Ske was leaning against the door. I said, “Give me a hand! I’ve got to move out of here and move aboard. I won’t get any sleep at all tonight if I don’t hurry.”
“You mean you’ll be gone for a real long time?” said Ske. “Years and years? Oh, great. I’ll help you like fury!” And he pitched right in. He needn’t have been so nasty. The bandages were off his hands. Every bruise I’d given him was healed except maybe for a broken tooth or two.
And then another voice cut in. “You will get plenty of sleep on a bench in the debt court if you don’t pay your back rent!” It was, of course, Meeley.
She marched straight over and picked up the box I’d marked Fragile Heirlooms. She picked it up and held it to her chest. I was going to snatch it back when I saw the butt of a blastpistol sticking out of her apron pocket.
Ske had scooped up the remainder of my things along with copious quantities of floor dirt and marched out with them.
Meeley and I stood glaring at each other. That is to say, she glared. I was frantic. I couldn’t leave without the one set of Heller monitors I had.
“Fifty credits,” she said.
Beaten, I got out my wallet. I didn’t have all that much left. And the thought of being bested yet again by this tyrant brought in a flood of bitter memories. I owed her. I really owed her. Oh, what wouldn’t I give to. . .
I had a counterfeit hundred. It had some blood on one end from the hypnotist. I suddenly had to fight to keep a glorious grin from coming onto my face.
I shoved the counterfeit hundred at her. “I am giving you this in memory of my pleasant stay here,” I said. “If you want to reserve this room for my return, that is up to you. But you deserve what you have earned.” They would seize and execute her when she tried to present it.
She looked at the bill. She was no trained cashier. Then she looked at me with a strange twist of her head.
“Goodbye, Meeley,” I said. “May you really enjoy your immediate future.”
I strode out with the box.
We flew through the moonlit night. Voltar’s second moon was rising now and the Apparatus hangar was a weird patchwork of thin double shadows.
I was amazed how late it was. Nearly 4:00 AM. I felt awful for more reasons than no sleep but no sleep was adding to the depression.
Ske refused to help me get my baggage to the ship. I found a hand dolly by myself, loaded it and pushed it to the air lock. When I started to pick it up and carry it in, I was infuriated to see that Ske had just been sauntering along behind me, hands in pockets.
“Carry this stuff aboard!” I demanded.
He just stood there. I could have killed him.
Suddenly I decided on something. I dissembled. Now was the time to get even with him for his nastiness these past weeks.
“Ske,” I said, “you feel aggrieved that I did not make you rich. Actually I am very sorry I have not helped your career along to the place it should go.” Into the maw of Hells, I privately added.
I reached into my pocket and got out my wallet. “You know that I came into some money lately. It will be no real use to me where I am going.” Indeed it wouldn’t, or here either. “You should be rewarded for your service. I should not be miserly about it.” I fished out the remainder of the counterfeits. Bloodstains would not deter Ske and he sure was no trained cashier. I handed him the wad.
He looked at it, he looked at me. First he used one eye and then he used the other, as though he was not seeing right.
“Well, carry the baggage into the ship,” I said. “Come on, come on!”
He put the money in his pocket and started to pick up baggage. I myself cradled the Heller monitors and went aboard.
A fresh temporary sign on the last cabin down the passage before the voice-operated door said:
OFFICER GRIS
Ske dumped my things on the floor and, after a couple more loads, finished up.
I followed him back to the air lock.
“Goodbye, Ske,” I said. “Whatever happens to you, I hope it is what you truly deserve.”
He just walked off across the hangar without looking back.
How is it, I wondered, that Heller can give people money and they are happy and I give them money and they look at me so oddly? I’d have to study up on it in the psychology texts.
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 7
I did not have any inkling whatever that I was about to begin what will rank as one of the most awful days of my life.
I went back into the ship. I was tired, I was depressed. I felt all rumpled up, inside and out. If I could only get some sleep!
And there was Heller in the passageway outside my door. He had on a clean blue Fleet work-jumper, unwrinkled and creased just so. He had his inevitable red racing cap on the back of his neatly combed blond hair. He looked, despite the hour, rested and glowing with health. I hated him.
His first words increased the intensity of my emotion. “What the blast crash is this horrible stink?” Then he was staring into my cubicle.
I edged past him into my room. “It’s my baggage.” True, it was literally thrown all over the place. True, Ske had even packed decayed, broken, disposable dishes.
“Look,” said Heller, “if you were to step aboard a Fleet vessel with gear like this, dirty as you are, they’d execute you! A spacevessel operates on a closed atmosphere system. This grit would clog the air recirculation filters and I don’t think the deodorizers would handle it.” He was being patient. “There’s a crew laundry and cleaner in the opposite passageway. Throw this stuff in there and get it all washed quickly. You haven’t got much time: the groundside water and sewage and power connections will be disconnected in an hour. So speed it up.”
