John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel (2 page)

The tramps, shuttles, and small-line ships were another matter. They were cramped, carrying crews of no more than a couple dozen at most. Scarred and battered, they were usually obsolete castoffs, sold at auction when one of the lines laid in a new fleet of up-to-date ships. To Torwald, they were more beautiful than the finest new craft. They were the ships he had chosen to spend his life in.

Last in the line stood the
Space Angel.
Her position told Torwald something about her recent prosperity. This far from the main buildings, the docking fees were cheaper. She was a real antique, her once glossy sides now dulled after years of collision with drifting space dust. He knew from her name that she had once belonged to the old Angel Line, back in the days when a line had consisted of an owner, a handful of ships, and their semipiratical crews. They had been proud ships in their day:
Star Angel, Angel of Sirius, Guardian Angel, Angel of the Nebulae. Space Angel
was probably the last of that line still spacing. At the top of the gangway, Torwald was greeted by a little man with a big mustache.

"Permission to come aboard," Torwald stated formally.

"Granted," the little man replied. Spacers were creatures of ritual.

Inside, she was so homey that Torwald felt like kicking off his boots. The deck, bulkheads, and overhead were covered with scars from the magnetic plates that spacers had worn on their bootsoles in the days before the invention of the gravity field. He knocked on the captain's hatch and heard a growled "Stand inside."

The captain of the
Space Angel
was a tough-looking woman of about fifty with a thin, intense face and a Sirius V cigar protruding from her teeth. She wore the silly peaked cloth cap affected by many ship's commanders. She held out her hand in the familiar gesture, and Torwald dropped his bracelet into the upturned palm. She fed it into her console. "Can you handle a shortbeam cutter?" she asked unexpectedly.

"Yes."

"Where'd you learn that?" She seemed surprised. "I rejected a half-dozen applicants yesterday because they couldn't. Were you an asteroid miner?"

"No, I was a POW on Signet. We used 'em in the quarries."

"They trusted prisoners with laser tools?" The captain couldn't mask the incredulous tone of her voice.

"They had explosive collars on us and used remote surveillance. No funny stuff was possible."

"Well, I need a quartermaster. One who can handle a shortbeam and can boss a team using them. Can you do it?"

"Sure."

"All right, Spacer Raffen, you're on. That leaves just one more post to fill."

"What's that?"

"Ship's boy. We still use 'em on these old silos. No mechanization. Our last one grew too old for the job and left the ship on Altair Three. He was a good boy.".

"I've got just the kid for you. Boy I just met in the terminal. As bad a case of the spacies as I've ever seen. Could've been me fifteen years ago."

"Bring him aboard."

"He'll need outfitting."

She reached into the console and extracted a plate of thin metal, handed it to Torwald. "That'll see to his outfitting," she said. "Expenses will be charged against his wages. Bring him back in two hours. We lift off at 1200 sharp."

Torwald saluted and walked away with the ship's credit plate in his pocket. Had he been so inclined, he could have charged his own ship with the plate. He knew he'd signed on with a good captain, at least.

Kelly sat in the coffee ship, brooding over his cup,

which was by then half-empty and quite cold. He thought of the spacer who had spoken with him: a tall, lean man, slightly graying, who moved with the easy grace of one who spent his life adjusting to the varying gravities a spaceman encounters. He had worn the gray coverall and battered boots of a man who worked the independent freighters. That was the service Kelly most wanted to get into—taking on cargo where they could find it, delivering it wherever it was to be sent, then waiting for another contract. The tramps had no home and followed no schedule. Kelly would have settled for a job on an Earth-Luna packet, though—anything to get into space!

Kelly felt a tap on his shoulder, and he looked up. It was the spacer again.

"Come on, kid. You've got a berth on the
Space Angel."

Within a block of the spaceport dozens of surplus stores catered to spacers. The end of the War had dumped millions of tons of surplus gear on the market, and the shops had sprung up overnight. Ideal places for a spacer to outfit himself cheaply. Torwald headed toward the most reputable-looking of these establishments.

