Meet Me at Infinity (4 page)

Quent came half out of his cubicle and with Pomeroy hanging onto his arm.

“You was having nightmares, sir.”

The little man’s left eye seemed to be swelling shut. Across the way Svensk’s bony head poked out. Imray and Sylla were peering down from the bridge. They were all grinning.

“Uh—sorry.”

Quent disengaged himself and pulled back into his cabin.

“Orbit in an hour, sir,” Pomeroy called. “Strugglehome.”

In the twenty ship days to Midbase, Quent acquired considerable enlightenment. At Strugglehome he asked Sylla to show him the mail-pod exchange routine. Here he learned that the slow man on a pod grapple can get a set of mashed fingers. The lutroid apologized effusively. By Davon Two Quent’s hand was in shape to help Svensk prepare a shipment from the culture chamber. The big saurian became animated in the fetid warmth and treated Quent to a harangue on phytogenetics. Quent finally told him to go away. He then learned, too late, that the chamber hatch controls were defective on the inside. Three hours later, when Miss Appleby decided to investigate the pounding noises, Quent was purple from breathing C0
₂
and she had to help him out.

“Wha’s girl doing on this thing anyway?” he gasped.

“Oh, a lot of us log officers take en-aitch tours,” she dimpled. “It’s so restful.”

Quent shuddered and clamped his big jaw.

About Appleby herself he learned that she spent all her time in her cubicles fixing up her trousseau and her hoard of stuff for her future home. The amount of loot she had astonished him. But she seemed to have been equally effective in loading up the
Rosenkrantzs
T.E.—the ship bulged with stores. She also emerged on the dot with excellent meals, which seemed to be Captain Imray’s chief interest in life.

During the hop to Turlavon Quent made two more efforts to get into Morgan’s domain, and was again rebuffed. He settled down to learning the ship bolt by bolt, manual in hand.

Turlavon passed without incident, but at Ed they had to wait for the planet station crew to finish harvesting. For three whole watches Quent struggled with unstable orbits, until he learned that Ed had enormous masscons and that someone had disassembled the ship’s grav-mass analyzer. He bore it all stoically, but his jaw was corded with knots which seemed to have been there before. He had, after all, been an admiral’s son for a long time.

At Midbase they lay into the main cargo umbilical to offload a flywheel for the station gyros. The delay at Ed had thrown them out of synch with Base time and the station dark-period caught them early. Quent used the chance to check over the ship’s exterior valve seals. He had worked back to the main lock when his hand light picked up a small gray creature flitting past the aft fins. It was about a meter tall and roughly humanoid.

Quent called out. The figure accelerated and vanished among the dock belts.

Quent frowned after it and went into the wardroom. Captain Imray was grunting over his greenbook tabs. The others were on the bridge, listening to the station newscast.

“Morgan,” said Quent. “Would he be about so high—and gray?”

Imray leaned back and rubbed his prune nose.

“That’s him. He go now listen is them gyros all right. Like a mother for gyros is Morgan.”

“He must have left by the engine room crash hatch.” Quent pointed to the panel. “Why isn’t the telltale light on?”

“The first officer’s appetite for the minutest details of our humble craft is truly admirable,” yawned Sylla, lounging in. “If it were not so tedious.”

“Mr. Sylla, if that hatch lock—”

“Sure, sure,” said Imray. “But Morgan never leave nothing open. Not Morgan. He like to come, go, private,
vernt?”

“Do you mean that you’ve allowed Morgan to kill the telltale circuits, Captain?”

“The mammalian insecurity syndrome,” remarked Svensk, unfolding himself out of the shaft. He was playing with a small wire toroid which changed shape disturbingly. “The leaky-womb phobia,” he creaked.

“I give you the panic of the omelet,” Sylla snapped.

“Captain Imray,” said Quent, “by regulation it’s my responsibility to oversee the engine room. With your permission, this would seem to be the time for me to take a look.”

Imray squinted at him.

“Morgan very sensitive being, son, very sensitive.” He wiggled his big black-nailed hands to show Morgan’s sensitivity. Quent nodded and started aft.

“Nothing touch, son,” Imray called after him. “Morgan—
”

The engine room personnel hatch was still dogged. Quent went to the hull and unbolted a pod cradle, revealing a duct panel designed to service the life-support conduit to Engines. He unscrewed the panel and tugged. It did not move. He displaced another cradle and found a magnetic contraption with no discoverable leads. He summoned Svensk, who arrived unhurriedly and gave it a brief inspection.

