Godspeed (16 page)

Doctor Eileen really liked Danny Shaker, I could tell she did. There was a lighter tone in her voice when she talked to him, and a different little smile on her face. It did not surprise me. I felt the same way myself. He was different from any man I had ever met in and around Toltoona.

"Let me start by asking a question," she went on. "You and I both know that the Isolation is real, and that before it happened there was travel between the stars. Materials and people came to Erin from far away, from planets around other stars. Why do you and your crew think they stopped coming?"

"Me and my crew? To be honest, Doctor, I doubt if anyone else on this ship spends two minutes a year worrying that question. But I do. I think there must have been some great emergency, far from Maveen. All the Godspeed ships were called there to help. And every one was destroyed. Perhaps in a great battle, but much more likely in some natural disaster. Maybe the whole fleet was turned to vapor in one flash of a supernova. Maybe they were all trapped around a chasm singularity, and they are still there. But we don't know. And I have to agree with my crew: Without real
information,
guesswork like this is no better than a game."

"I totally concur. But what do you think happened to the
other
worlds, all the other destinations served by the Godspeed ships?"

That made Danny Shaker's smooth forehead wrinkle, and he crossed his arms to massage his biceps through the sleeves of his blue jacket. "I don't like to think too much about that. I've been to libraries in Skibbereen and Middletown. There's not much left in the general data banks, but you get the feeling that our survival on Erin after the Isolation was not easy."

"That's a prize understatement, if ever I heard one." Walter Hamilton had been sitting aloof, still not fully over his spacesickness but much improved in the tenth-gravity field of our living quarters. Now he was showing signs of life.

"The first generation after Isolation survived by an eyelash," he went on. "Without the space launch system, and the local space fleet, and the access to minerals and light metals from the Forty Worlds . . ."

He hiccuped, put his hands on his stomach, and lapsed back to silence.

"So we came through—just." Danny Shaker turned again to Doctor Eileen. "But you know that we're not really in the clear. The records show that every human on Erin, and many of our most useful plants and animals, came here from somewhere else. We're not
native
to the planet. It's not right for us. We keep struggling along, but we do it by hauling in what we need from the Forty Worlds. And we do it with a fleet of ships that can't be replaced, and gets older and more worn every year. I know that from personal experience—every year, something else goes wrong with the
Cuchulain.

"But the old records make another fact even clearer. Of all the planets settled and colonized by humans, Erin is
the most like Earth,
the most like the original home world. So I think—and as I said, I don't like to think about this too much—I think that we have been very lucky. We have survived. Maybe a handful of other planets have, too." He glanced my way, and this time there was no wink or smile. "But for most of them, and for the
future
generations on Erin—"

"I agree with every word you say." Doctor Eileen cut him off before he could finish the sentence, I think because I was present. "And now I'll tell you why I'm asking you to fly us into the middle of the Maze. I believe we will find evidence, on the body whose coordinates I gave you, of something new about the Godspeed Drive."

"Something new?" Shaker's face was impassive again. "What?"

"I can't tell you—because I don't know. It could be as little as an old base, empty and deserted. Or it could be as much as a whole ship, with a Drive intact. But as I'm sure you'll agree,
anything
about the Godspeed Drive has to be investigated. Erin's future may depend on it."

"Indeed it may." Danny Shaker stood up. "I appreciate your sharing this information with me."

"You've earned it. And of course, you are free to pass what I have said on to your crew."

Danny Shaker's mouth quirked, and there was again a gleam of humor in his eyes and mouth. "I will certainly do that, Doctor. But I ought to be honest with you, and say that I do not expect them to show much interest—unless we find a ship that's designed for in-System use, and might replace the
Cuchulain
with something newer. They're a pretty practical bunch of people, my crewmen—and I'm glad of it. Give me a crew that keeps the waste disposal system working, and I'll take them any time over a group that spends their energy on future worries."

He was turning to go, but Duncan West, who had been sitting blank-faced through all the conversation, suddenly spoke. "I'll bet it's not that," he said.

