The Smoke Ring t-2

by Larry Niven

  The long hair would have to go when she reached higher rank. Pity. But dwarves were rare, and Bosun Sectry Murphy must be trained quickly…

  Through the hatch Wheeler could see a blue light, tiny and intense: a Navy heliograph, reflected Voy-light blinking near the east limb of the whorl. Red hair and a squarish feminine face suddenly blocked the view. “Petty, we’re at two-sixty-five flat, six south, two-forty klomters.”

  “And we’ve got better than half a tank, right?” Murphy nodded. “Get on the heliograph. We’ll rendezvous with the log. Jimson, Rice, get us ready for a burn.”

  The thick, disordered sky made Rather dizzy. If he fell into that he would be more than ordinarily lost. He climbed with care. Clave and Debby trailed him.

  There had been hard work followed by a long climb.

  They were all tired. Rather’s fingers and toes were starting to cramp. But the rocket was in sight, a hundred meters out…if that direction was still out.

  The log was rising through the Clump’s eastern fringes.

  Wind slapped at Rather from ambush, here, there, everywhere, as if he were embedded in a flock of terrified turkeys. Clouds ran in peculiar directions, not east-west, not flattened spirals, but shallow in-out curves. A line of small green puff jungles flowed in an arc that was not tidelike at all. Confronted by such strangeness, Rather’s bewildered eyes sought the one unchanging reference point.

  Voy burned blue-white and steady…twenty-five degrees east of the stump of the in tuft! Choppy clouds blurred the sun. Shadows pulsed, blurring and sharpening. Overlaid on those, Voy’s faint, sharp blue shadows lay in skew directions. Children learned not to see Voyshadows. Voyshadows told nothing, for they never moved, never changed, never distracted the eye.

  The tree had turned; the trunk was pointing wrong.

  Booce and Carlot waited at the rocket. Debby called, “Booce! How can you stand it?”

  “The tide? I grew up in it. You’ll get used to it. The happyfeet do.”

  “The shadows are making me sick to my stomach,” Debby said.

  Rather’s own stomach was queasy. “Carlot—”

  “We’re almost home.” There was no mistaking her joy. She liked it here. “Look, we’ve got the pipefire going.”

  “I’ll start the water.” A smaller pod had been carved into Logbearer’s new cabin. Booce crawled inside. “Tether yourselves.”

  The rocket cone pointed east. Rather poked his nose into the small hatch. “Booce, are you slowing us again?”

  Booce’s voice echoed. “What? No, tide’s different in the Clump. We’ll push west, straight toward the Dark.” He pulled a wooden plug from the water tank. He inhaled, put his lips to the hole, and blew.

  Rather withdrew his head to watch the completed rocket in action. Yellow-white coals glowed within the iron firebox that had given them so much trouble. The iron glowed dull red. A fourth pod nearby was filled with water in case the plates didn’t hold together.

  At the nozzle end of the rocket — “Nothing’s happening.”

  His answer was the sound of Booce inflating his lungs. Then the rocket went Chuff! and sprayed steam.

  “It’s going, Booce,” Rather said, and looked in.

  Booce’s face dripped with water. He was coughing and choking while he pounded the plug in with the heel of his hand. His glare was murderous.

  CHUFF, CHUFF, Chuff chuffchuffchuff…The rocket settled down. A row of cloud-puffs became a steady stream jogged by the play of capricious wind. Rather felt no acceleration. It would be gentle, with so great a mass to be moved.

  Carlot came up behind him; her long fingers found his hand and enclosed it. “Father? Shouldn’t we—”

  Booce sounded like his throat was still full of water. “Yes, go play lookout on the west face, you two. Watch for Navy and anything we might hit.”

  The maelstrom revealed itself to them as they circled the trunk. Flying was a continuing wonder to Rather, but Carlot did it better. She kept darting ahead, then circled to urge him on. At a vantage point on the west face they doffed their wings and rested.

  The Clump was a whorl like a tremendous fingerprint.

