Once the yards were securely in place and yet more lines were strung from their ends to the ship’s hull, the spacers brought out the sails. Huge bundles of shiny, metallic mesh, which they hoisted up in the same manner as the yards, firmly attached to the upper yard and then drawn down to the lower in a shimmering curtain that caught and reflected the ship’s lights. Three of them, Alexis saw, one for each of the three sections of mast that had been raised; and yet another section above those, Alexis remembered, called the royal.
“Main course at the bottom, sir,” she offered unprompted, “then the main topsail and the main topgallant.”
“Very good, Mister Carew. And the sail we’ll be raising on the mizzenmast?”
“Mizzen course, mizzen topsail, and mizzen topgallant, sir,” she replied confidently.
“Not quite, Mister Carew, would you care to try again, please?”
Alexis wracked her brain for the answer. There was something about the mizzenmast that was different, she remembered now, something that had made no sense to her when she’d read it and that she’d found no time to ask Easely to explain. “I find myself at a loss, sir,” she admitted finally.
“The lower sail on the mizzen of this ship is called the cross-jack, Mister Carew. You’ll note it’s fore-and-aft, unlike the ship-rig of the others?”
Alexis did note that it was different. Its yard hung toward the rear of the ship, instead of perpendicular as the others. She started to ask why that was, but Caruthers spoke again.
“My compliments to the bosun, Mister Carew, and would he provide you with our commissioning pennant and explain to you its placement at the masthead.”
Alexis hesitated, unsure if she’d understood. “I’m to climb the mast, sir?”
“Perhaps its heights will inspire you to learn the lessons set to you.”
Alexis swept her gaze up the length of the mast, now towering over thirty meters above the ship’s hull. Eyes wide, she answered. “Aye sir.” And scanned the masts and hull for the bosun’s distinctly colored vacsuit. Seeing him near the sail locker where he could watch the work on both the main and mizzen masts, she started in his direction, forgetting, in her anxiety at the thought of climbing the mast, to step deliberately. She found herself floating free from the hull again with her first step.
Flushing with embarrassment, she tugged at the safety line and felt the sharp clack of contact as her boots again made contact.
Carefully and deliberately, she made her way down the bowsprit to the sail locker where the bosun stood. She adjusted her suit’s radio to speak only to the bosun, she remembered the phrasing she’d heard Philip use with the carpenter the day before.
“The First Lieutenant’s compliments, Mister Kinsley, and I’m to affix the commissioning pennant to the masthead.”
The bosun faced her and she could see his wrinkled face grinning behind his suit’s visor. “Already, does he? Very well, then.” He pulled a tightly wound coil of fabric from a compartment within the sail locker and handed it to her. “Snap this carabineer to the top o’ the mast — aft, mind you, don’t go putting my rigging into disarray and such!” He reached into the center of the coil and showed her a second carabineer. “Then grab onto this and come down the port backstay — port, mind you, they’re workin’ to starboard.”
Alexis nodded, but had to ask, “Backstay, sir?”
“Them!” the bosun said, pointing to two lines that ran from the very top of the mast down to either side of the ship further back on the hull. “Topgallant backstays! The port one, mind you!”
Alexis stared in horror. She was to climb up the mast and then down along one of those slender lines, all on her first trip outside the ship? On her first day in space, even? “Aye sir,” she whispered.
She shuffled her way slowly and carefully along the hull to the base of the mainmast, securing her safety line to new guides as necessary, all the while attempting not to get in the way of the spacers busily working, though they seemed to pay her no heed, blithely unsnapping their safety lines to go around her and reattaching them once past. When she reached the mast, she saw that it was larger than she’d thought, fully forty centimeters in diameter. As with the hull, guidewires ran up the length of the mast and Alexis carefully secured her safety line to one. For a moment, she looked for handholds or projections to climb, but then realized with a laugh that they wouldn’t be necessary. With a slight flexing of her feet and a tug on the guidewire, she floated free of the hull and was very slowly gliding upward alongside the mast.
