Spanky chuckled. The old rivalry between the deck (apes) and engineering (snipes) divisions still existed, but it had been “tamed down” a little without the caustic presence of Dean Laney aboard. He’d been of the “old school,” in which duties were strictly defined in an almost labor union-like fashion. The Bosun wasn’t much different, but he’d adjusted to the new imperatives. Laney hadn’t. It hadn’t been so bad when Chief Donaghey had ridden herd on the man, but after Donaghey’s death, Laney became a tyrant. There just wasn’t room for that on something as small as
Walker
anymore. On this mission, Laney had remained behind to supervise the production of heavy industry—something his obnoxious personality was well suited for. And besides, the running—mostly—joke was that if somebody “accidentally” dropped something big and heavy on him, the world would be a better place.
In the meantime, the Lemurian apes and snipes on
Walker
got along much better. None of the ’Cats liked the Imperial term “Ape Folk,” even if, as far as anyone knew, they’d never seen an ape; they understood it was derogatory and condescending. In contrast, the “deck apes” didn’t mind that term at all. It was occupational . . . and almost fraternal. They embraced it just as the engineering divisions accepted the title of “snipes” in much the same way. There were still pranks and jokes, and a competitive spirit existed between them, but they’d all been through far too much together to lose sight of the fact that they were all on the same side, part of the same clan, living on the same Home. Spanky, who’d had a little college before joining the Navy as a mere recruit and rising as a “mustang,” was reminded of guys from different college fraternities who played on the same football team. In spite of his remarks to Carl Bashear—remarks expected of him—he liked it this way.
“Where’re we goin’?” Bashear asked as they left the repair detail to their work and moved aft.
“Something I gotta do, then I’ll go topside with you and have a look at that winch. You say it ain’t blowin’ steam?”
Carl shook his head. “Nope. Nothin’ blows steam around here ’cept the fellas now and then.” He shook his head. “That ain’t natural either. That gasket stuff Letts came up with works almost too good. No, there’s something else, and I gotta get it fixed. The Skipper wants Mr. Reynolds to fly tomorrow, or the next day, when we get underway.” He pointed in the general direction of land. “According to our charts, that thing’s not even supposed to be there. The Brit charts don’t show it either, for that matter, but they do show a lot of stuff a little farther along that ain’t right.” Bashear scratched his head. “So far, west of here, everything seems about the same. Nothing too out of the ordinary that different sea levels wouldn’t account for, other than the occasional volcanic island that ain’t where it’s supposed to be. What’s the deal with these atolls and stuff?”
Spanky shrugged. “Ask Mr. Bradford. He knows all that stuff. From what I gather though, these pissant desert islands and atolls pile up on old coral reefs or something. Kind of random. No reason they had to show up the same place they were ‘back home,’ since there was no real reason them other ones formed where they did. Just luck that the first coral pod—or whatever they are—took root where it did. The islands are in the same basic area, but no reason they should be
exactly
the same either.”
Bashear looked at him skeptically. “Well, either way, the Skipper wants Reynolds to fly.” He chuckled. “Now that he’s fixed all the holes in his plane. You heard one of the holes was ‘self-inflicted’?”
“I heard,” said Spanky, “and you ought to cut the kid some slack. Most of the holes
weren’t
self-inflicted and there were a lot of’em. All he had to shoot back with was a pistol, for Crissakes. So he got a little fixated on his target. Happens all the time. Just think how many observers prob’ly shot their own planes to pieces back in the Great War.” He grinned. “Think how many times those battlewagon boys blew their own observation planes over the side just in exercises, before the war! You get ’em in a real fight, they’d probably blast their own damn ship!”
“Well, any way,” Bashear continued as they worked their way aft, “Skipper wants him to chart shoals and such from the air so we’ll know if we can ever get something big through here, like a ’Cat flattop. I can’t lift the plane without the winch.”
“Right,” Spanky replied, and left it at that. Reynolds had taken a lot of ribbing for shooting his own plane, but the kid had guts. Once he’d finally decided what to do with himself, he’d become a good pilot for one of the tiny, rickety-looking “Nancys,” or prototype seaplanes Ben Mallory had designed. Spanky wouldn’t have gone up in one of the things, and he respected anyone willing to do something he wouldn’t.