"First," Torwald said, "something to stash it all in." The proprietor brought a spacebag in the glossy gray-black favored by the Navy toward the end of the War. Torwald's own bag was the more traditional dark blue.

Torwald rubbed his palms together. "Now, some protective gear." He was enjoying this, and Kelly was delighted with the amassing of the specialized equipment of his new trade. They went to a section where protective clothing was hung from racks or mounted on stands, everything from antipersonnel-missile-resistant vests to suits of articulated plates made from hardened ceramic fiber. Torwald picked out a one-piece coverall of armor cloth.

"Is that for stopping bullets?" Kelly asked.

"Well, partly. But, you'll be going places where thorns and fangs and stickers and stingers and the like are deadlier than any bullet. That's what the armor cloth is for, mainly. Do you have a knife?" Kelly took one out of his pocket: a spring-blade model, cheaply produced. "Get rid of it. That's only useful for sticking people. I'll find you a better one." He checked the display case at the front of the shop, finally choosing a heavy-bladed sheath knife and a small folding pocket model with several tools in the handle besides the knife blade. "These'll do just about anything. Besides which, if necessary, you can always stick people with them."

Then Torwald selected cold-weather gear, a wrist chrono and calculator, work gloves, clothing—all the necessities for a spacer's bag. Last of all, Torwald took Kelly to the rear of the shop, where the footwear was kept. They rummaged around for a few minutes while Torwald gave him a running lecture on the virtues of good boots.

"You might not think so, kid, but boots are more important than any other item of a spacer's equipment. That's because you never know when you may be set afoot, or in what terrain, or in what climate." Kelly didn't like the sound of the expression "set afoot."

"Besides," Torwald continued, "a spacer has very little to do with space, any more than a sailor has with water. It's just something to get across to reach the planets, where the jobs are. And on the ground, you need boots. Aha, jackpotl" With that exclamation, he pulled a pair of boots from a bin. "Genuine pre-War unissued Space Marine boots!"

"How can you tell they're pre-War?" Kelly asked, sorting through the bin to find a pair that fit. Torwald turned a boot sole-up.

"See those little threaded holes? That's where they used to screw in the magnetic plates. They haven't used those plates in fifty years, but the Navy required that the mounts be left there in case of equipment failures. When the War came along, they dropped that reg, and a lot of quality, to cut costs. These boots will last you a lifetime."

At the entrance of the shop, Kelly caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror. He saw himself as he had always dreamed, wearing a spacer's coverall and boots. The coverall hung slack from his thin frame, and the effect was that of a boy dressed up to look like a spacer. He still didn't feel like one. Then Kelly noticed Torwld reflected over his shoulder in the mirror, grinning at his self-absorption.

"Suit's a little big," Kelly said to disguise his embarrassment.

"You'll fill out if this ship's any kind of feeder. I imagine she is. That captain didn't strike me as the kind who'd keep a cook on the ship who didn't know the job."

They returned to the terminal by foot, Kelly working hard to avoid a first-voyager's swagger. Torwald picked up his own spacebag from the locker and they caught a shuttle to the ship. All the way Kelly gaped around him. He had never been allowed onto the field before, and he wasn't really sure that everything was actually happening. When the shuttle drifted up to the
Space Angel's
dock, Kelly gazed lovingly at her space-scoured sides, her shock absorbers, pitted by contact with the soil of who knew how many thousands of worlds. From the tip of her bluntly tapering nose to the bottom of her landing gear, she was as beautiful to him as the most magnificent palace he had ever dreamed of.

