The Voyage of the Star Wolf (24 page)

Cappy was the last one to his feet. Reynolds and MacHeath had to help him. He was as limp as a kitten.

“You okay?” MacHeath asked.

Cappy was in pain, but he nodded anyway. He gasped and said, “Boy . . . am I glad . . . that he's on
our
side.”

Astrogator Cygnus Tor was lying on the floor of her cabin.

The base of her antigrav bed—a tall glass cylinder—was open and she was on her back, staring up at the impulsion unit. Inside the cylinder, a uniform jacket was drifting slowly up toward the ceiling.

The door to her cabin was open. Lieutenant JG Valentine Michael Jones peered cautiously in. “Knock knock?” he said.

Tor didn't even look up from what she was doing. “Door's open,” she called.

“Commander Tor? Valentine Jones. ‘Jonesy.' You asked to see me.”

“Oh, right. I wanted to ask you something. Hey? Do you know anything about antigrav beds?” She extracted herself from the base of the cylinder and sat up to look at Jonesy. She had skinned down to a pair of shorts and tight-fitting T-shirt; it was obvious that she wasn't wearing a bra.

Jonesy shrugged. “Uh, not really.” He added helpfully, “But I know gravitors. You want me to take a look?”

“Well, I'm not getting anywhere.” Tor moved out of the way, wiping her hands on her pants.

Jonesy lay down on the floor and scooted headward to look up inside the base of the bed. She handed him the probe and waited, hunkering down to get a better look. Idly, she let her gaze travel down past his chest . . . “Listen,” she said. “I've been looking over your . . . record.”

“What's wrong with it?” Jonesy asked, his voice was slightly muffled.

“Huh? Nothing.” Then she realized that he meant the bed. “Oh. Look—” She pointed.

Jonesy scooted out and levered himself up onto one arm to look. He followed her gaze upward. Inside the bed, a variety of objects had floated to the top of the cylinder. “Ah, I see.” He scooted forward and peered into the innards again. “You were saying about my record?” He prompted.

“This is your first ship, isn't it?”

“Yeah. Beautiful, isn't she? The Academy wanted me to stay and do post-grad work and then become a full-time instructor. But I turned it down.”

Tor didn't answer immediately. She was studying the shape of Jonesy's thigh. She was fascinated by the subtle curve up toward his—she cleared
her throat and said quickly, “Listen. I need an assistant astrogator. I was wondering if you wanted to work on the Bridge. With me.”

Jonesy didn't answer. She could hear him tinkering with something inside the bed. “—Oh, here's the problem,” he said. “One of the rings is reversed. They're out of sync. The little one's pulling, the big one's pushing. They're fighting each other. That's why everything drifts upward. It's easy to miss. Wait a minute—”

He finished and extracted himself from the base of the cylinder. He sat up and handed the probe back to Tor. “I think someone's playing a practical joke on you.”

Tor looked incredulous. “They short-sheeted my antigrav bed—?” She frowned. “I
wonder
who could have done it.” She was almost convincing.

Jonesy didn't seem to notice He stood up with Tor. The various objects in the antigrav bed were now drifting properly in its center. Tor opened the door and tossed the items out. She stepped into the bed and floated off the floor. “Is this right?” she asked.

“Looks like it. There's one way to tell.” He climbed into the cylinder with her, floating up beside her. Tor smiled and flushed slightly at the almost-intimacy. Jonesy didn't notice. “See—if two people can float without drifting, that means it's fine for one. I mean, that's how we used to test 'em back in the Academy.”

“I'll bet . . .”

“Umm. We have to wait a minute to see—”

They waited. They were floating very close to each other now. Tor was getting visibly aroused. This gawky innocent boy was
very
attractive. Sooner or later, he'd have to notice her perfume—

Abruptly Jonesy realized why Commander Tor was looking at him that way. For a moment, he didn't know what to do. He was too uncomfortably close—and she was too uncomfortably handsome. Embarrassed and flustered, he said, “Uh, well—it's working.” He turned to the control panel. “Is everything else in order?”

Jonesy hit a button at random, not realizing—the shower came on with a hot steaming roar. They both yelped in surprise. Jonesy was flustered and apologetic, but Tor wasn't angry. She started laughing.

“Well, the shower works,” she said.

She helped him down out of the antigrav bed. Both of them were dripping. Jonesy looked like a shrunken dog, but Tor didn't seem to notice. She was still smiling. “Thank you, Lieutenant Jones.”

“Um—I didn't know they did that,” he offered, not knowing quite how to apologize.

“The deluxe models do,” Tor said dryly.

“Um. Well. Now, I know.”

“Maybe they need safety panels,” laughed Tor.

Embarrassed, Jonesy held his hands up as if looking for a towel, but he was too embarrassed to move. “Next time, I won't do that. Um, I better go dry off.” He nodded and smiled and nodded and backed out of the room.

Tor shook her head in quiet disbelief. Could anybody
really
be that innocent? Her smile broadened into one of easy delight. Jonesy was going to be fun. “
Next
time?”

