John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel Page 2

"Well, partly. But, you'll be going places where thorns and fangs and stickers and stingers and the like are deadlier than any bullet. That's what the armor cloth is for, mainly. Do you have a knife?" Kelly took one out of his pocket: a spring-blade model, cheaply produced. "Get rid of it. That's only useful for sticking people. I'll find you a better one." He checked the display case at the front of the shop, finally choosing a heavy-bladed sheath knife and a small folding pocket model with several tools in the handle besides the knife blade. "These'll do just about anything. Besides which, if necessary, you can always stick people with them."

  Then Torwald selected cold-weather gear, a wrist chrono and calculator, work gloves, clothing—all the necessities for a spacer's bag. Last of all, Torwald took Kelly to the rear of the shop, where the footwear was kept. They rummaged around for a few minutes while Torwald gave him a running lecture on the virtues of good boots.

  "You might not think so, kid, but boots are more important than any other item of a spacer's equipment. That's because you never know when you may be set afoot, or in what terrain, or in what climate." Kelly didn't like the sound of the expression "set afoot."

  "Besides," Torwald continued, "a spacer has very little to do with space, any more than a sailor has with water. It's just something to get across to reach the planets, where the jobs are. And on the ground, you need boots. Aha, jackpotl" With that exclamation, he pulled a pair of boots from a bin. "Genuine pre-War unissued Space Marine boots!"

  "How can you tell they're pre-War?" Kelly asked, sorting through the bin to find a pair that fit. Torwald turned a boot sole-up.

  "See those little threaded holes? That's where they used to screw in the magnetic plates. They haven't used those plates in fifty years, but the Navy required that the mounts be left there in case of equipment failures. When the War came along, they dropped that reg, and a lot of quality, to cut costs. These boots will last you a lifetime."

  At the entrance of the shop, Kelly caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror. He saw himself as he had always dreamed, wearing a spacer's coverall and boots. The coverall hung slack from his thin frame, and the effect was that of a boy dressed up to look like a spacer. He still didn't feel like one. Then Kelly noticed Torwld reflected over his shoulder in the mirror, grinning at his self-absorption.

  "Suit's a little big," Kelly said to disguise his embarrassment.

  "You'll fill out if this ship's any kind of feeder. I imagine she is. That captain didn't strike me as the kind who'd keep a cook on the ship who didn't know the job."

  They returned to the terminal by foot, Kelly working hard to avoid a first-voyager's swagger. Torwald picked up his own spacebag from the locker and they caught a shuttle to the ship. All the way Kelly gaped around him. He had never been allowed onto the field before, and he wasn't really sure that everything was actually happening. When the shuttle drifted up to the Space Angel's dock, Kelly gazed lovingly at her space-scoured sides, her shock absorbers, pitted by contact with the soil of who knew how many thousands of worlds. From the tip of her bluntly tapering nose to the bottom of her landing gear, she was as beautiful to him as the most magnificent palace he had ever dreamed of.

  Torwald led the boy up the ramp and went though the permission-to-board ritual again, this time for Kelly. As a member of the crew, Torwald no longer needed permission to board. The gangway ended at a curving ramp that arched upward to meet the opposite wall. Torwald climbed it with practiced ease, but Kelly stumbled and felt his stomach flip as the ship's gravity-field took hold of him. The "wall" they had been advancing

  Inward became the deck, and the ship, which stood upright on its shock absorbers, all at once seemed horizontal. Kelly looked back, only to find that the concrete of the landing field now towered vertically and that the man at the top of the gangway seemed to be landing horizontally, in defiance of gravity. It was a dizzying view, so Kelly looked quickly away and followed Torwald's retreating back.

  They emerged from the entry lock into a narrow companionway and turned right. The companionway turned into a catwalk that stretched across a cavernous hold, then transformed into a companionway again, one lined with doors, some bearing labels like cargo crane, HYDROPONICS, LAUNDRY, BATH; Other doors bore no labels. When Torwald and Kelly were far forward on the ship, Torwald took a ladder leading to the upper deck. The ladder ended a few paces from the bridge. Torwald knocked at the hatch again.

  "Stand inside," They entered.

  "So, this is the new boy?" The woman looked Kelly up and down, without expression. "What's your name?"

