by KATHY OLTION
“Could ye hold the light a wee bit more to the left?” Scotty said for maybe the tenth time in as many minutes.
McCoy obligingly shifted the beam, but the access hatch was too small for him to move it more than a couple of centimeters before the light was shining on the outside of the engine housing instead of the inner workings. “That’s as far as it’ll go.”
“Try the other side, then,” Scotty said. “I’ve got a loose helical coupling and I can’t see to get the torque amplifier on it.”
McCoy shifted the light again and held it steady while he tried to parse out the engineer’s words. Helical couplings and torque amplifiers sounded so techy, but he was a scientist; he should be able to figure them out. He tried to imagine what they would be. A helix would be like a DNA molecule, and a coupling would be something that joined two other things together. And a torque amplifier. . . .
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re talking about a bolt and a wrench.”
Scotty snorted. “Aye, that I am, but a helical coupling bears about as much resemblance to a simple bolt as a subdermal hematoma does to an ‘owie.’ ”
“A subdermal hematoma generally is an ‘owie,’ ” McCoy said. “Except when it’s idiopathic.”
Scotty considered that a moment. “What’s ‘idiopathic?’ ”
“It’s a fancy word for ‘we don’t know what causes it.’ What’s a torque amplifier?”
“It’s a fancy wrench.” Scotty wriggled sideways, shoved his right hand out the hatch, and waved the long, slender instrument he held in his fingers. It was about thirty centimeters long, tapered to a blunt point on one end, and had at least a dozen thumb switches along the handle. A glowing display beneath the switches registered 0 Newtons.
“When I touch it to a helical coupling, it reads the torque specifications from the coupling’s embedded microchip and adjusts its force field to the proper range, then either loosens or tightens it as necessary. Which is why I don’t want t’ be fooling around with it in the dark. If I accidentally remove an engine mount, we could wind up with a serious problem next time we call for thrust.”
“Oh,” said McCoy, holding the light a little steadier while Scotty pulled the tool back inside the engine compartment with him. “Why don’t they put a light on the end of the wrench?”
Scotty laughed softly. “If they did, there’d be nothing for assistants to do.”
McCoy looked nervously over his shoulder. “I could go looking for whatever’s making that clicking sound back there.”
“It’s just the Heisenberg baffles resetting themselves,” Scotty said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” McCoy muttered. The hair on the back of his neck was standing straight out, and even though he knew it was ridiculous, his subconscious mind kept waiting for some alien monster to swing down out of the darkness and bite his head off in one gulp. He longed to shine the flashlight out there, but the thought of Scotty unscrewing the wrong ‘helical coupling’ kept him aiming it into the tight workspace instead.
“There,” Scotty said. “Hold it right . . . there . . . got it. One down. Only four more t’ go.”
Four more? They’d been at this at least two lifetimes already. McCoy used his free hand to rub the small of his back, but he stopped in midrub when he heard a screeching sound near his feet. He jerked the light downward just as he realized that it was Scotty whistling.
“Doctor?” Scotty said patiently. “The light?”
“Sorry. You startled me.” He aimed the light back where Scotty was working.
“I dinna think Loch Lomond was all that spooky a song.”
McCoy ignored his sarcasm. “How can you whistle when we’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with a broken engine?”
“Same way I whistle any other time. A little higher, please. Thank you.” He banged on something solid, and even the metallic ring it made sounded somehow cheery.
“You’re having the time of your life, aren’t you?” McCoy asked him.
“Well now, I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Scotty said, “but I have had worse assignments. And after all the time we’ve been spending on the ground lately, any excuse to get back into space for a while is fine by me.”
McCoy wished he could say the same. He’d joined Starfleet to get away from a bad marriage and a bitter divorce, not because he had any burning desire to see the galaxy. He had eventually come to enjoy the “strange new worlds” part of the fleet charter, but he had never cared for the “boldly going” bit. As far as he was concerned, the only thing worse than wrapping a spaceship inside a hyperspace bubble and squirting it through the ether was tearing a body apart molecule by molecule and beaming it through a transporter. He would much rather ride a bicycle wherever he needed to go, or use his own two feet.
He knew better than to tell that to Scotty. The Enterprise’s chief engineer had started fights over less. The two of them had to live practically in each other’s laps for who knew how long; there was no sense irritating him.
Something made a soft thud off in the darkness. McCoy twitched, but he forced himself to ignore it. No doubt one of the phlogiston deframmulators had merely changed polarity.
He forced his own lips into a circle and whistled softly, not sure he liked the echoes of his own noise any more than the random sounds of the ship.
Then he felt the creature brush his leg. He cried out “Yeow!” and leaped backward, swinging the light around in an arc designed to either illuminate or eliminate whatever it was, he wasn’t sure which.
Metal rang again from inside the engine compartment as Scotty twitched in reflexive reaction, but McCoy swept the light down the catwalk as a gray and white blur streaked off into the darkness again.
“Doctor McCoy,” Scotty said, scooting out of the access hole and rubbing his bruised head, “I really have to—”
“There’s a cat in here!” McCoy said.
“A cat?”
“Felis domesticus. Small, slender, long tail. . . .”