Effortlessly, she glided upwards, the length of the mast flowing past her. With a nervous giggle, she reached out and tugged the guidewire again, increasing her speed. It’s like flying! she thought, ecstatically. She gave the wire another tug.
“With all deliberation, Mister Carew,” she heard Caruthers’ voice in her helmet and realized that he was watching her progress.
“Aye sir,” she murmured. She looked upward and saw that the guidewire her safety line was attached to ended at the top of the first mast segment and she would have to stop and reattach it to the next before proceeding upward.
In remarkably short time, she was at the very top of the mast, thirty meters or more from the hull of Merlin and with nothing to cling to but the mast itself, now seeming quite a bit less substantial than it had when she’d started up. Alexis examined the very top of the mast and saw how the next section, that which would hold the royals, was telescoped within it. The edge of its top was ringed with attachment points, and lines already angled down to secure the mast in place; one to the fore, where it met the very tip of the ship’s bowsprit, one to either side, attaching to the ship’s hull, and two aft, angling very slightly to attach to edges of the ship about a third of the way back. She clipped one end of the commissioning pennant to a ring at the back of the mast and eyed the two backstays dubiously. Her heart began beating faster and her mouth went dry as she took in the distance to the hull below. And I’m to just slide down from thirty meters in the air, she thought wryly, then her eyes widened and she smiled. Well, and there is no air, you silly thing. Nor any risk of falling.
With a laugh, she realized that getting down would be no more difficult than getting up had been, with no gravity to speak of. She looked back along the expanse of ship’s hull and grinned. The port backstay he said, and port’s left. She attached her safety line to the left-hand backstay and grasping the carabineer at the center of the pennant’s coil. With a deep breath, she pushed herself gently off the mast, angling as best she could to follow the backstay to the hull below.
Away from the solidity of the hull or even the mast, with just the thin line of the backstay beside her and no contact with either the hull or the mast, Alexis felt her heart leap. No, this is like flying! She grinned wildly. It’s incredible, it’s –
“Belay that, y’cunny-handed …” she heard the bosun’s voice yelling over the radio. “Starboard main t’gallant backstay! Watch yourselves, lads!”
Alexis looked ahead to the rapidly approaching hull and saw several spacers clustered around the line, oblivious to her approach. How? She realized her mistake. She’d been facing aft when she’d attached her safety line to the left backstay.
“Port’s the other left,” she muttered, grabbing for the line to slow her descent toward the group.
Her hand missed the backstay and the momentum of her grab started her body spinning, entangling her in her safety line. She began desperately waving her arms, trying to regain contact with the backstay and losing her grip on the line for the commissioning pennant as she let out a shriek of fear.
Suddenly, there were bodies all around her, and Alexis let out another shriek, certain that she’d plowed headlong into the work crew and injured someone before she felt herself gently slowed and steadied.
“We’ve got ya, sir,” she heard over the radio.
Within moments, two spacers had righted her and helped her settle back to the hull, desperately grateful to have her feet on something
once again.
“Mister Carew!” she heard Caruthers bark over the radio. “Are you quite finished playing?”
Alexis took a deep breath, steadying herself and moving away from the group of spacers, who quickly resumed their work.
“Yes sir.”
“Then I suggest you retrieve Merlin’s pennant, as you’ve left it quite scandalized.”
Alexis looked up at the mast to see the long stream of the commissioning pennant drifting high above, one end still attached to the top of the mast, but the other more than ten meters above the hull. Surely he can’t mean for me to go back up the mast after what’s just happened?
