If Mirror’s routes proved to be half as odd as the crew, he was in for an exciting life.
The communicator beeped in his pocket, and Alex took it out, feeling a strange pleasure mixed with embarrassment. A captain’s communicator was slightly larger than standard, loud orange in color… one of the few symbols of power.
“Captain…”
He recognized Generalov’s voice. In a second, the visual matrix opened up above the receiver. The navigator was at his workstation. Wearing his spacesuit. With his hair braided in the form of a pretzel on top of his head. And… a discreet red-and-blue ornament glowing on his left cheek. It was probably pointless to try to reform him.
“Captain here.”
“A direct communication from the owners. I’m transferring it to you.”
Alex closed the hologram, switched off the speaker, and touched the communicator to the back of his head, to the computer interface. This was the only way to guarantee the privacy of the conversation. He was intrigued—they hadn’t bothered contacting him when he first got hired, so he had no orders as far as the crew or the ship itself. Had it only now occurred to them to contact him?
“Alexander Romanov?”
The sound imitation was perfect. The voice seemed normal, secretarial. Just polite enough, just formal enough.
“Yes.”
“Are you using a private channel?”
“Of course.”
“Mister Li Tsyn, the Director of the Sky Company, wishes to speak with you.”
Alex realized that visuals were not being transmitted. But he straightened his back anyway. He wasn’t in the habit of having official conversations while picking his nose, or scratching his foot, or even simply lounging in a chair.
“Mister Romanov?”
The owner’s voice turned out to be one of an elderly but still sturdy man.
“Yes, Mr. Li Tsyn. I am listening, Mr. Li Tsyn.”
No formal introductions. No questions or congratulations on the new job… Mr. Li Tsyn could have used the same tone of voice to talk to his coffeemaker or his vacuum cleaner.
“Have you hired a full crew?”
“Yes, Mr. Li Tsyn…” Alex looked sideways at Morrison, who was in the act of pressing his finger to the contract.
“Good. Today you will take aboard three passengers and put yourself at their service. They will provide all the necessary route information.”
“Yes, Mr. Li Tsyn.” Alex could imagine the company director as vividly as if the visuals were on. A fat old bastard lounging in a luxurious armchair, petting a girlfriend… maybe even that same secretary…
“Mr. Li Tsyn has finished talking with you,” purred the secretary, as though reading his thoughts. “Are there any questions?”
The tone of her voice presupposed that there shouldn’t be any. That was why Alex asked:
“Mister Li is not in the habit of talking with new employees?”
“He is. You’ve talked. Any other questions?”
Under the inquisitive eye of Morrison, Alex forced himself to smile. The co-pilot could hear Alex’s part of the conversation.
“No, thank you. Goodbye.”
The transmission ended.
A direct call from Earth… wow… that cost a pretty penny.
“What are the orders, Captain?” inquired Morrison. It was an ambiguous question—orders for Alex himself, or orders for Morrison? Alex chose the second option.
“Be on the ship in an hour. We might be leaving tonight.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
The ship was all in order—this much, at least, was going right. Kim and Janet were in the sick bay; the black lady seemed to have taken the girl under her patronage. Turning on the surveillance system, Alex looked into the sick bay for just a second. Janet and Kim, both leaning over a table, were taking apart an assault ray gun, the Perun, the most powerful hand weapon allowed on small-tonnage ships. Kim was probably better at handling guns, theoretically speaking, but Janet had experience behind her… bitter, hard-won, but valuable experience as an Ebenian soldier.
Inside his navigation module, Generalov was still blissfully immersed in his work. Alex watched him for a few minutes on the screen of the captain’s control panel. Constant practice and self-training were typical for a spesh. And although Puck wasn’t a spesh, that was what he was doing—plotting imaginary routes in virtual space. Just now, Puck was plotting a course from Quicksilver Pit to Edem, Kim’s home world. At first, that track seemed far from perfect to Alex—the navigator had ignored the stationary space-tunnels, which were in constant use, and was taking the ship through “pulsing” tunnels. That would cause them to lose time—pulsing tunnels opened on intervals ranging from three to a hundred and twenty hours. It was also financially deleterious. The use of a pulsing tunnel cost twice as much. And finally, Alex did not see any distance advantage at all. The ship’s route was drifting farther and farther away from Edem.
When Generalov plotted a trek from Zodiac to Lard Crest, Alex finally realized what he was up to. Here they had no need for any tunnels, as the ship would be propelled by its own hyper-generator. And afterwards, covering two parsecs and arriving at the Crest, the ship would find itself at the stationary tunnel Lard Crest-Edem.
The solution was beautiful, and, as far as Alex could tell without being plugged into the machine, perfectly reasonable. They won with respect to time, to money, and to the ship’s resources.
“Cunning natural,” murmured Alex in delight, and switched over to the engineering module. This time he did it openly, initiating a two-way communication channel.
Young Paul Lourier was standing near the gluon reactor. He was swaying slowly, as though meditating in front of the energy stream flowing less than two feet away from his face.
Nothing was safer or deadlier than gluon energy. It was almost cost-free, not counting the cost of the reactor itself. No radioactive waste. No collateral radiation. If the reactor ran stable, of course.
But it was no easy task to achieve working stability with a reactor manipulating the very basis of all matter. At this level, the laws of physics started tripping up. There were no easy answers and ready-made schemes. While the reactor was in minimal-capacity mode, everything was still predictable, and it could always be turned off. But as soon as it moved into full capacity, the process would start “drifting.” And a great many different radiation flows would start appearing out of nowhere. The titanium body of the reactor could turn into gold or graphite, and once Alex even saw a reactor whose walls had turned into a cylinder of solid crystal. Mirror had a tandem Niagara gluon reactor with absolutely no walls, only force fields around the core.
Outwardly, the gluon flow looked like falling water, and Alex appreciated the imaginative approach of the design engineers. It looked as though two transparent, slightly bluish currents were cascading in front of Paul, taking their source from a gold-colored plate inside the ceiling and disappearing into a similar plate in the floor.
“Engineer,” Alex called out.
Paul turned around slowly. His eyes were half-closed, and a smile haunted his lips. He enjoyed familiarizing himself with the driving chains of the reactor—a typical spesh’s reaction to his work. Alex wondered what Paul saw. Probably not flowing water. Paul’s vision was rather different from Alex’s or Kim’s. He could see most of the known radiation bands and visually estimate a flame’s temperature to a fraction of a degree. Now a whole magical fireworks display was playing out before him… neutrons slipping past the force field, bursts of gamma rays, fanlike X-radiation, slow and clumsy alpha particles…