A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (19 page)

“What’s going on, here?” asked Glom, coming on the scene.

“What’s up, sir,” answered MacHinery, as he turned, “is I was expostulating with this murdering poisoner about the condition of the deck when his pot-polisher gets through, and he come at me with his assegai.”

“Take this stuff inside,” said the officer to Birdwhistle. “Don’t you know any more than to polish pots on a busy deck? Hey?” his voice rose shrilly, “Don’t you know any more’n that? Get that mess into the galley before you do any more harm.”

He aimed a kick at Birdwhistle, who dodged it by a scant inch before disappearing into the steamy depths of the galley.

“And what are you doing here?” Glom demanded of Judikha.

“Just after my watch’s dinner, sir,” she replied, picking up the bucket of whack.

“Did she have any hand in this, MacHinery?”

“No, sir. Merely a noncombatant spectator.”

“Then get on out,” he snarled at her and then, to the engineer, “MacHinery, you’re to keep your hands off other people and your nose out of their business. I’ll see to the men and I’ll do the fighting. Give the doctor his knife.”

“Very good, Mr. Glom; but I’ll not stand quiet before a knife, I’ll assure you of that.” And the knife hissed through the door, plunging half its length into the wall a quarter inch from where the cook’s ear would have been had Serpukhoffians possessed ears.

“Good enough,” approved Glom. “And, Doctor, you keep off the deck or you’ll have me to deal with.”

“Yes, sir,” muttered the cook unconvincingly.

With a grunt, the second mate turned on his heel and left, self-gratified with his diplomacy. MacHinery returned to his shop with his bundle of tools and the incident was apparently complete. But Judikha thought that in the future there would be little human brotherhood between the engineer and the cook, even if both of them had been human.

-VI-

“What kept you so long, youngster?” asked Wopple, as Judikha returned with the meal. Her eight watch mates were seated on boxes, buckets and chests around the dishpan, picking out what they could stomach, according to the tolerances of each. She squatted on a bucket and helped herself.

“There was a scrap,” she answered. “The engineer floored the cook with a pipe wrench.”

“Not a bad idea in general. What for in particular?”

“Cook came at him with a knife. What kind of food is this, anyhow? Regular thing?”

“Government allowance. But the government don’t require that it’s gotta be good.”

“I’m throwing the whole thing out the door,” said a red-faced woman in disgust; she was the largest female Judikha had ever seen, built something along the lines of an overtly mammalian forklift.

“Steady as you go there, Bombula,” said Wopple. “Ye’ll only have to lick it up later. Best to sit down.”

The woman subsided, albeit unhappily. Judikha returned her attention to her meal. She spooned off a portion of greasy, yellow fat that quivered like jelly, filling the cabin with its rancid odor. Nor did it bear closer inspection: there were very tiny things in it, moving nervously with perhaps a justified anxiety.

“I don’t know,” said Judikha, leaning back against the bunk behind her. “I suppose I could eat this when I’m hungry enough, but not now.”

“Plenty of hard bread in the stores,” said Wopple. “We’ll get our pound a day and nothing else when the rest is gone, so go easy.”

Judikha chewed on a piece of the bread and was amazed to find it fresh and not at all what she had expected from its name. Following her example, the others dumped their messes back into the common bucket and ate only the bread. They were a cosmopolitan crowd, representative of most of the space faring planets, and already had learned each other’s names, if nothing else. Judikha had of course given them her newly-invented alias. Besides Wopple, there was the burly woman, Bombula of Wockata V, who was constructed on so large a scale that even Judikha’s gangling six feet seemed insignificant. But where Judikha was long-limbed, lean and sinuous, Bombula was built to the rigorous specifications of a high-gravity world. The relatively low gravity inside the
Rasputin
, however, lent her the unexpected grace of a tethered balloon. She refused to wear anything other than a kind of cast-iron G-string, which to Judikha seemed an altogether unnecessary precaution. She admired Bombula’s enormous muscles. They looked like the slabs of clay of a sculptor’s rough sketch. Even her keg-shaped breasts seemed muscled. There was a bulbous-eyed Grubbian named Slikkenarn, whose mucous-covered, boneless body was only slightly less off-putting than the food—he left globs of evil-smelling snot everywhere and even the least fastidious of the crew complained; an emaciated Parnfattaar who could only whistle his name so Judikha avoided talking to him (rather than admit that she couldn’t whistle)—besides, he looked ill—tuberculosis or something, she supposed—and she preferred to keep her distance; and a scarcely less emaciated newtoid named OooOl who may have been female. Her translucent skin held a peculiarly morbid fascination for Judikha; there were a thousand interesting things, strange and colorful, barely visible, that shifted and slid and pulsated beneath OooOl’s cellophane skin. Aarngla-ak-Paheen was a Spazzite; Bob, a Terrian like Judikha, was a small, bland, balding man who looked more like an insurance salesman than a spaceman; and finally a shriveled little old man whose infirm teeth made his name sound different every time he spoke it. She could not imagine what useful function he could have and was shocked to later discover him outworking everyone but Wopple and Bombula. She learned later that only the old man, Wopple and the big woman had been in space before; all the others were, like herself, shanghaied neophytes.

