“Is it a deal then, Jay?” He held out his hand. “You help me, best you know how, and Mel stays our little secret.”
After a moment I took his hand and shook it. Of course, I had no choice. For what Danny Shaker didn’t need to say was the other side of his promise: If I didn’t help him, “best I knew how,” he would certainly make sure that the crew of the Cuchulain learned that a young female was on board. After that, nothing he said or did would be able to protect her.
Danny Shaker probably realized what we were getting into when we decided to keep Mel Fury smuggled away on board the Cuchulain until we reached the Net and the hardware reservoir. I know for sure that I didn’t, although I suppose I should have, because I already knew that back on Paddy’s Fortune she had been in the habit of disobeying the controller.
The sort of problems I might face became clear even before we reached my new quarters. I knew the layout of the ship, and I knew just where we were going. Shaker had told us to wait fifteen minutes after he left, and then he promised us another clear quarter hour during which the interior passageways would be deserted.
The trip from the cargo beetle to the living area would take only a few minutes. I knew we had ample time—and made the mistake of telling Mel that. Then every three steps it was “What’s this?” and “What does that do?” and “Wait a minute, Jay, this looks really neat.”
I drove her along, ready to scream. When we finally reached our destination I closed and locked the cabin door and pulled the navaid from my pocket.
“You’re not going to play with that now, are you?” asked Mel.
“I am. Or better still, you are. I want to know just how long it will take the Cuchulain to get from here to the Net.” “Why?”
“Because I need to know how long I’ll have to sit on your head. Mel, you don’t seem to understand that you’re in danger until we get there.”
“Phooey. I heard Shaker talking to his crew before we took off. They came in mad as could be, and in two minutes he had them wrapped round his finger.”
“Sometimes. But you didn’t hear what Shaker said to me after we took off, did you?”
“I couldn’t hear anything. There was too much engine noise.”
“Then let me tell you. He said—and I believe him—that if the crew ever learn that you are on board and are a girl, he won’t be able to stop them.”
“What will they do?”
I felt myself going red. Back on Erin I had been told lots about sex, but never with girls present. And what I had to tell Mel was pretty extreme.
“They’ll want you.” And, when she didn’t seem worried by that. “I mean, they’ll fight over you.”
“So?” She certainly wasn’t making this easy for me.
“And they’ll rape you. You do know what rape is, don’t you?”
Mel didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened and her pale face went even paler. She reached out without a word and took the navaid from me. As she started to manipulate the indents on its surface I realized that what I had learned about the navaid in my blind experiments with Paddy Enderton’s stolen model was nothing. Displays flickered into existence around Mel’s busy hands, and were gone again before I had time to take in what they were.
She asked one question: “What’s the top acceleration of this ship?”
“It ought to be seven-tenths of a gee, but the engines are in terrible shape. No one dares to run the Cuchulain at anything more than a quarter gee. Even then it feels like the ship is falling apart.”
She touched one more indent, and nodded to the display that formed in the air. “It’s an eight-day trip at a constant quarter gee, allowing for Maze direction changes. Twelve days if you use boost-and-coast.”
Danny Shaker would go as fast as the failing Cuchulain could manage. At best, I would have the job of controlling Mel’s curiosity for at least eight days. But she knew the stakes now: her body, and then probably her life.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “Shaker told me to go along to the main control room as soon as I could, otherwise the crew may start to wonder. Before I go, though, show me what you did to get that time-of-travel calculation.”
She ran through it again, this time including a display of thrust times and attitudes. It was done almost too fast for me to follow completely, but it would have to be enough for the moment.
I grabbed the navaid from her.
“And whatever you do, don’t leave this place.”
She nodded. Maybe I wasn’t going to have a problem with her after all.
I headed for the main control room—the same place where Danny Shaker had reached into the air duct and lifted me out like a landed fish. That had happened two days ago. It felt like two centuries.
I didn’t waste a second going from my new quarters to the control room, but Mel’s dawdling and my own use of the navaid had taken longer than I realized. The only people there when I arrived were Tom Toole and Robert Doonan, who gave me a wheeze and a glower and at once hurried out.
Tom Toole was standing near the controls, examining a display of the Cuchulain’s interior. He pushed his long jaw out at me and sniffed. “So you’re one of us now, are you? Replacing old Sean, as the chief says it.”
I couldn’t tell from the look on his cleanshaven red face if he approved of that. “Not a replacement. I don’t know enough to be a replacement.”
“Don’t know enough.” Tom Toole grinned. “And don’t flare up nor cuss enough, neither, to be Sean. You’ll manage, Jay. Anyway, the chief says, soon as you got here, you follow him to Doctor Xavier’s quarters. Better get along.”
I think Tom Toole regarded me as being a bit under his wing, because he was the first on the Cuchulain that I’d ever done a job for, back before we even left Erin. And I’m sure he was delighted to hear that I wanted to join the crew, and leave Doctor Eileen, because the two of them had been at each other the minute they met. Certainly he didn’t need to add, as I was turning to go, “Before you leave, Jay, here’s a word to the wise. There’s some on board the Cuchulain who are no friends of yours. I don’t know what you did down there on Paddy’s Fortune—and don’t want to know, neither, not right now—but whatever it was, it got up the nose of a couple of people. That, and the chief saying we have to partition off your living quarters in the Cuchulain with heavy duty bulkheads, which is going to be a lot of work and was certainly a surprise to me. Some people will blame you for their share in that work, too. Anyway, don’t count on Joe Munroe as a friend, nor Robbie Doonan, neither. And now scat out of here. I’ve spoke too much already.”
For Tom Toole, he certainly had. He was one of Danny Shaker’s right-hand men, but he was more of a doer than a talker. I pondered his warning as I retraced my steps and headed for the part of the ship where Doctor Eileen and the rest of our group were quartered. On the way I passed tubby Donald Rudden and Connor Bryan. They were dangerously close to my quarters, hauling heavy-duty partitions. They pointed to them as I passed.