The Bright Black Sea (46 page)

'Kintrine? Never heard of it. Where is it?'

'On the far side of the Ninth Star, half way between
Alantzia and Amdia, on the edge of the inner drifts. In short, the
middle of nowhere at all...'

'Well, that figures. Two or three years away...' I
said, lost in thought. 'Can't imagine there'd be any reason why
we'd ever have a reason to go there.'

'Can't imagine why anyone would...'

We considered that in silence for a moment or two.
We'd be hard pressed to find any reason to take the ship half way
across the Nebula to a tiny drift world, which would involve a long
trip around the Neb to Alantzia through the drifts...

'Ah, Willy...'

'Yes?'

'Well, you see, Willy, I'm in a somewhat awkward
position... I may've unintentionally found something important, or
not. I'm not certain.'

'What, and how so?'

He considered the question before shrugging and
saying, 'I'll leave it to you to deal with. I'll trust you to
handle this with tact, if you think it's even necessary to pursue
it at all.'

'What are you leaving to me to pursue?' I asked
warily.

'Well, you see, in digging through the true log, I've
come to believe that there may have been actually five “Shipmates”,
not just four.'

'Five shipmates? How could that be? And what makes
you think that?'

He shrugged again, 'I can't be sure how important it
is. I can't be sure there was a fifth, but, well, I've got this
feeling, Willy. It makes too much sense...'

I gave him a close look. He knew, he was just being
cagey. 'I know you too well, Rafe. You'd not put your reputation on
the line on an off chance. You know. And you intend to tell me. So
do so.'

'I'm trusting you Wil. Deal with this carefully.' he
said gravely. I nodded my agreement.

'As I said, it seems that the whole crew changed
their names every time they changed the name and registry of the
ship, which they changed every time they went into the drift and
back. So not only did crew members come and go over those thirty
some years, but those that stayed sailed with constantly shifting
names. So what I'm going to tell you is little more than a shrewd
guess – a feeling – on my part. I'll leave it to you to decide how
to proceed, based on a guess by ol'Rafe.'

I took that with a grain of salt. Rafe knew. He
wouldn't have mentioned a mere guess.

'What makes this so awkward,' he continued, 'is that
I've come to believe that our old shipmate Dyn has been aboard the
ship ever since the late Hawker bought it, and likely long
before...' He paused to watch my reaction, and hurried on, 'You
see, Willy, each crew member's record is like a thread which
changes colors with with each name change. I can usually find
enough clues in the log to tell me if a crew member leaves,
breaking their thread or if it's just changed colors with a new
name. There are subtle clues in the payroll accounts, crew
accommodations, health records and stuff that link one name to
another. I believe I can account for all the threads, and they all
eventually break, except for those of the Four Shipmates and, well,
one more. So unless I've missed a break somewhere, there's a fifth
unbroken thread running through all those years and to my
knowledge, remains unbroken right up until today. And yet, this
fifth shipmate has remained completely in the shadows, never
mentioned in the stories at all. Can you think of anyone aboard the
ship today that is more likely to be this shadowy fifth shipmate
than Dyn zerDey? And I can tell you this, fifty two years ago, when
I first signed on, back in the Apier System, just before Miccall
took her to Azminn, Dyn was already aboard with every indication of
having been onboard a long time.'

'I didn't know that you came over with the
Lost
Star
.'

'Yes, Willy, I'd signed on two years before they
decided to sail for Azminn. Bar and Say signed on when I signed on
and the rest that came over, after us. So if I'm right about this
fifth shipmate, if I haven't missed a break in the thread or tied
two broken threads together, Dyn would seem to be the only one who
fits that description.'

'Yes, I'd have to agree...'

'And if I've got the right thread, I can say for
certain, he's sailed with the Four Shipmates during all of the dark
ages of the
Lost Star
I've spent hours fishing out, which, I
must point out, makes all my work in vain, since he can just tell
us all about that period. If he chooses too. Or should I say –if he
had chosen to, since he certainly knew about my project... And how
much more does he know, and hasn't said? How far back does he
go?'

