Darrell Bain Read online

  "Thanks,” he answered casually. “Means a lot to me."

  "Somebody special give it to you?"

  "No. I bought it myself. It just ... means a lot to me."

  That was telling. But interestingly enough, that was all he said. And just because the man was now poking instruments around between my legs didn't mean we knew each other well enough for me to press further. And likely, I considered, we never would, because who knew when we'd see each other after this?

  "When was the last time you had a period?” he asked then.

  "Um ... ‘bout two, two and a half weeks ago,” I said. He let me sit up, and I glanced at the calendar on the wall. “Yeah. It'll be right at two weeks in two days."

  "Okay, good. Where do you want the implant? We recommend upper arm or belly, but it's your call."

  "Implant?"

  "Contraceptive. You're going to be gone potentially a long time,” Honeywell explained, “and we can't have babies popping off aboard ship. And the implants last a year, and take up a lot less space in stowage than months and months’ worth of birth control pills. Then there's the added benefit of no periods while the implant lasts."

  "Ah,” I said, grasping the idea. Not having a period for a year sure wouldn't bother me, either! “Good plan. I dunno. How big is the damn thing, and which site hurts less?"

  Honeywell grinned, holding up the sterile package containing the tiny implant. “In that case, I'd recommend belly."

  "Go for it."

  Moments later I had the little prosthetic injected just under my skin, right below my navel. And thanks to a bit of cold spray, I'd barely felt a thing. “How long does it take to kick in?"

  "Stay on your Pill until you run out of the current month,” Honeywell cautioned. “By then it'll be dispensing the correct amount. Don't be surprised if you spot a bit, or have some slight nausea in the meantime, though. You'll be getting hormones from both systems. If you have any problems be sure and report them. A small percentage of women can't tolerate this implant and it's still relatively new."

  "Right.” I nodded comprehension. “Better that than wups. I doubt the nurseries of starships are very big."

  "Exactly."

  * * * *

  Three days later I was told I'd be leaving the next day. And I was almost ten pounds over my 30-kilogram limit. I'd reconsidered after the whisky and began adding other odds and ends until I was overweight. Damn, damn, damn! What to leave behind? I spent two hours agonizing over choices and wondered whether other passengers and crew were having the same difficulties.

  I heard a tap at my door and spoke for it to open. Maddie stuck her head in.

  "Hi Maddie. Come on in.” I had a sudden idea. Maybe she had some spare space. Wouldn't hurt to ask.

  "Just for a moment,” she said stepping on inside. “I see you're packing. Got any room to spare?"

  I laughed. “I was just going to ask you!"

  "So much for that. No one has extra room. Mass, I mean.” Her expression drooped. “Well, there go my dress shoes and a gown."

  We talked a few minutes; then she left on another errand, probably to ask someone else. I was actually surprised to see her still around. I would have thought she'd already be aboard, being an astrogator, navigator or whatever the hell they finally decided to call her. I hoped that meant our route was already all mapped out. It better be, I thought, or we're all in trouble!

  Gordon had already left on a special, well-guarded carrier. I wouldn't see him again until we were in space. It was beginning to be lonely around the old homestead. I decided to use up some of the whisky but right at the last moment I got the word that we could add another five kilos. I repacked then weighed everything again and was right at the limit, including the whisky, so I didn't get to have a going-away drink in my room after all.

  I felt certain I wouldn't sleep that night and I was right. I tossed and tumbled until finally I took a tranquilizer, a leftover from my recovery period. I shook the bottle and noted with satisfaction that it was still almost full. I had used very few of them. I poured the rest down the sink. No room for personal medicines. If you were on drugs they had better be something you could do without or were stocked in the ship because it was going to be a long way back to a pharmacy.

  * * * *

  Along with Maddie and a few others, I was put on a mini-bus that took me to the shabby-looking airport and thence to the spaceport.

  "Gordon was asking a lot of questions about you,” Maddie said to me after we were underway.

  "When did you see him?"

