by Ric Locke
The aft lookout reported ships approaching right on time. Master Chief Joshua confirmed it over the deck push, and Peters and the other humans took their stations; human ships would trap first. They busied themselves with crosschecks as the sparks grew aft. With little to actually do, they were easily ready before the first Tomcat flashed into the bay with only a subsonic whisper from the retarder fields. The rest followed with the usual precision; once the 210 bird was taxiing into position against the inboard wall they moved away from the consoles. Furred, winged aliens took over their posts, and the enkheil ships trapped in turn, with almost equal flair.
Humans emerged from the planes and took up position at the noses, as they had when launching. Enkheil extruded their ladders, and the Combat Dancers emerged, to perform a routine similar in principle but different in detail from the one they’d done when they boarded, ending with all of them in deep bows, with wings furled like cloaks. Human officers saluted sharply, and Commander Bolton stepped forward to make a half-bow; the Dancers took that as a signal to rise, and both groups formed their columns and proceeded toward their quarters.
“Well, that’s that,” said Jacks with a satisfied air. “Our guys won.”
“How do you figure that?” Peters asked. “We ain’t heard nothin’ about it yet.”
Jacks shrugged. “Why do we need to? What with the wings and all, what they did at the end had to be admitting they lost. Pretty damn elegant, I thought.”
“You’re probably right,” Peters admitted, eyeing the other sailor sidelong as the Master Chief announced the end of the evolution. “Time for chow,” he told his crew when the announcement was done. “Me for a shower first, though.”
Rupert plucked at his jumper. “Sheeit,” he said. “The rubber long johns take care of that well enough for me. I’m gonna get out of this deck gear, though.”
“Right,” said Peters. “See you in the chow hall.” Rupert nodded, and he and Jacks headed off, Jacks swiveling his head around, probably looking for Se’en. Peters lingered for a few moments; that gave him a chance to nod at Ghnal as she passed. She returned the nod and added a wing flip, but didn’t say anything. “And that’s that,” Peters said to himself, and followed the others toward the enlisted quarters.
Todd was in the shower when he got there, so Peters stripped off his deck gear, pulled his kathir suit down around his waist, and sat on his bunk to wait. It didn’t take long to shower when his turn came, because Rupert was right; the suit took care of things like perspiration. Todd waited and went with him to chow, wanting to know what had gone on that had the brass excited. Peters explained the best he could. “They’re nice folks,” he concluded. “Wasn’t for the Master Chief gettin’ his balls in a uproar, we coulda had a nice forty-eight.”
Todd snorted. “Fat chance,” he opined. “I suppose the officers’ll get to go.”
“You know, I don’t think so,” Peters said. “Just a feelin’.”
That got a grin, shrug, and grimace from Todd. “You say it.”
This was first ande for the Grallt, second for the humans. The schedule was for an ande of off-time, then a second mock-combat session; the second session came off on schedule and without a hitch, with the same conclusion as the first. Ghnal Dhango stayed by the Number One console during the entire evolution, conspicuously ignoring Howell to the extent possible and paying little visible attention to anything except the business at hand. At the end she was escorted away by Chief Spearman, to join Khrog Dhakgo and disappear into the officers’ quarters hatch.
Very shortly after that the enkheil boarded their ships for the last time, the Combat Dancers doing another skit as the support crews climbed into their transports, fatter versions of the combat ships with windows—or rather, round portholes—down the side. Neither Ghnal Dhango nor Khrog Dhakgo tried to speak to Peters, or even acknowledge him beyond Ghnal’s parting nod as she joined her mate aboad the lead transport. Peters was relieved, but had to admit a little disappointment.
And, well, a little resentment, too, he was forced to admit, at least to himself. He thought about that as he helped boom Tomcats down; scuttlebutt had it that they’d be leaving soon, and Chief Warnocki didn’t know if that was right or not but didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Maybe even a lot of resentment. He thought about it some more as he showered and dressed for chow. Oh, well, the Navy was the Navy; you could do a lot of things, but bucking the system wasn’t one of them.
