The Middle of Nowhere Page 11

  Leen didn’t answer immediately. Finally, he grumbled, “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Neither did I. Till just now.” Korie allowed himself to marvel over that thought for a moment, then added in a much more serious tone, “But let’s make sure that everybody else has everything we can give them. We’ll take future credits if we have to. We’ll take whatever we can and bank the rest. How soon will you have your first bulbs of starshine to trade? No, don’t tell me. I’m not supposed to know about that. Just make sure Hall has enough to lubricate every deal thoroughly. But whatever we get in exchange, keep the delivery pods on the boats, or float them on tethers. Don’t bring anything onboard unless it’s essential. We’re going to have to rebuild from the keel up.” Korie looked to Leen. “You’re still not screaming . . .?”

  Leen shook his head. “You want my advice?”

  Korie hesitated, momentarily concerned he wouldn’t like what he was going to hear. “Go ahead, Chief. What do you think we should do?”

  “Strip the ship. Let everybody else benefit from our bad luck. Then we rebuild from the keel up. And don’t pay any attention to the screams of the chief engineer.”

  “Ah,” said Korie, nodding. “I like that plan. It’s almost as good as my own.”

  “No, better,” corrected Leen. “Not as wordy.”

  Cookie

  Stolchak sent him to the galley.

  Gatineau couldn’t figure out what the ship’s cook would want with a moebius wrench, but Stolchak had explained that she’d given it to Cookie so he could adjust the focus on the flash-burners.

  Gatineau made his way slowly to the mess room, feeling both tired and frustrated. His first full day aboard a starship and he hadn’t accomplished anything at all. He’d been from the bow to the stern and back again more times than he could remember. He’d met a few people, and he’d learned a little bit about the whys and the wherefores of this and that, but... he still hadn’t completed the job that Chief Leen had assigned him. He felt like a failure. And he’d really wanted to impress the chief, too. What was it that Lieutenant Commander Brik had said? Failure is not an option? Well, if it wasn’t an option, where in Hell was the goddamned moebius wrench?

  The ship’s mess was up and forward somewhere. He knew that much. Aft of the Bridge was the wardroom; the officers’ cabins were aft of the wardroom; the officers’ mess was aft of that, then the galley, then the crew’s mess. Aft of that was the ship’s PX and then the ship’s upper stores and supplies; then there were the upper cabins and bunkrooms, and finally, the ship’s engineering stores, then the engine room. So the mess room shouldn’t be too hard to find. It was supposed to be a large square space bridging both the port and starboard passages.

  But the passages weren’t exactly straight. For a variety of reasons, some functional, some not, both the port and starboard passages had corresponding doglegs, sometimes angling outward around a particularly bulky interior installation, sometimes angling inward for the same reason. And although Gatineau thought he understood all the markings on the walls, there were several that remained unnecessarily cryptic. And despite frequent requests to HARLIE for assistance, he still kept getting lost. If such a thing were possible, he would have suspected that the ship’s lethetic intelligence engine was deliberately trying to steer him through as many different parts of the vessel as possible.

  Eventually, however, he arrived at the galley. He was disheveled, tired, and unhappy. But he was here.

  Cookie took one look at him and said, “Uh-oh.” Cookie was a tall man, broadly built, with a longshoreman’s build and hands as big as shovels; he was scrubbed so clean he shone like a fresh-cut side of beef, and he wore a cherubic-pink expression. Without stopping to ask, he steered Gatineau to a chair, and slid a cup of hot chocolate in front of him. “Here, start on this,” he said. “It’ll settle your stomach. You missed lunch. Don’t you ever do that again. I made my specialty, corned beef and cabbage, and you haven’t been to heaven, lad, till you’ve tasted my cabbage. Most cooks don’t know the difference between spicing the water and peeing in it. I do. Every Tuesday, you’ll see. But now you’ll have to wait a week. And you almost missed dinner, too, I was about to send out a search party for you. Now, how do you want your steak?”