I stared at him thinking what I knew of Miccall and
Dyn.

'He and Miccall were inseparable,' I said, after some
musing. 'I always knew he came with the old gang to Azminn, but
never asked him about his stories. He's a closed book, and I've
never felt I knew him well enough to ask him about his and
Miccall's relationship. It makes sense, now that you point it out.
A lot of sense. Certainly, if anyone was with them during those
days, and yet would never be mentioned, it could only have been
Dyn. He seems to simply fade into the background, and would even if
he didn't spend so much of his time between the hulls...'

'Exactly. But Willy, before you go off running to ask
him about it, keep in mind that Dyn's known about this project and
of all the trouble those old days may have brought to young Min,
and said nothing. At least nothing we know of. Though perhaps he's
talked to Min on his own. We don't know for sure, do we?'

I shook my head. 'Not that I know.'

'And remember, We've no way of knowing how much of
the story he does know. He may not figure into their accounts
because he was never involved in them in any substantial way. He
may simply have nothing to offer. You'd best consider long and
carefully if you want to open this box up, my lad. Do you really
want to put Dyn on the spot? We're off to the drifts, and I'm
certain you'd not want to replace an environmental engineer with a
drifteer spaceer on the beach.'

I nodded. 'Point taken. Do you intend to mention this
in your report to Min or will she have to figure it out for
herself?'

'It'll not be in the report, but, if she digs deep
enough into the log itself, she might come to realize it – but
she'd have to dig deep.'

'Damn. It is bloody awkward,' I said, thinking of all
the implications. 'I certainly don't want to put Dyn on the spot,
and I have a feeling anything I say will put him on the spot. As
you said, we have to assume he knows about your work and what
happened to Min's folks... Though it's hard to see what he could've
done, or be doing to help. I think we can trust that he'll speak up
should the time come when it's critical. And as you say, he may've
decided just to confide in Min. And yet, if he hasn't and she
figures it out, and realizes that we're withholding this
information...'

'Aye, Willy. That's the problem. We don't know what
he knows, where he stands or how to find out without starting
something... Unfortunate.'

'Well, I'm certain we can trust him. It's just a
matter of, well approaching him... when to approach him, why to
approach him...'

'I'll leave it to you, Willy. If I said anything,
it'd be meddling. If you did it, it's ship's business.'

'Do you think I need to at all?'

He shrugged and gave me a look. 'You, perhaps know
more about that than I.'

'Perhaps. Though not enough to know what to do,' I
said, thinking. 'We'll just see how I feel after giving this some
thought, I guess. We've time enough...'

'That, we have.'

'Well, thanks Rafe for all your work. Let me see the
log and report when you're done, and I'll turn it over to Min. I'll
think about how to deal with Dyn.'

I stepped out into the dim light of hold no. 4 from
the short companionway when something large and dark swooped down
like a giant bat and struck me in the chest with an “Uff!”,
breaking my magnetic contact with the deck and sending me bouncing
off the companionway bulkhead.

There was some screeching. And some grabbing and
pushing followed by some 'Bloody! Blasted Neb!' and other more
pithy phrases and pointed comments as we struggled to regain
contact with the deck and sorted ourselves out.

'Blast it, screeching like that must have startled a
year off my life!' exclaimed Min, pushing away from me as her soles
touched the deck as I quickly let her go when I realized what had
happened and stepped back a step, trying to swallow my heart caught
in my throat.

Realizing it was just my owner, dressed in her
customary black, I bit off an angry retort, and after a moment
spent collecting my scattered wits, said, 'I'm very sorry I yelped
a bit and startled you, it's just...'

'Yelped? You did more than yelp,' she exclaimed. Her
face was mostly in shadow, but her tone, though sharp, had an edge
of teasing in it. Now.

'Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to be jumped from
out of the dark, so you're lucky I only yelped,' I replied,
pointing out the salient point. 'I'm a dangerous man in an
ambush.'

She laughed.

