Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (36 page)

And she made it—the incredible quantum leap into Basic Space Crew Training. A mathematician who had never touched a woman pushed her name, a State test administrator who wanted to up his school averages was of use. A general shortage of support personnel for the vital asteroid mining program helped. But basically it was her own unquenchable drive for the stars that carried her up.

Lots of people longed to go to space, of course; among other things, the spacers’ life was thought to be a privileged one. And people admired the stars, when they could be seen. CP’s longing wasn’t unusual; it was only of another order of intensity. She didn’t talk about it much—in fact, she didn’t talk much at all—because she learned her fellows thought it was comical: Snotface in the stars. But, as one of them put it, “Better there than here.”

In Basic Crew Training the story repeated itself; she simply worked twice as hard. And her next small savings went for a medical operation—not on her nose, as any normal girl would, but on the sterilization required of female students, for which they had to pay, if they wanted to get to actual flight. (For spacestation workers it was desirable too, but not compulsory.)

And she made it there too, relatively easily. At nineteen she certified for work in space. She was ready to be assigned offplanet. Here, oddly, her dreadful looks helped. In her interview she had asked particularly for the far-out exploratory flights.

“Holy Haig,” the young interviewer said to his superiors on the Assignment Board. “Imagine being cooped up for a year with that face! Stick her in the far end of station sewage reclamation, I say.”

“And you’d be a damn fool, sonny. What caused the abort on the last Titan trip? Why were there three fatal so-called accidents on the last six Trojan runs? Why do so many computers ‘accidentally’ dump parts of the log on a lot of the long missions? We lost the whole mineralogical analysis of that good-looking bunch of rocks on the far side of the Belt. If you recall, we still don’t know where we’ll get our cesium. Why, junior?”

The young Personnel man sobered quickly.

“Ah . . . personality tensions, sir. Stress, clashes, unavoidable over long periods to men in confined quarters. The capsuledesign people are working on privacy provisions, I understand they have some new concepts –”

“And to these tinderboxes you want to add an even reasonably attractive woman, sonny? We know the men do better with a female along, not only for physiological needs but for a low-status noncompetitive servant and rudimentary mother figure. What we do
not
need is a female who could incite competition or any hint of tension for her services. We have plenty of exciting-looking women back at the stations and the R & R depots, the men can dream of them and work to get back to them. But on board a long flight, what we need sexually is a human waste can. This—who is it?—Carol Page fits the bill like a glove, and she has all these skills as a bonus, if her marks mean anything. Talk about imagining a year with ‘that face’—can you imagine any crew who wasn’t blind or absolutely crazy experiencing the faintest additional tension over
her?
”

“I certainly see what you mean, sir—I was dead wrong. Thank you, sir.”

“Okay, skip it. Hell, if she works out at all she may actually be a fair asset.”

And so it was that CP went out to space, with a clause in her Articles certifying her for trial on long-run work.

On her very first run, a check on a large new incoming asteroid apparently dislodged from cis-Plutonian orbit, she proved the senior Personnel man right. She cleaned and dumped garbage and kept the capsule orderly and in repair at all times, she managed to make the food tastier than the men believed possible, she helped everybody do anything disagreeable, she nursed two men through space dysentery and massaged the pain out of another’s sprained back; she kept her mouth strictly shut at all times, and performed her sexual duties as a “human waste can” with competence, although she could not quite successfully simulate real desire. (It was after this trip that she began to be known as Cold Pig.) She provoked no personal tensions; in fact, two of the crew forgot even to say good-bye to her, although they gave her superior marks in their report forms.

After several repetitions of this performance she began to be regarded by the Planners as something of an asset, as the Personnel chief had predicted. The crews didn’t exactly love her, and made a great exhibition of groaning when Cold Pig showed up on their trip rosters; but secretly they were not displeased. Cold Pig missions were known to go well and be as comfortable as possible. And she could fill in for half a dozen specialties in emergencies. Things never went totally wrong with Cold Pig aboard. The Pig began to be privately regarded as lucky. She achieved a shadowy kind of status in the growing space network.