“We’ll get this,” said Wopple, “until we tell the skipper who done up the mate last night.”

“Who was it?” asked Bombula.

“Don’t know and don’t care. Wouldn’t tell if I did know. But it was none of this watch, you bet. Veronica’s the only one I’d suspect,” Wopple added, “and she was dopey all night.”

“Well, I’ll be damned if I can stand much of this sort of muck,” whined Bob. “What’s a fellow going to do, anyhow? Gimme a fair bellyful, I say, and then I can work with the next man. But what can anyone do if half starved? I’m one for going aft and telling the old man what he is.”

“Oh, shut up! You’d give a shipmate away quick enough, but you’d not face anyone aft!”

“Wouldn’t I? Just get this crowd to back me, I say, and I’ll do the talkin’,” said Bob, bravely rising to his feet, “and if you can’t follow me,” he added darkly, “I might have something to say about who done the deed.” He looked steadily at Wopple and the Udskayan also drew himself erect with surprising speed. He collared the little man, shook him, smacked him with an open hand against one ear, changed hands and smacked him on the other ear, then sat him down heavily onto a chest.

“If I’d gone far enough to tackle the mate,” he said sternly, “I’d ha’ finished the job and been in irons ‘fore this. Now, keep quiet. You know that it takes a better lot of men than this crowd to go aft with any kind of bluff. You know what it means, in a Rastablanaplanian ship, to go aft with a kick about grub or anything else. You’ll get nothing but abuse and if you stick it out, you’ll get toasted.”

The little Terrian was dazed, and remained quiet.

“I don’t know about all that,” said Ool, picking away a shred of loose skin that, Judikha feared, suggested that the creature might soon begin molting. “On my last ship, we go aft and we kick about the duff that had in it no flies and the skipper he come down and he look and he give hell to the steward and flies we get.”

“What planet was that ship from?” demanded Wopple.

“It was the
Frog Prince
out of Schlittnillen VIII.”

“The difference between heaven and hell! This is a Rastablanaplanian ship with a Rastablanaplanian skipper and mate. I’m a Rastablanaplanian—at least, an Udskayan—and kinda proud of my planet, but I’m not proud of some of its products, and I’d rather be in hell without claws than aboard of a Rastablanaplanian ship with the mates down on me. Don’t talk to me about going aft unless you’re ready to murder the officers and take the ship. What then? Can you astrogate? Is there a man or woman here who can even tune a blaster? Not one. Suppose you could. Only a matter of time before you’d be toasted. They always get you. But you couldn’t get that far. Think on it: here’s the skipper with a brace of toasters, the big second mate—mate now—with another pair, the steward with a gun in his fist, MacHinery with his wrench and the cook with his knives. And the cook’s a whole team by himself. Made a knife-play on the engineer because he kicked. What did MacHinery do, Veronica?”

“Made a row over the pot-scrubbing scarring the deck, and shook up the cook’s assistant.”

“There you are. Unless you’re ready to kill that cook, kill the second mate—anyone here like to try
that
?—kill MacHinery and kill the skipper, you might as well shut up about going aft with a kick.”

“I know that cook,” said Bombula in her oboe voice. “‘E don’t ‘member me, but I ‘member ‘im. I see ‘im in Pootra—take tree policemens put ‘im in jail. Bad bug. But Mr. Glom I could squish in me fist.”

“That cook, bad temper very,” agreed Slikkenarn. “This morning I my coffee get and say he I get out or scald he me. What for? I do know not.”

“Tell him to go soak his head,” said Bob, whom Judikha was realizing was recklessly feisty considering his unprepossessing size and appearance.

“No! What for? I the coffee take—I out get. It pleasant is not scalded to be.”