Abruptly, Jonesy stuck his head back into the room. “Uh—I almost forgot. Yes, I would like to work with you. On the Bridge, I mean. That would be great. Thanks.” And then he was gone again.

Tor laughed.

Yes. Jonesy was going to be a lot of fun. Already she liked him.

The ship's mess smelled of acrid coffee and stale doughnuts, burnt sweat and plastic grease.

Reynolds, Cappy, Leen, and three men from the Black Hole Gang were sprawled around the end of one of the tables. Several of them had bruises. None of them looked happy. One of the blue-skinned Quillas was quietly refilling their coffee mugs. “Well?” said Cappy. “Are you going to tell him or not?”

Leen was flipping through the screens on his clipboard, flashing from one schematic to the next. “Got that one, that one, that one—still have to check that—” He paused and looked up at Cappy. “One: You're interrupting my work. Two: I've already gotten my butt chewed once today. Three: It won't do any good. And four: No, I am not going to tell him how you feel. In case you've forgotten, a still is against regulations. Striking an officer is even
more
against regulations. By rights, they could court-martial you—but there's a war on and manpower is short. And on the other matter—Brik outranks you. You want my advice? Don't press your luck. Keep your nose clean and your head down and don't go looking for any more trouble.”

“We never hit him,” said Cappy. “We never even got close.”

“I'd have been very surprised if you had. You guys don't know much about Morthans, do you?”

“What do we need to know? They're big and they're ugly,” said Beck, one of the Black Hole Gang.

“So are you,” said Leen. “But that doesn't make you a Morthan.” There was good-natured laughter around the room. “There have been Morthans for over fifteen hundred years. And for the last thousand, they've been directing their own evolution. They regard themselves as machines. You know how we like to supercharge our equipment—well, that's what the Morthans are doing to their bodies. They do it with genetics, they do it with in-utero tailoring, they do it with implants and augments, they do it with drugs and brainwashing and indoctrination and psycho-training and God knows what else. They start planning a kid's life even before he's conceived—and if a kid fails
anywhere
along the line, they abort him. A Morthan child has to earn his citizenship.
If you haven't earned it by the time you're twenty-one, they flush you down the tubes. They don't believe in wasting resources on non-productive members of society.”

“What are the women like?” asked Armstrong, half-jokingly. He had walked in just as Leen had begun describing the Morthans.

Leen shook his head. “I don't know. Nobody's ever seen one. There's a theory though—” He looked around almost conspiratorially, then lowered his voice. “—Rumor has it that there aren't any Morthan women. They're all warriors. They grow their babies in industrial wombs. Supposedly, they think that breeding a woman would be a waste of effort when for the same investment they could grow another warrior.”

“Um—” Armstrong looked momentarily confused. “Wait a minute. If they don't have any women, who do they—?”

“Why do you think they're all so cranky?” laughed Cappy, and almost everybody else joined in.

“No—! Is that true?” Armstrong was genuinely confused. “That can't really be so, can it?” He looked from one to the other. “Don't they have sex drives or—?”

“I think,” said Leen, “that a Morthan only gets off by winning a fight.”

Reynolds gave Cappy a meaningful poke. “You should ask Brik, ‘Was it good for you too?'” Cappy did not look amused.

The duty-Quilla came up to Armstrong then, carrying a tray with a mug on it. “Coffee?” she said. Armstrong turned and noticed her for the first time and his eyes widened with unabashed interest. He'd never seen a Quilla this close before. She was vividly blue; she was patterned with shiny scales that shifted in color from turquoise to mazarine and she was as delicately patterned as a butterfly. Her skin looked as shiny and smooth as pale silk veil. Her sensory quills were a bright magenta; they quivered intensely. Armstrong was fascinated. The Quilla looked back at him with amusement. Her eyes were wide and bright and shadowed by dark, almost purple lids.

“Coffee?” she repeated.

“Huh—?” Armstrong finally realized what she was asking. “Oh, yes. Thanks.” He took the coffee and sipped it too quickly, simultaneously burning his mouth and trying to hide his embarrassment. He flushed, hoping that nobody had noticed, but of course, they all had—and were grinning at his discomfort.

“Here,” said Leen abruptly to Reynolds. He slid his clipboard across and poked at the screen. “Here it is. Look. Am I right or am I right?”

“You're the chief.”

“I told him and I told him—and what does he say? He says nine-fifty. Like all he has to do is say it and it's real. You know what it is—he's locked up in theory. He's so sure he can push the envelope, he's going to kill us. Look, those fluctuators are beta-grade; they'll never hit better than seven-fifty—
maybe
eight . . . downhill with a tailwind.”

Reynolds looked up at Armstrong, noticed his frank curiosity. “Chief Leen is a man of few words,” he explained. “All of them nasty.”

“Uh, whatever you say.” Armstrong turned to watch the Quilla as she exited the room. A goofy look spread across his face. “They sure are pretty, aren't they?”

“Careful,” said Reynolds. “You know what they say about Quillas.” He exchanged a knowing grin with Cappy.