Sanselle had the sled waiting by the big cargo lock by the time I got there. While the station's lock was open, the ship's cargo lock had not opened. Snowlike crystals fell away from the outside of the hatch as the station's air roiled over the dull surface like a miniature storm. The crystals melted as they struck the warmer sides of the cargo corridor beyond the one open lock.
'Is there someone in charge of the cargo - for the ship?' I asked as we waited for the chill to abate.
'The junior officer - most ships only have a crew of three,' Sanselle said. 'Needle jockey and two others. They handle everything else. Don't want anything worrying the pilot.'
With a hiss, the ship's lock opened. After a moment, the greenclad third officer looked down at the pair of us and the cargo sled. 'Captain Adgar wants all this clear as soon as you can. Stack it in the corridors if you have to, but get it off.'
'Tell the officer that the mass is too great.' Gerbriik's voice was in my ear.
'Ser,' I said respectfully, 'the cargo mass is too great for the station to do that. We'll move it as fast as we can, but we can't put it all here.'
'Is that from you, crewman?'
'No, ser. The maintenance officer.'
'Do what you can.' The red-haired third officer nodded reluctantly. 'We've already started inspecting for departure. I'll check back in a bit. Start with the red cases.'
Sanselle had eased herself into the hatch opposite the officer. 'Those? The spines?'
'Right.'
I followed Sanselle's gesture and made my way to the heavily tethered containers set within a braced semienclosure comprised of composite beams.
'See,' murmured Sanselle. 'Gerbriik used you.'
'That's because he's following me. You know what you're doing.'
'You do, too. You've been here near-on a year.'
A year personal objective? Had it been that long? Or longer? Eleven standard months, two weeks and one day, announced my personal demons, as if to confirm something, perhaps no more than I was no longer a true follower of Dzin.
The containers in the enclosure were small - small and massive - no more than a meter long and ten centimeters by ten in cross section. For the first time since I'd come to OE Station, I could feel the effort to move one of them - one single container - and Gerbriik had assured me that the combination of personal nanites and the coveralls could handle well over two hundred kilos with no strain at all.
'What are these?' I eased the first one onto the cargo sled - most carefully.
Sanselle, moving more easily than I, slid hers beside mine, bracing herself against the corridor wall to kill the container's inertia. 'Fusactor spines, I'd guess.'
I winced. Fusion power? The different kind of demon that had led to the wars of destruction? Images flashed across my mind - the old illustrations from Manwarr's library showing glowing shells of stone that had failed to hold the nucleonic devils, the images of undersea warships whose metallic hulls glowed enough to illumine the lightless depths of the Summer Sea millennia later. Those old images from Henvor conflicted with others more recently nanite-implanted, fought with the Rykashan assertions that fusactors had supplied the environmentally beneficial power necessary for the great cleanups. For a moment, I froze.
'You all right, Tyndel?' asked Sanselle softly, the green eyes gentler and suddenly more concerned.
'I'll be fine.' I forced a smile. 'Image conflicts.' I'd had them all along, but I really hadn't quite understood them. I supposed that was part of what Cerrelle had tried to warn me about with the bits about honesty. Honestly - or accurately -addressing the images seemed to help, once I'd understood the problem. Not all accuracy reflected the Rykashan viewpoint, either, I'd decided.
'We'd better get moving, or Gerbriik and that third will both be yelling at us.'
I slipped back into the hold of the Hay Needle. While the needle ship's hull was thick, a third of a meter or more, it was nonmetallic - a sophisticated form of high-level composite. I studied the hold for a moment, noting that almost everything seemed to be nonmetallic, confirming what I'd learned.
We kept at the unloading, but I let Sanselle move the sled once all the fusactor spines were unloaded. With that much mass on it, the more experience the better, even if I had been using the sled for almost half a year.
I did maneuver the second sled into place and began to remove the other containers - everything from a handful of orgnopaks to odd-sized and individual shipping packs that could have contained anything from station system replacement components to supplemental terraforming supplies and equipment. I wouldn't have known.
I had the second sled half loaded by the time Sanselle returned the first one empty.
'Had to store those,' she said. 'Gerbriik said we can pull everything else off, stack it along the corridor if we need to.'
I looked at the half-loaded sled.
'After this one is loaded and moved,' she added.
The redheaded officer reappeared. He did not speak to us, but looked through the hold and then vanished again, frowning.
'Worried,' murmured Sanselle.
We had the second sled loaded to mass limits far more quickly than the first. Again, I let her move it. After she left, for a moment, I studied the lock and the empty first sled. Then I eased the back of the sled practically into the lock, the way Sanselle had. Using the sled would still be faster, even if we only guided it thirty meters down the cargo corridor.
Sanselle returned far more quickly this time. 'Just tethered it at the other side of the station. Gerbriik said the mass would balance. Have to unload it later.'
We both worked on the sled, and when it was full, we both were soaked in sweat. I rode on the back while she guided it fifty meters beyond the sled bays, where we stacked everything on one side of the corridor. We repeated the process three more times before we had emptied the needle ship's cargo bay.
The third officer watched as we stacked the last, and very irregular, containers on the sled and started to ease it away from the cargo lock.
I wiped my forehead with the back of my sleeve.
'You got that clear faster than the captain hoped,' the third officer said. 'He's recommending a bonus. So am I.' His grin was one of relief. 'Stand back. We're sealing. He wants clear of here now.'
As the Hay Needle's lock hissed shut, so did the station's lock door.
'Must be in a real hurry,' said Sanselle. 'They usually stay and rest ten, twenty hours, anyway.'
Within moments of the closure, there was a scraping thump of sorts followed by a slight vibration that ran through the station. Gerbriik's image appeared between us. The maintenance officer was smiling. 'Captain Adgar was pleased. You'll get the bonus he recommended, but you still have to store all that cargo. The station's partly out of balance.'
'Yes, ser,' we said together, keeping our faces expressionless.
At that moment, I could sense Sanselle's thoughts, or closely enough, and mine were the same. Nothing ever satisfies Gerbriik.
Was that why he was maintenance officer? Were the demons using his continual dissatisfaction to assure better maintenance on a distant orbit station that had to be more costly to maintain? Was every person judged and fitted for such a slot in demon society? But had it been any different in Dorcha? Had the Shraddans come after me because I had become a demon or because demons were different and did not fit the pattern?
That question echoed something that Cerrelle had asked, and not for the first or the last time. Had I feared her honesty and perception because I needed it and didn't want to accept that? I shivered within myself, then glided along the composite gray walls toward the masses of cargo that remained to be stored for station use or transshipment.