Meet Me at Infinity (2 page)

—Jeffrey D. Smith

The rainbow floods were doused. The station band had left. Empty of her load of cadets, the F.S.S.
Adastra
floated quietly against the stars. The display of First Assignments in the station rotunda was deserted. The crowd had moved to the dome lounge, from which echoed the fluting of girls, the braying and cooing of fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts, punctuated by the self-conscious baritones of the 99th Space Command class.

Down below, where the Base Central offices functioned as usual, a solitary figure in dress whites leaned rigidly over the counter of Personnel.

“You’re absolutely certain there’s no mistake?”

“No, it’s all in order, Lieutenant Quent.” The girl who was coding his status tabs smiled. “First officer, P. B.
Ethel P Rosenkrantz,
dock eight-two, departs seventeen thirty—that’s three hours from now. You have to clear Immunization first, you know.”

Lieutenant Quent opened his mouth, closed it, breathed audibly. He picked up the tabs.

“Thank you.”

As he strode away a tubby man wearing a
Gal News
badge trotted up to the counter.

“That lad is Admiral Quent’s son. What’d he get, Goldie?”

“I shouldn’t tell you—a peebee.”

“A what? No!”

She nodded, bright-eyed.

“Sweetheart, I’ll name you in my will!” He trotted off.

In the medical office Quent was protesting, “But I’ve had all my standard shots a dozen times!”

The M.O. studied a data display which stated, among other things, that Quent was a Terra-norm Human male, height 1.92 m., skin Cauctan, hair Br., eyes Br., distinguishing marks, None. The data did not mention a big homely jaw and two eyebrows which tended to meet in a straight line.

“What’s your ship? Ah, the
Rosenkrantz.
Take off your blouse.”

“What do I need shots for?” persisted Quent.

“Two fungus, one feline mutate, basic allergens,” said the M.O., briskly cracking ampoules.

“Feline what?”

“Other arm, please. Haven’t you met your fellow officers?”

“I just got this rancid assignment twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh. Well, you’ll see. Flex that arm a couple of times. It may swell a bit.”

“What about my fellow officers?” Quent demanded darkly.

The M.O. cracked another ampoule and cocked an eye at the display.

“Aren’t you the son of Admiral Rathborne Whiting Quent?”

“What’s that got to do with my being assigned to a clobbing peebee?”

“Who knows, Lieutenant? Politics are ever with us. I daresay you expected something like the
Sirian,
eh?”

“Well, men considerably below me on the ratings did draw the
Sirian”
Quent said stiffly.

“Clench and unclench that fist a couple of times. No, unclench it too. Tell me, do you share your father’s, ah, sentiments about the integration of the Federal Space Force?”

Quent froze. “What the—”

“You’ve been in space a year, Lieutenant. Surely you’ve heard of the Pan Galactic Equality Covenant? Well, it’s being implemented, starting with a pilot integration program in the peebees. Three of your future fellow officers were in here yesterday for their pan-Human shots.”

Quent uttered a wordless sound.

“You can put on your blouse now,” said the M.O. He leaned back. “Life’s going to be a bit lumpy for you if you share your father’s prejudices.”

Quent picked up his blouse.

“Is it prejudice to think that everyone should have his own—”

” ‘Do you want your boy’s life to depend on an octopus?’ ” recited the M.O. wryly.

“Oh, well, there he went too far. I told him so.” Quent wrenched his way into his dress blouse. “I’m not prejudiced. Why, some of my—”

“I see,” said the M.O.

“I welcome the opportunity,”’ said Quent. He started for the door. “What?”

“Your hat,” said the M.O.

“Oh, thanks.”

“By the by,” the M.O. called after him,
“Gal News
will probably be on your trail.”

Quent stopped in midstride and flung up his head like a startled moose. A small figure was trotting toward him down the corridor. His jaw clenched. He took off down a side corridor, doubled through a restricted zone and galloped into the rear of the freight depot, shoving his tabs at a gaping cargoman.

“My ditty box, quick.”

Box in arms, he clambered into a cargo duct, ignoring the chorus of yells. He made his way down the treads until he came to an exit in the perimeter docks. He climbed out into the spacious service area of the
Adastra
from which he had debarked two hours before.

The inlet guard grinned. “Coming back aboard, Lieutenant?”

