He was finally getting through to Mel. She had seen this gun before. It was the one Dan Shaker had used when he killed Sean Wilgus, and Mel could not take her eyes off it.
Shaker had been watching her closely. He nodded. “All right, then.” He was standing up when he saw the little silver box, sitting on the table. “What’s that?”
“Pills,” I said. “I got them on Paddy’s Fortune, they’re supposed to make me healthier. Do you think I shouldn’t take them?”
“That’s up to you. But it’s exactly the sort of thing I was warning about. Take the pills out and put them in your pocket, and give me the box.”
I did as he ordered, and he tucked it away in his jacket.
“One look at that,” he went on, “and any smart crew member would start wondering where it came from. It’s workmanship like nothing on board the Cuchulain.”
He left, closing and locking the door behind him. I tucked the little white-handled gun away in my other pocket, where it made an awkward bulge. Mel sat down again at the table. Her expression was somewhere between guilty and defiant.
“You think I did it, don’t you? You think I left something on the cargo beetle.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. Shaker thinks so, and there’s trouble with the crew. That’s good enough for me.”
She stood up, reached across for her backpack, and headed for the inner room where she would be sleeping. “Well, I didn’t,” she said over her shoulder. “No matter what you and your great Captain Shaker believe.”
She closed the door behind her. I picked up a glass, walked quietly across to the door, and set one end gently against the crack where it opened. Then I put my ear on the other.
It was a trick that Duncan West had taught me, so long ago I don’t know when I learned it. The glass amplified all sounds coming to its open end, so I could hear very well what was happening in the next room.
I heard a strange rattling noise, hard and soft objects hitting the floor all at once.
I knew what it was. Mel was emptying out her backpack.
She didn’t say what was in it. I didn’t ask. But for the next few days she was on her best behavior, and she didn’t cause me one moment of extra worry.
She didn’t need to, because I did plenty of worrying without Mel adding more.
If it was important that Mel stay hidden away in my living quarters, it was just as vital that I appear every day to work with the rest of the crew. There was lots to do, too, because the Cuchulain was in awful shape and the senior men, Shaker and Toole and O’Rourke, spent most of their time monitoring the ailing drive. That, plus the absence of Sean Wilgus, meant extra work for everybody. There were more than enough unpleasant chores to pass on to me.
I didn’t mind. Checking the work of the cleaning robots, or rebalancing the mass around the cargo spindle, was not fascinating work, but it helped to keep my mind off Mel—and whatever she might be doing, cooped up by herself.
For the first three days I couldn’t complain. She mooched around the restricted space of my quarters, and if she seemed bored when I returned late in the day it was no more than natural. And on the fourth day I had an idea of my own.
“Here,” I said. Then I had to pause to clear my throat. I must have picked up a minor bug, here or in the damp jungle of Paddy’s Fortune, and my voice sounded rough and scratchy. “Here, why don’t you take a look at this when I’m away.”
I handed her the navaid. “We used it to get the coordinates for the Net and the hardware reservoir, but the controller said it put all sorts of other information in about the Godspeed Base and the Godspeed Drive. I have no idea how to get those data out. Maybe you can do it.”
Mel took the navaid. “Humph,” she said. It wasn’t exactly a sign of enthusiasm, and I wondered how long it would keep her quiet. Not long enough, I felt sure. I hadn’t told Mel, but we were making slower progress than expected. The engines had to be constantly nursed.
The problem came to a head early on the fifth day. We were still far from the turnover point when Shaker called the crew together. The engines were still deteriorating. We had to switch off the drive later in the day and service it.
That would not please Mel when she heard about it, but for the moment it pleased me.
To explain why, I have to describe something in a bit more detail. Seen from a distance, the Cuchulain looked like a long, knobbly stick, with a round ball on the “top” end and a flared cone—rather like a bathroom plunger—at the other, “bottom,” end. The knobbly stick was the cargo area, capable of changing shape, when the ship was fully loaded, to a bloated oval bag; the round ball contained all the crew living quarters. And the words “top” and “bottom” make sense, because the cone was the drive unit, and when it was turned on, anything a person dropped would “fall,” accelerating from the round ball of the living quarters toward the drive unit.
The place where we all had our living quarters looked like a smooth ball from outside, but of course it had lots of internal structure. Thinking of the whole ship as standing upright on its flared conical end, there were five main layers to the ball. At the very top were the living quarters used now by Doctor Eileen, Jim Swift, and Duncan West. Below that was a general area of crew quarters, some for sleeping but mainly for exercise and recreation. In the next layer came the central control region for the whole ship, buried deep in toward the center where it was well-protected from hull leaks or outside impact. The place where Mel and I lived now was off to the side of that same layer, near the outside hull.
The fourth layer contained kitchens, food machines, and storage areas for food, raw materials, and water. And finally, the bottom layer provided additional crew sleeping accommodation, plus access to the cargo region and, beyond that, to the drive.
It wasn’t hard to get between the different levels when the drive was on. There were spiral staircases between them. But when the drive was off, those staircases actually became harder to negotiate.
I had learned long ago that most crew members were lazy, and wouldn’t take on any effort that wasn’t needed. When the drive was off, and they were going back and forth to work on it, it was easier to stay down on the fourth and fifth levels. They would not come up to the third level, where Mel was hidden, unless they had a good reason to do so.
I didn’t tell Mel—I didn’t want her deciding it was safe to roam around—but I felt a good deal of relief when the drive went off an hour or two later, and Mel and I were suddenly in free fall.
“Let me find out how long this will take,” I said, and left her fiddling moodily with the navaid.
I didn’t expect to meet anyone, because the crew ought to be already down near the drive. It was a surprise, and a real opportunity, when I came to the stairway leading down from our level and saw Duncan West right in front of me. “Uncle Duncan!”
He was floating easily along, no more hurried or worried now in free fall than if he were lounging in an easy chair at our house by Lake Sheelin. He turned and gave me his slow, easy smile.
“Going along to give a hand, Jay? Me too. I got the word from Captain Shaker, he thinks I can be useful.”
“Maybe later. Uncle Duncan, stop a minute. I need to talk to you.”
He halted, and inspected me carefully from head to foot. “You’ve changed, Jay. You look different, and you sound different.”
“Never mind that. I haven’t had any chance at all to talk privately to Doctor Eileen, and I’ve got a lot of things I must pass on to her. Will you do it for me?”