I decided not to press that. 'Well, I am sorry to
have startled you.'

Not strictly speaking, crawling and begging for
forgiveness, as advised by Riv, I'll grant you, but there was an
I'm sorry or two in there and that'd have to do for the moment.

'I suppose I'm also sorry to have frightened you half
to death. It was unintentional. I couldn't see you standing in the
companionway when I swung down. I'm sure I'm lucky just to be
alive.'

'You are at that. I was just looking in on my nightly
rounds, and I'm never very comfortable up here anyway... Which
brings me to the question, what were you doing up in the mezzanine
– with the lights off?' I asked

'Oh, there's light enough to see all I needed to see.
I was just taking a little survey of my treasures.'

'In the dark? Wouldn't it have been easier if the
lights were on?'

'It's not that dark, and well, I was... I was trying
to get, well, a sense of what those things mean, their qi, if you
will. A sense of how they fitted into the Shipmates' lives – why
they're still here, preserved all this time. I'll have time to do
that, if I care to, in my free time. With your permission, of
course, Captain,' she added rather sarcastically, I'm sure.

'Oh, there's a qi about this place, at least in the
dark and I can't say I really like it, though I can't imagine it'd
really tell you anything...'

'Perhaps not, but I've an intuitive feeling that
there's lots of answers up there in these piles of junk... If I
knew the questions,' she added quietly. 'There had to be a reason
they hung on to all that junk.'

'I don't know. They weren't in the habit of leaving
answers or even clues behind. It could be as simple as they were
pack rats, never quite comfortable abandoning anything that might
come in handy some day...'

She just shrugged, and we stood in silence for a long
moment or two.

'Can we talk, Tallith?' I was determined to mend
things between us, if she'd let me.

She just shrugged again which I decided to take as a
Yes.

'Let's go and sit by the lockers,' I suggested, and
started for the shadowed corner where we kept our sports equipment.
I didn't think anyone would be up, but I preferred our talk to be
private.

She hesitated before saying, 'We can talk here.
There's not much we have to say, and I'm tired and ready for my
hammock.'

'As you wish. There isn't much we have to say that
can't wait. It's just that I'm getting tired of being considered
cute, and I suspect you are, too.'

'Cute, Captain?' she asked, her face unreadable in
the dark. 'I wouldn't say that.'

I smiled. Sarcastic again, but still, we were talking
again, and comfortably.

'As I'm certain you know, the crew thinks I kidnapped
you for romantic reasons. They know, but choose to ignore the fact,
that I thought you were in danger. And they've draw the wrong
conclusion from the fact that I'm not known for taking chances.
Instead they find us humorous, the way we act when around each
other, our proper coolness and all that. Aye, they, or at least
some of them, find it very humorous indeed. And I'm sorry to say
that I believe they've set up a pool as to when we're going to make
our announcement. I'm sure you'll agree with me that we should put
an end to that idea.'

'Why, you're dumping me, Wil!' she laughed.

Her good humor was promising, so I continued. 'I'm
just trying to get everything in balance. You seem to have settled
into your berth aboard your ship very comfortably. As I hoped. The
only thing out of balance is our relationship. I'm not pleading for
my job, I serve at your pleasure, as does any captain. I'm just
trying to get things right between us, Tallith, now, and for the
rest of this voyage. I want us to be comfortable with each other
again, like we were – however briefly. If you don't want me to be
captain of your ship, that's fine with me – it is your prerogative
– but that needn't come between us. What I did can't be undone, so
let's not let that come between us either. I did it for you, as I
would've for any of my shipmates. We work well together, landing
the Minlin and Isleta charters prove that. Let's build on
that...'

'Oh, for Neb's sake, Wil,' she sighed. 'Quit being so
bloody earnest. Do you really believe I can stay angry for half a
year? Even at you.'

'Well, no. But I'm a lot less certain about
twenty-two days.'

She shrugged and wiggled a hand. 'Twenty-two days is
a bit more iffy.'

'But I'm thinking No,' I ventured. 'So are we friends
and partners again?'