Temporary Duty

by Ric Locke

  “I guess you’re right,” Todd admitted. Something caught his eye. “Hey, look at that.”

  Peters turned. Dreelig, Dee, and Donollo were making an entrance, and it was worth watching. The older Grallt strode in the lead wearing his gray suit, back straight, looking down his nonexistent nose at the company. Dee had on a tunic in the same gray but cut low in front, and a skirt the same color, wide pleats draped straight and ending just above the knee. She hovered at Donollo’s right elbow, and Dreelig was half a step behind, carrying an ordinary-looking briefcase.

  They took a table next to the sailors, staying in character, Donollo handing Dee into the chair with gallantry, leaving Dreelig to find his own seat. Donollo caught Peters’ eye and seated himself pompously; they all held the pose for several heartbeats, then relaxed, and Dee broke out in a long peal of Grallt laughter.

  “What do you think?” Dreelig asked, leaning toward the sailors. “Will it be effective?”

  Conversation in the mess room had all but stopped during the performance; the low buzz started again, and Peters shrugged. “It works on your folks,” he pointed out. “I reckon it’ll be dynamite back home.”

  Todd was grinning. “President of Mars come to check up on the peons, but real informal, you know? Add a little fast talk, and you could sell ‘em building lots on the Moon.”

  Donollo said something, and Dreelig translated, “We have played an important one and his assistant before, but this is a little different. Dee’s costume is very effective, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Todd. Peters kept silent.

  “I don’t like it very much,” said Dee, looking down at herself. “There’s too much of me outside my clothing. But this is my first downside assignment, and if it works it will do very well.”

  “You definitely have the basics in place,” Todd told her. She stuck out her tongue at him. The tip of it was split into two points.

  “For now, if you will excuse us, we should eat,” Dreelig said, ignoring the byplay. “We have a great deal of work to do.”

  “Sure,” said Peters. “Let us know when you’re ready to leave, we need to go change.”

  “Certainly,” Dreelig acknowledged. “It won’t be for several utle yet. Gell isn’t ready, and there is no sense in our arriving in the night.” The noise level in the mess room had come back to normal or a little above, only a few glances from the other diners betraying their interest.

  “Then I reckon I could use a nap,” Peters said. “We done put in most of a day already, and it’s likely to be a while before we get a chance at the rack again.”

  “Good idea,” Dreelig approved. “Meet us in the operations bay at the sixth utle. That will leave ample time for the trip.”

  Peters had a restless nap, nodding off and waking up, spending a good bit of time in the study chair, staring out the window. The Moon was visible for a while, looking pretty much as it did from the deck of the ship at sea. Then the slow revolutions of the ship brought Earth into view, and he tried to figure out which part of it he was looking at. It was hard. He’d seen the pictures taken from space last century, but none of them had prepared him for the difficulty of seeing past the brilliant white cloud patterns to the relatively faint and irregular land outlines.

  Finally a reddish-white splotch resolved itself into the Sahara and north Africa, and he realized another part of the problem. He’d been looking at it as if it were in conventional globe position, North up, but the big white blob at the lower right wasn’t clouds, it was the Arctic, and if that was right, it wasn’t light yet in Jax. He checked the handheld. Sure enough, it was coming up on five in the morning back there.

  He napped again, waking in plenty of time to get ready. Noises in the head said Todd had done so as well; he waited until the other had finished his shower before going in himself. That done, he dressed in dark blue jumper with white piping and stovepipe trousers, realizing as he did so that he was already used to the kathir suit. The skivvies and T-shirt felt rumpled and constricting, and the scratchy wool of the uniform rasped his skin.

  Todd joined him when he rapped on the door. He had added neckerchief and salad bar, and his white hat was firmly screwed onto his head. Peters snorted, made excuses, and went back to add those items to his own outfit. If they were going to do this, might as well do it right.

  Chapter Seven

  Going down through atmosphere was more spectacular than going up. The dli went in belly first; streamers of pale-yellow and gold fire waved in the ports, and a low rumbling hiss vibrated the walls. That only lasted a few minutes, after which Gell brought the craft into level flight, which was as noiseless and sensationless as before. They were over open ocean, still very high up, for what seemed a long time before Gell pointed out the windshield. “Jax,” he said, and sure enough, white breakers and pale yellow sand were visible, far ahead and below.