“I was in a freighter out of Thwikletta,” said Bob, “and the cook was a big bug like this one and he gave us all the good things he stole from the steward, and he took care and shook out the weevils from the bread before he soaked it and he boiled the meat in fresh water and he stole that water—”

“And what’d you do for the cook?” demanded Wopple.

“Oh, we’d clean out the traps, swab the galley, fetch him his—”

“Like a slave,” interrupted the disgusted Judikha. “And you call yourself a human? Slaving for a bug! Say, Mr. Wopple, admitting that an officer runs the watch on deck, does the cook run the watch below in these ships? Does the cook do as he likes? Does the cook have a boss?”

“The steward.”

“And is the steward responsible for the way our grub is served—responsible for this?” She pointed to a pan where lunch was slowly dying.

“Partly. But I reckon our steward don’t dictate much to this cook. Notice him? He ain’t much bigger’n a Dewetsdorpian hemorrhoid-weevil.”

“Yeah, was the steward,” put in Bombula. “‘E tell th’ doctor cut our whack. Old man didn’t say nothin’.”

“Well, I’ll say somethin’,” said Bob, “I’m going to break his bloody face the next time I catch him forrard the galley door!”

“I’ll jump him myself,” added Slikkenarn.

“And I’ll jump you both if you do,” said Wopple, angrily. “The steward ain’t to blame.”

“Yes, it was the steward,” said Ool. “He weigh out the meat and the bread. He give the cook orders. We must punish the steward for this.”

This conversation frightened Judikha, who shared Wopple’s realistic assessment of the crew. With the exception of Bombula, there was not one of her watch mates—individually or in combination—who could prove a match for any one of the officers—especially since the officers had all the weapons.

The others understood Interlingua better than they spoke it and their approving nods and gestures added to the steward’s indictment. But before they had formulated a specific for this punishment the klaxon signaling half past twelve was sounded. They all went out as automatically as machines, as though their recent conversation had never taken place, to relieve the previous watch. Judikha returned to the galley the dinner she had only just brought out.

As she passed the engineer’s shop, MacHinery stopped her with a gesture.

“You were a witness, young lassie, were you not,” he said, “of that cook’s ungovernable temper and unwarranted assault upon me? Did you ever hear the like of it? He’s been a-grinding and a-sharpening of his knife gone fifteen meenutes; and I very much fear it’s for me.”

The engineer’s bilious face took on such a serio-comic expression that it brought a grin to Judikha’s, but she listened and did indeed hear the
wheese wheech
of a knife being honed on a stone in the galley.

“He’s after you, MacHinery,” she said, as she passed on. “You’re done for.”

The knife-grinding stopped as she entered the galley and the cook looked up from his murderous business. When he saw who it was and what she bore in her hands his already scowling face grew black with rage.

“You can take that slop to the incinerator,” he growled. “What do you think I want with it?”

“Dump it yourself,” she said, completely forgetting the lieutenant’s injunction to not make any trouble.

“What’d you say? Hey? You talk like that to
me?
”

“You heard it, didn’t you?”

Judikha still held the pail in her hands and as the villainous face leaned toward her, the yellowed tusks bared, the whiteless eyes glittering like wet capers, she obeyed an impulse born of anger and revulsion. She lifted the pail, tilted it and pushed it into the evil face before her. It landed squarely and the cook was deluged with the greasy mess. It splashed down his face and neck and flooded the floor. As he blindly struck the bucket from Judikha’s hand, he slipped and fell. By the time the cook slammed onto the deck with a sonorous boom, Judikha’s long legs had carried her well out of the galley and halfway back to her watch mates. She passed Lieutenant Birdwhistle, who was receiving orders from Glom. He had seen her act and he gave her a look even blacker than the cook’s had been, but her reception by Wopple and her watch mates was joyous, once she had reported what she had done. This was gratifying, but her first worry was the immediate future of her own skin, which not for the first time in her life her temper had put in jeopardy.

-VII-

Judikha worked in the pump room all that afternoon. She was puzzled by the tolerance that Glom showed her, a consideration he did not show any of the others. She could only imagine it was because he had heard—via the engineer—how she had humiliated the cook. Since there was little love lost between them—indeed, between the cook and anyone else—his forbearance might have been a way of expressing to her his approval. This theory was given some credence when she saw the second mate in the doorway of the galley with the cook, whose red face was still glossy with congealed grease as he gesticulated and shouted, pointing toward where Judikha worked with feigned nonchalance on the valve tree. The mate merely shoved the cook back into the galley and turned away.