  Gatineau looked up blearily, not certain if he dared refuse. He tried to stand up, but Cookie’s huge hand on his shoulder held him firmly down in his place. “But . . . I need to get the moebius wrench to Chief Leen. Let me just take it to him and then I can—”

  “Absolutely not. I didn’t spend all day in this galley preparing hot nourishing meals for this crew to have some ungrateful puppy grabbing sandwiches on the run. You’re going to eat a proper dinner or you’ll not leave this mess room. Even if he’s not yet in it, Captain Hardesty would rise up out of his grave and skin me alive if I didn’t put a hot meal into each of his boys and girls. I’ll not have you insulting the hard work of the mess crew, nor the good healthy produce from the Star Wolf’s farm. If you knew how much hard work went into every meal, you’d treat each mouthful with a lot more respect. I’ll see to that. Drink your milk now—here, bring it with you; come with me. You need to see this.”

  Cookie grabbed Gatineau by the arm, practically lifting him out of his chair and dragging him into the galley, a long narrow room lined with shining counters and appliances. “Y’see these machines? Do you think that’s all we do here, put raw potatoes in one end and take sandwiches out the other? Any damn fool can do that. Real cooking is an art form, and any real galley slave has to be a master artist, or it’s the surest way to start a shipboard mutiny. I can tell you that, me lad. No doubt about it. The most important part of a starship is her belly. Napoleon Bonaparte said it, and he was right. An army travels on its stomach. Never forget that. Here lad, have some more milk. Let me tell you rule number one: take care of the belly first. If you don’t take care of your own well-being, you’ll have nothing to give anyone else. What good will you be to this ship if you can’t do your job? Tell me that, will you now? No good at all. You’ll be in sick bay and Molly Williger and two other people will be spending all their time taking care of your poor body, when they could be doing something useful instead. No, that’s no way to be a good member of this crew. I don’t care how busy you are, lad, don’t you ever miss a meal again or I’ll come looking for you, and when I find you, you’ll be wishing you’d been caught by the banshee of Belfast instead. And all of her lovely sisters. Now, here, this is what I wanted you to see—” Cookie opened the door of a cold-box and pulled out a fresh piece of meat. “You see this? Do you know what this is?”

  “It looks like a steak?” Gatineau offered tentatively.

  “Wipe your mouth, son. You’ve got a milk mustache. A steak? Absolutely not. This is much more than a mere steak. Now if you were to ask Chief Leen what this is, he’d tell you that it’s fuel for your machine. It’s raw protein, which your body will turn into muscle and bone and energy to drive your engines faster than light. That’s how a mechanic would see it.

  “And if you were to ask Irma Stolchak what it was, she’d tell you it’s a crop. She’d give you a little lecture about how the protein has to be properly marbled, so it has enough fat to be flavorful, but not so much that it’s greasy. She’ll tell you how the flesh has to be stimulated in the tank, worked and stretched and exercised so that it has the right kind of chewiness in the mouth, but not overworked so much that it gets tough and gamey. And you’ve got to know exactly what you’re doing—are you growing pork chops or ham steaks? Are you growing beef ribs or pot roast? Is it going to be a breast or a drumstick? You don’t have a chicken or a pig or a cow walking around this ship doing the work, you’ve got to see that the exercisers in the tank produce meat and not just a fat blob of undifferentiated flesh. Ahh, she’d tell you about that, for sure. Do you know why? Because I wouldn’t accept a single piece of meat that isn’t good enough for my crew.

  “And if you were to ask Toad Hall what this is, he�
��d tell you that it’s a commodity, an asset, something to be used in the marketplace. He’d tell you it’s a lump of kilocalories, just waiting to be applied to the balance sheet.

  “But they’re all wrong, my lad. All of them. This isn’t fuel, and it isn’t a crop, and it isn’t a nice round number in the captain’s spreadsheet. Do you know what this is? This is a work of art looking for a place to happen. This is a bit of home on your plate, it’s a vacation at the end of a hard day’s work, it’s a reward for your hours of toil in the fields of the Lord. Properly prepared, by a master, not a hooligan, this becomes a feast not only for the tongue and the belly, but for the soul as well. Cooking is an art form, and the eating of the meal in an atmosphere of rest and relaxation is the only way to savor the artist’s handiwork. Now, I ask you, son—are you willing to reject the handiwork of a man who has dedicated his life to bringing you a bit of soul-filling pleasure three times a day? You’ll not betray the kitchen of this starship, I promise you that, not while I’m the lord and master of this domain, and surely not while I have my cleaver in my hand.