  They came in over the beach at what seemed like treetop height. When they turned over the river toward Mayport a powerboat was racing along, throwing up a white rooster tail. Gell pointed at it, then pantomimed, right hand hovering over the panel, nearly touching, then a fluttering gesture to simulate water flying up behind. Big grin. “Maybe we ought to let him do it,” Todd suggested from the back seat. “Be something to see.”

  “Yeah, but I’d rather see it than do it,” Peters said sourly. When Gell looked at him, he pointed at himself, then sat up straight, one hand over his forehead as if shielding his eyes from the sun, the other pointing far into the distance past the pilot. Gell’s reply was a chuckle that sounded like a fifty-caliber gun in the distance.

  They skimmed over the pines onto the athletic field, Gell working the control in tiny increments. Peters had time to note a ring of Marines and a glittering welcoming party, then they were down, the only indication that the flight was over being the cessation of movement out the window. He said “thanks” to Gell in Grallt, and added “good flight” in English as he and Todd got up to leave.

  Dreelig and the others were still seated, Donollo with his head back, apparently asleep. “This is our stop,” Peters said.

  “Yes, but not ours,” Dreelig told him. “We are going on to Washington. We will return at the fourth utle of the sixth ande.”

  Peters held up the watch. “You got any idea what time that’ll be, local?”

  Dreelig consulted with Dee, who counted on her fingers. “Well after dark, I don’t know the number exactly,” she said.

  “If we ain’t waitin’ when you show up, have Gell make a low pass over the admin building,” Peters suggested. “That’ll let us know you’re here.”

  “I would not do any such thing,” said Dreelig. “Kh kh! Gell has too many excuses for special performances while flying without making up more. If you are not here, we will wait.”

  “We’ll be here,” Peters assured him.

  They stepped down over the trailing edge and saluted the brass, the one with the most braid returning the salute. There was a clunk! behind, and Peters spun to see the hatch closed and the dli rising off the grass. The admiral said “As you were, sailor,” pretty sharply, and the two of them watched the craft vanish over the admin building, heading north.

  “I take it we don’t get to talk to the ambassador,” the admiral said.

  “Yes, sir, I mean no, sir,” Peters floundered. “The ambassador and his party have an appointment in Washington.”

  “I see. You men been booted out?”

  Peters flushed. “No, sir, we are runnin’ errands. There’s some things we oughta bring along for the trip, and since they had to come down anyway, they brought us along to make the arrangements, sir.”

  The admiral looked hard at him for a moment, then relaxed. “Very well. You’ll need to talk to Master Chief Joshua.” He gestured with his thumb toward the back of the formation. “Dismissed, then. Carry on, men.”

  “Aye, sir,” they chorused, and saluted again. The admiral returned it, and the party of officers broke up, obliging the sailo
rs to salute each as they encountered them.

  Master Chief Joshua was a stubby, bullet-headed individual in dress blues. He raised his eyebrows as Peters and Todd came up. “I’m Joshua,” he said by way of introduction.

  “Howdy, Chief. I’m Peters, and this here’s Todd.”

  “Good to meet you boys.” They shook hands. The Chief’s general air was no-nonsense competence with a little overlay of worry. “I’ll be your leading chief, and it looks like I’m the closest thing to an Air Boss this evolution is gonna have, so you might say I’m real interested. How long you boys got?”

  “All day, Chief,” Peters told him. “The boat’ll be back to pick us up tonight, I don’t know exactly what time. I mean, I know it in their time—” he held up his wrist with Dee’s watch on it, “—but not in ours.”

  Joshua tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “I think we can fix that. Come along, we got things to do, and you need to meet some people.” He led them to where a vehicle was waiting, a Suburban painted haze gray with Navy markings on the doors.

  At the main gate Joshua jerked a thumb at an F/A-18 Hornet, nose hopefully pointed toward the sky but firmly attached to a welded steel framework. “Our stuff looks pretty piss-poor in comparison, don’t it?” he remarked.

