“Let’s have a party,” Gary said.
There was a flurry of activity. Slither the Antarian cleared a table by englobing its surface in animate jelly. When the flesh withdrew, the table was spotless. The three Solarians fetched food and drink. Bounce of Mirzam remained to entertain the visitor. Melody felt a certain affinity to him, because she was an equivalently alien creature, and Sphere Mirzam bordered Sphere Mintaka. She was sorry she could not reveal her origin to him. “We do not receive many Lans currently.” He spoke by vibrating one antenna against another, and his height varied as his legs extended hydraulically from their stout tube-sockets. Mirzam was a jumping society, she knew; those three legs were made to deliver a lot of lift, and to absorb a lot of shock.
“Oh?” Melody inquired, accepting a squeeze-bottle of greenish liquid. In space, potable liquids were never poured; one never knew when a condition of null-gravity might occur. This drink had a sweet but strong flavor. “I understood this was a regular exchange.”
“It used to be,” Gary said. “But in the last two weeks no one has come except Skot, and the tabs have not been honored. Something funny going on. I have a message overdue from my buddy aboard the Trey of Swords. Usually Hath or somebody slips it in the chute during slack-time, but…”
So that was the nature of the exchange. Officers did little unofficial favors for crew, in return for a few hours’ “anonymous” relaxation that she suspected had something to do with intoxicants and amenable female Solarians. All off the record, of course. Getting along, in a fleet that never put in to planet.
And the hostages were fouling up the system. Because a hostage was not the same entity as the host. Hath of * had different priorities from Hath of Conquest. What was important to a member of a two-sexed species was not important to a member of a five-sexed species. So far no one but Melody knew the situation. And how would she make it known?
She was beginning to feel dizzy. “The drink,” Yael said in answer to Melody’s confusion. “Alcoholic.” She giggled. “Drink it slow, or you might wind up getting impregnated.”
Melody looked at the drink, startled. “An intoxicant!” Yet why was she surprised? She had known from her host’s memory that such things were common, and had reasoned that they applied to this lagniappe custom. She had merely failed to relate her intellectual comprehension to herself.
Suddenly a buzzer sounded in a rapid series of bursts and pauses. Gary looked up, dismayed. “That’s my call—emergency. It would have to come right now!”
“We shall see to your friend,” Bounce of Mirzam said, jumping up. Literally. His feet left the deck. “Like pogo sticks,” Yael commented, observing the way his three legs pistoned.
“No, I’ll go with you,” Melody said quickly to Gary. She was glad for an excuse to stop taking the intoxicant, and she didn’t want to have to explain to Slammer about a new escort; the magnet might get confused.
“Can’t do,” Gary said. “I’ve got to go hullside.” He started off down the hall.
Melody ran after him. “I’d like to go hullside!”
He whirled on her, harried. “You’re crazy!—no offense, sir.”
But she stayed with him, and Slammer stayed with her. “I won’t get in the way!”
“I never should have gotten relieved from watch,” he muttered. “Then I wouldn’t have been on call.” He jumped into a chute, disappearing from view.
Melody hesitated, then followed him, sliding down through darkness. This crew chute was smaller and faster than the officer’s access she had used before. Finally she leveled off in heavy gravity. She was, she judged, near the outer hull, her weight now about half again its normal amount. This was not a pleasant sensation; it dragged on her internal organs as well as her limbs, and her mammaries were uncomfortable. Although it was not as bad as the shuttle deceleration had been, she knew there was no immediate relief, and she had to stay on her feet.
Slammer arrived just after her. He did not seem discommoded. She wondered what the surface gravity was like on his home world. Maybe it made no difference to him.
Other crewmen were popping out of the chute. Gary was already stepping into his spacesuit. It opened like an ancient Solarian “iron maiden” torture device; fortunately, it did not possess the internal spikes. As he entered it, it closed on him, locking automatically. Melody marched up to a similar suit that seemed to be her size and stepped in. She had a surge of claustrophobia as it closed, but fought it off. She did want to see the outside.
Air filled the suit. She found she could move her arms and legs readily; the suit was so cleverly articulated that it presented no hindrance. It was not one of the invisible “second skin” suits, but a rugged heavy-duty workman’s job suitable for use in the special conditions of deep space.
Apparently Gary had forgotten her in his preoccupation with the emergency, and the others didn’t realize she didn’t belong. She knew she was taking a risk, but at least it was a release from the growing problem of the hostages. These people were not hostages; their auras were so low they were not even aware of her Kirlian nature. That was in itself valuable to know. As far as she could tell there had been no intrusion of hostages among the crew, unlike the heavily infiltrated officership. If she ever had to hide…
They crowded into a carriage on tracks set into the inner wall of the outer hull. She observed thick layering of foamlike material, evidently insulation. Heat loss could be a formidable problem in deep space, as would heat gain, if the ship moved into close orbit about a star.
Suddenly the vehicle was moving, accelerating to frightening velocity. The stanchions supporting the inner decks moved past at such a rapid rate they began to take on the appearance of the strings of a giant Mintakan harp plant, or the trunks of forest vines in Yael’s memory of her home planet. How glad she was to be riding instead of running! Slammer followed behind, having no problem with the velocity.
