Though Hell Should Bar the Way Read online

  I’d been carrying my safety line unhooked since I left Dorsal B. I wasn’t shuffling because Barnes was following me, but I made sure I set each magnetized boot sole firmly before I lifted my trailing foot. I stepped along uncomfortably fast. I’d pay for it in the morning—thigh muscles and skin abrasions both—but this was a test.

  I hooked the line to one of the shackles at the base of the antenna; then I checked the raised lettering on the pulley at the foot of the mast. The nearest exterior locker was just behind Dorsal A and easily within the reach of my line. I clanked up to it, setting my feet with determination as before.

  Barnes continued to shadow me. He didn’t comment on what I was doing.

  I opened the locker, pulling up the recessed catch before turning it. I was pleased to find a spool marked with the correct number—I hadn’t been sure how far Captain Leary was willing to go in a training exercise. I’d half expected to be sent to the stern locker or to inside storage.

  There was a handle on either flange of the spool. I gripped one, turned to Barnes, and mimed him taking the other one. He did—another better result than I’d feared—and we returned to Ventral A.

  I could probably have handled the spool alone if I’d had to, but there was no point in making me do that—except to prove I was on the bottom of the totem pole. I already knew that.

  When we got back to the antenna, I took a wrench from the satchel I was wearing and adjusted it to the nut of the hydraulic fitting that fed the pump. Barnes tapped my shoulder. I looked up and he touched helmets again.

  “Six took Ventral A out of service on the main console,” Barnes said. “It won’t move no matter how the course changes.”

  “All right,” I said. I finished disconnecting the hydraulic line, then took the existing cable loose from the lift spool and crimped it to the end of the fresh cable with an in-line splice. I then stuck a screwdriver through one of the holes in the take-up spool provided for the purpose and began turning it like a windlass.

  Even with the cables end to end, I couldn’t tell the difference in diameter by eye. I suspected that Barnes could have, however. Someday I’d have that much experience too.

  The cable stuck at the first shackle. The hydraulic motor could probably have dragged it through the obstruction, but I couldn’t do it by hand.

  I turned to Barnes. With hand signals I asked him to keep tension on the pulley while I went up and cleared the jam. He put his hand on the screwdriver, which was all the reply I needed. He may’ve nodded within the rigid helmet, but I couldn’t see for sure.

  This was my second trip up an antenna since reporting on watch. The suit was heavy, and I wasn’t used to wearing it. I fed the splice through the shackle, then climbed to the next one. Barnes resumed winding, thank goodness. Grasping the cable with my gauntlets and hauling it up by hand would have been a lot harder at best. I didn’t figure I’d give up—that I could control—but I might be out here dangling from the ratlines until they hauled me in.

  The splice hung at each shackle—up to the masthead and back down. I was counting them at the start—not for any reason, just for the way you do—but I lost track. I think it was seventeen.

  At the bottom of the mast, I returned to where Barnes knelt. He’d coiled the original cable beside him, as neatly as the take-up spool itself could have done. I could barely see straight, but I opened the splice and hooked the new cable to the spool. I took a single turn by hand, then removed my screwdriver/handle and reconnected the hydraulic line.

  It took me three tries to get the threads started so that I could snug it up with the wrench. Barnes watched impassively while I struggled, but when I rose from the job he led me to the semaphore stand by which messages were sent from the bridge to the riggers. There was also a hydromechanical override system for the rigging. Barnes unlocked it and hit three buttons in series.

  We both watched as antenna Ventral A telescoped neatly, with no more than the usual jumps and catches. It remained vertical: I’d only changed the extension cable, so there was no need to test whether the antenna would hinge flat and clamp to the hull for landing.

  Barnes patted me on the back and pointed to the nearer airlock. We walked to it together. I was so tired that I almost forgot to unclip my safety line from the antenna base.

  Chapter Six

  Barnes started taking off his helmet as soon as the outer hatch had locked closed. I knew that was usual for riggers, but I’d always been willing to wait for the pressure in the lock to build up a bit.

