The Bright Black Sea (52 page)

Today – according to our original course profile –
was the day we'd have begun our deceleration for Zilantre with the
main engine. Earlier today, when I asked Riv when we'd be able to
begin testing that engine, I gathered from his imprecise and brief
snarls that it'd still be at least four or five days more,
depending on how soon the (deleted) service bots finished the job
of severing the fractured four meter after section of the rocket
nozzle from the engine. Working with D-matter is never easy, and
cutting the inner D-Rad lining of the nozzle with a circular saw,
had been a (deleted) job from the beginning...

The bright side is – that with the exception of how
long it's been taking – everything has gone more or less as
planned. Everything suggests that when the work is finally
finished, the main rocket engine should be available for full use.
The remaining four or five days (taken with a grain of salt) of the
project would burn through our built-in delivery time leeway and
we'd need to aggressively use our balancing rockets to augment the
breaking power of the main engine to make our deadline, but we'd
still be using them less than if we'd chosen to rely on them alone.
So beneath all the crew's weariness and ill temper, there was a
solid base for optimism that the gamble will pay off.

I won't catalog all the delays of the last thirty
some days – I don't have the time – so I'll just use the process of
moving the engine as a typical example of the type of friction that
has pushed our schedule back by several weeks.

Engines wear out faster than ships, so ships and
engines are designed to make replacing them a fairly simple
process. Both engine housing fixture and engines are standardized,
designed to accept a series of appropriate engines which are
slipped into the ship's engine housing like a cartridge. The
engines have ribs along the outside casing which fit into slots in
the ship's engine fixture. Both are perforated with holes used for
bolting the engine in place. To move the engine down, these
securing bolts had to be removed. A shipyard has specialized robots
and tools designed to do this task efficiently. We had to make do
with spanners and general service bots which required much more
time and supervision. Much more than the engineers seemed to have
budgeted for, though in fairness, they never had done anything on
this scale before, which they were quick to point out, but
still...

In addition to unbolting the rocket engine, all the
various fuel and cooling pipes, pumps and controlling machinery
connected to it had to be disconnected (and eventually relocated)
as well.

Once freed, moving the massive, 40x10 meter engine
down was not, in theory, a particularly challenging project. Since
an object in motion tends to stay in motion, we merely had to
slightly accelerate the ship to leave the freed engine behind.
Before doing that, we attached cables to it so it had only a slight
amount of free travel and ever so slightly accelerated the ship
which had the effect of dropping the engine down until brought up
by the cable. The problem was that there's just enough clearance in
the slots between the engine and the ship to allow the engine to
twist enough out of true – holes on one side would align while on
the other side they would not quite align. We had a great deal of
fiddling to do using the cables to get the engine perfectly true.
(The engine, when installed properly, is set hard up against a
massive circular
harness
under the control deck at the very
top of the fixture, so this probably was not a big problem in a
shipyard install.)

Adding to the friction, is the fact that moving the
engine down meant that the whole engine room had to be in hard
vacuum because the bulkhead sealing the engine room where engine
meets the stern bulkhead is part of the engine, so moving it down,
broke that seal. A new bulkhead had to be built, but not until the
engine was in place, so that the work of moving and aligning the
engine had to done in space suits, which, as a general rule, means
everything takes at least twice as long as working without one. And
all the little delays of suiting up, and moving materials into and
out of the engine room through an airlock add up.

We've the onboard facilities and skills to design and
print the parts we needed to make the changes, things like a new
sealing bulkhead for the engine or the extensions to all the pipes.
However, the size of our tempering furnace limits objects to two
meters, so that many of the new parts had to be designed, printed
and assembled in multiple pieces. And in addition, we did not carry
enough of raw D-Steel blanks onboard to construct all the
additional fuel lines, so we had to stage scavenger hunts through
the ship and the ship's holds to gather enough inessential D-Steel
items to melt down and be printed into the parts we needed. And
since most of this extra material had to be stripped from the
ship's holds, we had to go outside the ship to get at it, since the
holds are not accessible from the crew section. And because of our
velocity and the density of the space we were traveling through, we
had to suit up in our armored space
suits
– which are more
like manned mini-boats – to go outside the ship. Working with these
large space suits was slow, tedious – and apparently un-budgeted –
work.

The end result was that even with the whole crew
working on the project around the clock, all of these friction
points in the process caused the project to quickly fall behind
schedule. It didn't take more than a week to see that the
engineers' original time line wasn't going to happen. I just had to
go with the flow. Not that I'd a choice. Engineers can be a pretty
snarly bunch even in the best of times if outsiders – even ship
captains – poke their noses too deeply into the affairs of the
engine room, and when things start going awry, even looking at them
can set them to barking and growling. I try to steer clear of them
whenever I can these days. I won't admit to being actually
intimidated by them – it's just that there's no point making
enemies – they know what needs be done and are working as fast as
they can to do it, so nothing I can say or do will help matters.
It's just good diplomacy for me stay on the control platform and
not linger long...

I caught sight of what I thought was movement in the
corner of my eye and turned to see who was coming down the main
access well. There was nobody there. Just shadows. I stared at that
complex pattern of shadows created by the ship's ribs, pipes, and
equipment and nothing moved. Again. But nevertheless, I felt
something was there.

I was beginning to get spooked.

This was not the first time in the last day or two
that I've found myself turning to greet somebody only to find no
one around. This was not the first time I felt that I wasn't alone,
but was. This was not the first time I wondered if I was being
driven down the dark hole by worry and stress – though I don't feel
any more stressed than I have been since taking command. I was
resigned to whatever the Dark Neb had in store for us, we'd make
the delivery deadline or not. It wasn't my choice. And we were
doing all we could to make it work. I wasn't any more worn and
stressed than everyone else aboard, and yet, I was seeing things
move out of the corner of my eyes and feeling a presence on the
nape of my neck that not only wasn't there, but couldn't be as
well.

