Rover might now be less respectable, maybe even a bit shabby, but was by no means a slattern. The Saxtorphs had obtained her in a postwar sale of surplus and outfitted her as well as their finances permitted. On the outside she remained a hundred-meter spheroid, its smoothness broken by airlocks, hatches, boat bays, instrument housings, communications boom, grapples, and micrometeoroid pocks that had given the metal a matte finish. Inboard, much more had changed. Automated as she was, she never needed more than a handful to man her; on a routine interplanetary flight she was quite capable of being her own crew. Most personnel space had therefore been converted for cargo stowage. Those people who did travel in her had more room and comfort than formerly. Instead of warcraft she carried two Prospector class boats, primarily meant for asteroids and the like but well able to maneuver in atmosphere and set down on a fair-sized planet. Other machinery was equally for peaceful, if occasionally rough use.
“But how did the Saxtorphs ever acquire a hyperdrive?” asked Laurinda Brozik. “I thought licensing was strict in the Solar System, too, and they don't seem to be terribly influential.”
“They didn't tell you?” replied Kamehameha Ryan. “Bob loves to guffaw over that caper.”
Her lashes fluttered downward. A tinge of pink crossed the alabaster skin. “ I don't like to… pry— ask personal questions.”
He patted her hand. “You're too sweet and considerate, Laurinda. Uh, okay to call you that? We are in for a long haul. I'm Kam.”
The quartermaster was showing her around while Rover moved up the Alpha Centaurian gravity well until it would be safe to slip free of Einsteinian space. Her holds being vacant, the acceleration was several g, but the interior polarizer maintained weight at the half Earth normal to which healthy humans from every world can soon adapt. “You want the grand tour, not a hasty look-around like you got before, and who’d be a better guide than me?” Ryan had said. “I'm the guy who takes care of inboard operations, everything from dusting and polishing, through mass trim and equipment service, on to cooking, which is the real art.” He was a stocky man of medium height, starting to go plump, round-faced, dark-complexioned, his blue-black hair streaked with the earliest frost. A gaudy sleeveless shirt bulged above canary-yellow slacks and thong sandals.
“Well, I— well, thank you, Kam,” Laurinda whispered.
“Thank you, my dear. Now this door I'd better not open for you. Behind it we keep chemical explosives for mining-type jobs. But you were asking about our hyperdrive, weren't you?
“Well, after the war Bob and Dorcas — they met and got married during it, when he was in the navy and she was helping beef up the defenses at Ixa, with a sideline in translation — they worked for Solar Minerals, scouting the asteroids, and did well enough, commissions and bonuses and such, that at last they could make the down payment on this ship. She was going pretty cheap because nobody else wanted her. Who'd be so crazy as to compete with the big Belter companies? But you see, meanwhile they'd found the real treasure, a derelict hyperdrive craft. She wasn't UN property or anything, she was an experimental job a manufacturer had been testing. Unmanned; a monopole meteoroid passed close by and fouled up the electronics; she looped off on an eccentric orbit and was lost; the company went out of business. She'd become a legend of sorts, every search had failed, on which basis Dorcas figured out where she most likely was, and she and Bob went looking on their own time. As soon as they were ready they announced their discovery, claimed salvage rights, and installed the drive in this hull. Nobody had foreseen anything like that, and besides, they'd hired a smart lawyer. The rules have since been changed, of course, but we come under a grandfather clause. So here we've got the only completely independent starship in known space.”
“It is very venturesome of you.”
“Yeah, things often get precarious. Interstellar commerce hasn't yet developed regular trade routes, except what government-owned lines monopolize. We have to take what we can get, and not all of it has been simple hauling of stuff from here to there. The last job turned out to be a lemon, and frankly, this charter is a godsend. Uh, don't quote me. I talk too much. Bob bears with me, but a tongue-lashing from Dorcas can take the skin off your soul.”
“You and he are old friends, aren't you?”
“Since our teens. He came knocking his way around Earth to Hawaii, proved to be a good guy for a hole, I sort of introduced him to people and things, we had some grand times. Then he enlisted, had a real yeager of a war career, but you must know something about that. He looked me up afterward, when he and Dorcas were taking a second honeymoon, and later they offered me this berth.”
“You had experience?”
“Yes, I'd gone spaceward, too. Civilian. Interesting work, great pay, glamour to draw the girls, because not many flatlanders wanted to leave Earth when the next kzin attack might happen anytime.”
“It seems so romantic,” Laurinda murmured. “Superficially, at least, and to me.”
“What do you mean, please?” Ryan asked, in the interest of drawing her out. Human females like men who will listen to them.
“Oh, that is— What have I done except study? And, well, research. I was born the year the Outsiders arrived at We Made It, but of course they were gone again long before I could meet them. In fact, I never saw a nonhuman in the flesh till I came to Centauri and visited Tigertown. You and your friends have been out, active, in the universe.”
“I don't want to sound self-pitying,” Ryan said, unable to quite avoid sounding smug, “but it's been mostly sitting inboard, then working our fingers off, frantic scrambles, shortages of everything, and moments of stark terror. A wise man once called adventure 'somebody else having a hell of a tough time ten light-years away'.”
She looked at him from her slightly greater elevation and touched his arm. “Lonely too. You must miss your family.”
“I'm a bachelor type,” Ryan answered, forbearing to mention the ex-wives. “Not that I don't appreciate you ladies, understand—”
At that instant, luck brought them upon Carita Fenger. She emerged from a cold locker with a hundred-liter keg of beer, intended for the saloon, on her back, held by a strap that her left hand gripped. High-tech tasks were apportioned among all five of Rover's people, housekeeping chores among the three crewmen. This boat pilot was a jinxian. Her width came close to matching her short height, with limbs in proportion and bosom more so. Ancestry under Sirius had made her skin almost ebony, though the bobbed hair was no longer sun-bleached white but straw color. Broad nose, close-set brown eyes, big mouth somehow added up to an attractive face, perhaps because it generally looked cheerful. “Well, hi,” she hailed. “What's going on here?”
Ryan and Laurinda halted. “I am showing our passenger around the ship,” he said stiffly.
Carita cocked her head. “Are you, now? That isn't all you'd like to show her, I can see. Better get back to the galley, lad. You did promise us a first-meal feast.” To the Crashlander: “He's a master chef when he puts his mind to it. Good in bed, too.”
Laurinda dropped her gaze and colored, Ryan flushed likewise. “I'm sorry,” he gobbled. “Pilot Fenger's okay, but she does sometimes forget her manners.”
Carita's laugh rang. “I've not forgotten this nightwatch is your turn, Kam. I'll be waiting. Or shall I seduce Commissioner Markham — or Professor Tregennis?” To Laurinda: “Sorry, dear, I shouldn't have said that. Being coarse goes with the kind of life I've led. I'll try to do better. Don't be afraid of Kam. He's harmless as long as you don't encourage him.”
She trudged off with her burden. To somebody born to Jinx gravity, the weight was trifling. Ryan struggled to find words. All at once Laurinda trilled laughter of her own, then said fast, “I apologize. Your arrangements are your own business. Shall we continue for as long as you can spare the time?”