About the time he’d reached that conclusion Cleeves was banging on his door with a summons to attend the Master Chief. The runner had arrived with news from the bridge: High Phase would begin at the next ande, only a few minutes away. Their next destination was called Zenth, whatever and wherever that was. He thanked the runner, who took herself off, and shared a shrug with the Master Chief. There was nothing strange here but the funny-looking people. When you’re in the Navy, you go where the boat goes.
When he got back to his room there was a surprise waiting; a package wrapped in brown cloth and tied with soft string. Todd professed ignorance. “One of the Grallt, the regular ones, not the zerkre, brought it by and said it was for you.”
“So what is it?”
Todd shrugged. “Damifino. Open it up, then we’ll both know.”
The contents of the package was a statuette about thirty centimeters high, depicting a male-female pair of Combat Dancers in the pose they’d used at the end of their routine when they first came aboard: male crouching, female erect, both with wings spread. The material was some kind of wood, dark brown with a green tinge, and the artist had used the grain of the wood to emphasize the lines of the dancers’ wings. “Damn, that’s pretty,” Todd observed. “What’s the note say?”
Peters hadn’t noticed the note, a slip of folded paper, creamy white with some kind of design or logo embossed on the front. Keep us in mind, it said in Grallt, and there was a squiggle below that, probably somebody’s signature. He read it to Todd. “As if I could forget any of this shit,” he said softly.
“Look at it this way,” Todd suggested. “You’ve made at least one friend.”
Peters snorted. “Yeah, and a whole bunch of enemies, I reckon, and the enemies are a lot closer. Whoa, here we go.”
Llapaaloapalla had been maneuvering as they spoke, stars flitting across the window in jumps and skips; there came the odd decelerating sensation of entry to High Phase, with the same special effects they’d seen before. Peters looked at the statuette in his hand for a long moment, then carefully set it in one of his locker cabinets, slipping the note under the base.
“You ought to keep it out to look at,” Todd objected. “It’s pretty.”
“Nah,” Peters said, and latched the cabinet. “It’d just collect dust. I’ll take it out from time to time, but there ain’t no need to be too obvious about it.”
Todd shrugged. “It’s your statue.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kennard and Tollison started the exercise sessions back up as soon as possible. Peters joined in as something to do more than anything else; most of the others seemed to feel the same way. The Grallt, not given to mincing words, called it “dance class”. Peters forebore to explain that to anybody. Tollison would have laughed; he didn’t know Kennard much.
Their diet started changing. The first new item to appear was a cloudy pink beverage; Zeep brought them each a glass without being asked and bustled off. Todd tasted it cautiously. “Milk,” he diagnosed. “Kind of a funny flavor, but not bad.” Peters tasted and agreed.
After that they got on average one new item per meal. Zeep would bring something, tell them the name, and bustle off while they tried it. Some of it they liked, some they didn’t; none of it made them sick, although almost all the humans had weak allergic reactions to one or more items.
That was remarkable when you thought about it. Peters asked, and Zeep explained: “Oh, it all has to be tested, that’s why you don’t get it all at once.” He shrugged. “If it was only us we wouldn’t
need to test, we know the enkheil well. But you humans are new.” Peters and Todd shared raised eyebrows. Apparently there was a little more to food service on Llapaaloapalla than met the eye.
Peters and Tollison, along with a few others, got called away from the exercise sessions regularly, because Chief Warnocki wanted to get started on the forward bay door. They got out the bucket lift and turned to; the mechanism wasn’t in quite as bad shape as the aft one had been, probably because the Grallt’s operations pattern used it less, but several gear teeth were cracked, and the thing needed oil like a last-century automobile did. Dhuvenig’s admonition not to open the doors during high phase left them with no way to test it until Cleeves suggested that they disconnect the drive chain from the door itself. “We know the door moves,” he observed.
“Yeah, and the carrier bearings on that are next on the list for grease,” Warnocki growled. “But yeah, you’re right. We’ll do it that way.” It took an extra watch, but at the end they were confident that the doors would work when needed.