  “Now answer my question, and answer quickly, how do you like your steak?”

  “Uh—rare. Please. Pink on the inside, seared on the outside.”

  “Good man. That’s the proper way. And what vegetables will you be having with that?”

  “Snap peas, if you have them. And mashed potatoes, please. If it’s not too much trouble. And a salad? Bleu cheese dressing?”

  Cookie considered the order, nodded a grudging acknowledgment. “Unimaginative. But solid. A good start. Tell you what. I’ll put a bit of avocado on the top of that salad for you, and a bit of shrimp as well. Just to dress it up. And I’ll mix a few pearl onions and mushrooms in with the peas, nothing fancy, but you’ve got to have a bit of crunch on the fork, you know. And the potatoes, they’ll get cold without a nice blanket of gravy—or would you prefer a coat of sharp cheese? And a bit of eyetalian on the steak, of course, of course. It’s a shame you’re so late. At this hour, it’s really much too late to put on a proper do, but I can still give you a small taste of what’s possible in the hands of a chef who knows what he’s doing in a kitchen. And if you’ll not miss any more meals, well then pretty soon you’ll know what a privilege it is for you to serve on a ship with this cook. You’ll have a proper belly on you soon enough, you could easily use another ten kilograms. We’ll have you looking like a proper member of the Star Wolf’s crew. I mean, look at yourself, lad; you’re as thin as a plasma tube. That’s what happens when you forget to eat. Ahh, but when you see what magic I can work on your plate, you’ll forget every platter your sainted mother ever put before you. You’ll count the minutes between your meals, I promise you that; but enough of my bejabbering. Tonight, at least, I won’t begrudge you a simple oldfashioned repast. Now, get your skinny little butt out of my galley and back into a chair, before I lose my patience and put you in the grinder for tomorrow’s sausage.”

  Gatineau went through the first half of the meal, barely tasting it. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. And he didn’t realize how good the food in front of him really was until Cookie laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Slow down, lad. You’ve got to give yourself a chance to savor each bite; otherwise the cook’ll know you’re lying when you tell him how much you enjoyed it. Real men don’t gobble, no matter how hungry they are. No one’s going to take your plate away, so slow down and show me that you appreciate the taste of it as much as the fullness it gives your belly. Besides,” he added, “you’ll need to save your strength for your dessert. I do the best afters in the fleet. You’ll have a slice of my peach-berry cobbler smothered in sweet cream. And after that . . . while you’re here, you’ll do a bit of K.P. Your penance for missing lunch. And then we’ll talk about that wrench you’re looking for.”

  “Thfmk yff,” said Gatineau, stuffing another bite in his mouth. After everything else he’d had to do today, a bit of K.P. would probably be a relief.

  But he was wrong about that too.

  Outside

  The Star Wolf had three kinds of airlocks.

  The traditional airlock was a chamber with hatches at each end; air could be pumped in or out.

  The valve lock was a series of self-closing membranes, resembling heart valves, through which a crew member pushed himself. Some gas leaked out through each transfer, but each chamber had a decreasing level of pressure, so the final chamber had minimal air to lose.

  The revolving lock was a rotating cylinder, much like a revolving door. The crew member stepped into it, rotated through, and stepped out the opposite side. It was the fastest way to get in or out of a pressurized hull.

  Fleet regulations required that all three kinds of locks be backstopped by additional pressure hatches.

  Today, Brik chose the valve lock. It allowed him to ease into vacuum at his own pace.

