The Sirens of Space (26 page)

“
Close enough, Mr. Ashton,” Cook
smiled patiently. “You’re close enough. Now, replay the simulation,
please.” Soon, the screen showed incoming fire, and a graphic on
the board registered the enemy score against the ship’s
shields.

“
Slow the replay to quarter-speed, Mr.
Ashton. Go on—quarter-speed.” Winking at Mendelson and ignoring the
quizzical looks of the others, Cook leaned back in his chair.
“Everyone look at the screen, and remember what you see. This is
your last simulation, slowed to more manageable levels. Look at it
and imagine yourselves floating freely through time. The universe
around you moves at this speed, but your own clock can beat to any
time you find comfortable.

“
This is how things should look to you
during a battle. This is how they
will
look to you, once you’ve mastered your
station. The flow of time has slowed, from a mad torrent to a
placid lake of crystal clarity, and time itself has become your
friend, one you can use and trust, whatever the dangers, whatever
the enemy.

“
Watch the screen,” said Cook, a
hardened edge creeping into his soothing voice. “Mr. Ashton
deserves our thanks, for conducting these drills to help you to
this point of proficiency, where you are at last capable and
competent. It was a thankless task, and one that I find quite
impossible, but it’s among the most crucial for any new ship. His
job is over now. He can only bring you part of the way. My job
starts where he has left off, and I will bring you the rest of the
way—to where your no longer have to struggle to do your job, and
your actions will seem as natural as breathing—to where you and
your comrades on the bridge are one with the ship.”

The enemy cruisers completed their
circling maneuvers, and were bearing down on the
d’Artagnan
, fully armed.

“
Mr. Ashton, turn off the grader. The
computer can give a rough measure of progress and you should all
use it for your off-hours practice, but it’s outlived its
usefulness here. I prefer to evaluate you all myself. Now, release
the simulator to manual control and let’s keep things at this speed
for a while, shall we? I think we’ll find it more
relaxing.

“
One more thing,” he added, smiling
mischievously at his first officer. “We’ll do it my way, this
time.” He leaned back in the chair, resting his elbows on the
armrests and lightly touching his fingertips together as he gazed
at the screen. Outwardly, he seemed the quintessence of calm
repose, like a tenured professor sitting in his den for an evening
of study and quiet reflection. But his eyes blazed in fierce
concentration, sending chills down the spines of those on the
bridge perceptive enough to notice.

“
Miss Palmer—blank all guns, all power
to shields, and stand by to recharge the keel guns. Helm—constant
heading, prepare to drop us dead south, two hundred fifty
degrees.”

* * *

Like giant snakes,
buried
in layer upon layer of black insulation, the engine coils stretched
in both directions before disappearing beyond the opposite bends in
the ship. The dark corridor walls, wide enough to let two men pass
comfortably abreast on either side, did nothing to relieve the
gloom. The air dripped like jungle heat, dank and oppressive, but
without even the prospect of rain to bring relief.

Crewman Technician Tom Sullivan’s coil
crew was still laying replacement cables in 277-port-12, as they
had for the last week. Whoever installed the original coils had not
gone overboard on quality control, he thought. There was scarcely a
length of coil that didn’t needed adjusting, or outright
replacement. It was almost criminal, what these contractors got
away with, and this was not the only pocket of trouble on the ship.
If all the
Challengers
were
like this, they’d be best off sending the lot back to the factory
and demanding their money back. But that wasn’t the way of any
world in the Universe, these days. The procurement industry had too
many well-placed friends, and there was no guarantee that anyone
else would do a better job, anyhow.

“
All right,” he shouted. “Take ten.
And Esshaki, try not to trip over the torch wires this time.” He
eased down to the floor and leaned back against the
coil.

Sweat coursed from his pores. At his age, he
thought, he should be thinking about his pension, not working like
a jungle shoate on Demeter. Panting, he removed his shirt and tried
to wipe his face and chest, but soon gave it up. The shirt was
already soaked, and going bare-chested in this humidity didn’t help
at all. Soon, the rest of the crew gathered near the water jug,
some rinsing themselves, others grateful for the chance to gulp a
few mouthfuls of tepid water.

“
Needing some comp’ny there, Sully?”
Denny Barrett, his face dripping wet, came and sat next to
Sullivan. Like Sully, Barrett was a Valhallan and full technician;
together, the two of them supervised an eight-man crew. With too
few yeomen to go around they’d been conscripted for nanny duty, and
were beginning to understand why greenshirts were such crusty,
cantankerous sorts. They had two apprentices and six raw recruits
in the bunch, and had their hands full, explaining to the tyros
what they should be doing.

“
Can’t say I like this any better’n I
ever did,” said Sully. “Leastways before, whatever else I did I got
to see some progress. Now, seems like we butt our heads sideways
against the wall just to stay even.”

Barrett laughed. “Always a fountain of
joy, eh Sully? Seems I remember a cute birdie on the old
B R McLintock
.”

“
Now, don’t start up on me,
Denny.”

“
Pert as a song, she was. And singing
all day long the praises of one Thomas McGiver
Sullivan.”

“
Denny, I’m telling you— ”

“
But there was always something,
wasn’t there, Sully? She was late for this or that, or too tired
when you were in the mood to romp. Seems once I remember you
arguing over a shade of lipstick you didn’t much fancy. Then, one
day—lo and behold—she’s off with another and you’re left
complaining about that turn, too.”

Sully sighed and rested his head against the
insulation on the coil behind him. She’d been pretty, with lips
like wine and a smile like a breeze, a ray of sunshine in a life of
rain. He’d often wondered what his life would have been like, if
only…but he banished such mawkish thoughts from his mind as soon as
they arose. Cozzies had little room for nostalgia, and space was no
place to dwell in the past.