Together, he and Bashear cycled through the air lock into the forward fireroom. ’Cats looked up as they passed, nodding respectfully but remaining at their posts. The number two boiler was lit. Cycling through to the aft fireroom was almost like passing through another Squall to a different world all over again. In contrast to the peaceful routine they’d just left, the aft fireroom was a scene of chittering excitement, shouted commands, and almost frantic activity. Black soot floated in the air along with the downy filaments of Lemurian undercoats. Spanky sneezed again and blew his nose into his fingers. He no longer slung the snot at the deck plates as he once had, but wiped his fingers on a rag hanging from his pocket. Somehow, slinging snot at
Walker
just didn’t seem right anymore.
“Tabby!” He had to shout to be heard over the commotion in the fireroom.
Tab-At, or “Tabby” as the original “Mice” (a pair of extraordinarily insular and unusual firemen who actually looked quite a bit like small rodents) had christened her before she became one of the Mice herself, looked up from where she stood, striking a pose similar to the one Spanky himself often used. Her hands rested on admittedly shapelier, disconcertingly feminine hips, even though she belonged to an entirely different species. The tail that twitched beneath her abbreviated kilt at Spanky’s shout undermined the image to some degree, but oddly, not too much. As usual, whenever Spanky encountered her, she wasn’t wearing a shirt either. This time at least, she probably hadn’t been doing it just to get his goat, since her silky gray fur was lathered with sweat and covered with soot. Even so, Spanky had to take a deep breath and force himself not to bellow at her for being out of “uniform” once again. Her beguilingly . . . human . . . well-rounded breasts were the very reason he’d dictated that every fireman must wear at least a T-shirt on duty. None of the firemen in the aft fireroom had T-shirts on now, because for this task he’d given special dispensation. That didn’t mean Tabby or the several other female “firemen” they now had were included in that dispensation. Spanky had thought that was understood. Apparently it wasn’t. ’Cats could be very literal-minded—especially when they wanted to be.
“Tabby,” he repeated, “get over here!”
Bashear looked at Spanky curiously, wondering what this was about. That he hadn’t thrown an instant fit over the lack of T-shirts was strange enough. His opinion on that was common knowledge and a source of some amusement. None of the female deck apes (and there were a lot more of them) had to wear shirts for special duties that anyone else might remove theirs to perform. But Spanky McFarlane had bent as far as he intended to just by letting females of any sort into his engineering spaces. If they were going to be down there, they were going to wear clothes! Tabby tormented him constantly, but he was torn by his own personal axiom: if somebody does something that bothers you, either pretend it doesn’t or make them stop. In Tabby’s case, he couldn’t figure out how to do the second, so he tried unsuccessfully to do the first. He wasn’t fooling anybody.
Oddly, instead of undermining his authority, his . . . predicament probably strengthened it. Early on, he was viewed by many ’Cats as some sort of omniscient, unapproachable wizard. They now knew he wasn’t, but although they weren’t terrified of him anymore, they were amazed that a mere mortal such as they (albeit without a tail) could be so knowledgeable about machines. Wizards and magicians didn’t have to know things, or so the tales of younglings said. They just cast spells and things occurred. Spanky couldn’t cast spells; he actually knew things, and he’d come by all that knowledge the hard way: he’d learned it the same way everyone else had to, and they respected him immensely for that.
Tabby hopped over the ’Cats on the deck plates that were hauling debris from within the number three boiler with a hoe-shaped tool on their hands and knees. Others gathered the stuff up and put it in heavy canvas bags to be taken topside. Amazingly, Tabby snatched a T-shirt from a valve wheel as she approached and pulled it over her head.
“You wanna see me, sir?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Spanky gestured back at the work. “That bad, eh?”
She shrugged. “Whoever overhauled that boiler did a piss-poor job on the firebrick. Waadn’t me. I guess with the hurry we were in, somebody got sloppy.”
“Probably so. You were supposed to tell me if you wound up having to tear it down and rebrick it, though.”
“We be done by tomorrow,” she assured him. “I didn’t think it was worth buggin’ you about.”