“I know what a cat is.”
“Well one just rubbed up against my leg.”
“Did he, now?” Scotty looked into the distance, where McCoy’s flashlight beam cast deep shadows in which anything could be hiding. “Are you sure?”
“It was either that or a damned hairy ghost.” McCoy shined the light down on his leg, where three or four silvery hairs, each a couple of centimeters long, clung to his pants.
Scotty nodded slowly. “Well, that would explain my missing field-strength meter.” He held up his right hand and wiggled his little finger, on which an oversized ring sported a circular gauge. “I lost it two days ago, and it turned up this morning right in the middle of the pilot’s chair. I didn’t think I’d dropped it there.”
“How long since this ship’s regular crew left?” McCoy asked.
“A week, at least,” Scotty said.
“The poor thing must be starving.” McCoy knelt down and reached out toward the darkness. “Here kitty. Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
“After that shriek o’ yours, I doubt if he’ll be very eager to come back.”
“I didn’t shriek.”
Scotty rubbed the back of his head. “Dinna shriek? My God, man, I thought you’d been eaten alive.”
“Well, for a second there I thought the same thing. Here, kitty, kitty.”
“You should try offering it some food. And don’t aim the light in its face. Aim it at yourself so it can see you, instead.”
“Now there’s an idea,” McCoy said. “Here.” He handed Scotty the flashlight, then stood up and went into the living quarters. The bright overhead light nearly blinded him after the dark engine room, but he found the autogalley—still off-line—and rummaged through the emergency supplies stored beneath it until he found a foil pouch of dried meat. The fine print identified it as emu strips, vacuum-sealed and preserved by irradiation over six years earlier. He scanned it with his tricorder, which reported no toxins, so he took
it back into the engine room and tore open the package.
The aroma was as strong as the live emu. He pulled out a rubbery finger-sized strip of meat and held it in front of him, saying, “He ought to have no problem smelling this. Here kitty, kitty.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, the cat stuck its head around the side of a pipe, its eyes glowing green in the dim light. It shunned the corrugated metal catwalk, tiptoeing gracefully along a wiring conduit and leaping from machine to machine until it stood partially obscured by a finned heat radiator just out of reach. Its short fur was mostly gray, with faint black stripes on its sides and tail and white under its chin and along its belly.
“Come on,” McCoy urged it. “Just a little closer.” He set the bag down by his feet so his left hand was free.
“You’re not going to try to grab it are ye?” Scotty asked.
“No, I’m not going to grab it,” McCoy answered. “I do know something about cats.”
He held the meat out. The cat clearly wanted him to reach out to where it waited, but he held his hand steady, and at last the cat leaned forward and jumped to the metal grating in front of him, then stepped cautiously closer. It sniffed the strip of meat, then licked at it.
“Must not be as hungry as we thought,” Scotty said softly.
“Cats are careful,” McCoy whispered back. “It just wants to know what I’ve got before it eats it.”
Satisfied that the smelly stuff was edible, the cat took it in its teeth and backed away. McCoy kept hold of his end, but the cat growled and kept tugging, so he let it go. The cat backed away a few steps and hunkered down to eat, its fangs making short work of the meat strip.
McCoy was ready with a second one when the first was done. The cat came right up to him this time and took it from his hands without sniffing it first, then backed off and finished it just as quickly. McCoy held onto the third one and made the cat let him pet it before he let go, then he backed up and led it into the living quarters before he would feed it again.
The cat hesitated at the door, sniffing cautiously, but its hunger finally overpowered its fear of the new people on board its ship and it stepped on through, tail high. Scotty came in behind it and closed the door.
“Now what?” he asked.
McCoy looked for a collar, but there was none. He scratched the cat between the ears and said, “I guess we give it a name.”
Chapter Twelve
DELORIC’S BUNK had long ago lost its springiness. When he lay down on it, it creaked and groaned. When he got up from it, he creaked and groaned. Even sitting on the edge of it like he was now caused his hips to ache.
Had he been the sole user of the bed, the problem wouldn’t exist. His mother had described him as small-boned. His father said he was a runt. His first girlfriend, Shayla, said he was built the way a Kauld should be built. Not too skinny, and certainly not overly muscled. He missed Shayla. In fact, if Shayla were here, then there would be a good reason for his bunk’s broken springs. He smiled at the thought, but it was short-lived.
The real reason his bed was in such sad shape was because Kertenold used it while Deloric toiled away on the comet’s surface. To be fair, Kertenold probably felt the same sense of ownership of the bed and that it was Deloric who slept soundly while he worked hard. But Kertenold stood a head taller than Deloric and weighed half again what he did: he was bound to wear things out faster. At least he didn’t sleep in the bunk above. It would ruin Deloric’s night to have someone Kertenold’s size and their bunk land on top of him.
The thought of hot-bedding with someone else originally disgusted him. He was a fastidious sort, and he’d been certain that whoever used the bed before him would contaminate it. The first few nights on board he had changed the bedding before crawling in, but once the work on the comet started he was too tired to care. Some sleep shifts, he was so exhausted that he would probably not have noticed if anyone else, male or female, was still in the bed.
