what we can afford to do about the main engine.
Vynnia has just let me know the LinTin boat has arrived, so I'll close this account.
It has been, well, an interesting passage.