“Consult the construction chief and tell him that we both recommend that the closing of the hull should begin immediately,” Gelrayen said, then turned to Captain Tarrel. “Would you like to see your cabin now? You can move yourself aboard while I attend to my ship for a while. The diplomatic guest suite here on the bridge level should be ready for use.”
“Of course, Commander,” Tarrel said. “That is probably the same as the suite I was given while I was aboard the Kerridayen. I do know the way, if you need to get to work.”
As it happened, Commander Gelrayen wanted to get to work on the closing of the Methryn’s hull immediately, and he suspected that the construction chief would not be willing, unless he presented his arguments and pleading in person and possibly brought along Fleet Commander Asandi as well. Captain Tarrel found the guest suite to be in the exact corresponding place it had been aboard the Kerridayen, proof that the Starwolves were fairly satisfied with the thirty-thousand-year-old deck plan of their carriers. Since it was in the collection of corridors immediately behind the bridge, that meant that she could be there in half a minute or less without having to bother with the lift. In fact, her cabin was hardly any farther away than that of the Commander himself.
She did not remember Lt. Commander Pesca until she was on her way back into the station to collect her things. He was unobtrusive enough, since she generally ignored him altogether, but she was still responsible for him and made a point of checking on him two or three times a day to see if he was making a nuisance of himself. The trouble was that she found him dull, inept and given to petty complaints — poor company compared to Starwolves — and she easily could have done without him. For one thing, he was not very likely to accomplish his mission of learning their secret language, all the more so because they probably knew exactly what he was trying to do. But Tarrel had no good excuse for leaving him at the station, and she thought it best to keep him close, where she could watch him.
“Pack your bags, Wally,” she declared, finding him in the common lounge of their suite of apartments when she returned. “We’re moving aboard the Methryn right away.”
“Is the Methryn ready to go out?” he asked, looking surprised and curiously worried about her announcement.
“No, not for another week. But I’ve been invited aboard, and I’m not going to leave you wandering about here on your own.” “But is that a good idea?” he asked, still obviously concerned. “I mean, can’t you do your work better here at the main base?” “No, I can do my work better aboard the Methryn when she goes into Union space,” she said, wondering what was bothering him. “If you don’t want to go back into battle, I can probably make arrangements to have you sent home. But I’m not going to leave you here.”
“No, I should go,” he agreed grudgingly. “You might need me. Besides, I seem to be getting nowhere with their language.” “No, you never will,” she told him. “They keep their secrets better than stones.”
The first crisis had occurred by the time Captain Tarrel returned to the Methryn. Kelvessan were running up and down the docking tube, to the point that she spent half the walk through stepping to one side with her bags. A whole crowd of people was outside in the bay itself in what looked like furious inactivity, as if they very much wanted to do something but had no idea just what. None of that was very promising for the Methryn. Captain Tarrel did not know what the problem could be, but her first guess was that the scanner was somehow involved. She doubted that there was anything that she could do to help, except perhaps by staying out of the way. Her compromise to her own curiosity was to stay in her cabin and make herself at home for a couple of hours, time enough for the Starwolves to get over their initial panic and make some sense of the situation.
When Tarrel did finally present herself on the bridge, the crisis had settled itself to a state of desperate industry, which was probably to say that things were very much back to normal.
The work on the new surveillance console was continuing at an unhurried pace, as if nothing had happened, and that seemed to suggest that the trouble had not occurred here. Commander Gelrayen had left a message for her with Valthyrra, instructing her to join him on the floor of the construction bay.
As soon as she could see the interior of the bay, Tarrel had a much better idea of what was happening. Handling arms mounted on tracks on ceiling and floor had been brought in both above and below the ship to begin the work of fitting the remaining hull plates, suspended by the — deceptively slender arms out of range of the artificial gravity that existed only at floor level. More plates were being held in groups by other handling arms, but the work itself appeared to have been suspended. Commander Gelrayen hurried over to join her before she saw him. He was not in Starwolf Commander’s white, and she could not easily tell him from many of the dozens of other Kelvessans on the bay floor.
“We have a problem,” he told her simply. “We have to send these plates back to the construction facilities. These plates were cast and shaped years ago, but this is the first time that they have ever been brought out into the bay.”
“What is the problem?” Tarrel asked. “Don’t they fit?” “They probably fit perfectly,” he told her. “Unfortunately, they have not yet been prepared for final fitting. Do you not see the difference?”
Tarrel looked closely, but the only thing that she could see was that all of the plates were shiny silver on both sides. “I suppose that the new plates haven’t been painted yet. Can’t you do that after they go on?”
“That is not paint,” Gelrayen said. “The plates are bonded to a thick polymer coating that resists impacts and helps to insulate the hull against power discharge. And considering what we have to fight, we will need that coating. We fuse the sheets into a solid piece once it is on, and we can easily repair ripped and burned sections. But this much work has to be sent back to be done properly, and quickly enough to keep us on schedule.” “Can you still keep your schedule?” Tarrel asked.
He nodded. “Yes, we believe so. We began fitting the plates two days ahead of schedule, and that gives us two extra days to make up for our little mistake.”
The main bay doors began to open, the internal atmosphere held by containment fields, while smaller tenders waited just outside to carry away the hull plates. Considering the size of those plates, most of them almost sixty meters'along each edge, this was the only door through which they would fit. Tarrel looked up to see one of the massive plates pass directly over her head, supported at one corner by a handling arm barely half a meter thick. For all the years that she had lived in space, she still had some problems with artificial-gravity environments.
“We might just as well go back aboard,” Gelrayen commented. “There is nothing we can do to help here, except to get out of the way. Valthyrra will be powering up the scanners as soon as the bridge console is finished, and she told me to expect that within the hour.”
Tarrel was interested to watch the tenders move along the length of the Methryn to collect the unfinished hull plates, but she did not necessarily want to be beneath while the plates were being taken away. They took the lift back up several levels to the observation deck, then crossed the docking tube back into the carrier. Tarrel was compensated for not staying below to watch, since the windows along the length of the tube gave her an excellent view of the tenders operating on their own level. Commander Gelrayen indulged her curiosity a moment, stopping to watch. The only problem with moving the weightless plates was maneuvering their awkward size through the tight areas between the Methryn and the walls of the bay.