  Inward, matter thickened. There were puzzle trees, distorted cotton-candy jungles, the much smaller puffballs that Carlot had pointed out for him (“fisher jungles”), and greenery that was totally unfamiliar. Ponds took odd shapes in the distorted tide. The sky was thick with birds: skyhorses, triunes, and a thousand tiny red and yellow darts converging on a puff jungle. Everything moved in arcs, tighter near the center of the whorl, and darker. The center itself was almost black, but motion could still be seen there.

  The triune families were hard to spot, but two had turned to observe the passing log. They were fat sky-blue cigar-shapes with wide triple fins: male and female and child, linked along their bellies. Three slender blue shapes flashed violent-orange bellies as they converged on the red-and-yellow bird-swarm: another triune family, separated to hunt.

  A thin stream of cloud cut across other patterns of cloud-flow. Rather spotted it in the moment before Carlot pointed. “There. Navy.”

  “How do you know?” Rather saw only a dark point at the end of the line of cloud.

  “It’s coming toward us. Customs. They’ll make a burn and intercept us in a day. Oh, treefodder.”

  Rather laughed. She’d borrowed his curse. “What?”

  She showed him.

  Far in toward the Clump’s dark center, in the thick of moving matter, was a broad, flat ring-shape with a pebbly inner surface…angular structures in pastel colors… blatantly artificial. Could it really be as big as it looked?

  He judged its size by an even larger natural object nearby: a tree with one tuft missing. The log was smaller than their own, Rather thought. At its midpoint he could make out a rocket-shape, cone and tank and angular cabin.

  Carlot said, “I know that rocket. Woodsman. Dad won’t like this. They could just as easily have been out another damn year.” She looked into his eyes. “We won’t have much time together. The Belmy family owns Woodsman. Dad wants to marry me to Raff Belmy.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “Shut up.” She pulled him against her by the slack of his tunic. “I don’t want to think about it. Just don’t talk,” she breathed into his ear, and he obeyed. It crossed his mind that Booce should be told of these things. But there would be time…

  Gyrfalcon found the log easily: bigger than average, with both tufts severed. It was making its burn: a wavery line of cloud behind it was beginning to arc over. The rocket would be behind the trunk.

  “Instruments,” Wheeler instructed. “Rice, get us a rendezvous track. Murphy, the neudar. That dark blemish in the wood—”

  “I see it, sir.”

  He waited and watched. His crew moved well, Bosun Murphy in particular. She hadn’t yet used the neudar under field circumstances. She moved slowly, but without mistakes. That would reflect well on Wheeler.

  “The blemish is dense. Metal,” she said. “Kilotons.”

  “Now the rocket.”

  “I can’t see anything—”

  “Behind the midpoint.”

  “Oh! I can look through the wood!” She tried it. “Mmm…something…metal, not much. Our own iron rocket nozzle would show a mark like that.”

  “Rice?”

  “We need a burn, Petty. Fifty degrees planar, zero axial, a hundred breaths of bum and we’ll go just past.”

  “Give us the burn, then all hands suit up. Spacer Rice, you’re in the cabin, on instruments. Murphy, on the pump.”

  Gyrfalcon carried a glass alcohol tank and a pair of water tanks. Its valve system had been rifled from the hulk of an ancient Cargo and Repair Module. On long voyages, standard practice was to spray water into the alcohol flame as working mass. Water could be replaced in domains beyond the Admiralty’s reach. Alcohol generally could not, though some of the happyfeet tribes carried alcohol distilleries for trade with the Admiralty.

  Wheeler and Jimson
tethered themselves carefully at the steering platform above the motor. Murphy began to pedal. Pedals could be extended, but a dwarf on the bicycle always delivered more power. Wheeler put his hand in the airflow to test it, then started the alcohol flame. He checked his crew’s handholds before he increased the flow.

  Thrust pulled at his skin and his bones. He ran water into the flame. Thrust rose again, and heat bathed the inner surfaces of his straining legs.

  Rice called down from the cabin. “Cut it!”

  Petty Wheeler reached below his feet for the alcohol valve. The roar died to a hiss: water on a hot surface.

  Next, the water valve. Gyrfalcon fell free.

  The log was nearer; the plume of acceleration was gone. Using the binoculars, Wheeler found a pair of human shapes on the near side.

  “They’re not giving us much attention,” he said. Murphy took the binoculars. Presently she said, “They’ll have time.” She looked until he took them away.