But not with Captain Bob Meich, on whose ship,
Calgary
, her story begins. Captain Bob Meich loathed her, and despised a certain fact about Cold Pig that was the most precious possession of her life.

Among the various Articles of Contract by which she was bound, there were two unusual clauses that were all she had worked for, and which she prized above life: Cold Pig, almost alone among thousands of women in space, was fully certified for solo flight.

She had insisted on a general flight clause at first signing, and she had the attested experience to back it up. Authority showed no particular resistance: space work includes thousands of hours of dull routine ferrying of stuff from here to there, which the men disliked, and quite a few station women were allowed to help out. Cold Pig’s looks were helpful here too; clearly her goings and comings would never cause a ripple. But Cold Pig had her sights set higher than this.

Once in space, she set out to achieve a solo cert for every type of rocket going. She piled up flight time between all her assignments. She would fly anything anywhere, even if it meant three months done in foul air, herding a rock in an old torch with a broken-down air regenerator she could barely keep functional. Her eagerness to fly the lousiest trips slowly made her an asset here, too.

The payoff came when there was a bad rock-hit on a hot new short-run mission; Cold Pig not only saved a couple of lives, but flew the new model home alone and docked it like a pro. The wounded captain she had saved was grateful enough to help her get the second Article she coveted, the big one: it was formally stipulated that if a scout became disabled on a multiship mission, Carol Page would be assigned as replacement to take over his mission and ship, solo, until he recovered. This was extended to include flying the mother ship itself should all other crew be totally disabled.

Thus it was that one day Cold Pig came head to head with Captain Bob Meich of the
Calgary
, on the extreme-range mission on the far side of Uranus, with four of the ship’s five scouts out on long exploratory flights. Don Lamb, the fifth and last, lay stranded helpless in his sleeper with a broken hip, and his scout ship idled in its berth.

“No cunt is going to fly off my ship while I’m breathing,” Meich said levelly. “I don’t give a flying fuck what your Articles say. If you want to make a point of it back at Station you can try. Or you can have a little accident and go out the waste hole, too. I am the captain and what I say goes.”

“But, sir, that data Don’s ship was assigned to is supposed to be crucial—”

He glared coldly at her; not sane, she saw. Nor was she, but she didn’t know that.

“I’ll show you once and for all what’s crucial. Follow me, Pig.” He spat out the name.

She followed him to the scout access tunnel; all the ports but one were empty. He opened the port of Don’s scouter and crawled into the small capsule.
Calgary
’s pseudogravity of rotation was heavy out here; she could hear him grunting.

“Watch.” He jerked the keys from the console and pocketed them. Then he yanked free the heavy pry-bar, and deliberately smashed it again and again into the on-board computer. Cold Pig was gasping.

He crawled out.

“Take your pants off.”

He used her there on the cold grids beside the wreckage of her hopes, used her hard and with pain, holding her pants across her ugly face so she nearly smothered.

At one point a bulge in her shirt pocket attracted his notice: her notebook. He jerked it out, kneeling his weight hurtfully on her shoulders, and flipped through it.

“What the hell’s this?
Poetry?
” He read in ferocious falsetto scorn: “
With delicate mad hands against his sordid bars
—aagh!” He flung the little book savagely toward the waster. It went skittering heavily across the grids, tearing pages.

Cold Pig, supine and in pain, twisted to see it, could not suppress a cry.

Meich was not normally a sexual man; several times she had felt him failing, and each time he slapped her head or invented some new indignity; but now he grinned jubilantly, not knowing that he had sealed his own fate. He jerked her head forward and, finally, ejaculated.

“All right. That’s as close as you get to flying, Pig. Just remember that. Now get my dinner.”

He was tired and withdrawn; he hit her covered face once more and left her. Cold Pig was grateful for the cover; she hadn’t cried before in space—not, in fact, for years. Before dressing she rescued the little notebook, put it in a different pocket.

“Pig!” He may have had a moment’s worry that he’d killed her. “Get that food.”