  "Kelly, ah, Ma'am."

  "The proper form of address is Captain or Skipper. There's also Gertie, but I'll kick your behind the length of this ship if you ever use it while aboard. On this ship, Skipper is customary. Kelly what? Do you have another name?"

  "No, Ma—Skipper. It was the only name I had when the orphanage picked me up in the refugee camp, so . . ."

  "Kelly it is, then," she said, punching some keys on her console. With a click, a thin, flexible gold band extruded from a slot. She took the band and clipped it around Kelly's right wrist.

  "You are now a spacer aboard the tramp Space Angel. Your rank is Probationary Spaceman, Second Class. Once per ship-month you and the rest of the crew will turn in your bracelets to me to have your record updated." She had been businesslike to begin with, but her next instructions were even more so. "You will both now give me your personal sidearms."

  Without comment, Torwald reached into his bag and retrieved two holstered pistols. Kelly's eyes widened at the sight of them. One was an ordinary slug gun that fired a high-velocity metal missile—the kind most police carried. The other was the one that made Kelly blink. It was a Service laser, and ex-officers of the Services were the only civilians allowed to carry them on Earth. The skipper took the pistols and turned to Kelly.

  "No sidearms?" she asked.

  "Just the knives we got at the surplus shop. Do you want those?"

  "No, you can keep them as long as you don't use them on your shipmates. Any beam or high-velocity slug weapons, however, must be turned over to the ship's master to be locked in the arms safe before liftoff. If, later, you are found to have such a weapon in your posession, I can cycle you out the airlock without benefit of life-support system." She gave Kelly a few seconds to absorb that great, grim truth, then continued in a lighter tone. "Now, why don't you two go .down to the mess and meet your new shipmates?"

  They turned to leave the bridge. Over the hatch, Kelly saw the chronometer and read it automatically: 1108, 27 March 2195. A date he'd never forget.

  The rest of the crew was gathered around a big rectangular table, drinking coffee and tea. Torwald found a vacant seat and sat down. After hesitating selfconsciously, Kelly did the same. Torwald opened the conversation: "Torwald Raffen, quartermaster. This is Kelly, new ship's boy. Call me Tor."

  "Ham Sylvester," offered a great black gorilla of a man at one end of the table. The other end, the captain's seat, was unoccupied. "I'm mate and ship's husband." This last was an ancient rank still sometimes used on old ships. Sylvester's smile looked like a piano keyboard. He gestured toward a stunning woman on his left. "This is Michelle LeBlanc, med officer and cook." She smiled radiantly. Kelly could see that Torwald was hooked already.

  "Achmed Mohammed, chief engineer and pilot of our atmospheric craft." This was from the little man with the big mustache who had been at the top of the gangway when they boarded. He gestured toward ;i rather chubby red-headed boy a year or two older than Kelly, who sat next to him. "This is Lafayette Rabinowitz, my assistant."

  "Finn Cavanaugh, navigator and distiller," said a tall, black-haired and dark-eyed man who sat next to I .afayette.

  "Bertrand Sims," an elderly white-haired man next to Finn announced. "I am supercargo, accountant, and philosopher. The exotic beauty seated across from me is Nancy Wu, officer of Communications and Hydroponics and sometime specialist in alien botany." Petite, raven-haired, and almond-eyed, Nancy seem
ed far too young to be a ship's officer.

  "Does everybody double up on duties here?" asked Torwald.

  "Usually," Ham replied. "We're a multitalented bunch. Michelle's a zoologist, Finn's a chemist, I'm a heavy-weapons specialist, Bert knows history, Nancy plays the violin, and Achmed's a holographer. What do you do besides what you signed on for, Torwald?"

  "Should I tell you? I'll get roped into a lot of stuff that's outside my duties."

  "That's for sure," Ham said blandly. "But you might as well own up to it now. We'll find out eventually."

  "Well, just about everything. I was on solo, two and three-man scoutships for most of the War. That took training in just about every ship's position. I'm good at reconnaissance and charting, I know a little geology, and I can handle mining and quarrying. I can pilot atmospheric craft and small watercraft. I can handle light weapons and explosives."