  "Oh, I've been at the launch site for a while now, getting my commission straightened out and all. This was just a trip back to pack."

  "Commission?” That was news to me.

  "Uh-huh. Reinstated with a bump in rank for my good looks and pleasing personality."

  I laughed but didn't ask anything more about that. I figured I'd find out later. It was Gordon's questions that interested me. I did ask about them.

  Maddie said, “Oh, he's mostly interested in what you're like when you're not working. The books you read, shows you watch, things like that."

  "Getting ready for the switch, is he?"

  "Oh, yes. I think Sira was regaling him about the joys of sex before you told her to slow down."

  "Good. It's better to take things like that slow. Very slow. He's going to have enough surprises hit him in the face when the hormones start circulating. Remember when you were a teenager?"

  Maddie laughed and covered her face. “Oh, God, don't remind me! The poor fellow!"

  "Uh-huh,” I said, and meant it. I remembered my own teenage years. I mused for a moment then continued. “You know, Jeri really did hit the jackpot. When she was a Crispy she fell in with Kyle and they were more or less alone, at first. He turned out to be perfect for her. He was a well-read and even-tempered man with enough scientific knowledge to help explain a lot of our contrary traits and the idiotic parts of our society. And he was single but had been married; a good marriage, so she said. And they went at it slow. All the things pointed out by my research that are either necessary or highly recommended for a successful conversion."

  "Right. And you have a lot of the same traits as Kyle."

  Finally it dawned on me what she had been getting at. Some days I'm brighter than others. “Um. You think he's already looking at me as a potential ... um, girlfriend?"

  "Uh-huh. Or more. Of course he can't have human sexual feelings yet but he likes you already."

  I stayed silent for a while. Being a mentor might turn out to have some side benefits—or handicaps, depending on how he developed. I decided I needed to think and closed my eyes. The image of Technical Sergeant Juan Melandez's strong brown face and hard muscular body kept intruding on my thoughts. I found myself wishing he were going.

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  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I don't know what I was expecting from the starship. I guess I was still visualizing rocket propulsion and I should have known better. You don't go plying the stars using rockets! What I saw looked something like four cans of soup turned on their side. At one end the cans appeared to be squashed toward the center. They were attached snugly to each other with heavy bracing. The other ends had the same squished look but it had more protruding aerials and weird looking apparatus extending from it. The whole thing was cradled on short fat landing legs. At first I thought it wasn't very large but then I saw the tiny figures walking around beside it and the size came into perspective. It was huge! And I should have been expecting that, too. If you're going on a trip that might last two years—although it wasn't planned for that—it would pretty well have to be sizable to support the scientists, crew and military aboard. And it was.

  What surprised me most was seeing it inside its hangar, which was my first sight of it. Spaceships always took off in the open, didn't they? Yes, and this one would too, as I found out. It was built inside a covering to conceal what it was, and to keep from revealing its size a
nd what it looked liked to anyone not supposed to see it.

  "Impressive, huh?” a voice said as we stood and stretched after getting off the jet that brought us to the spaceport and taxied on inside the hangar. I still didn't know the location of the spaceport. From what I had seen as we descended though, I suspected we were in far west Texas or perhaps New Mexico. The terrain was similar at any rate. Sometimes I think secrecy is carried to ridiculous extremes but perhaps not in this case.

  I nodded, even though the question hadn't been directed at me. It was indeed impressive. And the most remarkable thing about it was the propulsion system. Again I was fooled. I was used to thinking of spaceships as mostly massive fuel tanks and cramped living quarters. This one was just the opposite. Most of what I was seeing from the outside was either living area or storage space. What I took to be the unreality impellers and artificial gravity apparatus took up less than a tenth of the mass. Fuel tanks and maneuvering jets for moving short distances after leaving Earth took only another tenth. I learned those last facts later. At the time I wouldn't have known an impeller from an incinerator.