  Still, Barnes and I were the only ones in the lock this time—we were knocking off shortly before the watch ended. I wasn’t hiding in the crowd. I began to undo my catches also. The pressure had risen to ten psi by the time I had the helmet off, though.

  Barnes grinned at me. “Know where the warrant officers’ lounge is, kid?” he asked. “Level Two, aft of the crew’s quarters?”

  “I know it’s there,” I said. I’d never had occasion to visit it, and I hadn’t imagined I ever would.

  “Drop in when you’ve changed out of duty clothes,” Barnes said. “We’ll stand you a drink or three? All right?”

  “I’d be honored,” I said. Which was true, but it was an honor I could’ve done without. I’d really been looking forward to my bunk.

  Barnes was out of his hard suit in half the time it took me—even with his help on the catches. I clamped the suit to its place in the locker and walked—staggered, better—to my cabin.

  I’d been wearing shapeless garments, spacers’ slops—brand new, bought with the fifty florin advance from Cory. The cloth was soaked with sweat, and stiff with blood at a couple of the wear points. My skin burned as I pulled them off.

  My cabin didn’t have a shower, but there was a tap and basin. I sponged off with a rag, then sprayed the rubbed patches with antiseptic sealant from the first aid kit. I dressed again in RCN utilities. Aboard ship they were really dress clothes for all but the commissioned officers—which I certainly was not, except in name.

  I left my cabin, feeling a lot brighter than I had when I entered. Removing the hard suit had been a weight off me in more ways than one.

  I took the down companionway to the second level, then walked aft through the newly built crew’s quarters: bunks four high, set in alcoves partitioned by ceiling-height dividers which also provided locker space. Twenty-odd spacers were in the alcoves. Those who noticed me nodded or called, “Sir,” in acknowledgement. I nodded back, surprised that anybody recognized me.

  I’d heard that Leary’s crew, the Sissies, considered themselves an elite and were certainly a close-knit group who’d served together for years. To my surprise, they seemed willing to treat me with more consideration than I expected most junior midshipmen got in the RCN.

  There were closed compartments on either side of the corridor when I got beyond the alcoves. The nearest one on the port side was a group shower/latrine. The hatch across from it was ajar. I tapped on the panel, then eased it open enough that I could peer through.

  “Come on in, kid,” Barnes called, “and shut it after you.”

  I entered. The cabin was twelve by eighteen. There appeared to be a full galley at the aft end, and the furniture had leather cushions. Barnes and Dasi, the other bosun’s mate, sat close to one another at the round steel table in the center. On it was a tray with a bottle and tumblers, and everybody in the room was holding a drink.

  Woetjans, the bosun, and Sun, who’d been acting as purser and armorer but called himself the gunner’s mate, sat against the hull side of the cabin. They were all facing me.

  Barnes pointed to a chair across the table from him. “Sit down and pour yourself a drink,” he said. “D’ye like rum?”

  “Well enough,” I said, sitting as directed. “I’m not a drinking man, though, and it’s been a while since I last ate.”

  “We’ve got other stuff,” Sun said. “Pretty much anything you want.”

  He was the only ship-side warrant here; the others were rig
gers.

  I sipped the rum. It was lightly spiced and very powerful. I didn’t recognize the brand name, but it had been bottled in one of the Southern Tier counties and was way more expensive than anything I could’ve afforded on my own.

  Woetjans said, “Barnes says you cut the pump line before you started working on the cable even though he’d told you Six had taken Ventral A out of the computer. That so?”

  “That’s so,” I said calmly. I hope I sounded calm. “I trust Captain Leary and I trust Barnes.” I nodded across the table as I spoke. “But I don’t trust some dickhead not to throw a switch on the bridge while I’ve got my arms wrapped in cable.”

  I drank a bit more rum; a little more than I’d meant to, to tell the truth, and I almost snorted it out of my nose.

  Oddly enough, that broke my fear. I almost started laughing at the notion. I thought, There’s never a situation so bad that it can’t get worse.