Quent mumbled and started off around the docking ring, lugging his box. He passed the immaculate berths of the
Crux, Enterprise, Sirian,
passed the gleaming courier docks, plodded on into sections crowded with the umbilical tubes of freighters and small craft and crisscrossed with cables and service rigging. He stumbled and was grazed by a mobile conveyor belt whose driver yelled at him. Finally he came to an inlet scrawled in chalk “P B ROSEKZ”. It was a narrow, grimy tube. Nobody was in sight.

He set down his box and started in, trying not to rub his white shoulders against the flex. The tube ended in an open lock which gave directly into a small wardroom cluttered with parcels and used drinking bulbs.

Quent coughed. Nothing happened.

He called out.

A confused sound erupted from the shaftway opposite. It was followed by a massive rear end clad in shorts and a shaggy gray parka. The newcomer turned ponderously. Quent looked up at an ursine muzzle set in bristly jowls, a large prune of a nose.

“Who you?” demanded the ursinoid in thick Galactic.

“Lieutenant Quent, First Officer, reporting,” said Quent.

“Good,” rumbled the other. He surveyed Quent from small bright eyes and scratched the hair on his belly. Quent had erred about the parka.

“You know refrigerate for storage?”

“Refrigerant?”

“Come. Maybe you make some sense.”

Quent followed him back into the shaftway and down a dark ladder. Presently they came to a light above an open hatch. The ursinoid pointed to a tangle of dripping tubes.

“What’s it for?” Quent asked.

“Make cold,” growled the other. “New model. Should not slobber so,
vernt?”

“I mean, what’s it refrigerating?”

“Ants. Here, you take. Maybe better luck.”

He thrust a crumpled folder into Quent’s hand and shouldered past him up the ladder, leaving a marked aroma of wet bear rug.

The leaflet was titled:
Temperature-Controlled Personnel System Mark X5 Series D, Mod., Appvl. Pdg.
Quent peered into the hatch. Beyond the pipes was a dim honeycomb of hexagonal cubicles, each containing a dark bulge the size of a coconut. He heard a faint, chittering sound. Quent began to examine the dialed panel beside the hatch. It did not seem to match the leaflet diagram. Somewhere above him the ladder clanked.

“Futile,” hissed a voice overhead. Quent looked up. A thin gray arm snaked down and plucked the folder from his grasp. Quent had a glimpse of bulging, membranous eyes set in a long skull, and then the head retracted and its owner clambered down. It, or he, was a lizardlike biped taller than Quent, wearing a complicated vest.

“You are Quent—our new first officer,” the creature clacked. Quent could see its tongue flicker inside the beaked jaws. “I am Svensk. Welcome aboard. You will now go away while I adjust this apparatus before the captain buggers it completely.”

“The captain?”

“Captain Imray. Hopeless with mechanisms. Do you intend to remain here chattering until these ridiculous ants decongeal?”

Quent climbed back to the wardroom, where somebody was trying to sing. The performer turned out to be a short, furry individual in officer’s whites with his hat on the back of his head and a bulb of greenish liquor in one brown fist.

“II pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut dans la ville,”
caroled the stranger.

He broke off to pop round yellow eyes at Quent.

“Ah, our new first officer, is it not? Permit me.” Incisors flashed as he grabbed Quent by the shoulders and raked sharp vibrissae across Quent’s cheeks. “Sylvestre Sylla, at your service.”

Quent exposed his own square teeth.

“Quent.”

“Quent?” Sylla repeated. “Not Rathborne Whiting Quent,
Junior?”
he asked in a different tone, touching a black tongue to his incisors.

Quent nodded, coughing. The wardroom seemed to reek of musk.

“Welcome aboard, First Officer Quent. Welcome to the
Ethel P. Rosenkrantz,
patrol boat. Not, of course, the
Sirian,”
Sylla said unctuously, “but a worthy ship,
voyons.
I trust you are not disappointed in your first assignment, First Officer Quent?”

Quent’s jaw set.

“No.”

“Permit me to show you to your quarters, First Officer.”

Sylla waved Quent to the upper ladderway, which opened from the wardroom ceiling. Above the wardroom was a section of cubicles for the crew, each accessible by a flexible sphincter port. Beyond these the shaftway ended in the bridge.

“Here you are, First Officer,” Sylla pointed. “And your luggage, sir?”