Stories about unknown and unwanted visitors to ships
in space are as old as Terra itself. We've no doubt thousands of
them in the ship's library in words and vid. I've read and viewed
my fair share of them. And while most of them are “galactic
fiction” – stories set outside the nebula in fictional starships
and such, there are hundreds of stories set – more or less – in
real ships that ply the Nine Star Nebula as well. The problem for
writers, as well as real people, is that it's extremely hard to get
aboard a ship undetected without the aid of someone onboard.
Successful pirates – if they actually exist outside of the deep
drifts, and only if you believe the old spaceer yarns – are said to
be able to find ways of doing it. Somehow. But aboard a ship that
takes all the prudent precautions, as we do, I don't see how it'd
be possible. Neb, the environmental system would detect and return
an error if someone unaccounted for was aboard drawing un-budgeted
resources. And seeing that we're more than four months into a
voyage, I can't imagine how any intruder could've avoided detection
for so long or why the intruder would be active now. The
alternative, that the intruder had come onboard in passage, is
impossible. The ship is sealed tight and traveling in empty space
at millions of kilometers an hour. Any breach of the airlocks or
hull would set off alarms. Which left only the supernatural.

I didn't want to accept the supernatural, though
being no more superstitious than your average spaceer, it's
sometimes hard not to accept the supernatural, sometimes. Space can
be rather eerie.

The only possibility, as far as I could see, was from
the two quarter boxes we had up in no. 4 hold. They'd been packed
and sealed by a bonded expediter, and the seals on containers are
designed to be impossible to alter without leaving a telltale, so I
felt the risk was slight, but not impossible. But, if I'm not
imagining the whole thing – and I'm certain I am – the boxes would
be the only avenue of unauthorized entrance to the ship. I decided
I needed to check the seals on the boxes just to rule them out.

I made my way upwards through the ship. It was quiet.
Outside of the watch on the bridge and the crew in the engine room,
everyone else had retired to their cabins, so the decks were empty,
save for Illy, who was, as usual at this time, reading on the
awning deck before retiring. I stopped to chat with her for several
minutes and swung up for no. 4 hold.

As I may have mentioned, no. 4 hold can be spooky
even without seeing things moving in the corner of your eye. The
shadows seemed to move about in no. 4 hold all the time. So I
wasn't keenly looking forward to this last stop on my tour. Of
course I could turn on the lights. But you can't let imagination
carry you away. Still...

Still, I managed to pass the light switch in the
companion way and stepped into the semi-gloom of the hold, lit only
by half a dozen dim safety lights set in the bulkheads. I stood and
took my usual survey of the hold. I'd go over and check the seals
of the two containers in the far corner, and the locks of the
strongrooms, and...

And the shadows moved.

They flew from above and behind me. I may have
yelped.

The Neb-blasted cats. The cats that are usually
content to silently watch me from the shadows of the mezzanine.
They had launched themselves and were landing at my feet. And
meowing and looking up at me, milling about my feet. Rubbing
against my boots.

I didn't know what to make of it for several moments.
I just stared down at them. There were a lot of them, but were
enough alike that I couldn't keep them straight enough to count.
But suddenly they were very friendly, almost pleading, happy for my
company, so I bent down and asked them what was going on.

'Meow,' pretty much summed up their answer, but they
not only let me pet them, but crawled up on me to look me in the
eyes and tell me directly, 'Meow'. This degree of friendliness was
unprecedented in the no. 4 hold's tribe of cats. They've never, in
the sixteen years I've been aboard, paid attention to anyone,
unless Dyn in secret. Dyn is our official director of animal
management, but I doubt that even he did little more than manage
the population reproduction and make sure their automatic feed and
recycled feed disposal units were in proper working order. And now,
I seemed to be their best friend in the whole Nine Star Nebula.
What, indeed, was going on?

After awhile, I stood up and made my way to the
quarter boxes, trailing a stream of cats. Using both my com link
and my eyes, I inspected the seals on both boxes – neither showed
any evidence of tampering. I slipped through my escorting cats and
sat down in the shadows by the lockers and benches we've set up in
the corner where we kept the various athletic gear and toys. The
cats kept me company, both sides attempting to communicate, and
succeeding only on a basic level – we were all more comfortable
together than alone. I can't say hold no. 4 was any more eerie than
I usually found it and with the company, even a bit less than
usual. As long as I didn't think about why the cats were acting the
way they were. Which I tried not to.

Eventually, I was tired enough to sleep, so stood,
said good night to the cats and made my way to the access well.
They followed me to the well meowing. And I thought they might
follow me down as well, but no. They gathered around the edge of
the well and watched me descend to the bridge deck, and on to my
room.

I made a note to have Dyn see that the no. 4 hold
cat's feed and recycling systems were working properly, on the
theory that was the most likely and least eerie explanation for the
cat's behavior.

As much as I appreciated the companionship of cats, I
hope that is the explanation.

'I need three mumble-garble more bloody meters of
mumble-garble fuel line...' growled Riv, loud in the speaker of my
armored space suit.

Riv was working with Min in the main rocket nozzle,
setting up the plasma cutter to finish the job of cutting free the
bell's after section, which explained the garbled passages of his
request.

I was in a large egg shaped space suit – which
smelled pretty sour until I got used to it – anchored on the edge
of the starboard engine room access lock with the coiled fuel line
next to me. 'Was that three meters?' I asked, just to annoy him, as
I went about manipulating the suit's mechanical “arms” to unwind
the required three meters.