Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 9

I know two ways to make time stretch forever.

One is to go somewhere you have never been before, and do a hundred new and interesting things. After two days you think you have been away for ages, and you just can’t believe that so little time has passed since you left home.

The other way is to be waiting for something, waiting and waiting and waiting, and not able to speed up its arrival at all.

That’s what happened to me in the two weeks after Doctor Eileen declared that we were going off to space to take a look at Paddy’s Fortune. While others did the interesting work I had to stay home, helping Mother and keeping my eyes open for the possible return of the violent strangers.

That danger seemed to lessen toward the end of the first week. Since Paddy Enderton had left no one to inherit any of his possessions, Mother and Doctor Eileen arranged for them to be taken over to Skibbereen and sold at auction. The proceeds would go to pay for Enderton’s burial and the repair of our damaged property.

As it turned out we didn’t get a penny toward either one. Before the auction could take place, the storage place in Skibbereen was broken into and everything was stolen. Mother seemed to think that this was a good thing, because it made us a less attractive target.

Another dull week followed. Duncan West, who knew far too much to be treated as an outsider, had been sent over to Muldoon. Sworn to secrecy, he was negotiating for a ship and crew. It wasn’t likely to be easy, with crews scattered all over after Winterfall. Doctor Eileen was back on her rounds, quietly arranging for a physician from the north end of Lake Sheelin to serve as her substitute while she was away. She was also busy with something else that I didn’t find out about until later.

She dropped in on us every couple of days, but the only visit of interest was when she gave me what she called a Maze Ephemeris. It contained names of worldlets and sets of numbers called orbital elements, six of them for each place.

Comparing her list and Paddy Enderton’s calculator/recorder/display and who-knew-what-else unit, I was able to relate the two sets of numbers to each other. They did not quite match, but Doctor Eileen said that the difference was just that one set was centered on Maveen itself, and the other on what she called “the whole Maveen system center of mass.”

I was also able to match most of the names on Doctor Eileen’s place list to items on the calculator display, and vice versa. Paddy’s Fortune was not on her list, but she said that was not surprising. There were far more worldlets in the Maze than anyone had ever surveyed, and small bodies in particular were liable to be left out. I didn’t know at the time what she meant by “small,” and I was astonished to learn that anything less than a mile or two across—the full distance from our house to Toltoona, and more—was unlikely to be on anyone’s list. For the first time I began to develop a feel for the vast region covered by the Forty Worlds.

One fine, calm day, when there was no breath of wind and the temperature was above freezing, I ventured again to the top of the water tower. In four nerve-tingling trips I brought down the telecon, and demonstrated it to Doctor Eileen on her next visit. She said that it was more evidence of a technology no longer possessed anywhere in the Forty Worlds, but she could see no way to relate it directly to Paddy’s Fortune, and she did not even take it away with her.

I put it up in the front bedroom, my bedroom again, and used it to stare every day across the lake at Muldoon Spaceport. The facility was very quiet. I saw only two launches in a week. Most of the rest of the time, when Mother did not have me running around helping her—I think she deliberately kept me busy—I sat upstairs playing with the calculator.

It was soon obvious that it was capable of many more things than I could understand. At the simplest level, I could point to one of the worlds of the Maze and obtain more and more detail simply by calling for “Second Data Level,” “Third Data Level,” and so on. The trouble was, most of what I was shown seemed useless. There were listings of object composition (that’s what I had looked at and not understood the first time I used it); there were things called “delta-vee” lists, that told how easy or hard it was for a ship to get from any world to any other at a chosen time. And finally, at the most detailed level of all, the complete set of data acquired by any visit to or survey of the object was included. For a prospector, or anyone hoping to scavenge the Maze, the whole collection of data could be priceless.

For us, though, it was useless. We were going to Paddy’s Fortune and only to Paddy’s Fortune. But I did wonder if we had missed the point. Perhaps the men who had broken into our house were interested in data about the known worldlets of the Maze. Or perhaps they wanted something completely different, something we had not thought about.

I had spent a lot more time with Paddy Enderton than had either Mother or Doctor Eileen. He was rough and tough and dirty, but he was also practical. He had never mentioned the stars or the Godspeed Drive to me, not once. No matter what Doctor Eileen might believe, try as I might I could not see him as a person who would care one jot about the existence of Godspeed Base, or the long-term future of human beings on Erin. If he called a place Paddy’s Fortune, that’s what he would expect to find there: something to make him rich.

Before I had time to worry about that, a thousand things happened at once. Time began to stretch in the other way, with so much going on that I have trouble remembering what came when.

It began when Doctor Eileen came to the house, late one evening. She had heard from Duncan West. He had located and hired a ship, the Cuchulain, complete with crew, and was now busy arranging for supplies to be ferried up to it from Muldoon. He needed help, and he told Doctor Eileen that I could join him as soon as I was ready.