  “We ain’t as far behind as you might think, Chief,” Peters suggested. “They can do things we can’t, but we got some shit that makes their eyes pop. We can do business if the powers that be get their thumbs out.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” the Chief advised. “Net’s been full of it-ain’t-workin’-out. Some of ‘em are sayin’ it’s too bad, but those folks are just going to go off and leave, and we won’t ever see ‘em again.”

  “Chief, if there’s a place to put money on that, you put some down against it,” Peters said earnestly.

  “Can’t say I’m sorry to hear it, seeing as how I’m gonna be with ‘em when they vanish,” the Chief commented. He settled back into his seat. “Speaking of which, you boys said there were some things we needed to bring along. What, pray tell, does the U.S. Navy have that you can’t find on a spaceship?”

  “Pillows, wardroom chairs, and radios,” Todd summarized.

  “Weldin’ gear and all the electronics you can scrape up,” Peters added.

  “Pillows?” Joshua raised his eyebrows again.

  “Pillows. You take a look at these Grallt, they’re all real narrow shouldered, Chief,” Todd explained. “They don’t use pillows because they don’t really need them. We each need to bring a pillow, maybe a few spares.”

  “Easy enough,” Joshua commented. “Just one more thing to add to the seabags.”

  “Them seabags can be pretty light, Chief,” Peters remarked. “We ain’t gonna need many clothes. Couple sets of skivvies, dress uniforms. Everybody gets issued a kathir suit, and that’s really all anybody’s goin’ to need.”

  “Kathir suit? What’s that?”

  “Sort of a junior-grade space suit,” Peters described it. “Fits like a second skin, stays clean all by its ownself, makes air when there ain’t none, and it’s got pushers on it, so’s you can move around when there ain’t no gravity.”

  “You’ve already been issued yours, I take it. How come you didn’t wear them?”

  Peters looked him in the eye. “They ain’t regulation, an’ we don’t know you yet.”

  Joshua grinned. “We’ll talk more about that later. Wardroom chairs? Sounds like you’re setting up something real luxurious.”

  “Oh, Hell, no, Chief, just tryin’ to get it shipshape. They got this big room, gonna set it up as a ready room for the crews.” Peters was careful not to be specific about who was setting things up. This Chief sounded pretty jealous of his authority; it wouldn’t do to have him find out that a Second Class and a Third were making most of the decisions. “They got most of the stuff, but we thought, they’ll need chairs. The big leather things they use for briefings on the ship.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Joshua assured him. “Briefing chairs, not wardroom chairs. There’s probably a Federal Stock Number for them: Chair, Briefing, Officers and Aircrew, FSN umpty million dash something. I’ll get after the supply folks. Looks like we’re here.” They were passing through the dilapidated iron arch that marked off NAS Jacksonville from the surrounding slums. The Marine guard said something to the driver, and they accelerated away toward the flight line.

  The hangar they arrived at was run down, the sheet-iron siding rusting through the silver paint in blotches. “Looks like Hell, doesn’t it,” Chief Joshua remarked when he followed their gaze. “It used to hold a fighter squadron.” He shook his head. “Times do change.”

  Sailors swarmed around the office block beside the hangar, painting and washing windows, and more were inside, sweeping and swabbing. “They’re getting good practice, Chief,” Todd said. “Me’n Peters and a Grallt work crew are just barely going to have officers’ country fit to live in by the time you come aboard. It’ll take a month of field days to get the rest of it shipshape.”

  “Will it now,” the chief remarked, not a question. He pushed a door open and urged them through.

  The room was in sorry shape: cracked dark-green tile on the floor, faded grey paint on the walls, fluorescent fixtures with about every third tube dead or flickering. It was furnished with desks and chairs that were probably older than anybody in the room, maybe older than any two of them. One of the desks had a computer on it, net cables disappearing into the overhead through a roughly hacked hole.