The thought of packing this gear anywhere appalled me. I wanted some sleep. Just a little sleep. Then a horrible thought hit me. The electronics of the monitor equipment would be ruined. Threat provokes fast thought. “I can’t,” I blurted out. “I’ve got guns, blasticks in this gear!” It had to work.
It didn’t. A shocked look came over his face. “Hey, don’t you know this whole ship will be awash with excess electrical charge? It could set them off!”
“I thought you fixed that.”
He shook his head. But he wasn’t thinking about that. Apparently, all he was registering was my objections. He stepped over to me and, in a fast frisk, began to remove blasticks, stun guns, the bladegun from my pockets. “You’re a walking arsenal! If that stuff went off, you could blow us out of space!”
He stepped over to the wall and gave a knob a spin. A locker opened. “This is a shielded, antiexplosion repository.” He started throwing my weapons into it. “Now get any other explosives out of your baggage and throw them in there.”
Thankfully, I shoved the Fragile Heirlooms box in after them.
Heller was looking at my gear again. “It’s full of just plain dirt!”
(Bleep) that Ske for packing even floor sweepings!
Heller had gone to a passageway locker and gotten some things. “This is a cleaning sheet roll. You pack your uniforms into the slots, roll it up and stuff it in the cleaning machine. They’ll come out washed and pressed. Next, this is a dirty clothes and linen cleaning sheet roll. Stuff your underclothes and socks and so on in that, roll it up and put it in the washing machine. These are waterproof bags: put all your papers and notes and so forth in them.”
He was about to leave when he turned back and looked. “I don’t see any dress uniform in that gear.”
I had never bought a General Services dress uniform. “They don’t wear them on Earth!” I meant to be scathing.
“You’ll need one for launching.”
I was too sleepy and roughed up to comprehend why in Hells you needed a dress uniform to launch a ship. (Bleep) these Fleet guys. They were crazy!
“Your driver is still out there. I’ll give him some money and he can rush over and get a shop open and bring one back.”
I groaned. I couldn’t cope w
ith all this mania for looking nice. My reluctance must have provoked him.
He stood back and pointed toward the air lock. “You take all that baggage back outside the ship and sort it out into these rolls and bags, take the rolls over to the laundry. And include that uniform you’ve got on. Then take a shower. You’ve got to be quick. You won’t have facilities much longer!”
I nearly wept. All I wanted was some sleep. I actually ached. (Bleep) these Fleet guys. He wasn’t in the Fleet now! Who cared if the air filters of the ship all clogged up?
I carried all my baggage outside the ship and began to sort it on the hangar floor.
When I had discarded the broken canisters, old newssheets and piles of just plain dirt that Ske had packed, I didn’t have too much gear, after all. The discards filled two hangar garbage cans.
I neated up the boots and caps and uniforms in the cleaning roll and then belatedly remembered I was wearing one. I emptied all my pockets into the waterproof paper-preservation bags and got my other papers into them. I stripped and put the uniform I was wearing into the cleaning roll and the dirty underthings into the washing roll.
I was standing there naked in the hangar, trying to see if I had everything straight when I heard somebody giggling. The Countess Krak was somewhere about. I didn’t wait to see where. I grabbed the rolls and bags and sprinted back into the ship.
The incident didn’t help my already rattled state. In the crew’s cleaning and laundry room I was faced with huge discs that said this thing and that on them: typical Fleet jargon, typical Fleet lightning bolts pointing at this thing and that. (Bleep) the Fleet. I jammed the rolls into what I thought were the proper doors and then carried the bags of papers back to my room.
The shower did make me feel better. I was amazed at the amount of grime that rolled off! My head cleared up. Maybe all that dirt in my hair had been pressing down on my skull and fogging me up. It was an interesting theory. I was just about to concede that maybe the Fleet had something when a nerve shattering buzzer-gong in the laundry sent me tearing back in there to get my clothes.
I retrieved the underclothes roll. Everything was beautifully clean, beautifully flat and even several tears had been nicely mended.
For a moment I couldn’t remember where I had put the uniform roll, there were too many disk doors. I started looking.
I couldn’t find it!
With great care, I retraced my every prior action in this place. I had come in the door there and I had leaned here to rest while I tried to read signs and arrows. I opened the door I was now sure I had put the uniform roll in.
Nothing! I went tearing through the place opening every possible disk door.
Nothing!
I steadied myself down. I read the signs. And then it hit me!
I had put my uniform and boots roll in the disintegrator!
I stood there, naked, weeping quietly to myself. I had no clothes to wear but underpants!
