“No, Mr. Hansen.” Her tone was calm.”That would only be true if the voyage is a hiatus in life, just a waiting period before I get to Hope Nation and resume living.”
Young Derek Carr snorted with disdain. “What else could it be? Is this”--he waved a hand airily--”what you call living?”
His tone offended me but I had no standing to object.
Miss Frowel, though, seemed not to notice. “Yes, I call this living,” she told him. “I have a comfortable berth, lectures to arrange, a trunkful of holovid chips to read, enjoyable dining, and pleasant company to share the voyage.”
Randy Carr poked his son ungently in the ribs. The boy glared at him; he glowered back. Some signal passed between them. After a moment Derek said coolly, “Forgive me if I was rude, Miss Frowel,” not sounding greatly concerned.
She smiled and the conversation turned elsewhere. As I finished my baked chicken I closed my ears and imagined the two of us alone in her cabin. Well, it would be a long voyage.
We’d see.
“So you finally got something right, Mr. Seafort!” Lieutenant Cousins examined my solution on the plotting screen, rubbing his balding head. “But Lord God, can’t Mr. Tamarov even learn the basics? If he’s ever let loose on a bridge he’ll destroy his vessel!”
Mr. Cousins had us calculating when to Defuse to locate the derelict U.N.S. Celestina,lost a hundred twelve years ago with all hands. I checked Alexi’s solution out of the corner of my eye. He’d made a math error matching stellar velocities. Basically correct, except for the one lapse, but his omission could have been catastrophic. Perhaps Celestinahad foundered because of some careless navigation error. No one knew.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” Alexi said meekly.
“You’re very sorry indeed, Mr. Tamarov,” the lieutenant echoed. “Of all the middies in the Navy, I get you! Perhaps Mr. Seafort and Mr. Holser will inspire you to study your Nav text. If they don’t, I will.”
Not good; it was an open invitation to Vax Holser to redouble his hazing, and there was already bad blood between the two.I had nothing against hazing; we all had to go through it and it strengthens character, or so they say, but Vax took a sadistic pleasure in it that disturbed me. Naturally, as first middy, I’d hazed Alexi and Sandy myself. From time to time I’d had one or the other of them stand on a chair in the wardroom in his shorts for a couple of hours, reciting ship’s regs, or given extra mop-up duty for minuscule infractions.
As low men, they had to expect that sort of thing, and did. I decided to keep an eye open. I couldn’t wholly protect Alexi from Vax, who was second in seniority, but I could try to keep the brooding middy from going too far.
“Back to work.” With an irritable swipe, Mr. Cousins cleared Alexi’s screen and brought up another plot.
Of course, our calculations were only simulated, with the help of Darla, the ship’s puter. In reality Hiberniawas Fused and all our outer sensors were blind.
Our first stop was to be at Celestina,if we could find her without too much delay. She was but a small object, and deep in interstellar space. Then, after many months, we would drop off supplies at Miningcamp, sixty-three light-years distant, before completing our run to Hope Nation. But simulation or no, Lieutenant Cousins expected perfection, and rightly so.While the fusion drive made interstellar travel practical, the drive was inherently inaccurate by up to six percent of the distance traveled in Fusion. So, we aimed for a point at least six percent of our journey from our target system, stopped, recalculated, and Fused again, as a safeguard against blindly Fusing into a sun, which had happened at least once in the early days. During Fusion our external instruments were useless; we couldn’t determine our position until we actually turned off the drive.
I tapped at the keys. So many variables. Our N-waves traversed the galaxy faster than any known form of communication. Though the Navy talked of sending out messenger drones equipped with fusion drive, in practice it didn’t work well. The drones frequently disappeared, and no one knew just why. You’d think a puter could handle a ship as well as a mere human, but-”Pay attention, Seafort!”
“Aye aye, sir!” I squinted at the screen, corrected my error.
Anyway, engineering a fusion drive was so expensive, it made more sense for the Navy to surround it with a manned ship, to ferry passengers and supplies to our colonies as well as mere messages.
Perhaps someday, if the drones were perfected, our profession would be obsolete. It would be a shame. Ours was a glamorous career, despite the slight risk of developing melanoma T, the vicious carcinoma triggered by long exposure to fusion fields.
Fortunately, humans whose cells were exposed to N-waves within five years of puberty seemed almost immune, though there were exceptions. Even for adults going interstellar for the first time, the risks weren’t excessive, but they grew with each successive voyage. So, officers were started young, and crew men and women were recruited for short-”Daydreaming again, Mr. Seafort? If it’s about a young lady, you could go to your wardroom for privacy.”
“No, sir. Sorry, sir.” Blushing, I bent over the console, my fingers flying.
One way to determine our location was to plot our position relative to three known stars and consult the star charts in the ship’s puter. We could also calculate the energy variations recorded during Fusion and estimate the percentage of error that would result. This method gave us a sphere of error; we could be at any point in the sphere. Then we merely had to calculate what our target would look like and see if we observed anything that matched.
I don’t care what the textbooks say. Navigation is more art than science.
When nav drill was over at last, I chewed out Alexi and sent him to the wardroom with a chip of Lambert and Greeley’s Elements of Astronavigationfor his holovid.
2
The clock ticked against me. Blindfolded, I felt for the bulkheads, hoping not to trip over an unexpected obstacle. I groped my way to a hatch. Lockable from the inside, fullsize handle. That meant I was in a passenger’s cabin. I felt my way out to the corridor. I turned left, arbitrarily, and walked slowly, my arm scraping along the corridor bulkhead.
I sensed I was moving upward, almost imperceptibly. It meant I was coming to a ladder.
One of our training exercises was to figure out where we were, without sight. We’d be given a Dozeoff and would wake some minutes later, Lord God knew where. If we took too long to orient ourselves, we were demented. I suppose, if a ship’s power backups and all our emergency lighting failed at once, the drill could be useful. But I couldn’t imagine a situation that would cause that to happen.
I bumped into the ladder railing. It extended both up and down; that meant I was on Level 2, in passenger country.
Amanda’s cabin was somewhere near; as our friendship had progressed I’d finally been invited inside it.
Where was I, east or west? If east, there’d be an exercise room about twenty steps past the railing. I couldn’t remember what was west, except that it wasn’t the exercise room.
Throwing caution aside to improve my time I staggered down the passage. If Mr. Cousins had put a chair in the corridor I was done for.
No exercise room. “Passenger quarters, second level west, about fifteen meters west of the ladder, sir.”
“Very good, Nicky.” Lieutenant Malstrom’s voice. I took off the blindfold and blinked in the light. I grinned, and he smiled back. I could imagine how our first lieutenant would have said the same thing.
Cut out three foam rubber disks an inch thick, set them one on top of another, and stick a short pencil through the center.
Now stand the pencil on end. You’d have a rough model of our ship. The engine room was within the pencil underneath the disks; below that sat the drive itself, flaring into the wave emission chamber at the stubby end of the pencil.