Tonight would be different. He’d been thinking so hard since the last work shift he was sure his brain would melt. When he had nights like this back home, sleep would sometimes elude him for days.
About half his shiftmates were still up, milling around the cramped ship. In the lounge, some of the crewmembers were rolling hexies in a game of chance, betting the hard, dry cakes that served as dessert from dinner. The winner didn’t have to eat them. In the far corner, three or four others were swapping dirty jokes. Deloric had already heard them, or some variation, and grew weary of the laughter.
He thought maybe a glass of warm yeerid milk would allow him to sleep, but the cafeteria had already closed and the dispenser in the lounge was empty. Clearly, the universe was against him tonight. But as he turned to leave, he heard someone quietly playing a bantar and singing an old folksong. The young woman sat near the lounge door and started in on the second verse. It took a moment, but Deloric finally realized she was singing “Teeth of the Tajar,” an antigovernment anthem from four or five generations back. The only way she could get away with singing such a song was because it was against the old government, which the current government had overthrown.
The singer’s voice was soft, but certain of the notes she hit. Deloric admired anyone who could make music. He’d tried three or four different instruments, only to give up on them within days, and his singing voice would scare a rock. Hers was pretty, even if the words she sang were harsh. He listened to her sing about greed and the lust for power and the evil it led to. The song made just as much sense today as it had the day it was written. It was just as true—and just as damning. He wondered if the singer had chosen it on purpose, if it was her way of telling the rest of them that she had figured out what their hard work over the last week would ultimately be used for.
She wouldn’t look up. She couldn’t afford to let a glance confirm his suspicion, for anyone could be a spy, even him. She was taking a risk just playing the song. He was just as glad that she didn’t look at him, for he knew he couldn’t hide his feelings from her, either. He lingered by the door and listened to three more verses, then headed for his bunk, humming quietly.
There was no single moment when it became clear what he had to do. He only knew he had to do something. The lights were already dimmed in the bunk room, so he shuffled his way down the aisle of beds, but instead of removing his clothing, he just pulled back the covers, crawled in, and waited until he heard the room fill with the sounds of sleep. Kertenold would kill him if he ever found out, but Deloric was beyond caring.
He thought about destroying the giant mirror he had helped build, but the only way he could think of to do that was to crash the bunkship into it, killing everyone including the crew out there at work on it now. He couldn’t bring himself to do that. He thought about breaking radio silence and warning the human colony five light-days away, but they were in the Blind. His message would be buried in the wave of charged particles streaking toward the planet, and they would never detect it. Besides, that would be treason, and no matter what he thought of the project, he couldn’t bring himself to betray his own people.
That left only one choice. When the last of the gamers turned out the lights, he eased from his bunk, took his small flashlight from the tiny personal locker at his feet, and headed for the door. He was two-thirds of the way there when someone in an upper bunk snorted awake and grabbed his shoulder.
“Hey! Hey! Is it time to get up already?” came the sleep-thickened voice. It sounded a little like Nialerad.
“No, it’s okay. Go back to sleep,” Deloric whispered.
“Where you going?”
“Shhh. To the little miner’s room.”
“The what?”
“I got to use the toilet. Too much yeerid milk,” he lied.
“But they’re at the other end of the room.”
What was this guy? The self-appointed hall monitor? “Someone got sick in there. I’m going to use the ones in the next dorm.”
“Oh . . . that
’s good.” The guy’s voice sounded muffled, like he was talking through a pillow and his words were slurred together.
“Now go back to sleep,” Deloric whispered. Heavy, steady breathing was the response he got. People were so weird when they were almost asleep. He slid out from under the man’s heavy hand and cautiously resumed his mission.
The hallways were dimly lit and deserted. The bunkship was small compared to the Kauld warships, but bunkships were much more efficient in this sort of off-world mining situation. They were designed to serve as a satellite hotel rather than a ship, since they spent the majority of their time in orbit around the mine.
That worked to Deloric’s advantage in a couple of ways. As small as the bunkship was, it wouldn’t take him very long to get to the shuttle bay, and he wouldn’t have time to back out of his plan.
Instead of taking the lift, he opted for the stairs, thinking that his chances of running into anyone else would be practically nil. But he regretted that choice almost instantly. A single lamp illuminated each landing, and the garish light cast odd shadows through the metallic mesh of the stairs, sending chills up his spine at every turn. Worse, each step he took echoed like thunder, no matter how gingerly he moved.
He tiptoed up the two flights to the shuttle deck, then eased the heavy door shut and leaned against the wall, feeling the cool, smooth metal against his head, hands, and back. His heart was beating hard and fast, and he was surprised at how ragged his breathing had become, even though he had done nothing strenuous. But within a few moments he gained control over his body again and moved cautiously down the hall. The bay itself was at the far end of the now darkened hallway and back behind the suit lockers.
The silvery suits hung in rows on metal hooks. He was already reaching for his out of habit when he realized he probably wouldn’t need it where he was going. He grasped the empty gloves, taking a moment to say goodbye to his former life, then he turned toward the shuttle bay and was about to step through the doorway when something made him stop. His skin tingled as though someone had tickled his back with a feather.