“Yes, sir.”

Quite insane now, she smiled—a doubly horrible effect on her bloodied face—and went to do as he ordered, smoothly, efficiently as always. Don was awake too, by now, looking curiously at her. She offered no explanation, merely inquired what he’d like to eat.

The dinner she produced was particularly tasty; she used some of her carefully hoarded spices to disguise any possible taste from another carefully hoarded ingredient—though she knew from long-ago paramed school it was tasteless.

The fact that she was crazy was made clear by her choice. She had other capabilities; she could have served a meal from which neither Don nor the captain would ever have wakened. In fact, she did give one such to Don, who had always been minimally decent to her. But for the captain she had another, and as it turned out, more perilous plan. Cold Pig was human; she wanted him to
know
.

He ate heartily. Another type of person might have been made slightly suspicious by the niceness, comprising just the foods she knew he was fondest of. Or by her compliant, quietly agreeable manner. To Bob Meich it only confirmed what his father had taught him, that all women needed was a little knocking about, to be shown who was boss. He announced thickly something to this effect to Don, on his bunk in the next “room”; expecting no answer and getting none.

Don was young, the captain mused. Too soft. He still talked about his mother. When Don got better he would teach him a thing or two about handling women.

Presently he began to slump toward the special dessert CP served him. Feeling some irony, she put his “nightcap” bottle where he liked it, within easy reach. She was impatient now, there was much to do. Waiting, she had to admire his extraordinary physical vitality. A dose that ought to have brought quick oblivion took a few minutes to work fully on him. She began to worry that he might hear Don begin to hyperventilate, but he gave no sign of this. Finally Meich stared about, focused on her, shouted “Wha—?” and half rose before he went down for good. She should have been warned.

But he
was
completely unconscious—she snapped her fingers by his ear, sprinkled salt on his exposed eye to make sure. She could get to work.

First she wanted to check on Don. She had saved enough of the substance she had fed him to serve her own necessities, and she wanted to see how painful it might be.

Don was half off his bunk, the last spasms subsiding into occasional leg jerks. His face was not excessively distorted, only sweat-covered, and the mouth was bloody. He’d bitten almost through his tongue, she found. But it did seem to have been quick. There was no heartbeat now except for one last faint thud that came during the minute she listened. Despite herself, she wiped his face a little, closed his eyes, and laid a hand for an instant on his soft brown hair. He
had
been considerate once.

Then she went to work, hard and fast. She blunted one scalpel and another—those suits and air tubes were tough—and had to go to pliers and other tools before she had things to her satisfaction. Next she got all essentials tied or taped in place. She also disconnected a few alarms to keep bedlam from breaking out prematurely. Early in the process, Meich startled her by sliding out of his chair, ending head down under the table.

One of the air canisters she’d wrestled loose rolled under the table too, the cut end of its hose wagging. This she noticed only subliminally, it didn’t seem to matter. She was busy undogging heavy seals.

The main air-pressure alarm in the pilot’s chamber was very loud. It roused Bob Meich.

He rolled convulsively, and pushed himself half upright, overturning table and seats, opening, closing, opening his eyes wide with obvious effort.

What he saw would probably have stunned a lesser man to fatal hesitancy. The room was in a gale—papers, clothes, objects of all description were flying past him, snapping out of the half-open main port.

The port was opening farther. As he looked, the suited, helmeted figure of Cold Pig pulled the great circular port seal back to its widest extent and calmly latched it. Alarms were howling and warbling all over the ship as air left from everywhere at once and pressure dropped; total uproar. Then the sounds faded as the air to carry them went out. The last to remain audible was a far faint squeal from the interior of Don’s scouter. Then near silence.

CP had wondered whether Meich would go first for his suit or directly to the door and herself.

His reflexes carried him, already gasping in airlessness, to the suit that hung on the wall behind, standing straight out as it tugged to fly. One heavy boot had already rolled and shot out the port—no matter, the helmet was there. Emergency suits were emplaced throughout
Calgary
, which was partly what had taken her so long.