The enkheil had used lasers, or something like lasers, in the mock combat, and the Navy blue paint on the planes had absorbed the energy just fine, thank you. They had blotches where the paint had been burned off, and those had to be cleaned, filled, and repainted. Peters wasn’t involved in that, but Todd was, and when he remarked about it, Peters explained what the enkheil had told him: “They reckon it must be the same thing, but they ain’t got a clue what it really is, because they buy ‘em off the shelf and they’re all sealed up, so you can’t tell how they work.”
“Sounds like an opportunity for us,” Todd observed. “Maybe we could sell them cheaper or something.”
Peters snorted. “Hnh. Just don’t let the Master Chief hear you talkin’ like that. That’s officer business, accordin’ to him, and enlisted better keep their nose out.”
Todd grinned. “What I think is, Master Chief Joshua wants your ass.”
“We don’t get on too well, and that’s a fact.”
During the workups for the voyage Peters and Todd hadn’t seen a great deal of one another, each being pulled into the orbit of his particular specialty despite the strong association formed by their being tossed together and into a strange situation. Now that they were roommates they had begun to take up where they’d left off, taking chow together, talking over the day, and grousing about conditions.
They also began, tentatively at first, to resume their exploration of Llapaaloapalla. Peters’s command of the Trade language and Todd’s less elegant ability gave them access to anywhere that wasn’t private or guarded, and much that was. Neither of them asked or received permission, either from the Grallt or their own hierarchy, and they made no explanations and filed no reports. They didn’t discuss their wanderings in public, except sotto voce over meals, and although they weren’t exactly furtive, they did take reasonable precautions to avoid questions that were sure to be awkward.
The section below the operations bay had about the same volume as the bay, but was divided into decks; the upper two were warrens of freezers, some of which weren’t working, and the rest of it held long narrow trays mounted on chain drives. A gang of Grallt would manhandle a tray onto the start end of the chains, which would carry it slowly away. As it moved, it would be filled with dirt—or some mixture plants would grow in—and seeded, and before it reached the end would support a luxuriant growth, which was harvested by one crew before another wrestled the tray off the chains, cleaned it, and returned it to start for recycling. The overheads of those compartments were forests of lights of different types, and the illumination there was almost blinding; many of the Grallt working there wore caps and tinted lenses, the lenses depending from headbands or cap visors, which made sense.
“Why this one not works?” Todd asked, looking into an empty compartment in the freezer section.
“The mechanism is broken,” said Gellin, the sub-supervisor who had consented to guide them. “We could use the space, but it isn’t a large problem. When we next go to Kakikya someone will repair it.”
“How should it work?” Peters asked, looking with interest at a small box or cabinet near the door. “Is this the control?”
Gellin lifted her brows. “That’s right, you humans like to fix things. Yes, that should be the control. Except that when I move the lever—” she suited action to the words “—nothing happens, see?”
Peters had his multitool out and was removing left-handed screws to expose the mechanism. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Gellin asked, sounding dubious.
“Not always,” he said cheerfully. “It doesn’t work, so I can hardly break it, can I?”
“I suppose so.”
“Todd, take a look. Looks like a pretty normal thermostat t’me.”
“Yep, there’s the coil.” The younger sailor twiddled the lever. “And this tightens and loosens it, instead of just shifting it back and forth. Makes sense, if you can’t depend on gravity. Where’s the switch—Ah. What’s this?”
“This” was a ball of fluff that had worked its way into the mechanism, jamming a bit that was intended to move. Mindful of the possibility of electric shock—ship’s power was 103 volts, a bit over 59 Hertz, well within the adaptability of computer power supplies and enough to blow your fillings out if you got across it—Peters put on an airsuit glove and used the multitool’s pliers to gently ease the foreign body out. Something clicked, there was a fat spark from deeper in the case, and air began coming out the grilles. “There we go,” he said, holding the tool up with the fluff caught in the points.
“Incredible,” Gellin breathed. “You made that look so easy.”
“Sometimes it is easy. Sometimes it’s much more difficult,” Peters warned.
Gellin waved that off. “Yes, I know the principle,” she said. “Can you show me what you did?”