I was ready that minute, and said as much. Mother stayed up half the night, making me a spacer’s jacket and trousers of dark blue, and first thing the next morning she zipped me over to Toltoona in Doctor Eileen’s cruiser. They loaded me and my little bag on board a ground transport to Muldoon. I thought for a horrible moment that Mother was going to hug me in front of the other passengers, but she didn’t.

Muldoon Port was a steady four-hour run around the bottom end of Lake Sheelin. I spent the whole trip in a hot glow of anticipation. Every previous time at Muldoon Port, I had been an interloper. Now I was going in as an honest-to-goodness spacer.

At the dropoff point inside the port I slung my bag over my shoulder and strolled the long way round to the cargo staging area where I was supposed to find Uncle Duncan. I wanted to see everything, and I wanted everyone to see me. It seemed a pity that the port was in its winter quiet.

In fact, I don’t think anyone noticed me at all. And my grand arrival at Duncan West’s side in the staging area was an anticlimax.

He didn’t even say hello. He just nodded at me and went on talking to a big-boned, lantern-jawed man with carroty-red hair and a scrubbed-clean red face, who glared at me, said nothing, and kept on shaking his head.

“That’s where the money is coming from.” Uncle Duncan never raised his voice, ever, but today he did seem more intense than usual. I had the feeling that an argument had been going on for some time. “I have no stake in this, so I have no authority to change the deal. But remember the golden rule: The one with the gold gets to make the rules.”

“Not in space,” the big man said. He had the gravel voice and breathy wheeze of a spacer, and with your eyes shut you might have taken him at first for Paddy Enderton.

“You ought to have told us what you had in mind when we started,” he went on angrily, “so we could have stopped then and there. You say you can’t change the deal. Well, neither can I. If you want to take a woman on board the Cuchulain, that’s up to you. But I certainly can’t agree to it. You know about women and space. You’ll have to talk to the chief, see what he says. He’ll be back down here tomorrow.” He stared down his long, thin nose at me. “And what’s this, then? Another winter surprise?”

“No. This is Jay Hara. I told you he was on the way.” Duncan turned to me. “Jay, meet Tom Toole, purser of the Cuchulain. You’re going to be working with me and him on the supplies.”

Toole made no move to shake my hand, but he did give me a much longer, thoughtful stare. “Jay Hara,” he said after a few moments. “You’re a young ’un. But I started young myself. Can you organize a list of items by their masses?”

“Sure.” If I couldn’t, I was going to learn fast.

“Here, then.” He handed me a long printed list. “You locate these items on the pallets over there, and you set them in order, most massive first. Then you wheel them to the ferry ship. They get loaded that way, see, heaviest near the ferry’s center line.” He turned back to Duncan accusingly. “If you can’t change the deal at your end, who can?”

“Doctor Xavier. Doctor Eileen Xavier. I’ll make sure she’s here tomorrow to meet with your chief.”

“Is she one of the women who wants to go up?”

“Yes. One of two.”

“How old is she? The chief is sure to ask me.”

“Pretty old. Maybe sixty-five.”

Tom Toole grunted. “That’s one bit of good news. How about the other one?”

“A lot younger. Thirty-five.” Duncan seemed ready to say more, but he noticed that I was still listening. “Here, get to work, Jay. I didn’t ask you to come over to Muldoon to stand there gaping.”

I began to walk slowly across toward the pallets and the cargo loading area. As I did, I heard Tom Toole say, “In her thirties. And pretty, I suppose. Now that’s damned bad news. Your doctor and the chief are going to have a good go-around on that one, I’ll tell you.”

Doctor Eileen and the Cuchulain’s chief did have a good go-around, just as Tom Toole had predicted.

I was there to hear it, but in a sense I missed the first minute or two, because of how it began.

Doctor Eileen had arrived at Muldoon sometime during the night. The next morning she was having breakfast with me and Uncle Duncan, at Muldoon Port’s one open winter cafeteria, when Tom Toole came in. He had with him a slender man who wore his long brown hair carefully tied back behind his head. I wouldn’t have taken him at all for a spacer, because he breathed normally and easily and neither his cheeks nor his bright grey eyes showed any sign of broken veins. But he did wear a blue spacer’s jacket, plain of all decorations and molded to his shoulders and chest without a wrinkle.

They halted in front of us. “Doctor Eileen Xavier?” asked Toole. He sounded very quiet this morning. “This is the head man on the Cuchulain, Chief Daniel Shaker.”

The slender man held out his hand to Doctor Eileen. “Better just Dan Shaker,” he said. And, as I froze, “Pleased to meet you, doctor.”

His voice was clear and musical, with no sign of spacer’s lungs. But I hardly noticed that, because inside my head Paddy Enderton’s voice was whispering, “If it’s Dan, see, then it’s God help me. And it’s God help you, Jay Hara. And it’s God help everybody.”

After a few seconds my brain came back to my head. I stared at Daniel Shaker’s outstretched hand as it shook Doctor Eileen’s and saw that it was perfectly normal.