“
A-course,” nudged Denny, “she did
give old man Dugan a touch of Demetrian Flu—and Demmy Rot’s a
fitting climax to his career, wouldn’t you say?”

The two old friends laughed. They’d been
through a lot together. Seen all of Terra between them and knew all
the redshirts on all the ships along the frontier. They’d laughed
and cried, and hugged within an inch of breaking their backs when
they found they’d drawn the same duty. For the first time in ages,
and even in the midst of the newest ship of the line in the whole
Fleet, the old-timers felt at home.

“
Sully?” called a voice from the water
jug; it was Martindale, the tyro from Ceres. He was holding up a
cup, spilling water over its sides. Sully motioned for him to bring
it; it was nice that some of the recruits showed their elders some
respect, he thought.

“
Here you go, Sully,” he smiled. He
was a tall lad, with tightly curled hair and olive skin. Hidden
beneath his boyish looks and slender physique were muscles like
strands of steel, and on top of everything else, he came from a
family of spacers. It was little wonder that, almost alone among
the redshirt tyros, Martindale won quick acceptance from the
veterans, and respect for his knowledge of a ship’s
insides.

“
If I didn’t know better, I’d say your
mother gave you birth in the engine room of a schooner. Thanks,
lad.”

“
Must be hard on you old-timers,” said
Martindale, towering over his two supervisors, “stringing cable
like this, day after day.”

“
Aye to that,” called a voice from
behind them. It was Bartee, another of the tyros. He’d finished his
cup of water and was coming to join the group; the rest of the crew
was close behind.

“
I swear,” he continued, “this crap
goes on and on. No let up, no break, not even for New Year. And not
so much as a word of thanks for all our hard work. That’s something
they never tell you about, when you sign the enlistment papers. The
endless hours in a sweatshop, the fact that there’s no end to it
all.”

“
Now that’s enough out of you,” Sully
snapped, startled by the fury in his own voice. Denny and Larsen,
another new recruit, helped him to his feet. “No matter what I may
think of you, you’re a Cozzie now. A tyro, to be sure about it, but
you’re a full fledged Cosmic Guardsman. And if you think this is
rough, you wait for the real work to start. You ain’t done full
watch in the midst of an ion storm, or battle with a pirate
squadron whose only thought is spreading your atoms from here to
kingdom come. I’ve had about all I’ll stand of your belly-aching,
and I’ll not stand for it any longer.”

“
But if that tyrant of a bridge-rat
had any sense— ”

“
And I’ll not stand your bad-mouthing
the Skipper, neither. Not unless you want me to tan your groundtoad
butt myself. Skipper drives us tough—tough as any I’ve seen, maybe
tougher. That, I’ll grant you. But he’s no shirker. He works as
hard as any of us himself, maybe twice as hard. He won’t have us
doing anything he’ll shy from himself. And he won’t lean on us at
all, without there be a reason for it. If he says sweat, then we
sweat. And we’ll do it from now until he says to quit, even if he
takes us through every holiday from here to Rigel and back
again.

“
Am I understood?”

Bartee barely kept a sullen silence.

“
Am I understood, Mr.
Bartee?”

“
That’s no reason— ” the tyro began,
but his reply was cut short by the clearing whistle of the
ship-wide intercom, muffled as it sounded through the engine
coils.

“
Attention,” came a voice over the
speakers. “May I have your attention, please. This is the Captain.”
It was the third time Cook had used the intercom to address the
entire crew. The first time, he announced that the galley would not
serve beer until further notice; the next time it was to inform the
crew that they were sequestered, and none of them could leave the
ship without his written permission until the ship was starworthy.
His voice on the speaker knotted every stomach on the
ship.

“
That’s no reason...,” Bartee began
again, his voice dripping indignation; this time he was silenced by
his superiors.

“
Quiet,” stormed Sullivan. “The
Skipper’s talking. Now be still, all of you.”

“
This is the one hundred
sixth-fifth day since I assumed command of the
d’Artagnan
. Many of you have been
here almost since the beginning. In that time, we have found our
ship needing constant care and attention to compensate for shoddy
work in the factory. But we are professionals, dedicated to making
our ship the finest in the fleet, even if it means endless hours of
sacrifice and hard work. When the attention we lavish today turns
into habit, we’ll find that we cannot accept less than the best
from one another, or from ourselves, simply because that’s the way
we’ve always done things....”

“
Does that
mean we’re all
doomed to spend eternity checking engine blocks, Mr. Van Horn?
Engineering duty’s rough enough, without us— ”

“
Hold your tongue, Ensign Stewart, or
I’ll come over there and pull it out myself. And that goes for the
rest of you, as well.”

“
I demand a lot from my
crew: loyalty; devotion to duty; devotion to each other; above all
else, the highest devotion to excellence. For all of us, it should
be a constant irritation to find the
d’Artagnan
in less than finest trim,
for this hits at what should be our first and final objective—pride
in our work, ourselves, and in our ship. That is why I’ve pushed us
all as hard as I could, because we cannot and should not tolerate
anything less than perfection....”

“All right,
if you can’t
listen quietly, stand at attention, the lot of you. And Huntsman,
get out from under that Scout. You can finish the overhaul later,
when the Skipper’s done talking.”

“
But Mr. Patterson— ”

“
You heard me, Crewman. Out of there
and over here! On the double!”

“
But I will not bear down,
or call for sacrifice, without an overriding purpose. By the same
token, when it serves no purpose, I will not exact an unthinking
discipline, merely for its own sake. That does nothing but dull the
sense of order aboard ship, diminishing respect due the captain
from his crew—and the crew from the captain....”

Connors was
leaning
against the doorframe at the entrance to the molecular transmitter
when he heard a voice call from down the corridor.

“
What do you think it all means,
Chief?”