“I didn’t know she was there. I didn’t know Aunt Cecelia had approved it. It’s too bad, really. I never asked to come along on this ridiculous cruise; it was all my mother’s idea.”
“You’d rather be supervising a loading team at Scavell or Xingsan?” asked Buttons. “Come on, now, Ronnie . . . this isn’t bad. I admit, I wasn’t planning to be home for the season this year—no more than Bubbles—but it’s not as if visiting my father were a hardship.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Ronnie said. He looked around for sympathy, and found expressions that told him he was boring, and boring was one thing they would not accept.
“Why don’t we swim?” asked Bubbles. “Now that we can use the pool again, a nice swim would be fun.” She stretched her long, elegant arms, and wriggled in a way that suggested something other than swimming.
The others agreed; Ronnie knew he should swallow his sulks and go with them, but the sulks were too embedded. “Go ahead,” he said, when they turned to look back at him. “I’m going to try Beggarman one more time.” That was the computer game they’d been playing until it palled . . . and Ronnie never had gotten above the eighth level.
He had no real intention of playing Beggarman. . . . He wanted to regain the ground he felt he’d lost with the captain. A private apology should do it; he had charmed his way past fiercer dragons than this. No woman of her age could be immune to boyish charm. He showered, put on a fresh jumpsuit, and looked at himself in the mirror. He slicked his hair: innocence? No. It looked as if he were trying for innocence. He tousled it: mischievous waif? Yes. That should do it. He waited until the others had logged into the pool enclosure. Then he strolled down the curving passage, slipped through the hatch between crew and staff areas, and found his way to the bridge. It wasn’t that hard; he had memorized the ship plan on his deskcomp.
The bridge did not meet his expectations. He had envisioned something like the bridge of the training cruiser. . . . Aside from that, and the small craft he’d piloted, he’d never been aboard a ship. He stared at the small room crowded with screens and control boards, the watch seats crammed in side by side, the command bench hardly an arm’s length from any of them. Something was going on. . . . He sensed the tension, heard it in the low voices that reported values he did not understand. He had expected to find silence, even boredom; he had expected to be a welcome break in a monotonous shift. But no one seemed to notice him. Captain Serrano uttered a series of numbers as if they were important. . . . But how could they be, out here in the middle of nowhere? It must be one of her stupid drills or something.
With all the confidence of youth and privilege, Ronnie strolled into the crowded space.
“Excuse me, but when you’ve got a moment, Captain, I’d like to speak to you.” He spoke with the forthright but courteous tone of someone with a perfect right to be where he was, doing what he was. He expected a prompt response.
He did not expect the smart crack of an open hand across his face; it sent him reeling into the back of someone’s chair. He grabbed for a support, and found a handy rail along the bulkhead. His cheek hurt; his mouth burned. Anger raged along his bones, but he was still too shocked to move. Serrano’s voice continued, low and even, with one number after another. Someone repeated them, and he saw hands flicker across control boards. Just as he got his breath back, he felt the gut-deep wrench he knew from his one training voyage: the yacht was flicking in and out of a series of jump points.
Anger drained away; fear flooded him now. Jump transitions . . . they’d been near jump transitions, and if he’d interfered they might all have been killed. The quick remorse he was never too proud to feel swept over him. He gulped back the apology he wanted to make—he should wait, he should be sure it was safe.
Then Captain Serrano turned to him, anger on her dark face. “Don’t you ever come on my bridge again, mister,” she said. Ronnie’s eyes slid around the room; no one looked at him. “Go on—get out.”
“But I—I came to say something.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Get off the bridge.”
“But I want to apologize—”
She took a step toward him and he realized that he was afraid of her—afraid of a woman a head shorter—in a way he had not feared anyone since childhood. She took another step, and his hand fell away from the rail; he backed up. “You can apologize to my crew for nearly getting us all killed,” she said. “And then you can go away and not come back.”
“I’m—I’m sorry,” said Ronnie, with a gulp. It was not working the way he’d planned. “I—I really am.” She came yet another step closer, and he backed up; she reached out and he flinched . . . but she touched a button on the bulkhead, and a hatch slid closed four inches from his nose. BRIDGE ACCESS: PRESS FOR PERMISSION appeared on a lightboard above it. Ronnie stood there long enough to realize that his cheek still hurt, and she wasn’t going to let him back in. Then he got really angry.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he told George later. No one else had seemed to notice, but George had asked about the mark on his face. “I mean, it was, in a way, but I didn’t mean to interrupt during a jump transition. She didn’t have to take it that way. Damned military arrogance. She hit me—the owner’s family—all she had to do was explain. Just you wait—I’ll get even with her.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” But George’s eyes had lit up. He loved intrigue, especially vengeance. George had engineered some of their best escapades in school, including the ripely dead rat appearing on the service platter at a banquet for school governors.
“Of course,” Ronnie said. “She has other duties; we have nothing to do between here and Bunny’s place but get bored and crabby with each other.” He felt much better, now that he’d decided. “First thing is, we’ll get into the computer and find out more about her.”
“You could always give a little kick to one of her drills,” George said.
“Exactly.” Ronnie grinned. Much better. A good attack beats defense every time; he’d read that someplace.
Chapter Seven
Heris could have believed the Sweet Delight knew it smelled sweeter—or perhaps it responded to the change in the attitude of its crew. Without the sour-faced pilot, and the inept moles, with the addition of two eager, hardworking newcomers, crew alliances shifted and solidified around a new axis. A healthier one, to Heris’s mind. They were not yet what she would call sharp, but they were trying, now. No one complained about the emergency drills. No one slouched around with the listless expression that had so worried her before. Perhaps it was only fear of losing their jobs, but she hoped it was something better.
It had been unfortunate that she’d hit the owner’s nephew. She knew that; she knew it was her fault from start to finish. She had let them leave the hatch to the bridge open. . . . On such a small ship, with a small crew, where the owner never ventured into the working compartments, it had seemed safe. She had not noticed when he came, and when he startled her she had silenced him in a way that might have been hazardous—would have been, with some people. She was ashamed of herself, even though they’d made it through a fairly tricky set of transition points safely.
She called Cecelia as soon as they were through, and explained. “It was my fault for not securing the bridge—”
“Never mind. He’s been insufferable this whole trip; his mother spoiled him rotten.”
“But I should have—”
Cecelia interrupted her again. “It’s not a problem, I assure you. If you want to feel chastened, schedule your first riding lesson today.”
Heris had to laugh at that. “All right. Two hours from now?”