“I left it outside,” said Quent.

“Doubtless it is still there,” replied Sylla and dived gracefully through another sphincter.

Quent climbed down and exited from the tube in time to rescue his dittybox from a grapple. As he wrestled it up the shaftway he could hear Sylla promising to defeather Alouette.

The cubicle proved to be slightly smaller than his cadet quarters on the
Adastra.
Quent sighed, sat down on his hammock gimbal, took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He put his hat back on and took out his pocket recorder. The recorder had a played message tab in place. Quent flicked the rerun and held it to his ear.

Ping-ping-ping,
went the official channels signal. He heard a sonorous throat-clearing.

“Congratulations on your Academy record, Lieutenant. Your mother would have been, um, proud. Well done. And now, good luck on your first mission. One that will, I trust, profoundly enlighten you.”

The recorder pinged again and cut off. Quent’s frown deepened. He shook his head slowly. Then he took a deep breath, opened his dittybox and rooted through a bundle of manuals. Selecting one, he pushed out through the sphincter and climbed up to the bridge.

In the command chair the ursine Captain Imray was flipping fuel selectors and grunting into the engineroom speaker. Quent looked around the small bridge. The navigator’s console and the computer station were empty. A little old man in a flowered shirt sat in the commo cubby. He glanced around and batted one baggy eye at Quent, without ceasing to whisper into his set. He had a gray goatee and yellow buck teeth.

The first officer’s chair was beside the shaft ladder. Quent removed a parcel from the seat, sat down and opened his manual. When the captain ceased grunting Quent cleared his throat.

“Shall I take over the check, sir? I gather you are going through phase twenty-six.”

The ursinoid’s eyes widened.

“Some help I get,” he boomed. “Sure, sure, you take.”

Quent activated his console.

“Gyro lateral thrust, on,” he said, manipulating the auxiliary. There was no reply from Engines.

“Gyro lateral thrust, on,” Quent repeated, thumbing the engine-room channel.

“Morgan don’t say much,” remarked Captain Imray.

“The engineering officer?” asked Quent. “But—but you mean he would respond if the function were negative, sir?”

“Sure, sure,” said Imray.

“Gyro torque amplifiers, on,” said Quent. Silence. “Primary impel-lor circuit, live,” he continued grimly and worked on down the check. At: “Pod eject compensator—” a brief moan came from Engines.

“What?”

“Morgan says don’t bother him, he done all that,” Imray translated.

Quent opened his mouth. The main voder suddenly began barking.

“Control to peebee
Rosy!
Pee bee
Rosy,
prepare to clear dock at this time. Repeat, peebee
Rosy
to station north,
gol
Peebee
Kip
four-ten, repeat, four-ten. Control to peebee
Kip,
dock eight-two now clearing. Repeat, peebee
Kip
green for dock eight-two.”

“Morgan, you hear?” boomed Imray. “We green for go, Morgan?”

A faint squeal from Engines.

“But Captain, we’re only at check-phase thirty,” said Quent and ducked as Lieutenant Sylla hurtled out of the shaft to land in the navigation console with a rattle of claws. Sylla slapped the screens to life with one hand while punching course settings with the other. Imray and the commo gnome were yanking at their webs. From below came the clang and hiss of the disengaging lock, and the next instant the station gravity went off.

As Quent pawed for his own web he heard Imray bellowing something. The auxiliaries let in and the
Ethel P. Rosenkrantz
leaped to station north.

Quent hauled himself down to his chair, trying to orient the wheeling constellations on the screens.

“How’s she look, Morgan?” Imray was asking. “Green we go out?”

Another hoot came from Engines. Sylla was smacking course settings with one furry fist.

“Svensk! Appleby! You set?” Imray bawled.

“But Captain—” Quent protested.

Sylla kicked the fix pedal, twiddled his calibrator and dropped the fist.

“Gespriich!”
roared Imray and slammed home the main drive.

Quent’s head cleared. He was crosswise in his seat.

“With no web is risky, son,” said Imray, shaking his jowls.

“We weren’t due to go for forty-five minutes!” expostulated Quent. He righted himself as acceleration faded. “The check is incomplete, sir. Control had no right—”

“Apparently the first officer did not hear the four-ten,” said Sylla silkily.

“Four-ten?”

“Four-ten is ship in bad trouble, must dock quick,” Imray told him.