  The Navy ship was bigger and more elaborate than Logbearer. It arrived in a wave of warm steam and paused a hundred meters from the center of the midtrunk. Four men emerged and flew toward them.

  Logbearer’s crew waited outside the cabin.

  “They’re fast,” Debby said.

  Booce chuckled. “Never try to outfly the Navy. Navy wings are different, and the men are picked for their legs.”

  They were closer now. Rather suddenly gripped Booce’s arm. “Booce, they’re wearing silver suits!”

  “Ah, Rather—”

  Rather eased his grip. “Sorry.”

  “Well, watch that. It’s only Navy armor.”

  “But it looks—”

  “Just armor. There are three vac suits in the Admiralty, and we aren’t important enough to see one. Incidentally, they’d love to make it four.”

  Closer yet. The armor didn’t cover them. All wore helmets: head-and-shoulder pieces with an opening for the face. Some wore additional plates. And one was a dwarf.

  Their wings! They pointed a little forward, as the foot did; they folded on the forward kick and snapped open on the back-kick. The Scientist should see this. Rather thought.

  They left their wings on even after they touched bark.

  The dwarf was a woman. Red hair showed around the helmet before she lifted it. Pale skin, pointed nose, and pointed chin; hair like flame streaming from a tree afire.

  Her chest plate stood several ce’meters out from her chest. She was five or six years older than Rather, quite lovely, and Rather’s height.

  She caught him looking and smiled at him. He forgot that he could move. Her eyes were blue, and they danced.

  He was blushing, and Carlot had caught it, and Rather looked away in haste. And watched a long, long man kicking toward them.

  The globe helmet was much larger than his head, with an opening for his face…like the silver suit’s helmet with the faceplate missing. Separate curved pieces protected his thighs, back, upper arms, and hips. Those were wood painted in silver; but the head-and-shoulder piece was of hammered metal. Wide nose, dark skin, black cushion of hair: he might have been part of Booce’s family.

  He recognized Booce (and ignored his crew). “Booce Serjent? You may remember me: Petty Wheeler. Welcome home.”

  “Good to see you again, Petty. You’ll remember Carlot—”

  She smiled brilliantly. “Good day, Petty Wheeler.”

  “Oh, yes. You’ve grown, Carlot.”

  Booce said, “These others are Clave and Rather Citizen, from Citizens Tree, a few hundred klomters west of us. Debby Carther we hired before we left.”

  Meeting strangers was outside Rather’s experience. Booce had told him what to do. He said, “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” and held out his hand.

  “Pleased.” The Navy man’s handshake was strong for a jungle giant. “I’ll speak to you later. Rather. Clave, Debby, a pleasure. Booce, do you have anything to declare?”

  “Yes. One log, forty klomters or thereabouts. If you want to measure it yourselves—”

  “No, we’ll just take half the manifests as you sell it off.”

  “And the Wart,” Booce said complacently. “Our one bit of luck, and a happyfeet tribe almost made off with it.”

  “That mucking great chunk of metal halfway in?”

  “Heh. You’ve found it already? We haven’t measured that either, but it’s thousands of tons. Petty, we’d like the Wart classified. We won’t get so many thieves that way.”

  “All right, but if happyfeet attacked you—”

  “I don’t want to file charges. They got away, but we hurt them, and I don’t want them to know who. They might want to come after us with friends.”

  “That attitude makes life difficult for the Navy, Booce. We’d rather chase them down. You’re sure?…All right. We’ll want our taxes in metal.”

  “Fine. I want to keep that makeshift firebox until I can buy more sikenwire. It’s not pretty, but it works. Barring that, I’ll sell the entire lode to the Navy right now, if you can tear it out and tow it home. Take it off my hands,” Booce said.

  Rather couldn’t help himself: he stared. But what if he takes you up on it?

  Petty Wheeler laughed. “I don’t have alcohol to tow it, and I can’t authorize that kind of expenditure. But we’ll inspect it now, and I’ll send a team to cut our share loose after you’re moored.’’

  Petty Wheeler’s crew began searching Log bearer inside and out. Rather’s momentary impulse was to stop them. But Booce showed no surprise…and of course there was nothing aboard Logbearer to be found. Meanwhile the Navy officer turned to Rather and said, “Rather, wasn’t it? You should consider joining the Navy.”