  "That's good," said the mate. "With a crew this size, we can use as many capabilities as we can come by. What was your last ship?"

  "The Purple Turkey. She was a small prospector for Orion Metals and Crystals. The company went bust and the ship was put up for auction."

  "Their loss is our gain." Ham turned to Kelly, "Son, you're about to learn spacing from the bottom up. Who wants him first?" He looked around the table.

  "Dibs!" said Achmed. "Lafayette and I are going to do a complete overhaul and cleaning of the engine room once we're in space. We can use another hand."

  "I'll come down and give you a hand if I can spare the time," said Torwald.

  "Appreciate it," said the Arab. The intercom bonged.

  "Up ship in five minutes," Ham announced. "Secure those cups. Lafayette, escort Kelly to his quarters and show him how to prepare for lift-off. Torwald, you come with me."

  Kelly followed Lafayette from the mess. They descended the ladder to the lower-deck companionway, then scuffled quickly over the catwalk through the hold. Just past the hold, Lafayette opened a hatch that revealed a cramped cubicle outfitted with a folding bunk, a table, and a chair. Kelly stretched himself on the bunk at a gesture from the older boy.

  Lafayette drew two broad straps across Kelly's belly and thighs, leaving his arms outside. "These aren't really necessary, Kelly, but the safety regs say you have to be strapped in when you take off. With the grav field on, you don't usually feel much. My cabin's just across the companionway, and Achmed's in the one next to mine. You can unstrap when you hear the next bong." With that, he darted out, closing the hatch behind him.

  Kelly waited tensely, still unable to believe that it was all happening. Less than two houis before, he had been moping in a spaceport cafe, no closer to space than on the day he was released from the orphanage. Now, he had a berth aboard a tramp freighter preparing to take off for who knew where, lie was terrified that, the dream over, he would awaken on a bunk in a State transient house.

  The Space Angel began to vibrate, and Kelly felt a :.low, directionless pressure that lasted several seconds, then stopped, to be replaced by a feeling of almost-wcightlessness. Suddenly, normal gravity resumed. In a perfect artificial-gravity field, acceleration should be undetectable except by instruments, but the new ship's boy was becoming aware that nobody had developed a perfect grav field yet.

  At the next bong, Kelly unstrapped, rose, and examined his cabin. His cabin! He had never had a private room in his life. The closest he had ever come was sleeping under bushes in a park out of sight of other people. The compartment was a small Spartan chamber, but he wouldn't have traded it for a suite in the most luxurious hotel on Earth. This was a spacer's cabin, perhaps four paces long and three wide, the bunk, small desk, and chair folding neatly against the pale-green bulkhead. Former occupants had left their mark: welded to a bulkhead was a hook that must once have held a punching bag; someone had laboriously engraved an alien landscape above the bunk, apparently using manual chasing tools.

  He shook his head as he surveyed his new domain, remembering the orphanage, the State transient houses he had lived in; long dormitory halls lined with stacked bunks, never any privacy, and the inevitable thefts and victimization by gangs. He was still musing when Torwald's head appeared through the hatch.

  "Got your stuff stowed?"

  "I just got out of the bunk a minute ago."

  "You'll never cut it in space if you're going to move so slowly, Kelly. Here, your clothes go in this locker." Torwald opened a door into the bulkhead opposite the bunk. He helped Kelly hang his clothes and showed him where to stow his personal belongings. There was pathetically little to put away. They were interrupted by Finn, the navigator, who stuck his head through the hatch.

  "Come forward to the laundry and draw your linen, you two. Torwald, the laundry'll be in your charge now, by the way."

  "I figured that. The quartermaster usually gets stuck with the odd jobs that don't fall into anyone else's realm of competence."

  When Kelly returned with his linen, Torwald showed him how to fold his bunk neatly into its wall slot, then disappeared. Kelly gave his room a final fond glance, then he wandered forward to the mess, where he found Ham and the skipper reviewing some paperwork. The skipper looked up and caught sight of him.

  "Kelly, why don't you give Michelle and Tor a hand in the galley?"

  "Aye, aye, Skipper," Kelly said, feeling very spacemanlike. He found Michelle and Torwald sweating away in the cramped galley. An unfamiliar but delicious odor hung in the air.

