Bento-boxes turned out to be the ship board equivalent of takeout, finger food that wouldn’t make a mess while eating. Cookie drew on his ancestral heritage and made up a couple of variations of spicy fillings. We spread the mixture over flat bread rounds, folded, rolled, and then wrapped them in clingfilm. Pip, Cookie, and I set up a production line. Forty-five crew needed a hundred and twenty of these little buggers. I thought it would take a long time, but it took less than a stan once we had a rhythm going. We’d done them at a rate better than three a tick. I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised considering Cookie did two for every one that Pip and I completed. Spread, roll, wrap, stack-a mindless, but oddly social task. The three of us gathered around the prep table and worked side-by-side to prepare for the evening meal.
I thought we’d put them in paper bags for easy carrying but Cookie had a better idea. He pulled out a stack of stamped, creased cardboard sheets and quickly formed one into a box with a clever folding lid. He repeated the action slowly for me to watch. I mimicked his moves and produced an identical box. It was as if I’d been born folding them. Even Cookie seemed impressed by how rapidly I caught on and he left the folding to me while he and Pip filled the boxes: two rolls, one piece of fruit, a cookie, a package of sliced vegetables, and small cups of dressing for dipping. The condiment was the only thing that might have spilled, but each container held only a few milliliters. With the lids closed, the boxes stacked on each other and I noticed small indents that kept them from sliding apart-clever and then some.
“What about drinks?” I asked. “I assume people can’t come down for coffee, can they?”
Cookie pointed to large insulated containers under one of the counters. “You’ll be delivering. Fill one with black coffee and the other with light and take a pocket full of sweetener packets.”
As the clock ticked down to pull out, the mess deck crowd thinned. I was able to prep and secure the urns with two fresh and full, and one on standby. We stacked the boxes on trays and placed them in the coolers. Cookie had it down to a science. While Pip certainly had been through it before, I marveled at Cookie’s expertise.
“We run a restaurant, gentlemen,” he reminded us regularly. “The customers don’t have any other choice, but we owe them our best just the same.” Finally, we completed the preparations and Cookie declared us ready. Pip and I collapsed into chairs at one of the mess tables to wait.
A few minutes later, the speakers announced, “PULLOUT IN THIRTY TICKS. ALL CREW TO DUTY STATIONS. SET NAVIGATION DETAIL. SECURE FOR PULLOUT. SET READINESS LEVEL YELLOW.” For Pip, Cookie, and myself the mess deck and galley were our duty stations. We just sat and looked at each other.
“Do we need to strap in or anything?” I looked from one to the other.
Cookie smiled but Pip guffawed.
Our boss cuffed him playfully. “It is a fair question, jackanapes. Have you been around so long that you forgot your first pull back?”
Pip had the decency to look abashed. “Actually, no. My first time was on the Marcel Duchamp. I was a wiper in the environmental section and they strapped me into the scrubber.” He looked both angry and embarrassed. “Bastards left me in there for three stans.”
Cookie winked at me.
Pip just groaned. “It took me all trip to get the stench out of my hair. And I never did live it down. That’s why I took the transfer to here.”
This was the first time Pip had offered any information about himself. Thinking back, I realized I’d known him less than a week but it seemed like a lifetime. I already had trouble remembering what life had been like before the ship. “When was this?” I asked.
“Last stanyer. I’m into my second year at quarter share. Don’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh? Isn’t that good?”
Cookie chimed in, “Yes, it’s very good, young Ishmael. Considering the alternative is to strand Mr. Carstairs on a company planet in the middle of nowhere.”
I thought of the hapless attendant whose berth I’d taken on Neris and wondered if he had found another position.
“Well, I should have moved up to a half share by now.” Pip’s tone betrayed an undercurrent of bitterness.
Cookie tried to soothe his pique. “And you shall. But all in good time.”
“ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR PULL BACK. ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR PULL BACK.” The squawk box in the overhead made me jump with the sudden announcement.
Unconsciously I held my breath. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the edge of the table. Cookie smiled and Pip just lifted his coffee cup off the table. Somewhere I felt, rather than heard, a thump from the front of the ship, and my inner ear told me something had happened.
The speakers squawked again. “ALL HANDS, PULL BACK COMPLETE. TUGS CAST OFF IN THREE ZERO TICKS, MARK.”
“That’s it?” I exclaimed.
“We’re underway, Mr. Wang,” Cookie said with a smile. “Rather uninspiring, isn’t it?”
It was definitely anticlimactic, but it cast a new light on Pip’s story. Based on his reaction, he’d been quarter share for a long time and perhaps he had transferred out of embarrassment. I planned to have a heart-to-heart with my new friend because there was more there than he was saying. My speculation must have shown because he suddenly became very interested in examining his coffee mug.
Cookie told stories of pull backs where the tug captain hadn’t had so deft a touch. He showed me a scar where he’d been thrown against a steam pipe stanyers before. “Usually, though, they’re like this,” he assured.
Over the next three stans the speakers gave periodic status reports until finally all tugs released us and were on course out of the system. As I had suspected, we had a lot of mass to get moving. The kicker engines, all the way aft, pushed us for only the first few clicks and after that, they were secured until we reached the jump location. After we’d gotten clear of the orbital, we ran up the field generators deploying the huge sails and the gravity keel. The ship picked up the solar winds which pulled us out of the Neris’ gravity well. The outbound leg was scheduled to last twenty-two days before we hit the gravity threshold and jumped into the Darbat system.
At 18:00, the usual dinnertime, the captain called down and gave Cookie the go ahead to distribute dinner. A few crew, who had no navigational duties, came to the mess deck and sat together over their bento-boxes, talking quietly among themselves. Meanwhile, Cookie, Pip, and I set off to feed the other thirty odd people scattered around the ship. By 18:30 we had completed our rounds and returned to the galley to clean up.
At 20:00 the speakers came on one last time. “SECURE FROM NAVIGATION DETAIL. SET THE WATCH FOR NORMAL OPERATIONS. SET CONDITION GREEN THROUGHOUT THE SHIP. SECOND SECTION HAS THE CONN.”
I punched the button to start the last urn brewing and drained away the oldest pot. By the time the captain and bridge crew showed up, they had fresh coffee and Cookie had put out a tray of pastries.
Chapter 5
Neris System
2351-September-15