“Lively now, Mister Carew!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The men eased themselves on the benches, dripping sweat and sucking greedily at the water tubes from the sail locker’s wall, and Alexis followed suit, despite its taste. The scent of sweat, fresh and stale, permeated the close space and she concentrated on her breathing, trying to breathe shallowly and avoid the odor. When they’d first returned to the locker in preparation for the transition to darkspace, she’d thought to sit on one of the benches herself. There was plenty of space with the ship so undermanned and her trips up and down the masts had quite tired her out, but Caruthers had stopped her as she’d begun to sit, explaining that officers traditionally stood at the locker’s inner hatch, leaving the benches to the men.
“It’s an acknowledgment of their work,” he’d explained.
Alexis, who’d spent the last hour being sent up and down one mast or another on some errand, felt that she’d worked quite a lot herself. Or played, I suppose. After her embarrassment at coming down the wrong stay, Alexis had quickly regained her sense of exhilaration at being outside the ship and the hours they’d spent in transit to the Lagrange point had passed with run after run up and down the masts as Caruthers set her to naming and identifying parts of the ship.
With every wrong answer, and there were many, he’d sent her off with, “Perhaps a closer look, Mister Carew, and if not, then ask a nearby spacer the proper name and return here to me.”
Before long, she’d been exhausted and sweat ran down her face and neck, but she’d met every correct answer with a thrill of accomplishment and every wrong answer with a different thrill at the opportunity fly up the masts or over the hull.
“Oy! Hadd!” one of the spacers called loudly. “Remember me a thing what’s slipped me mind, w’ye?”
“An’ what’s that, Burley?”
The first man furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes. “Port, lad … be that t’one left or t’other left?”
The spacers roared laughter and Alexis felt her face heat as she realized her muttered comment had been broadcast to the entire sail crew. Oh, and my screeches as they caught me, I imagine as well.
“Oh, Burley, port’s t’other left, I tell ya true!” He waited for the renewed laughter to die a bit. “An officer say so, after all!”
Alexis lowered her eyes and bit her lip nervously at the renewed laughter. She’d been quite certain that the laughter and betting over her first step Outside had been good-natured, but she was not so confident about this. She tentatively scanned the men’s faces in the dim light and caught the eye of the spacer, Acker who was altering her uniforms for her. The man was laughing along with the rest, but when he caught her looking at him, he gave her a quick wink.
That made her feel a bit better and as the laughter died down again, Acker called out, “’ere now, Burley, wot were yer own first trip Outside like?”
Burley drew himself up, with squared shoulders and a proud look. “Why I ran t’rigging like a grand old topman, I did!” The spacers all laughed harder than before and Burley glared at them until his face finally broke in a wide grin. “’Til that first stop,” he added sheepishly. He stretched and put a hand to his back. “Bloody back still hurts a’times.”
“Burley were a jumper, Mister Carew,” Hadd said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “Going to show us all how quick he could go up t’mast.” He stood from the bench and wrapped his arms around an imaginary mast to demonstrate. “So he clips on, and he bends his knees way down, he does!” He crouched low, buttocks touching his heels -- while Burley grinned and shook his head -- before standing quickly. “An’ up he go!”
“An’ bang, he stop at the top!” another man yelled and the sail locker was filled with laughter again. “Ol’ Burley, he didn’t think none ‘bout how ter stop!”
Alexis smiled along with them and gave Acker a grateful nod.
“Oy, then, Hadd,” Burley said as the laughter died. “Don’t remember your first time out being all rosy!”
Hadd’s face darkened and he glared at the other man. “Don’t like as to speak o’ that, I don’t,” he said as the others laughed even louder.
“Hadd, he got a might … queasy, first time out. An’ the bosun says to ‘im, he says, ‘Shake yer head, lad, it’ll move that mess to the back, it will.’”
“It don’t,” Hadd muttered miserably, to more laughter.
“And what of darkspace, gentlemen?” Alexis asked. “Should I expect much different from that?”
The laughter trailed off as the men sobered, looking away from her uncomfortably.
“The Dark’s fair different, sir, it is,” Hadd said finally, and the other men nodded agreement. “Known strong men what couldn’t go Outside in the Dark.” There were murmurs of agreement.