  Barnes rubbed his cheek with his left hand and said, “Following procedures is all well and good, but sometimes you don’t have time for it.”

  “I know that,” I said. “In an emergency I’ll do what I have to do and if I get killed, well, I wanted to join the RCN. I didn’t need my brother being blown to hell on New Harmony to know that the job has risks. But today wasn’t one of those times, unless you’d given me a direct order.”

  I met Barnes’ eyes, then looked around at the others. The other members of the court-martial, it was sounding like.

  “Hell, you were right,” Barnes said. “I’d’ve pulled you up short if you’d cut corners today.”

  “Yeah, if we were in a rush,” Dasi said, the first he’d spoken since I entered, “Six’d get us to Saguntum without a planetfall. Instead of which we’re making three.”

  “Remember Tubby Duxford?” Woetjans said. “He was moonlighting in a dockyard when somebody reconnected the power inside. The pulley cut his hand clean off.”

  “He was a bloody fool to work for Sampson,” Barnes growled, refilling his tumbler.

  “Tubby was a bloody fool most times that I remember,” Woetjans agreed. “But if he’d bothered to disconnect the gear on the take-up spool, he’d still have his left hand.”

  I said, “Could Captain Leary really make the voyage from Cinnabar to Saguntum without planetfall?” I said. I tried a little more rum. “It’s rated as a thirty-day voyage.”

  “You bet your ass he could!” Sun said. He didn’t sound angry, though there could’ve been a challenge in the words. “And it wouldn’t be any thirty days, neither. He’s like a wizard in the Matrix, finding routes that nobody else could.”

  “If we’d really been in a hurry,” Dasi said, “we’d be aboard the Sissie instead of this pig. And I wish we bloody well were.”

  “We’re keeping a low profile,” Woetjans said. “Say, pass the bottle, will you?”

  Barnes passed the rum back. “It’s not that low,” he said. “Six is using his own name, right? And so’s the Mistress.”

  “Who notices the name of the signals officer?” Woetjans said as she poured. “Even the captain, that doesn’t set off any bells. The Princess Cecile, though, everybody’s heard of her. And if they haven’t, she still looks like a warship. Not a transport hauling diplomats around.”

  “She is a bloody warship,” Dasi said, “even if you call her a yacht.”

  “So she is,” said Woetjans, returning the bottle to Barnes. “The kid needs some more, Barnes.”

  “I still don’t see why they can’t be Captain Smith and Signals Officer Jones,” muttered Sun.

  The kid didn’t need another drink; that rum must’ve proofed close to the grain alcohol they used as working fluid in the Power Room. Still, realization that I’d passed a test had relaxed me. I didn’t object as Barnes poured me another two inches.

  “Somebody who’s looking already,” I said to Sun, “is likely to recognize Captain Leary if they see him. And if they do that and he’s pretending to be somebody else, then he is blown—they have to be spies. But if he’s just being given a responsible job while the Republic’s at peace”—I shrugged and raised my rum—“well, what’s surprising about that?”

  “Aw, you know they wouldn’t waste Six and the Mistress like that,” Sun said, but he sounded more like he was arguing than that he was sure.

  I swallowed very carefully before I said, “I don’t know anything of the sort. I was hired to take the place of a midshipman who’d been injured, on a charter carrying a foreign ministry delegation to Saguntum. And that’s all I know.”

  “Well …” said Woetjans. “I guess I could get used to a quiet voyage if I had to.”

  “I guess,” said Sun, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  I stayed a bit longer, but I refused another drink. Even so, I hung to the railing of the companionway when I returned to my cabin on Level One. It had been a good visit and had, I think, made me a real member of the crew.

  But neither my head nor my stomach could take many repetitions.

  Chapter Seven

  I spent my next duty on the hull with Captain Leary as he indicated our course to me from the Dorsal A masthead platform. The captain was using a brass rod—it must have been filled with something—between our helmets so that we could talk without actually leaning into direct contact.