Wait! Ske had been sent out for a General Services dress uniform! All was not defeated. I could yet triumph over Fleet supercleanliness!
With hope, I rushed back to my cubicle.
Success!
A package on the bed!
Quickly, I opened it.
What was I looking at?
I recognized the colonel’s cross. That was one rank down, but Ske, of course, could be counted on to be inaccurate.
But what were all these designs?
Lying on a dead-black cloth, the red embroidery was quite startling.
Bones, hangman’s noose, electric whips. Bones? Hangman’s noose? Electric whips? The helmet. Black! A huge phosphorescent skull!
It was the dress uniform of a colonel of the Death Battalion!
It even had the belts that represented bleeding intestines!
It was the number one terror uniform of the whole Voltarian forces!
I took a step toward the door. But then I realized Ske would carefully be gone.
Legally I could wear it as I outranked it and in theory a Secondary Executive could wear any of the Apparatus uniforms.
I was too tired. I lay down on the gimbal bed. I turned on a rest-heat light. What an awful way to start a voyage. If I could just sleep for an hour maybe some of this confusion would go away. Maybe, I thought, we would be safely in space when I awoke. Little did I know!
The lights went off. They were disconnecting the groundside cables. To Hells with it. I would just go to sleep. There was nothing, really, to a space blastoff.
Some of the tension was going out of me. I was just drifting off when a dreadful clamor brought me straight up. Pounding! Hammering! It sounded like they were ripping the ship apart!
I hastily threw a towel around my waist and rushed into the passageway. The sounds redoubled. Then I realized they were coming from the forward auxiliary engine room. That was not right. We were still in the hangar! We ought to be getting crane-lifted to a trundle dolly.
In the control deck, there was Heller. He was perched on the edge of the local pilot chair, red cap on the back of his head. He was talking over the comm system to the engine room. From what he said, it was obvious that it was just a hangar engineer in there, somebody borrowed.
“I’ll lift her off very easy, so I don’t want much drive,” he was saying.
I stared through the opened view windows. The space-particle armorplates were lowered. Heller leaned out and looked around and then yelled a “Stand clear” to some people in the hangar.
My Gods! He was about to fly this thing in the hangar! He might ram another ship or zoom through the roof! “Hey,” I yelled. “Don’t try to fly in here!”
Heller was sitting back. He gave a small laugh. “That’s what tugs are for—to move around constricted spaces. Hold on, Soltan. She’s jumpy.”
Somebody with target wands was out in front of the ship. Heller reached for throttles.
I held on!
It wasn’t even a straight run! He had to go around a crane and two spaceships and then turn again to get out the door!
There was a crash under us. I thought our bottom had fallen off. But it was just the big blocks and chocks tipping over.
He just perched there on the edge of the chair and flew her out of the hangar on warp-drives!
The target man was putting him over well away from the local landing circle but still quite close to the door.
“Hold on, Soltan,” said Heller. He wasn’t doing any holding on himself, he was just working throttles and switches. I should have believed him!
With a swoop and a drop back, he stood the tug on its tail!
I went sailing down the passage and brought up hard against the door.
The tug didn’t. It touched without a quiver and was now vertically sitting just outside the hangar in the open air.
Heller swarmed down the now vertical rungs and offered me a hand and led me into the crew salon. The furniture had gimbaled over ninety degrees to adjust to the tug’s being upright now. He pulled out a hot jolt canister from the locker, passed it through the heat coil, pulled the tube up and handed it to me. He smiled. “You ought to leave the bubblebrew alone the night before a voyage, Soltan.”
It wasn’t a criticism, it was just the kind of chatter these Fleet guys engage in. Probably a joke. But it made me feel cross. I didn’t want the hot jolt. All I wanted was to go to my room and get at least a few minutes sleep. It was barely daylight outside.
I was just in the act of pushing the hot jolt away when a face jutted into the door.
It was Bawtch!
There he was, with his side-blinders flapping, his popeyes critical, his bony arms piled a yard high with paper!
“I couldn’t resist the extreme pleasure of seeing you off, Officer Gris,” he said. “And I brought you a going-away present. Some orders to stamp.”
“All those?” I groaned.
“No, only about a third. But you sure been busy ordering things! Buy, buy, buy! No wonder taxes are so high. The rest of this is just your
neglected work: you have several weeks of reports you haven’t read and I thought it might relax you on your voyage to do some honest application to your job.”
I tried to wish him away. It didn’t work. So I carried the hot jolt back to my room and fished my identoplate out of a waterproof bag, sat down at the gimbal table and started stamping. We would soon be gone. The worst was over—I thought. I would snooze from here on out.
“The rest of this,” said old Bawtch, “I’ll just put in between these voyage clamps where you can see this undone work every time you start to lie down. Hi, what’s this?”