Todd took it upon himself to explain a bimetallic thermostat, and showed Gellin where the insulating fluff had stopped it from operating properly. The blast of arctic air was kicking up dust, already rapidly lowering the temperature in the room. The kathir suits kept their bodies comfortable, but faces and hands were getting a bit chilled. “I must tell my first about this,” Gellin said. “Shut the machine off for now; the room must be cleaned before we can begin using it. No, don’t worry about the cover,” she said to Peters, who had begun fiddling with it. “I will put it back in a little while.”
“No trouble,” Peters said as he put in the last screw. “I’ll turn it off.” He moved the lever to the left, at a guess; the cold blast stopped abruptly. “There.”
Gellin took them to meet her supervisor, a portly male about Znereda’s age called Lindalu, which Todd and Peters took for granted. Lindalu thanked them without effusiveness and made a suggestion to Gellin that they didn’t hear. On their way out of the freezer section she popped into one of the rooms and emerged with a handful of objects. They were probably fruits, looking a little like apples at first glance. Inside the skin they were soft, sweet, and creamy, like custard, with a center of tough fiber holding hard pits. The two sailors devoured theirs in a few bites, and Gellin only smiled and fetched another apiece. “Good, aren’t they? But we don’t have enough for everybody, so they are special treats. This occasion qualifies.”
“It was not a major effort,” Peters demurred, but Gellin only smiled and went away in the abrupt Grallt fashion. The sailors went their own way, munching custard fruit.
* * *
Word began to spread, and the humans, who not only fixed things but explained them afterwards, were welcome almost everywhere. Even Linvenig, the engineering officer who had tossed them out when they intruded before, was hospitable; he was Lindalu’s brother or something, and cordially led them on a tour of the engineering pits. He did not explain the zifthkakik. “Nobody can explain the zifthkakik,” he told them. “Nobody knows how they work except the people who made them. Sorry about that.” The idiom translated perfectly. “I’d like to know myself. So would man
y people,” he observed wryly. “But I don’t see it happening soon.”
“Us too,” said Todd cheerfully.
They began to get invitations. Some of the living quarters had kitchens, and those were typically occupied by families with children; they had several meals with one or another of the Grallt they met. They were on their way to a family meal when a call came from behind. “Peters, is that you? Wait a minute.”
Peters turned to look. “Oh, it is you!” Peet exclaimed, clapping her hands together delightedly. She was wearing a sort of shift or singlet, with straps over the shoulders, ending well above mid-thigh, made of something thin enough to let nipples show. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. “You never came to see me.” In a few steps she had Peters in a close embrace and was giving him a straight-faced kiss. After a moment or two of that, she moved back a little, staying well within personal space, and looked down. “I see I made the right impression this time,” she said with a broad grin.
“Peet, I—”
“Never mind, we can talk later.” She seized his hand. “You go ahead,” she said to Todd and their host. “I’ll bring him back later. Or maybe not.” This with another grin and a quick peck on the lips.
“Not problem,” said Todd, with amusement in his tone; Peters couldn’t look around, being trapped, but could imagine the grin. “Get on with it,” the younger sailor advised in English, definitely amused. “I’ll expect a blow-by-blow account later.”
“You wish,” Peters said, and heard the other laugh.
“Enough chat,” said Peet firmly, and towed him to the door of her room. It was set up for two, a bit bigger than the sailors’ and quite a bit more cluttered. “Get out,” she said without ceremony to the other occupant, another female. “Go visit with Dell or something. I want to gabble this guy.”
Peters hadn’t heard the word before, but the context was clear; at some point he’d decided the Hell with it, go with the flow. The other girl was wearing a garment similar to Peet’s; she stood and stretched, looking at Peters with a smile, then turned to face away and began pulling on trousers, the lower half of the pants and shirt outfit some Grallt wore. “You aren’t supposed to be looking at her,” Peet said. “You’re supposed to be looking at me.” She struck a pose for a moment, arms high, the stretch making her breasts more prominent. “There. Now get out of that suit while I clear this stuff away.”