  I listened to his descriptions of what I should be seeing as my eyes followed the sweep of his arm across the glowing Matrix. He could have been whistling to me in bird language and it would have made as much sense, or almost as much.

  Apparent color indicated relative energy levels compared to the level of the bubble universe I was viewing from. That was simple enough. I didn’t understand how the captain was so sure how the universes were layered, though; which one a ship should enter before it went on to the next.

  I hoped that when I compared what the captain told me with the Sunray’s plotted course, I’d understand better. Anyway, that’s what I started doing on the bridge as soon as I reentered the hull.

  Cory was on duty. He let me use the command console—the only console—and took a flat-plate display himself. There was no reason he shouldn’t have done that—nothing was happening or likely to happen—but it was still a kindly action.

  I don’t know how much it helped me, though. I felt badly out of my depth as I viewed the astrogation plot as a three-dimensional hologram and compared it with my memory of what I’d seen on the hull—and Captain Leary’s commentary on it. I’ve got a good visual memory, but the captain had been describing subtleties which continued to escape me.

  The tap on my elbow just about made me jump out of my skin. “Hellfire!” I said and turned my head.

  One of the delegation stood beside the console; she’d just touched me. I’d seen her among the ministry personnel when they were boarding, but I hadn’t had contact with any of them before now. There was no reason to: They had quarters separate from the officers and crew, and they messed separately also.

  I’d noticed this one; she was very pretty. She was older than I’d thought, though; not old, but past thirty. From a distance I’d guessed she was twenty, like me.

  “I’m Maeve Grimaud,” she said and smiled, which made her even more attractive. “I believe you’ve just been out in the Matrix?”

  Maeve’s dark-blond hair was shoulder length. She wore a two-piece outfit of soft violet fabric which wasn’t fancy but matched her eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m pretty busy now.”

  “Well, I was hoping that you could take me out on the hull,” Maeve said. She smiled again. “I’ve never seen the Matrix, and I’d like to. With a guide.”

  You could do better than me, I thought. Aloud I said, “Ma’am, I’m still in training. If you get permission from the captain, I suppose I can. But not now, please. I’m trying to apply what Captain Leary showed me before I forget it all.”

  Her face tightened a trifle, but the smile was back an instant later. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll hold you to that.�
��

  She turned and walked off the bridge. I followed her into the corridor with my eyes. She got into the companionway and I turned back to my exercise.

  Cory was looking at me from his station. He didn’t say anything, but he was smiling.

  * * *

  An hour later, a text crawl from Maeve appeared on the bottom of my display. It said that she had permission from Captain Leary to go onto the hull with my escort. I replied that I’d take her out at the end of my next watch.

  Chapter Eight

  I came in with the riggers from an uneventful watch on the hull. Starboard B hadn’t rotated fully to lock during one of the course changes, though it was close enough that I certainly hadn’t noticed the difference by eye. I suspect the experienced riggers had missed it also, because the alert came by semaphore from the bridge.

  We’d examined the track and found nothing, so we walked the mast into proper registry using bars stuck into the holes in the mast. With all twelve of us tugging, we got it into place. It made me a believer in hydraulic power, though.

  I started taking my suit off as the riggers around me stripped—as usual, in half the time it was taking me. When the watch had melted away to the showers and their bunks, Maeve came forward. I’d completely forgotten her.

  “Are you ready to take me out?” she said. She was wearing spacers’ slops, as new as mine were, but she made them look sexy. Soft, clingy fabrics were kind to her; or maybe I should say that Maeve was kind to any clothes she chose to wear.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I didn’t want to, but I’d said I would. “First we’ll find a suit to fit you.”

  There were three spares in the end locker. The medium was probably the best bet, but when I pulled it out and compared it to Maeve it didn’t look like a good one. She was the right height, but she was slim and she’d rattle around like the pea in a whistle. That would mean scrapes and bruises—at best.

  “Put her in an air suit,” said a voice behind me.