  “Why?”

  The man smiled. “The pay is good, particularly for a tree dweller, if you can get in. We’ll shape you up and teach you things you should know, like how to win a fight. You’ll be holding civilization together. The personal advantage is, you’re the right shape. You noticed Bosun Sectry Murphy? Short, with red hair—”

  “Yes?”

  “She’ll be wearing a vac suit within six years. Guardian is the highest rank there is, unless you were born an officer. You could do the same.”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Talk to her yourself. Ask Booce, for that matter. Booce, we’ll fly down and inspect your Wart. Would you like to ride with us?”

  “I’d be delighted.” Booce looked around at his crew and added, “We’d all be delighted.”

  Gyrfalcon’s hull sported handholds everywhere. The Navy men spaced Logbearer’s people high along one flank. There were shelves for feet and straps to circle a waist (or just under the armpits on Rather). “Fighting vessel,” Clave whispered to Debby. “They can cover the hull with archers.”

  Three Navy worked aft, around the motor. They ignored the civilians.

  Something green was trying to grow on the wooden hull. Fluff, maybe. The wood had been scraped recently. Rather noticed that much before the rocket fired.

  If Wheeler was trying to impress a barbarian dwarf, he succeeded. The rocket roared and spat flame. Rather felt his blood settling into his legs. The log’s rough bark surged past, accelerating. Aft, Wheeler and Murphy used toothed gears to point the nozzle. In a way it was more impressive than the CARM. You could see how it all worked.

  The roar of the motor would cover his voice (and the fear in it). Rather asked, “Why don’t they let us inside?”

  “Classified. Nobody knows what’s in a Navy ship,”

  Carlot said. “We haven’t seen the whole crew, I’m sure of that. Rather, I noticed you staring at the, um, redhaired woman?”

  Rather told a half-truth. “She looks short. I mean, it’s surprising, because she’s the same size I am. Mark never looked short.”

  Carlot seemed to relax. “Well, no. He was bigger than you when you were growing up.”

  Wheeler moved the nozzle ten degrees to port. The ship slewed around, spraying flame. He swiveled the nozzle starb
oard; the rotation slowed and stopped, and Gyrfalcon decelerated. It eased to a stop less than a hundred meters from the blister in the trunk.

  “The bandits almost had it torn loose,” Wheeler observed.

  Booce nodded.

  The same four Navy personnel accompanied them to the Wart. Three set to examining the blister that had grown up around the metal and the matchet-chewed wood that extended far back behind it. The fourth sought out Rather. “Petty Wheeler said you might have questions to ask me,” said Bosun Murphy.

  Rather was not really thinking of joining the Navy. He didn’t say so. “I don’t know enough to ask good questions.”

  She smiled enchantingly. “Ask bad ones. I don’t mind.”

  “What are the vac suits? Why are they important?”

  “They’re old science, as old as the Library. They’re invulnerable,” she said. “The highest fighting rank is Guardian, and that’s the rank that wears the vac suits. There are supposed to be nine Guardians. We’ve got eight. This—” She rapped her helmet, then the plates on her thighs. “—It looks like this, but all over. You’ll get as high as Petty just because you’re the right shape, and then you find out if you actually fit into a vac suit.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t got that far yet.” She looked down at her protruding chestplate unhappily. “Maybe I won’t fit. I’d still keep my rank as Petty. Understand, you have to be qualified, you have to be trained. It’s just easier if you’re the right size.”

  “Training. What’s it like?”

  “They’ll put you through exercises. You may think you’re strong — you’re a tree dweller? I can see the muscles. But Petty Wheeler could tie you in knots. After you’ve been through training you could tie him in knots. I could, I think, and you’re stronger. Your people, do they use polar coordinates to find themselves?”

  “No.”

  “They’ll teach you how to find yourself in the sky. You’ll learn how to count, if you don’t know—”

  “I can count.”

  “You’ll learn how to work a rocket, not a steam rocket but a Navy rocket. They teach you how to obey too. You want to go in braced for that, Rather. A superior officer tells you to fly, you fly, wings or no.”