  Joshua introduced them to the people: Senior Chief BM (Aviation) Warnocki, Chief of the Deck and effectively Ops Officer in their truncated TO; Chief Corpsman Gill, assistant to the doctor; one of his assistants, Corpsman 2/C Kiel; Communications Tech 1/C Howard; and Yeoman 1/C (Data Processing) Hernandez, who was sitting at the computer, toying with a graph of some kind.

  “I’m Linguistics specialty,” Howard said as he shook Peters’s hand. “Translator. I’ll be learning the Grallt language.”

  Peters shook his head. “Everybody’s gonna have to do that,” he said. “The way they got it set up, we’re gonna mess with the regular crew,” he explained. “It’s like a restaurant, with waiters and all. You’ll have to know a little bit of the language to eat.”

  “Do tell,” Howard murmured. “You guys already learned some of it?” he wanted to know, tone a little accusing.

  “Yeah, ‘bout like what I said,” Peters told him. “How to order dinner, say sorry and thank you, that sort of thing. It’s all most of us’ll need. You’ll have plenty of chance to spread yourself.” Howard flushed a bit at that, not too pleased to be so transparent.

  The next few hours seemed very long to Todd and Peters. Between them, they described Llapaaloapalla as best they could, trying to convey the size of it and its general air of seediness. They tried hard to describe the untidiness, crudity, and air of dilapidation, but ran into a wall of disbelief. Nobody could imagine that anybody who had to live aboard ship would let it go that way. “Go ahead anyway, Chief,” Todd advised an incredulous Warnocki. “A couple of wire welders, supplies, and some shipfitters’ tools will be worth the trouble.”

  Warnocki shook his head. “I’ll do it, but if it turns out to be a waste of time, you’ll hear about it,” he warned. “What’s it made out of? I have to know, or I won’t know what kind of welding supplies to load.”

  Todd and Peters looked at one another. “Hell, I dunno,” Peters admitted. “I was assumin’ it was steel. That’s what it looks like, anyway.”

  “A steel spaceship? Now I know you’re full of shit,” Warnocki observed.

  Nobody was pleased by the time difference. “That’s going to be tough,” Chief Gill told them. “People can manage twenty-five or twenty-six hour rotations pretty easy, but thirty?” He shook his head. “Right off the top of my head, I’d say we’re gonna have to rotate rest days, and short-handed as we are, that could be a problem.”

  “I’ve worked forty-eight at a stretch
before,” Chief Joshua objected. “Even seventy-two sometimes.”

  “Sure. I’ll bet everybody here has. But thirty hours, every day, for two years?” Gill shook his head again. “I’ll look it up and get back to you.”

  “That reminds me. Got a job for you, Hernandez.” Peters unstrapped Dee’s watch and passed it to the programmer. “What can you do with that?”

  Hernandez inspected it dubiously. “Not much, I don’t think.” He tapped it, held it to his ear. “Dios mio, this thing’s mechanical! Is it some kind of joke?”

  “No joke,” Peters assured him. “It keeps their time. We’re gonna need a conversion program, our time to theirs. Among other things, I know what time they’re comin’ back for us by that thing, but I don’t know what it’ll be in our time. You figure that out and let me know.”

  Hernandez still looked dubious, but he pulled out a handheld, bigger and fancier than the one Peters was still carrying, and started pressing keys. “Stopwatch function, to get the basic interval. Never mind this thing,” with a wave at the desktop computer, “it’s like cracking a nut with a sledge hammer. While we’re waiting, I haven’t heard you say anything about what kind of computers they’ve got up there. I’m interested, you might say.”

  “You’re lookin’ at it,” Peters told him.

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” Todd confirmed. “The most complicated gadget we saw is a one-way PA system, and I’m not even sure it’s electronic. We never heard it work.” He glanced at Peters. “They don’t even have a radio on the dli, the shuttle they ride up and down.”

  Into the resulting, unanimous, stunned silence Peters said to Joshua, “That’s what I meant about radios, Chief. Earbugs for everybody, spares, talkies, spare batteries ‘til Hell won’t have ‘em. Radios to talk to the planes, and power supplies to run ‘em, and battery chargers.” He waved at Hernandez. “Computer types’ll have to take our own along. What we need’s a radioman. Got one on the list?”