Doctor Eileen stared at him as if he were a statue that had just come to life. "Not what?"

I understood her reaction. Uncle Duncan
never
contributed to such general discussions of the past and future.

"Not the computer software," he said. "I bet it's not that that's causing the problem with the cleaning robots. I'm no computer specialist, but I've never heard of a glitch that could just drop individual rooms off, here and there, and leave the rest serviced."

"What else could it be?" Danny Shaker was staring at Duncan, too, as though he had never seen him before.

"I don't know. But I'd be more than willing to take a look."

"A look? No touching the computer, you realize—hardware or software."

"Of course not. I told you, I don't know computers. Well?"

Danny Shaker shook his head at first in refusal, but then he gave a what-do-I-have-to-lose shrug of his shoulders. He turned to Doctor Eileen. "Can you show him the place you were talking about?"

"I think so. But Jay could do it better."

Danny Shaker raised an eyebrow at me. "Jay?"

"I'm sure I can."

"Then let's go."

I led the two men away, suddenly unsure of myself. I had been there twice, but I'd seen proof that spacesickness made me forget things. There was a lot of relief in me when I opened a door, and revealed the dusty and neglected room beyond it.

Uncle Duncan went in and stared around for half a minute, a vacant look on his face. "How would they enter and leave?—I mean the cleaning robots."

Danny Shaker did not speak. He just pointed to a little panel, low on the far wall. Uncle Duncan walked forward without another word, leaving tracks in the deep dust, and knelt in front of the panel. He slid it carefully to one side. "It doesn't stick."

"I'm sure we checked that. I feel sure it's the computer, hardware or software."

But Duncan was shaking his head, and lying flat to stick his head past the open panel. "The cleaners come right through here." His voice was muffled. "Everything up to the back of the panel is vacuumed and polished. Which means . . ."

He wriggled back a foot or two, and began to feel carefully around the rear side of the panel's perimeter. After a few moments he grunted, rolled over onto his back, and inched his way forward until his head had again vanished behind the panel. His hands went up.

"Here we are."

"Did you find something?" I couldn't see what he was doing in there.

"Inhibitor circuit." He had his forearms close together, and he seemed to be pushing hard on something. "Met this sort of thing—before." His voice was uneven, grunting with effort. "Seen it back home. Break—in strip. See, Jay,"—he finally brought his arms down, and wiggled his way back out—"you see, Jay, there's times when people don't want cleaning robots in a room. Maybe they're using it themselves for something that needs privacy, or maybe they have something in there that they're worried about because it's super-fragile or valuable. So some rooms have an inhibitor circuit strip that you can turn on. It sits just where a cleaning robot enters the room, and it inhibits the robot, tells it not to go in. The normal condition has the inhibitor turned off, so the room gets cleaned. But if a circuit cross-connect goes
bad,
like it did here, then you can get the inhibitor permanently
on
. . ."

He stood up and dusted himself off. The hair on the back of his head was thick with grime. "Well, that's it. We won't know for sure, of course, until the cleaners come through again."

The whole thing, from our entry into the room until I was helping Duncan to dust himself off, had taken no more than three minutes.

Danny Shaker's face was a picture. "Do you do this sort of thing often?"

"I make my living at it—I don't mean cleaning machines, I mean with all sorts of mechanical fixes."

"Then would you like to earn some money while we're on the way to the Maze? If you would, I'll have Tom Toole add you to the ship's pay roster. We have a hundred little things that need fixing, all over the
Cuchulain.
"

"Sounds good to me. No promises, though. And no computer work—I'm just a tinkerer."

Duncan was as laid back as ever. I don't really think he cared much about the money, but he sure did like to fiddle with things.

Anyway, from that moment on he began to work with the crew of the
Cuchulain,
just as though he had been one of them for years. And every day he had a meeting with Danny Shaker, to discuss problems and progress.

It was typical Uncle Duncan. No matter where he was, or what was going on, he always managed to make his easygoing way right to the center of things. I envied him, and I wondered how he did it.