  "What's that smell, Torwald?" Kelly asked.

  "That's fresh bread baking, can you believe it, kid? We landed in a gold mine!"

  "Of course I'm baking bread," Michelle said. "As long as the flour holds out, anyway. Kelly, get some plates out and set the table. Tor, fetch three onions from the lower bin, there, and begin chopping them up." Torwald tied on an apron and set to work while Kelly tried to figure out where the plates were secured. When he returned from setting the mess table, he found Torwald bent over a retractable chopping board with his sleeves rolled up.

  Michelle was staring at his exposed wrists, which were encircled by bands of thick scar tissue.

  "My God! Where did you get those?"

  "Never seen manacle scars, Michelle? You should see the ones on my ankles. Leg irons are heavier than manacles."

  "I'd heard they did things like that to POWs, but I didn't believe the stories," she said, with a slight shudder.

  "You shouldn't believe all the propaganda you hear; nevertheless, some of it's true."

  Kelly had seen similar scars on discharged veterans in Earthport, and he had heard some of their stories - enough to realize that Torwald must be an exceptional mental and physical specimen to have survived such treatment with his mind and health intact.

  Torwald and Michelle worked together smoothly. Both were proficient from long experience at producing large meals from the tiny space of a ship's galley. Kelly was kept busy hunting up utensils while Torwald prepared the ingredients and Michelle did the cooking.

  "I just remembered something," said Michelle. "Kelly how many places did you set?"

  "Ten."

  "Set another. There's a man aboard you two haven't met yet. He's a factor or something for the company we've contracted with for this voyage."

  "Just what is our job this trip?" Torwald asked. "The holds are empty."

  "It's all very hush-hush. The skipper and Ham wouldn't say anything before we left Earth. We're supposed to find out after dinner."

  Little was said during the meal, but everyone occasionally glanced at the man seated to the skipper's left. He was a serious little man, balding and paunchy, obviously not a spacer.

  Though he had never eaten so well in his life, Kelly was relieved when the meal was finished, because he found the exigencies of spacer table manners nerve-wracking. First, Lafayette had rebuked him for passing the salt with his left hand: many spacers came from cultures that forbade handing things with the left hand, so the custom was generally observed throughout the spacing community. When Kelly later
passed a plate piled with sliced ham—carefully using his right hand—to Achmed, the boy was surprised to learn that both the engineer and the skipper belonged to faiths that did not permit them to touch pork. Kelly was thoroughly mortified by the time the meal ended and was grateful when the skipper introduced the stranger.

  "This is Sergei Popov, factor for Minsk Mineral. He'll be along to supervise the operation we're embarking upon. Suppose you outline the project for the benefit of the crew, Sergei."

  "Minsk Mineral is a small, new company," Popov began. "The company was founded by Aleksandr Strelnikov, a geologist. During the War he was a site surveyor for construction outfits building bases in advance of Naval expansion. As geologists will, he made frequent side trips from the construction sites to explore the peculiarities of planetary makeup.

  "On Alpha Tau Pi Rho/4, a planet of geological singularity, he made a find. In a range of hills near the base site, he found a stratum of pure diamond crystal so large that it could be cut in slabs. Needless to say, Mr. Strelnikov said nothing about his find to his superiors."

  "Shortbeams!" Torwald said.

  "I beg your pardon?" Popov looked perplexed.

  "When I was interviewed, the skipper asked if I could handle a shortbeam cutter."

  "Precisely. Your quarrying skills will be necessary when we reach our destination. Now, where was I? Oh, yes! When Strelnikov returned home at the end of the War, he found some supporters. Together, they scraped up enough financial capital to form Minsk Mineral. For camouflage, we have spent several years working small claims for marginal profit. Now, we go after the big prize. We filed a mineral claim to this small site, supposedly on wildcat speculation. With the proceeds from this voyage, we'll take the mineral option for the entire planet. We decided to hire a tramp for the project in order to escape the notice of our very powerful competition."

  He had their full attention. Diamond crystal was one of the most valuable of natural materials, in heavy demand by hundreds of industries. The scent of a pure stratum on an unclaimed world would bring the big mining interests down on it like piranhas. If they could get a full cargo off that world and on the market before they were detected, they would be rich and safe.