Spanky took a breath. “Now you listen to me,” he said in a low, intense tone. “Anything that affects this ship’s readiness to steam at a moment’s notice—anything the Skipper needs to know before he can make a decision based on that readiness—is always worth buggin’ me about, no matter how trivial it seems. Last I heard, you were planning on replacing a few firebricks, and I specifically told you to let me know if you had to do more. I didn’t hear from you, so I came in here thinking we still had three boilers, in a pinch. Right now, the Skipper thinks he has three boilers, but he doesn’t, does he? All he’s got is two—with a lot of crap in the way of one of’em. What if a squadron of them Brit, Imperial, Company—whatever—frigates suddenly shows up on the horizon? The Skipper’ll be deciding what to do based on his
certain knowledge
he’s got three boilers! Don’t
ever
just jump up and crack this deep into something without telling me first! Is that understood?”
Tears welled in Tabby’s large amber eyes.
Spanky was stunned. “Goddamn!” he managed. “Are you fixin’ to
cry
?” His voice was incredulous. His own eyes went wide when Tabby’s tears gushed out and coursed down her furry cheeks.
“I . . . I so sorry!” Tabby practically moaned. As usual when she was upset or excited, she lost her careful drawl. “You got so much . . . so much other stuff; I just want to not bother you with more! I sorry, Spaanky! Please no be maad! I never, ever do nothing you no tell me! I wear shirt all the time! Just please no be maad at me!”
For a moment Spanky and Bashear were both speechless. Tabby sniffled loudly a few more times, then tried to collect herself. She began wiping the tears on her clean shirt, smudging it with wet soot and firebrick dust.
“I’ll swan,” Bashear said softly.
“Shut up, you!” Spanky growled. He turned back to Tabby. “Ah, lookie here,” he said clumsily. “No sweat. Just don’t do it anymore, see? ” Tabby nodded almost spastically. “All right, then.” He looked around, staring at anything but her for a few moments. If the work detail had heard or even paused in their labor, he couldn’t tell. They were still drawing the broken firebricks and passing them along to others, who dropped them into sacks. Finally Spanky looked back at Tabby. He was glad she’d apparently composed herself. He hadn’t come here to jump all over her; he actually had something else on his mind. Still, what he’d said was true and needed saying. Especially now.
“Look, Tabby, just get the job done, now you’ve started it. I’ll report the boiler’s down to the Skipper.” He gestured at the detail. “Things look well enough in hand.” He paused. “You’re doing a good job here in the firerooms. Those squirrelly Mice taught you all right, God knows how. I expect you know the old gal’s boilers as well as they do by now.” He paused again and took a breath. “Here’s the deal. I made Aubrey chief down here because he was a torpedoman. He knew turbines and steam plants, but he never was really all that good with the big stuff. Never should’ve used him like that. Should’ve left him working with Bernie Sandison back in Baalkpan.” He shook his head. “Well, Aubrey’s dead, and I’m going to split Engineering back into two divisions: steam plant and propulsion. Every fireman on this tub is a ’Cat now, and it would be stupid to take some guy off something else and put him in charge in here when you’d know more than he would, so as of right now, you’re chief of the boiler division, got that?”
Tabby’s surprised eyes began to fill again.
“But only if you don’t start cryin’ over it, for God’s sake!” Spanky added hastily. “There will be
no
cryin’ in the firerooms, clear? Not ever!”
Instead of answering, Tabby lunged forward and touched him on the cheek with her muzzle, tongue slightly extended. Spanky knew the gesture was a Lemurian version of a modest, chaste kiss. Passionate kissing involved much more licking. Even so, he was thunderstruck and didn’t have a chance to say anything before Tabby bolted back to the detail she was overseeing.
Bashear, uncertain how Spanky would respond, guided him back toward the air lock and they cycled through. “C’mon,” he said. “I still need you to look at that winch.”
“What the hell was that all about?” Spanky asked quietly, still torn between shock, fury, and . . . God knew what. “What the hell’s got into her? I
had
to chew her out about letting me know, but I figgered she’d make some crack and get back to work! Then she starts bawling! And that . . . whatever she did to me . . . Do you think she’s crackin’ up?”
“You really want to know what I think?” Bashear asked as they went through the forward air lock and headed for the companionway.
“Well . . . sure.”
“I think she’s sweet on you,” Bashear said seriously.
“Horsefeathers!”
“Sweeter than honey on a comb. I wonder how many engineers ever had sweethearts in the fireroom? Not many, I hope.”