  * * * *

  We walked to the ship after being taken close to it in a cart, with it growing more and more massive as we neared. Considering the speed with which it had been constructed, I figured something that large had to have started with the four “soup cans” taken from off-the-shelf cylinders originally meant for something else. The body of airliners, maybe. Railroad tank cars, but probably not. Those would have been too small. Perhaps storage tanks from a refinery. Or I suppose it could have been built from scratch on site, given the incentives and plenty of money.

  A floating golf cart with our luggage aboard trundled around to the other side, presumably to a loading bay of some sort. An airlock with both doors propped open on one cylinder, and a small loading ramp extended from another, provided our entrance into what would be our home for a long time to come.

  "Follow me, folks. Don't lag or you can get lost in here.” A short female corporal just inside the airlock grinned at us, flashing white teeth in a tanned face. She had on the same type of chameleon uniform I'd seen on Captain Jenson when I first reported to SFREC. “Don't worry about your luggage. It'll catch up to us pretty quick."

  The interior of the ship seemed even larger once we were inside, especially considering we were in just one of the four subdivisions of the ship. We were led through hallways and passages and past larger rooms, some open, some not. People came and went as we walked, seemingly in a hurry and obviously intent on last minute errands or duties. It didn't take long to get me lost. I'm the type of person who needs a map to find my way across a street.

  Before long we entered what was clearly passenger country. Fewer uniforms were evident and the narrow hallways had doors that opened or closed into recesses. The entrances, or hatches in navy parlance, were lined to provide airtight seals. Most doors came with names attached, some single, some couples. The military people I saw were all dressed alike, in the silvery camouflage with sleeves rolled up.

  "This is your stateroom, Ms. Trung,” the little corporal said. “Please look at the schedule of events and the diagram of the ship as soon as possible. Both are available from the ship's computer monitor in your room. Next chow—meals for civilians—is at 1600 hours and there's a general orientation at 1800 hours, That's four o'clock and six o'clock for civilians, but get used to the military method of keeping time. You'll be briefed on it tonight. There's a FAQ section displayed on your monitor that also explains it. Take a look at all the FAQ. It'll save you lots of time and maybe some grief. Your luggage will be along shortly.” She glanced past me and said, “In fact, here it comes now."

  Sure enough, a little cart came along hovering a few inches above the floor, or deck as the navy called it, and I saw my two suitcases. I was very glad they were lightweight, since their mass was included in the personal goods limit. I thanked Corporal Smithson, then closed the door behind me and began sorting out the bulk of my worldly possessions, all 35 kilos of them, not counting the clothes I was wearing. I felt a little guilty because of my .40 S&W automatic in the side pocket of my windbreaker. Once I learned that the clothing we weighed in with wasn't included in the baggage allowance, I decided to carry it and take my chances of it being confiscated. Not surprisingly, we had to go through a detector before entering the ship and my weapon was spotted, of course. That resulted in a brief phone call, a smile and a request to turn it in to the armory before liftoff.

  The stateroom was about like what you'd find on a cruise ship, minus a porthole. One room contained all the furniture, including the bed, and all of it was bolted to the floor. There was a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet, and that was it. It looked kind of spare until I started going through the FAQ and discovered some seats that let down from the wall—bulkhead—as well as a few cabinets I hadn't known were there. The main room could also be partitioned with folding wall dividers. I should have gone through the questions before unpacking and storing my possessions. After finding the cabinets I had to take the time to rearrange things. It was then that it struck me: the ship was designed as if it would be gravitized to something like we were used to. I thought about it and decided it must be an adjunct of the propulsion system, or possibly a whole separate system that provided gravity. Whatever; it seemed I wasn't going to be allowed to experience weightlessness after all, one of the experiences I'd been looking forward to. Kitty mess and other bad words.

  * * * *

  The evening meal was sandwiches and tea or water. The cooks were busy stowing their pantry. Not that we'd get many cooked meals, I'd heard. The military MREs were going to be fairly standard fare and I expected they would get to be very old by the time we returned.