“An no few who were right grateful fer their suit’s plumbing, first they laid eyes on what’s out there,” Burley added, then coughed uncomfortably with a glance at Alexis. “Beggin’ yer pardon fer the language, sir.”
“Quite all right, Burley.” Alexis bit her lip nervously. “Is it really so terrifying?” she asked, glancing at Caruthers.
“It is … different, Mister Carew.”
“Not a place man’s supposed to be,” Hadd muttered and the other spacers nodded agreement.
“You’ll be all right, Mister Carew,” Burley assured her. “A minute at the hatch with it dark, an’ then the lights’ll be up. Not near so bad w’ the lights up.”
“Less’n a minute,” another spacer added. “Jus’ seems longer.”
“And likely time to discover it for yourself, Mister Carew,” Caruthers said, moving to the locker’s front hatch and motioning for her to follow. “We’re at the Lagrange point and ready to transition to darkspace, I see. Do remember that the radios will not work once the hatch is opened to the Dark.”
Alexis swallowed heavily and followed him, her heart beating faster. She fastened her helmet back onto her suit as the others were doing, then placed her hand flat against the hatch in front of her.
Without warning, the lights in the sail locker went out and she realized that they had transitioned to darkspace or were about to. The hatch began to slide under her fingertips and she knew that they must have, though she’d felt nothing to indicate it and felt no different herself. She waited in anticipation as the hatch slid away into the hull,and looked out into … nothing.
She could see nothing but blackness, broken only by the dim glow of the tritium coated needle of her suit’s oxygen gauge. She stretched her arm out ahead of her, thinking perhaps that she had been mistaken and had simply lost contact with its surface but felt nothing ahead of her. She could see nothing, feel nothing except her vacsuit and the deck under her feet,
She stood still for a moment, wondering if this were another of the spacers’ jokes, but nothing at all happened.
And then, as her eyes adjusted to the utter lack of light, she saw … something. Almost a swirl of darker black in the distance and then, as though her brain had suddenly discovered how to interpret what she was seeing, more of them. Far in the distance, great masses of darkness, swirling and rolling across the void. How she was seeing them when there were no sources of light that she could see, she didn’t know, but she could. Or almost could, for it seemed that there was detail just out of her grasp.
Alexis gaspe
d as one of the masses, shaped like a dark thundercloud against a jet black sky, slowly rolled across the void and touched another, smaller one. The two shapes roiled into each other, flashing with ebony lighting until the larger cloud split in half where it touched the smaller, the two halves gradually flowing up and over the other shape before folding back upon the whole, and Alexis lost sight of the two shapes as they drifted past the edge of the hatchway and were blocked by the ship’s hull.
Fascinated, Alexis dropped to her knees and groped blindly outside the hatchway for one of the guidewires. Finding one, she snapped on her safety line and stepped out onto the bowsprit, remembering to step slowly and keep her feet firmly anchored to the hull. As quickly as she dared, she moved out onto the bowsprit, away from the hull, and looked around her.
There were far more of the objects out there than she’d been able to see through the narrow hatch. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of masses, far off in the distance. All slowly moving, majestically colliding and absorbing each other. And behind those shapes, thousands of points of blackness, like dark stars. Can a star shine blackness? she wondered in awe.
Merlin’s outer lights came on, shining from the hull and masts but not all at once. Even the light behaved differently here, seeming to pool and flow across the surface of the hull, creeping toward her along the bowsprit and as it reached her, she found it more difficult to make out the far off shapes. Reluctantly, Alexis turned her attention back to the ship and Caruthers quickly approaching her along the bowsprit.
He reached her and touched his suit’s helmet to hers so that she could hear him. “Are you quite all right, Mister Carew?” he asked, his voice echoing and, perhaps, a bit breathless.
Into the Dark (Alexis Carew Book 1) Page 10
