“Okay, now she’s pumping up the C-head ring. That’s, um, five giga-Teslas? That’s way more than she needs to maintain a steady one-gee field. Is she planning on buffering some really heavy shocks? Attitude control — we’re steady. No thermal roll to speak of, not out here in Septagon B, so she’s put just enough spin on the outer hull to hold us steady as we back out at five meters per second. That’s going to take, uh, two minutes until we’re clear far enough to begin a slow pitch up toward the departure corridor. Am I right?”
“So far so good.” Max leaned back in his chair. “I hate these stations,” he said conversationally. “It’s not as if there’s much other traffic — we’ve got nearly a thousand seconds to clear the approaches — but it’s so damn crowded here it’s like threading a needle with a mooring cable.”
“One wrong nudge—”
“Yeah.” The Romanov was a huge beast. Beehive shaped, it was three hundred meters in diameter at its fattest and nearly five hundred meters long. The enormously massive singularity lurking inside its drive kernel supplied it with power and let it twist space-time into knots, but was absolutely no use for close-range maneuvering; and the hot thrusters it could use for altitude control would strip the skin off a hab if the Captain lit her up within a couple of kilometers. That left only the cold thrusters and gyrodynes for maintaining altitude during departure — but they had about as much effect as a team of ants trying to kick a dead whale down a beach. “One-sixty seconds to burner ignition, and we can crank up to departure speed, a hundred meters per second. Then just under an hour and a half to make it out to fifty kilometers and another blip on the burners to take us up to a thousand meters per second at half a gee. Another two hundred kilometers out, then we begin kernel spin-up. I haven’t looked at the flight plan for this run, but if she does her usual, once the kernel is up and running the Captain will crank us up to twenty gees and hold for about twelve hours. And she won’t mess around. That’s why she ran up the bulkhead rings now, when she’s got spare power to pump into them.” He stretched his arms out overhead, almost touching the damage control board. “Seen one departure, seen ’em all. Until the next time.”
“Right.” Steffi pushed back her chair. “Do we have time for a coffee before the burn sequence?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Steffi stood up and squeezed past Max’s chair, trailing a hand across his shoulder in passing. He pretended not to notice, but she caught the ghost of his smile reflected in the screens as she turned toward the door. Two or three weeks of stealing time together didn’t make for a serious relationship in her estimate, but it beat sleeping alone on her first long cruise, and Max was more considerate than she’d expected. Not that she was incapable of coping. WhiteStar didn’t employ child labor, and she’d joined up at thirty-two, with her first career under her: she’d known exactly what she was letting herself in for. If anyone had accused him of taking advantage of her, she’d have taken a pointy stick to them. But so far discretion had paid off, and Steffi had no complaints.
There was a vending machine near the facilities pod down the gray-painted crew corridor. She punched for two glasses of iced latte, thought about some biscuits, and decided against it. Bridge crew, even trainee bridge crew, dined with the upper-class passengers on a rota, and Max was up for dinner at the end of his shift in a couple of hours. It wouldn’t do to spoil his appetite. She was about to head back to the auxiliary control center when she spotted a stranger in the corridor outside — probably a passenger, judging by his lack of ID. “Can I help you?” she asked, sizing him up. He was tall, blond, male, blandly handsome, and built like an army recruiting poster. Not at all like Max, a little voice in the back of her head said critically.
“Yah, yes. I was told the, ah, training bridge was on this level?” He had a strange accent, not hard to understand but slightly stilted. “I was told it was possible to visit it?”
“Yes, it is.” She nodded. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to make an appointment if you want to look around. It’s in use throughout the voyage, and right now it’s the backup control center — in case there’s a problem with the main bridge. Are you wanting a tour?” He nodded. “In that case” — she steered him toward the nearest door back into passenger country — “can I suggest you take it up with your liaison officer after dinner? He or she will be able to take your details and arrange something for you tomorrow or the day after. I’ve got to get back to work now, so if you’ll excuse me…”
She gently pushed him back toward the passenger section, waiting until he finished nodding and the door closed. Then she breathed a sigh of relief and ducked back through the closest door into wonderland. Max raised an eyebrow at her. “She’s begun pushback,” he said. “What kept you?”
“The passengers are wandering.” She passed him an iced coffee. “I had to herd one out of the corridor just now.”
“Happens every voyage. You lock a couple of thousand bored monkeys in a tin can, and you’ve got to expect one or two to go exploring. They’ll stop poking around eventually, when they realize everything interesting is sealed off. Just remember to keep your cabin door locked whether you’re in or out.”
“Hah. I’ll do that.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to a quiet life…”
“Wow!” Wednesday looked around the room, her eyes wide. It’s bigger than my bedroom back home. It’s bigger than our entire apartment! A pang of loss bit her. She shoved it aside hastily.
She stood in the middle of an ocean of deep-pile carpet the color of clotted cream and looked about. The room was so wide that the ceiling seemed low, even though it was out of reach. A couple of sofas and an occasional table huddled at one end as if they were lonely. One wall looked like raw, undressed stonework; there was a door in it, with a curved, pointy bit at the top, opening onto a boudoir like something out of a medieval fantasy, all rich wooden paneling and tapestries. A huge four-poster bed completed the impression, but the medievalism was only skin-deep. The next door along led to a bathroom with a tub almost as large as the bed recessed into the white-tiled floor.
“If you need anything, please call the purser’s office,” the steward told her. “Someone will be on hand to help you at all hours. Your trip itinerary should be able to tell you how all the suite utilities work, including the fabber in the closet over there.” (The closet lurking behind another open gothic archway looked to be about the size of a small factory.) “Do you need anything else right now?” he asked.
“Uh, no.” She looked around. “I mean, yeah, I have to go buy some odds and ends. But, uh, not right now.”
“By your leave.” He turned and left, smiling oddly, and the door to the corridor — no, the promenade deck, they called it — closed behind her.
“Wow!” she repeated. Then she glanced at the door. “Door, lock yourself.” There was a discreet clack from the frame. “Wow!”
Wednesday ambled over to the nearest sofa and flopped down in it, then unfastened her boots. “Ouch.” More than a day of wearing them had left her feet feeling like raw meat: she curled her toes in the carpet for almost a minute with her eyes closed, writhing slightly and panting. “Oh, that is so good!” After another minute, other senses began to intrude. “Hmm.”