  Orientation was in a big auditorium kind of room, but with a low ceiling and seats attached to the deck. I won't mention that again. Just take it for granted that everything movable was locked into place—or should have been. Gravity or no, weightlessness had to be allowed for.

  I moved down the narrow aisle between two rows and found a seat. A moment later I felt the presence of someone beside me and turned to see. Tech. Sgt. Juan Melandez looked much handsomer smiling than he had while glowering at us as an instructor. Except he was no longer a sergeant. Brand new CW2 insignia were attached to his cammies. He'd skipped the basic warrant officer rating of WO1, signifying that his CW2 was a presidential commission. It also signified that someone thought very highly of him.

  "Hi!” he said with a grin. “We have to stop meeting like this."

  "Hello.” I felt my face turning red as I remembered what I'd been thinking just before being shanghaied into the mission to the newly discovered Crispy hideout. “And congratulations. I see you've been promoted."

  If he noted the blush he made no sign of it. “Thanks. Reward for keeping all my ducks in a row, I guess. Y’ know, I wondered what in hell you people were up to when I was dragooned into that quick training course, but never in my wildest dreams did I think you were going somewhere on a spaceship."

  "Not just a spaceship, Mister Melandez. A starship."

  "Yeah. Starship. And you're not in training now. I'm Juan to my friends unless I'm on duty."

  "Okay. I'm Mai. Or Cherry, but not many call me that."

  "Why not? It's a pretty name."

  "Not a clue, Juan, but call me Cherry if you like.” I smiled while thinking I'd given him the name only my closest friends called me by and started to wonder why but, really, I knew. He looked better than ever. Then what he'd said hit me. “Are you just now finding out where we're going?"

  He nodded and smiled ruefully. “Yeah, I'm a last minute addition. One of the original crew came down with the heebie-jeebies two days ago and someone pulled my name out of the hat and asked if I wanted to go on a special mission. I didn't have to be asked twice. Anything to get out of a training slot, but I sure never figured I was going on a starship!"

  "It's the same way I felt at first. Well, I'm glad to
see you aboard. I'll feel safer now."

  "Thanks. I think."

  I was still wondering how to answer that remark when a man in a black and silver dress uniform I'd never seen before joined several others on the stage. They all wore similar attire. He had a strong face with a hawk nose and high cheekbones and stood several inches taller than the others.

  "Who's that?” I asked, as if Juan would know since he'd just joined us.

  He did know. “That must be the dress uniform for the Space Force since I was given one just like it, and since I haven't seen anyone but the few up there wearing it so far, I suspect one of them is our captain."

  Sure enough, the last man who'd joined the others on the stage took the podium with three confident strides while the other six sat down, two women and four men. “Good afternoon,” he began. “I'm Colonel Jules Becker, captain of our ship. It was christened yesterday and shall henceforth be known as the USSS Galactic. In case you aren't aware, this is the second in a line of starships being built. The first one has already left, the USSS Zeng Wu. It was named to honor the memory of two very special men whose sacrifice in part made this trip possible.

  "Our primary mission is to contact the Zeng Wu, if at all possible, before it locates the Cresperian planet. All of you should by now know about the Cresperians. They are members of an intelligent species, some of whom were marooned on Earth. To that end we shall proceed directly to the last star system we know is on Zeng Wu's itinerary. If we arrive too late to catch them, we will then proceed to try locating the Cresperian home planet alone.

  "Once in this ship you are subject to military discipline. This means orders from me or my officers and NCOs will be obeyed with alacrity. The only appeal is to my superiors on Earth, upon our return. I cannot emphasize this enough. We are on a dangerous mission. We have no idea what we may encounter. Strict discipline is our only recourse when the going gets tough. That doesn't mean the military is going to be hanging over the shoulders of scientists and other personnel on board and monitoring their every move, but it does mean that any disputes are ultimately my responsibility to solve. It also means that you are responsible for reading and abiding by the ship's regulations posted on your computer. So be nice. Do your best to get along with your crewmates. This may be a long voyage and it is very important that we meld ourselves into a smooth working and smooth sailing ship.