Then the carriage climbed. At first this increased her weight, making her sagging flesh chafe against a suit built for a male torso, but soon it lightened as they came into the region of decreased gravity. Melody realized that they had passed the officers’ section and were heading into the sword-blade—the solar collector. The ship narrowed, forcing the ascent though they remained at the hull. If the job were near the axis, gravity would be mild. Thank the God of Hosts!
They coasted to a stop and jumped out. Now they ran down a short passage to a vast airlock. Melody felt dizzy and uncoordinated. Not the effect of the intoxicant, she decided, but the half-gravity of this region. This business of gravity constantly changing with elevation was intellectually comprehensible, but took some getting used to in practice. The men, however, seemed to be used to it.
Slammer joined them. Now at last Gary noticed her. “Yael!” he cried. “You can’t come out here!”
Melody shrugged. “Why not?”
“Hurry it up,” another suited figure snapped. “We’re slow already. Crew B will pick up merits.”
There must be competitive interactions between crews, encouraging better performance. Good system, Melody thought.
Gary hesitated only momentarily. “All right, Yael, stay tight on my tail. I don’t have time now to take you back to your level. If anything happened to you…”
The lock closed. Pressure diminished, making her suit become rigid, although it was still flexible at the joints. Then the outer lock opened, swinging outward, and the huge dome that was one indentation of the tripartite sword-blade lay before them.
Dome? It should be a valley, thought Melody. But then she realized: Centrifugal gravity drew toward the outside, not the center. The lock opened from a bubble in the sword-handle; the entire ship was over her head. It just didn’t seem that way from the inside.
The others went out, moving with peculiar dragging dancelike steps. Melody tried to follow—and found that the magnetic boots of the suit were holding her rooted to the deck.
“Go on out,” the man behind her said gruffly. “Haven’t y
ou ever been on-hull before? We have to clear the lock.” He did a tap dance around her and was out.
Melody imitated his motions, and found that only the heel parts of her spaceboots were magnetic; the toe parts had no pull. Thus by pressing down on one toe she was able to draw the heel free without threatening her overall balance. Or so she thought. But suddenly it let go, causing her to lurch frighteningly. Fortunately her other foot held firm. She was grateful the pull was so strong; no danger of falling off accidentally.
Clumsily, she heeled-and-toed after the last man. She was able to diminish the lurches by levering each heel up just so, not too much or too little. The man walked right around the curved lock until he was hanging from the top, then stepped out on the hull itself. Melody, still preoccupied with her walking, discovering how to lengthen her stride so as to make her heels pull up automatically behind, did not fully realize what was happening until she felt the blood impacting in her head. She was inverted!
Now she was hanging precariously from the huge hull. The half-gravity pull seemed like double-gravity; one slip and she would fall into the bottomless well of space! She was abruptly terrified.
But with an effort of will she reoriented. She was not hanging, she was standing, the great mass of the ship below her. Before her was now the valley of solar reflection. Yes, that was better!
“Here we are in a suit on the Ace of Swords,” Melody said to Yael. “A suit of space and of Tarot.” But the host was too frightened of the vacuum overhead to respond to the pun.
The surface of the blade was mirror-bright, a concave reflector that focused the sun’s rays on a suspended trough collector above it. From a distance the trough had been invisible, but now it loomed above like a guyed moon. At the moment it was dark, because this face of the sword was opposite the sun, but Melody knew that very soon that would change as the rotation of the ship brought this mirror sunside.
“It’s in the trough,” Gary’s voice said in her headphone. “Meteorite severed one guy. See it listing there?” He pointed, and indeed Melody could see it: the trough bent to the side. “We have to reconnect that wire before the next pass and tie it fast. We’ll have maybe five minutes. If that focused energy hits us…”
Melody understood. The light of the nearby star was powerful, and focused it would be hundreds of times as strong; that was the point of this setup. A man in that region would be fried, his suit exploding from the heat.
“Here she comes!”
The sword accelerated, seeming almost to yank Melody free of the deck. “What?” she exclaimed involuntarily.
“The blades are geared to orient squarely on the sun,” Gary explained tersely. “An even rate of turning would lose as much as fifty percent of the available energy due to imperfect angles of reception, missing the trough, and so on. So it clicks over the lean aspects more quickly. Uses up some energy, but gains much more. The whole blade’s on a separate axle, of course. We could stop it turning entirely if we had to, without messing up ship’s grav. But since the troughs are held in place by centrifugal force, that’s not advisable ordinarily.”
“I had no idea there was such sophistication in space,” Melody said, genuinely impressed. Indeed, it was evident that her prior education had been scant. She had thought that the philosophical reaches of Tarot encompassed most of what was important. Next time the Ace of Swords appeared in a reading, she would react to it with a vastly changed perspective!
“A thousand years of experience,” he said nonchalantly. “Look—sunrise.”