“Can you open this?”

“Yes,” said Svensk, and started back through the hold.

“Mr. Svensk, come back. I want you to open this lock.”

“The semantic confusions you homotherms get into are beyond belief,” croaked Svensk. “Are you not aware that Morgan desires this to remain closed?”

“As first officer of this ship I am ordering you to open it.”

“When I said I could open it—I meant with the proper tools.”

“What are the proper tools?”

“Linear force must be applied in the presence of a certain set of alternating pressures in a gaseous medium.”

He arched his long neck. Quent scowled at him.

“Pressures? Mr. Svensk, are you deliberately—” Quent suddenly stabbed his wrench at the saurian. “It’s a sonic lock, isn’t it? Set for… Mr. Pomeroy, bring that recorder in the wardroom locker back here. I want you to imitate Morgan’s voice.”

Reluctantly, Pomeroy tooted while Quent tugged, and the panel slid open. Instead of the shining banks and alleyways of a normal engine-room they were looking into a pitch-dark tangle.

“What in the name of space—?” Quent reached into the filaments.

“Sir, I wouldn’t do that,” warned Pomeroy.

“Fascinating!” Svensk’s skullhead came over Quent’s shoulder.

“What is that mess?”

“I fancy it is part of the sensor system by which Morgan maintains contact with the stress structure of his mechanisms. I had no idea he had achieved anything so extensive.”

“Just close it up, please sir,” Pomeroy begged.

Quent stared into the web.

“I’m going in,” he gritted.

From behind them came a piercing wail. Quent spun and a gray wraith flew at his face, spitting sparks. He reeled back, his arms over his eyes. The hatch clashed shut.

“Oh sir, that’s done it!” cried Pomeroy.

The lights went out. The hold voder broke into a skirling, howling din. Quent heard Svensk pounding away from them, and stumbled after the sound. The wardroom voder began to roar. Quent found his hand light and rushed to the bridge. The deck was a bedlam of noise and every console was flashing. Svensk and Sylla were yanking out computer cables. Quent slammed down the circuit breakers. There was no effect. The hideous din yammered on.

“Nothing to do but get out till he calms down,” Pomeroy yelled in Quent’s ear. “Thank the Lord we aren’t in space.”

The others had left. As Quent went out Miss Appleby flew past in a whirl of turquoise silk.

“You idiot,” she raged. “Look what you’ve done.”

Imray stood glowering on the deck. Svensk towered at full height, his eyes veiled in membranes. Sylla paced with ears laid back and there was a decided pungency in the air.

Quent slammed the lock but the uproar reverberating through the
Rosenkrantz
was clearly audible.

“He’s got an override on those circuits,” Quent fumed. “I’m going in there and cut off his air.”

“Asinine,” grated Svensk. “We are in air.”

“His water, then.”

“To do so would render the refrigerant exchange inoperative.”

“There must be something—what does he eat?”

“Special concentrates,” snapped Miss Appleby. “I stocked him with a year’s supply at Central.”

Quent kicked a freight belt.

“In other words, Morgan runs this ship.”

Imray shrugged angrily.

“He run it—we run it—we go,” he growled.

“When Space Force Monitor hears about this it’ll be Morgan who goes.” Quent told them darkly.

Sylla spat.

“The first officer had forgotten the
Kipsuga Chomo.
Or perhaps he recalls the four-ten which inconvenienced him?”

“What?” Quent turned on the lutroid. “I have forgotten nothing, Mr. Sylla. What has the
Kip
to do with Morgan?”

Imray shook his jowls.

“No, Syll, no!”

Svensk coughed.

“Look, sir,” said Pomeroy. “Morgan’s fixing to make a night of it. He don’t quit. How’s for you and me to go by the office and see about a place to sleep?”

Miss Appleby sniffed. “That would be useful.”

The din continued unabated. Reluctantly, Quent went off with Pomeroy to the Midbase station offices, where they found one billet for a female only. Midbase was bulging with colonists awaiting transfer on Route Leo. In the end the male complement of the
Rosenkrantz
settled down to doze uncomfortably on a textile shipment and to endure the jibes of the cargomen when the lights came on.

