“So now let me pull it all together, and tell you how you can help. Number one: I need Mel Fury to work with the gadget here, but as far as the crew are concerned Mel Fury mustn’t even exist. They have to think that this world is no more than the way it looks from the surface, wild and uninhabited. Certainly with no people.”
“But it’s an artificial world,” I objected. “Obviously something inside must keep it going.”
“Obvious to you, Jay. But I’ve told you before, you’re an exception.”
I felt ridiculously pleased at the compliment, and wondered why.
“But most don’t think that way,” Danny Shaker went on, “so I don’t see that as a problem. The existence of Mel Fury is a problem, though, and that means we have a secret to keep. Mel must be hidden here on the cargo beetle before the crew return—no problem there, I can find a dozen hiding places—and stay out of sight until we get to the Cuchulain and are on our way again. All right?”
Mel nodded. I had the feeling that Danny Shaker had her practically hypnotized, but I didn’t blame her for that. I had been there myself.
He smiled, as though Mel had just done him the biggest favor in the world, rather than having no choice but to do whatever he said. He turned to me. “As for you, Jay, you’ll have to say you gave yourself up, voluntary-like, after nearly starving and dying out on the surface in the rain. And you’ll say that after talking with me you want in with us, instead of sticking with Eileen Xavier. I’ll tell the crew you gave me this”—he held up the navaid—“that Doctor Eileen had, and that used to belong to Paddy Enderton. But now here’s the hardest part.” His voice became soft, and he looked right into my eyes. “If we’re to carry this off, Jay, Doctor Eileen has to think that way, too. She must believe you’ve betrayed her. Or it won’t work. Can you do it?”
The honest answer was, I didn’t know. But I really had no choice, any more than Mel had a choice. What would happen to us if we said no? I had a strong suspicion, but I didn’t want to prove I was right.
“I can do it,” I said firmly.
What he was asking of me would be unpleasant, especially when I had to face Doctor Eileen, but it didn’t sound too difficult. And it seemed to me that Mel and I were coming out of this unbelievably better than I could have imagined just half an hour earlier.
For one thing—the main thing—we were alive. And now we would be operating with the protection of Danny Shaker himself. Not only that, we had kept the girls in the interior of Paddy’s Fortune out of the hands of the crew of the Cuchulain. I understood what that meant, even if Mel did not. It was a major achievement.
As Shaker discussed where to stow Mel safely out of the way in the cargo beetle, in a place where no one was likely to look for her, I felt nothing but relief. And the image of him that I had tried to paint for Mel, as a deadly, heartless killer, was one that I no longer found credible.
Why didn’t I question more closely, at least to myself, Shaker’s own motives in all of this?
I have no excuses, though I know I was ignoring Tom Toole’s comment, that the Chief was a deep one. And I had forgotten, or at least managed to push to the back of my mind, Danny Shaker’s own words to his crew, back on board the Cuchulain, “I’ll take the possible value of a live something over the guaranteed zero value of a dead one.”
Maybe that was it. Maybe I refused to reduce my own self-image to that of a mere live something.
Chapter 21
The first job was to find a hiding place for Mel Fury. Shaker stowed her away behind a false bulkhead, tucked away among spare parts for the beetle’s drive unit. It was crowded and not too comfortable, but he ordered her not to move or make a sound until he came to get her. By that time, he said, we would be on board the Cuchulain.
She nodded cheerfully enough, but I wasn’t too happy. I was beginning to wonder about Mel. She had met her very first male—me—only a day or so earlier. A few hours after that she had seen Sean Wilgus killed. Then she had been explicitly forbidden by the controller that ran Paddy’s Fortune to go back to the surface. She had followed me anyway. And now she acted as though everything was part of some big, exciting game. I decided that either young Mel had a few screws loose in her head, or she was at least ten times as tough as me. Maybe both. Would she sit still when she was asked to?
Then Danny Shaker came up with his own surprise. He wanted me out of the way, as well as Mel, when the crewmen returned.
“Just listen closely, and you’ll find out why,” he said, when I asked him. “Nine-tenths of running a ship, or anything else, is psychological advantage. I don’t want you hidden, exactly, the way Mel Fury is, but I do want you in a place where you won’t be noticed first thing. Aye, and you’d better be given a real job to do, preferably something that everybody hates. This should do fine.”
He showed me a hatch in the floor of the cargo beetle. It led to a cramped lower level, a ring-shaped region with a ceiling only a couple of feet high. “That runs around the cargo beetle drive,” Shaker said. “It’s supposed to be checked for dirt and leaks and general condition every time the beetle flies. But you can imagine Pat O’Rourke or Tom Toole trying to squeeze in there.”
Or Jay Hara. But Shaker forced me down through the hatch. “Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours,” he said cheerfully. “I expect you to do a decent job of it while you’re waiting to come up, too. Otherwise I’ll be forced to put you back.” He slammed the hatch shut.
I sat on a hard metal floor. At least there was light. Mel would be sitting in the dark. I didn’t feel particularly sorry for her.
I did nothing for a few minutes, then began to crawl around the inner wall of the ring. I saw no sign of any breaks, but dirt and junk there was, plenty of it, and I collected it in the bag that Danny Shaker had given me.
I was almost back to where I started when the floor vibrated to footsteps above my head, and I heard voices. I stopped working and sat motionless. I could hear—but if only I had been able to see!
Because an argument was starting up, no more than a few feet away.
“Aye, and look at us.” That voice belonged to Joseph Munroe, sulky as ever. “Starved and tired out, with nothing to show for it.”
“The galley’s on, Joe.” Danny Shaker sounded conciliatory. “You’ll have hot food in a few minutes.”
“And soaked, every one of us. No more dry clothes, either.”
“Not until you’re back on the Cuchulain. I’m sorry, but I didn’t expect rain here.”
“Or much else that’s happened, far as I can see.” Munroe raised his voice, from sulky to angry. “I’m going to say this, Dan Shaker, if no one else will. This trip’s been a disaster, botched from start to finish. And you can’t say we didn’t try to warn you. You ignored us.”