Mighty Etamin was rising rapidly over the valley horizon. The double star was too brilliant to look at directly, but she followed its progress by the moving shadows. It shoved its way almost directly overhead. Then the gearing slowed the rotation, causing Melody to fall abruptly to the side, and the star stood almost still.
Melody was intrigued. “It used to be a fable, about making the sun stand still,” she murmured.
Gary spoke to the others. “I’ll jet out with the replacement cord as soon as the sun sets. Put the safety on me, and haul me in in a hurry if I run late. I’m too young to fry.”
Efficiently they attached jet-pack and safety line to him. Then as the star commenced its movement offstage, Gary took off. Like a shooting star he streaked into the half-dusk, trailing two lines, the jets augmenting the initial boost of centrifugal force. As he passed through the slanting beam of the vanishing star, the light refracted from portions of his suit in a splay of rainbow colors, a splendid effect.
“Superman,” Yael remarked.
Gary angled the jet at apogee just as the star set. He maneuvered for what seemed like an unconscionably long time before coming to rest. Melody realized that space jetting was more tricky than it looked, especially with the drag of lines changing the vectors. Several minutes passed before he got the old wires removed and the new ones threaded. Then the sword rotated again.
“The sun will catch him!” Melody cried, alarmed. And she jumped with both feet.
Suddenly she was falling through space—with no safety line. It had been a natural reaction, but a mistaken one. She screamed.
There was a clamor in her suitphone as the startled men exclaimed. “The fool! Doesn’t she know not to—”
“Get another line and jet!” “No time; she’ll be out of range before we can—” “Look at that magnet!”
Melody looked as well as her slow spin in space enabled her to, though of course the remark had not been directed at her. Sure enough, Slammer had followed her into space, ever-loyal to its assignment. “But you have no metal to interact with out here!” she exclaimed to it. “You can’t maneuver!”
Slammer of course did not answer. He could not even nod. He had become an aimless meteor.
The sun had not reappeared. Melody remembered that the blade was tripartite; that last adjustment had merely taken it another third of the way around. Gary had been in no danger. No question about it: She had reacted foolishly, and now was in trouble.
“I’ll get her,” Gary said, sounding disgusted. Melody turned her head to face him—and her body turned the opposite way, confusing her. She was in freefall, unable to direct her progress. She found herself staring at the stars, some of which she knew were the other ships of the fleet. On the shuttle’s screen they had looked large and close together, but here in the open, five thousand miles apart, they were nothings. Long stars were Swords or Wands; the others were uncertain. Her chance in intersecting one was about one in five thousand—after allowing for the three weeks it would take at her present velocity to get her there. She would not be bored, however, as she could anticipate suffocating within one day.
Somewhat sooner than that, Gary arrived, having jetted across to intercept her. He caught her by one arm and they gyrated crazily in space; then he enfolded her space-suit in his arms and steadied them both with the jet. It was a tricky business, but he was expert. Almost immediately they stabilized.
“Save the magnet!” Melody cried.
“There’s no time; the sun’s coming back,” he said.
“No, we’re in the shade of the ship,” she said. “It may be turning, but we aren’t.” When he had been working on the trough, he had had in effect to race the rotation of the ship merely to keep up with it, but now they were flying straight out.
“But we have to get back to the lock. It will soon be in sun.”
Meanwhile, Slammer had passed them, going out. “I don’t care,” Melody cried. “We have to save the magnet!”
Gary sighed. “I’m a fool. I never could resist a plea from a pretty girl.” He timed their spin and actuated the jet. They accelerated after Slammer, gaining slowly.
Abruptly they stopped. “Oh-oh,” Gary said. “That’s as far as the safety line goes.”
“Then give me the jet and let me bring it back!” Melody exclaimed.
Gary shook his head within the helmet and said, “You are something else!” He was unaware how accurate that comment was. “You really want to catch
that thing?”
“Slammer is a living, sapient, loyal entity. He tried to help me. I can’t let him die in space!”
“All right,” he said wearily. “I’ll put you on the line while I go after the magnet.” And he did so.
In due course he caught up with Slammer, put his arms around the sphere, and jetted back to Melody. Then she took the magnet while Gary grabbed her around the waist. They jetted as a mass back to the ship, following the spiraling safety line in.
They did have to land sunside, for the jet was now too low on fuel to permit them to stand off. They allowed the winding action of the ship as it turned under the line to reel them in. As they passed through the periphery of the sun-focus region, Melody felt the intense heat despite her suit. As they dropped lower, it abated, until at the deck the ambience was bright, not hot.
“Thank you, Gary,” she said as her feet took hold and Slammer assumed his own mobility. “I will remember you.”
Gary merely grimaced.
The Captain was approachable. At his invitation, Melody joined him for dinner in his quarters. The meal was not elaborate; they had the same tubed refreshments she had encountered before. But the atmosphere was different.
Captain Boyd did not mention her hullside episode, though he surely knew about it, and she was grateful for that. “It is good to relax with a pretty girl,” he remarked.
Melody was pretty at the moment; she and Yael had taken great pains to perfect her appearance. But she passed off the compliment as inconsequential. “For that, thank my host,” she said. “In my natural form I would hardly appeal to you.”
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