Horrible sounds came from the
Rosenkrantz
all morning. After noon mess Morgan appeared to tire. The officers went warily back on board.

“Have to give him time to cool down,” said Pomeroy. As if on cue the voders erupted briefly. A few minutes later they did it again. The others went to their hammocks, leaving Quent in the wardroom to brood.

He was still there when Miss Appleby came in.

“I’m afraid I was rude to you, Lieutenant Quent.”

He looked up dully. She seemed to be all aglow.

“Actually what you did was ever so lucky for me.”

She smiled, setting down a parcel. She served herself tea and a cookie. Instead of taking them to her quarters she came back and sat down at the table with an excited wiggle.

Quent’s eyes opened. He sat up.

“That Mrs. Lee,” she confided happily. “You know, the colonist? She’s got twenty meters of Gregarin passamenterie. It took me all day to talk her into swapping me one meter for a petite suit liner and a case of bottlehots. I’d never have got it if we hadn’t been held up, thanks to you.”

She glowed at him over her tea bulb.

“Well, I—”

“It’ll make
the
vest of all time for Bob,” she sighed. “Bob loves vests—off duty, of course.”

Quent put his head back on his fists. He had been raised with two older sisters.

“That’s—great.”

“You’re depressed,” she observed.

Quent heaved a sigh and shook his head. Against his better judgment he found himself looking into her large green eyes.

“Miss Appleby,” he blurted. “When I came on this ship I was completely unprejudiced against Non-Humans. Completely. I welcomed the chance to show my father that other beings were just as fit to serve in space as—” His voice faded. “Now I just don’t know. This mess—that insufferable Morgan—”

“Yours is a strange reaction, Lieutenant. We girls always say it’s much safer on a ship with one of Morgan’s people. They’ll do anything for the ship. Like the
Kip,
you know.”

“What do you know about the
Kipsuga?”

“Why, just that their engineer saved them. He got them back to Central. Ikka somebody. Pom says he died.”

Quent frowned.

“Funny they didn’t tell me about him.”

“Probably your father is the reason they keep things from you, don’t you think, Lieutenant?” She stood up, hugging her parcel. “They’re fine people,” she told him earnestly. “You just have to understand their ways. That’s what Bob says. He says a lot of Space Force officers are prejudiced without knowing it.”

Quent looked up at her. She radiated Galactic amity.

“Could be,” he said slowly. “Miss Appleby, maybe I haven’t—”

“Try a little harder,” she encouraged him. “That Mrs. Lee said a newsman was asking about you.”

“It is time to eat.”

The harsh croak cut her off. Svensk unfolded himself from the ladder.

“Right away.”

Appleby vanished. Svensk turned a suspicious eye on Quent.

“Serpent,” jeered Sylla, bouncing down, “You reptiles did not understand that time existed before until we provided you with thermal vests. At home we have still the taboo against eating lizards because of their unfortunate tendency to putrefy while torpid.”

“Activity fails to correlate with intelligence,” Svensk clacked haughtily.

“On the other hand,” Sylla licked his vibrissae, “our primates are regarded as quite palatable. Braised, naturally, with just a
Hen
of celery. Amusing, is it not, First Officer Quent?”

Quent exhaled carefully.

“If you feel so, Mr. Sylla.” He stretched his mouth sideways in a lifelike smile. “Excuse me, I believe I’ll lie down.”

The silence behind him lasted so long he almost wondered about it.

The next fortnight was spent laboriously servicing beacons along Route Leo. The beacons were elderly M20s, which Quent had cursed while navigating from the
Adastra.
Now he found their trouble lay in the bulky shielding which attracted dust, thus building up electrostatic imbalances that distorted the beacon’s spectrum and eventually its orbit. They had to be periodically cleaned and neutralized. The job required long hours and close cooperation among crewmen. By the fourth and last beacon Quent’s jaw had developed a permanent ache.

“Have you not yet finished, First Officer?”

Quent was clinging awkwardly to the far end of the slippery kinetic bleeder. Above him Sylla wriggled through the beacon grids with the agility of his otter forbears, warping his vacuum line expertly as he went.

“It is clear that the Academy does not contemplate its graduates shall endure the indignity of labor,” Sylla jibed.

“I admit I’m inexperienced in this and not as fast as you are,” Quent said mildly. “Mr. Svensk. Where are you casting that sweep line?”