CHAPTER 14

The next day the cleaning robots went into the room where we had been and scrubbed, vacuumed, and polished it spotless. I know, because I went there especially to check.

Duncan didn't bother to go with me. He
knew
his fix would work. It was the knack.

He did a couple of other small jobs for Danny Shaker, but the big one came four days later.

Shaker appeared early in the morning—the ship kept Erin time—in our living quarters.

"I know some of you are going to hate this," he said, "but we have to go to free-fall conditions for five or six hours. We have a slight drive imbalance, and it's costing us time and energy. We're going to do a partial strip-down and take a look." He glanced at Duncan. "You'd be welcome." And then to me, seeing my longing expression, "You, too, Jay, if you want. You said that you'd like to see the drive close up."

I had, and I did. But I couldn't go with them at once, because I had promised to help Jim Swift move things out of a spare cabin filled with junk. He had been sharing a place with Walter Hamilton, which was no new experience for either of them, except that now Jim complained that in low gravity his cabin companion snored like a handsaw.

The drive went off while we were in the middle of the move, and working in free-fall slowed us down a lot. Nothing would stay where we put it! It was forty minutes after the drive went off before I started along the column that led aft from the living section through he empty and collapsed cargo hold, and on toward the drive area. On the way I paused to take another look at a cargo beetle, clamped to the column. The controls inside looked so easy. I wondered if one day I might get to fly one.

No use asking Patrick O'Rourke, that was sure. I didn't know why, but he glared at me from his great height whenever he saw me, as though I was some sort of ship's vermin scuttling along at his feet. But maybe Danny Shaker or Tom Toole would let me fly.

The rear compartment when I came to it was dark and gloomy. It was frightening, even filled with good air and with the drive off. I knew what monstrous energies were generated here. The feel of those energies was somehow still present, lingering on like an odd taste in my mouth.

I thought for a moment that the others were right there, in the first aft compartment that I came to. Then there was a moment of horror, when the four shapes I had seen in the dim light turned into four headless, legless corpses. The working men had taken their jackets off, and the blue clothing hung suspended in the middle of the compartment. Something (I learned later that it was static electricity) had made the chest and sleeves billow out full, as though there were torsos and arms inside them.

I took a deep breath, told myself that I was an idiot, and moved on to the main drive compartment.

Of course, the work of dismantling and inspecting the suspect drive unit had not waited for me. The housing had been swung free, and Uncle Duncan and Danny Shaker, together with two general crewmen, Joseph Munroe and Robert Doonan, were inside it, peering along the huge conical channel. Their legs all stuck out in different directions. I shivered again, because if the drive went on their heads would be vaporized in a microsecond. But it didn't seem to worry them in the least.

"I'll bet it's that." Uncle Duncan's voice sounded strange, echoing off the hard vault of the drive chamber. "Is it easy to take apart?"

"No problem." That was Danny Shaker. "Once I can get my hands on the right tools."

An arm came groping in the air, toward a length of rough cloth in which wrenches were secured every few inches.

"I'm here," I said. "I can get it for you. Which one do you want?"

"Give me the whole thing. We may have to try a few." Danny Shaker's right hand was still groping about behind him. I reached out to give him the set of wrenches, and saw that his shirt sleeve had somehow been snagged on the edge of the drive opening.

The sleeve was pulled up, to reveal his bare upper arm. I saw, with a horror that made anything earlier seem like nothing, the vivid red line of a scar across his biceps, midway between elbow and shoulder. As I placed the tools in his hand I moved my head to get a view of the underside of his arm. How far did the scar extend?

All the way—all the way around his arm!

I was in the drive chamber for another two hours, while Duncan and the crew made their repairs to the drive. I have to take Duncan's word to Doctor Eileen that that's what they were doing, because I took no notice of their actions. My mind was far away, back in the front room of the house with Paddy Enderton, while he raved about Dan, the armless half of the two-half-man. The bad one, the one much worse than brother Stan.