Torwald led the boy up the ramp and went though the permission-to-board ritual again, this time for Kelly. As a member of the crew, Torwald no longer needed permission to board. The gangway ended at a curving ramp that arched upward to meet the opposite wall. Torwald climbed it with practiced ease, but Kelly stumbled and felt his stomach flip as the ship's gravity-field took hold of him. The "wall" they had been advancing

Inward became the deck, and the ship, which stood upright on its shock absorbers, all at once seemed horizontal. Kelly looked back, only to find that the concrete of the landing field now towered vertically and that the man at the top of the gangway seemed to be landing horizontally, in defiance of gravity. It was a dizzying view, so Kelly looked quickly away and followed Torwald's retreating back.

They emerged from the entry lock into a narrow companionway and turned right. The companionway turned into a catwalk that stretched across a cavernous hold, then transformed into a companionway again, one lined with doors, some bearing labels like
cargo crane,
HYDROPONICS, LAUNDRY, BATH; Other doors
bore no labels. When Torwald and Kelly were far forward on the ship, Torwald took a ladder leading to the upper deck. The ladder ended a few paces from the bridge. Torwald knocked at the hatch again.

"Stand inside," They entered.

"So, this is the new boy?" The woman looked Kelly up and down, without expression. "What's your name?"

"Kelly, ah, Ma'am."

"The proper form of address is Captain or Skipper. There's also Gertie, but I'll kick your behind the length of this ship if you ever use it while aboard. On this ship, Skipper is customary. Kelly what? Do you have another name?"

"No, Ma—Skipper. It was the only name I had when the orphanage picked me up in the refugee camp, so . . ."

"Kelly it is, then," she said, punching some keys on her console. With a click, a thin, flexible gold band extruded from a slot. She took the band and clipped it around Kelly's right wrist.

"You are now a spacer aboard the tramp
Space Angel.
Your rank is Probationary Spaceman, Second Class. Once per ship-month you and the rest of the crew will turn in your bracelets to me to have your record updated." She had been businesslike to begin with, but her next instructions were even more so. "You will both now give me your personal sidearms."

Without comment, Torwald reached into his bag and retrieved two holstered pistols. Kelly's eyes widened at the sight of them. One was an ordinary slug gun that fired a high-velocity metal missile—the kind most police carried. The other was the one that made Kelly blink. It was a Service laser, and ex-officers of the Services were the only civilians allowed to carry them on Earth. The skipper took the pistols and turned to Kelly.

"No sidearms?" she asked.

"Just the knives we got at the surplus shop. Do you want those?"

"No, you can keep them as long as you don't use them on your shipmates. Any beam or high-velocity slug weapons, however, must be turned over to the ship's master to be locked in the arms safe before liftoff. If, later, you are found to have such a weapon in your posession, I can cycle you out the airlock without benefit of life-support system." She gave Kelly a few seconds to absorb that great, grim truth, then continued in a lighter tone. "Now, why don't you two go .down to the mess and meet your new shipmates?"

They turned to leave the bridge. Over the hatch, Kelly saw the chronometer and read it automatically: 1108, 27 March 2195. A date he'd never forget.

The rest of the crew was gathered around a big rectangular table, drinking coffee and tea. Torwald found a vacant seat and sat down. After hesitating selfconsciously, Kelly did the same. Torwald opened the conversation: "Torwald Raffen, quartermaster. This is Kelly, new ship's boy. Call me Tor."

"Ham Sylvester," offered a great black gorilla of a man at one end of the table. The other end, the captain's seat, was unoccupied. "I'm mate and ship's husband." This last was an ancient rank still sometimes used on old ships. Sylvester's smile looked like a piano keyboard. He gestured toward a stunning woman on h
is
left. "This is Michelle LeBlanc, med officer and cook." She smiled radiantly. Kelly could see that Torwald was hooked already.

"Achmed Mohammed, chief engineer and pilot of our atmospheric craft." This was from the little man with the big mustache who had been at the top of the gangway when they boarded. He gestured toward ;i rather chubby red-headed boy a year or two older than Kelly, who sat next to him. "This is Lafayette Rabinowitz, my assistant."

"Finn Cavanaugh, navigator and distiller," said a tall, black-haired and dark-eyed man who sat next to I .afayette.