Another crew was given a signal and they clambered up on the hull and began to replace the plates that had been removed to gain access to the main drive room. They looked like tiny dolls up there. Tug Onewas not big but a forty-foot fall can make a bad squash when one hits. I looked away. I don't like heights.
It looked awfully busy. From cover suit colors there must be eighteen contractor crews working on that ship. But Heller wasn't fooling me. He was just stalling. I knew you could overhaul a spaceship on and on and on. You could even undo today what was done yesterday! Heller, I decided, had no slightest intention of ever leaving on the mission. Why should he? He had beautiful quarters even though the area was under refit. He had Krak. Why should he go anywhere?
And then I saw something that unsettled me. A Fleet lorry came roaring up outside the hangar and about six Fleet spacers piled out. They had a near fight with the hangar guards but Heller appeared and calmed it down.
The spacers picked up the box. It was long and quite heavy. With a loose-kneed trot they carried it through the tug's airlock and into the ship. After a while they came out. One of the hangar Apparatus foremen jeered at them and the lead spacer detoured about two feet and knocked the foreman flat!
Amidst a bunch of shouts of "drunks!" and "bluejackets!" – which is what the Apparatus calls the Fleet, a bluejacket being a kind of insect – there was a near second riot.
Heller got it untangled and the spacers went off and Heller picked up the Apparatus foreman who was saying, "I didn't mean you, Officer Heller," and things calmed down again.
But I was veryinterested in that box! I sidled very inconspicuously into the tug. The flight deck was a bit torn up – they seemed to be installing gravity simulator coils in the walls – and a lot of control wires were unhooked. But I had no interest in that.
The floor plates of the passageway were unlocked and up, displaying the shallow underhold below and on the bottomside of the main drives. I quickly lowered myself down.
There were six such boxes. They had letters on them, Box A, Box B,and so on. They were heavily fastened. And I could not lift a corner of one by myself. What the Devils did he have here? What menace did thispose to a mission that must fail?
I couldn't make it out. Afraid to be caught down there, I scrambled back up.
I ran straight into Heller! He was kneeling there on the passageway crossbars, looking at me curiously. I thought, well, here's where I blew it.
Heller reached down and gave me a hand and in a moment I was standing again in the passageway, teetering because all there was to stand on was the cross-supports of the missing plates. I waited for his blast.
Heller looked at me searchingly. It didn't make it any easier for me that he seemed to be having no trouble standing on the thin threads of nothing whereas I was sure I'd slip and fall back into the hold and break a leg.
"Soltan," he said in a soft voice, "I've got the feeling you've been avoiding me lately." Avoiding you, I thought. You unobservant idiot! I haven't even been here for three weeks!
Heller looked a little sad. "When you ran off that night, I must have said or done something that offended you. If so, I'm very sorry for it." He saw I was having trouble standing on the thin braces and he guided me over to more solid footing. "Soltan, whether we like it or not, we're pitched in together on this mission. I personally want to make a go of it." That really flustered me. That was the one thing he wasn't supposed to do! I did not like the way this conversation was trending. He must not suspect how this mission would be sabotaged.
"Oh, I do, too," I lied hastily. I snatched the flap off my pocket and got out the delete notice the machine had given me. "I was up before dawn to carry out your request. This proves it." I gave him the slip.
He looked at it curiously. He turned it over and looked on the back. Then he shrugged and put it in his pocket.
"I'm sure you're trying to help all you can. And thank you for doing things like this." He seemed to think it over. Then he said, "Soltan, remember the old Academy saying 'All drive and no drink makes disasters'? I think maybe you have been working too hard." A lot he knew. I hadn't been doing anything! Not to help. Never, never, never!
He snapped his fingers. "I've got it! You owe me a dinner!" I must have looked blank. "You remember! I was the first officer you met the day you were promoted. Did you meet any other officers that day?" I shook my head, more to clear the sudden shock out of it than to say no.
"Capital!" said Heller. "So I'm calling in the debt. Right now and tonight!" He laughed cheerfully and slapped me on the shoulder.
I knew what was coming next. Such a dinner includes the girls of the other officers and one's own girl if there are any around.
"So you," he said, "just have your airbus out there an hour after dark and we'll all fly away to some fine nightclub and you'll buy us a dinner! Thatwill make peace and cheer you up!" Hastily I said, "Wait. I can't go in uniform." I looked down at myself. Three weeks in the woods and a smelly uniform to begin with and I was a real wreck.
"Oh, think nothing of it!" said Heller. "Right at sunset, you come in here," and he pointed to an officer's cubicle, "and have yourself a nice bath and I'll have a civilian dinner suit all laid out for you." He swatted me on the back. Very happy. "It's a date! I'm glad we can become friends again! See you at sunset!" And he walked off in good spirits.
The spirits I had were going into a power dive! I didn't have a credit to my name. My identoplate was worthless on any check. If I tried to pass these counterfeits, I'd be promptly arrested and executed. He supposed I would be solvent as most officers would be – money is not that important to them. But he could have done nothing worse to my morale.
I had a thought. There were silver rails and latches, there were even gold vases and plates behind the airtight door at the passage end.
I tiptoed down and said, "Open" in every voice pitch I could manage.
It stayed shut! "OPen! ohPEN! open! OPEN, (BLEEP) IT!" A workman up in the flight deck yelled down, "Are you calling me?" I got out of there.
Maybe I could arrange a convincing air crash before tonight. Maybe from ten thousand feet free fall! That was all I could possibly afford.
Chapter 2
At nine o'clock that fatal night, the Countess Krak was smuggled out of the tug in a riot helmet and gas cape while Snelz and his guardsmen studiously paid attention only to their dice game in a corner of the darkened hangar.
The windows of the airbus were darkened. My driver was nowhere to be seen.
Heller stopped by the dice game and said something to Snelz and then came sauntering over to the vehicle and slid back of the wheelstick.
I sat there in back, unaccustomed to being so clean and outright uncomfortable in the sparkling one-piece dinner suit. I was trying to look calm but actually I was quite terrified to be sitting so near the Countess Krak.
The airbus vaulted into the night, speeding up to try to match the way Heller drives.
The Countess got out of her riot helmet and cape and straightened her hair. And indeed she looked very lovely: her face perfection itself, her tresses like a halo, her dinner gown a pale, pale orange, the kind with the ripple lights that pulsate to the cadence of the female's speech. Her eyes were sparkling, as innocent as a child's. How looks can deceive – I hoped I could get through this without her killing me for some fault in grammar or table manners. Gods knew what might happen when she found I couldn't pay the bill.