When I had discarded the broken canisters, old news-sheets and piles of just plain dirt that Ske had packed, I didn't have too much gear, after all. The discards filled two hangar garbage cans.
I neated up the boots and caps and uniforms in the cleaning roll and then belatedly remembered I was wearing one. I emptied all my pockets into the waterproof paper-preservation bags and got my other papers into them. I stripped and put the uniform I was wearing into the cleaning roll and the dirty underthings into the washing roll.
I was standing there naked in the hangar, trying to see if I had everything straight when I heard somebody giggling. The Countess Krak was somewhere about. I didn't wait to see where. I grabbed the rolls and bags and sprinted back into the ship.
The incident didn't help my already rattled state. In the crew's cleaning and laundry room I was faced with huge discs that said this thing and that on them: typical Fleet jargon, typical Fleet lightning bolts pointing at this thing and that. (Bleep) the Fleet. I jammed the rolls into what I thought were the proper doors and then carried the bags of papers back to my room.
The shower did make me feel better. I was amazed at the amount of grime that rolled off! My head cleared up. Maybe all that dirt in my hair had been pressing down on my skull and fogging me up. It was an interesting theory. I was just about to concede that maybe the Fleet had something when a nerve shattering buzzer-gong in the laundry sent me tearing back in there to get my clothes.
I retrieved the underclothes roll. Everything was beautifully clean, beautifully flat and even several tears had been nicely mended.
For a moment I couldn't remember where I had put the uniform roll, there were too many disc doors. I started looking.
I couldn't find it!
With great care, I retraced my every prior action in this place. I had come in the door there and I had leaned hereto rest while I tried to read signs and arrows. I opened the door I was now sure I had put the uniform roll in.
Nothing! I went tearing through the place opening every possible disc door.
Nothing!
I steadied myself down. I read the signs. And then it hit me!
I had put my uniform and boots roll in the disintegrator!
I stood there, naked, weeping quietly to myself. I had no clothes to wear but underpants!
Wait! Ske had been sent out for a General Services dress uniform! All was not defeated. I could yet triumph over Fleet supercleanliness!
With hope, I rushed back to my cubicle.
Success!
A package on the bed!
Quickly, I opened it.
What was I looking at?
I recognized the colonel's cross. That was one rank down, but Ske, of course, could be counted on to be inaccurate.
But what were all these designs?
Lying on a dead-black cloth, the red embroidery was quite startling.
Bones, hangman's noose, electric whips. Bones? Hangman's noose? Electric whips?
The helmet. Black! A huge phosphorescent skull!
It was the dress uniform of a colonel of the Death Battalions!
It even had the belts that represented bleeding intestines!
It was the number one terror uniform of the whole Voltarian forces!
I took a step toward the door. But then I realized Ske would carefully be gone.
Legally I could wear it as I outranked it and in theory a Secondary Executive could wear any of the Apparatus uniforms.
I was too tired. I lay down on the gimbal bed. I turned on a rest-heat light. What an awful way to start a voyage. If I could just sleep for an hour maybe some of this confusion would go away. Maybe, I thought, we would be safely in space when I awoke. Little did I know!
The lights went off. They were disconnecting the groundside cables. To Hells with it. I would just go to sleep. There was nothing, really, to a space blastoff.
Some of the tension was going out of me. I was just drifting off when a dreadful clamor brought me straight up. Pounding! Hammering! It sounded like they were ripping the ship apart!
I hastily threw a towel around my waist and rushed into the passageway. The sounds redoubled. Then I realized they were coming from the forward auxiliary engine room. That was not right. We were still in the hangar! We ought to be getting crane-lifted to a trundle dolly.
In the control deck, there was Heller. He was perched on the edge of the local pilot chair, red cap on the back of his head. He was talking over the comm system to the engine room. From what he said, it was obvious that it was just a hangar engineer in there, somebody borrowed.
"I'll lift her off very easy, so I don't want much drive," he was saying.
I stared through the opened view windows. The space-particle armor plates were lowered. Heller leaned out and looked around and then yelled a "Stand clear" to some people in the hangar.
My Gods! He was about to fly this thing in the hangar! He might ram another ship or zoom through the roof. "Hey," I yelled. "Don't try to fly in here!" Heller was sitting back. He gave a small laugh. "That's what tugs are for – to move around constricted spaces. Hold on, Soltan. She's jumpy." Somebody with target wands was out in front of the ship. Heller reached for throttles.
I held on!
It wasn't even a straight run! He had to go around a crane and two spaceships and then turn again to get out the door!
There was a crash under us. I thought our bottom had fallen off. But it was just the big blocks and chocks tipping over.
He just perched there on the edge of the chair and flew her out of the hangar on warp drives!
The target man was putting him over well away from the local landing circle but still quite close to the door.
"Hold on, Soltan," said Heller. He wasn't doing any holding on himself, he was just working throttles and switches. I should have believed him!
With a swoop and a drop back, he stood the tug on its tail!
I went sailing down the passage and brought up hard against the door.
The tug didn't. It touched without a quiver and was now vertically sitting just outside the hangar in the open air.
Heller swarmed down the now vertical rungs and offered me a hand and led me into the crew salon. The furniture had gimbaled over ninety degrees to adjust to the tug's being upright now. He pulled out a hot jolt canister from the locker, passed it through the heat coil, pulled the tube up and handed it to me. He smiled. "You ought to leave the bubblebrew alone the night before a voyage, Soltan." It wasn't a criticism, it was just the kind of chatter these Fleet guys engage in. Probably a joke. But it made me feel cross. I didn't want the hot jolt. All I wanted was to go to my room and get at least a few minutes sleep. It was barely daylight outside.
I was just in the act of pushing the hot jolt away when a face jutted into the door.
It was Bawtch!
There he was, with his side-blinders flapping, his popeyes critical, his bony arms piled a yard high with paper!
"I couldn't resist the extreme pleasure of seeing you off, Officer Gris," he said. "And I brought you a going away present. Some orders to stamp."
"All those?" I groaned.
"No, only about a third. But you sure been busy ordering things! Buy, buy, buy! No wonder taxes are so high. The rest of this is just your neglected work: you have several weeks of reports you haven't read and I thought it might relax you on your voyage to do some honestapplication to your job." I tried to wish him away. It didn't work. So I carried the hot jolt back to my room and fished my identoplate out of a waterproof bag, sat down at the gimbal table and started stamping. We would soon be gone. The worst was over – I thought. I would snooze from here on out.
"The rest of this," said old Bawtch, "I'll just put in between these voyage clamps where you can see this undone work every time you start to lie down. Hi, what's this?" The room hadn't neatly returned to horizontal. I had not stowed the gear for flight. He wasn't looking at the weapons that had fallen out of the antiexplosion safe. He was picking the dress uniform off the floor.