  He touched his starsuit harness, checking the flattened lump in the case he wore next to his skin. He took a last few breaths of pure oxygen from the pressure pack he carried, and then discarded it. He pushed through the first valve, then the second—the air sucked steadily out of his lungs. He pressed through the next valve and the next. And kept exhaling. When there was nothing left to exhale, the pain in his chest began to ebb, and he closed his throat against further exhalation.

  Brik wore a modified starsuit, as close to that worn by the Morthan assassin as he could fabricate; it wasn’t much more than a chest guard and a genital harness. He also wore a facepack to protect his eyes; he hadn’t been able to determine what modifications had been made to Cinnabar’s eyes and that wasn’t the purpose of this experiment anyway, so he wore the facepack.

  His only air supply was an oxygen transfusor strapped to his right shoulder. The autopsy on what was left of Cinnabar had shown a similar device tucked inside the large bone of the assassin’s right thigh. It was good for fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes before it was exhausted; but that rating was for a human metabolism. Brik’s metabolism, fully exerted, would probably exhaust the unit in one third of the time. The same equation would have held for Cinnabar. Could he travel the length of the starship in seven minutes?

  He was about to find out.

  It was imperative that he find out.

  He unclipped the short black hose from the side of the oxygen transfusor, opened the valve and slipped the end of it into his mouth. He bit down hard on the grips of the mouthpiece, holding it firmly between his molars. He sucked gas. Good. It worked. Just barely.

  Then he pressed through the final valve of the lock.

  Hard vacuum hurt.

  And it was noisy. He could hear the pounding of his heart in his chest, feel the waves throbbing outward from his chest, into his arms and legs in a series of accelerated pulses; he could hear the roaring of his blood through his veins and the rasp of his irregular breathing in his throat and his lungs. There was nothing else to hear.

  And his internal body pressure felt wrong. He felt queasy, especially in his gut, where the lack of atmospheric pressure gave his bowel a nasty sense of independence. The sensation grew alarmingly. And suddenly Brik knew that he would not be able to control it. He pulled himself out of the airlock and cramped almost immediately into a fetal position.

  He couldn’t see what was happening behind him, but he could feel an intense visceral sucking sensation. His bowel exploded in a dark powdery spray. The eruption was violent and painful. Even after his bowel was certainly empty, the sucking continued. It became excruciating—as if his whole body was going to be pulled out through his rectum. Brik held onto the handgrip and endured. He’d known this was going to happen; he’d known it was going to be painful; he just hadn’t realized it would be this painful.

  The only consolation was that the same thing would have happened to Cinnabar too. But Cinnabar had probably been trained and augmented specifically for EVA maneuvers. So maybe it hadn’t been as painful for him. In which case, Brik mused, who was more courageous?

  It didn’t
matter. It wasn’t about courage. It was about results. Already, he was feeling better. He focused his attention forward, checked the time, and asked himself once more if this was a good idea. The answer was still no. Nevertheless . . . this was the only way to find out. Brik put the mouthpiece back in his mouth and took a small suck of air. Yes, he could do it. He pulled himself out of the airlock reception bay . . .

  He was at the bow of the ship, just ahead of the snarl painted on the hull. His target was the aftmost airlock. He began pulling himself along the hull of the starship with a steady count. He used the handholds set into the fuselage next to the long tubes of the plasma drives, and he chanted inaudibly to himself as he went, one of his exercise mantras.

  He fell into an easy rhythm. He pretended he was climbing one of the exercise walls at home. Five minutes. One hundred meters. He could do it. In free fall, it would be easy.

  But it wasn’t.

  Hard vacuum burned.

  The stars were hatefully bright. His eyes watered with the pain. His sinuses ached. His whole head felt cold. His ears pounded with the roaring of his own blood.

  And very quickly, he knew that his hands were too cold. Every time he touched the hull of the ship a little more of his body heat leached out through his fingers. The designers of the ship had erroneously assumed that anyone using this space-ladder would have been properly suited, so they hadn’t padded the handles with temperature-neutral material. Brik’s only comforting thought was that it had to have been as bad for Cinnabar as it was for him. Perhaps worse. Because Cinnabar couldn’t have been sure that the airlock he was heading toward would open for him.