“Well, doctor,” Shaker was saying. “I’m sure we’ll be able to work together well, and have a successful voyage. But according to Tom here we have a few things to work out before we start. Let’s talk.”

He nodded at Tom Toole, with hardly more than a half-inch up-and-down motion of his head, and the other man at once turned and started to leave the restaurant.

Daniel Shaker nodded, just as casual, to Uncle Duncan. “In private, Mister West, if you don’t mind.” And as Duncan stood up, and I started to do the same, Shaker gave me the friendliest smile, one that lit up his sparkling grey eyes and his whole face, and said, “You must be Jay Hara. Looking forward to going to space, I’ll bet. I know I was at your age.”

“He can’t wait,” Doctor Eileen said. “But off you go,”

“Oh, that’s all right.” Daniel Shaker pointed to my plate, where half my breakfast was still uneaten. “Let him stay and finish. I remember my own appetite at sixteen.”

Doctor Eileen hesitated a moment, then she shrugged. “I’ve certainly got nothing secret to say. But Duncan West tells me you have certain concerns about this trip.”

“I do indeed, Doctor Xavier.” Shaker took a roll of bread and broke it in two, but I noticed that he did not eat it. He just crumbled it in his fingers. “I have concerns,” he went on, “but not on my behalf. On yours, and on behalf of my crew. Tom Toole says you want to take women to space.”

“Just two women. Myself, and Molly Hara.” Doctor Eileen nodded her head at me. “Molly Hara is Jay’s mother.”

“It doesn’t matter who she is. You know that women in space are supposed to be bad luck.”

“I do. And I know that is nonsense.” Doctor Eileen smiled at Daniel Shaker. “You strike me as a very sensible man, Captain Shaker—”

“Not captain. The captain of the Cuchulain died in a space accident on the last voyage. I am serving as chief, but only until the owner brings in a new captain.”

“So until then I’ll call you captain. Anyway, I feel sure you know why women don’t go to space. It’s nothing to do with bad luck—that’s only superstition. It’s the same reason women don’t have dangerous jobs, on Erin or off it. Do I have to say why?”

“Women are too precious. Too valuable to be risked.” Daniel Shaker never looked away from Doctor Eileen, but I somehow felt that he was also keeping his eye on me. Except for his hands, absently crumbling bread, he sat perfectly still. “Women must be protected. Women must be guarded, kept away from all danger. And space is dangerous.”

“You seem to have survived it very well.” Doctor Eileen scanned him with a physician’s eye. “If I didn’t know it, I’d never suspect you were a spacer. You show no signs of vacuum exposure, in skin or voice or lungs.”

“I take care. A man can be careful, in space or out of it. But I’ve had my share of accidents, even if they don’t show.” Shaker shook his head slowly, as though remembering, and finally went on, “I say it again, from personal experience: Space is dangerous.”

“I’ll accept that. But you agree with me, it’s nonsense to say that women bring bad luck in space.”

“I can say it’s nonsense.” Shaker put down the bread roll and crossed his arms, so both his hands were squeezing the opposite biceps through his jacket in a gesture that I was to see a thousand times. “And you can say it’s nonsense. But what you and I think, doctor, that’s not important. I’ve got a crew to manage, and there’s no doubt how they think. And in practice, they are right. Women in space—especially young women, and attractive women—cause trouble for other reasons. My crew are young men, most of them. They’re letting off steam now, after Winterfall, and they might be all right for a few days. But I suspect we could be away a good deal longer than that. And after a while a young woman on board would be a disaster. That’s not superstition. It’s hard fact.”

“I see your point,” Doctor Eileen said. “If there were as many women as men born on Erin, the way there used to be, we might see as many women in space as men. And then there would be no problem. But as it is…” She glanced at me, then back to Danny Shaker. “Young women, you said, and attractive women. That lets me out. I assume you have no objection to my going?”

Shaker gave a little jerk of his head, as though he was surprised. “That’s not what I meant, Doctor Xavier. But I can’t argue with your logic. With no disrespect, you’re at an age where you ought to be safe enough on board. I can live with that. The crew will grumble some, but a crew always needs something to complain about. Better that than some other things.” Still massaging his own biceps, he pointed one finger at me. “But not Jay’s mother. We’re agreed, aren’t we, that taking Molly Hara would be asking for trouble?”

It’s a funny thing, but the expression on Doctor Eileen’s face seemed more like relief than anything else when she nodded, and said, “I suppose so. It’s a pity, but I’ll make it my job to tell Molly, and I’ll explain your reasons.”

I wondered if Doctor Eileen had already been worrying about Mother’s effect on the crew. I had never thought of my own mother as “young and attractive,” but she certainly seemed to be popular with spacers, judging from the number of them who had been to stay at our house. But I didn’t have time for many of those thoughts, because Daniel Shaker was rising to his feet.

“It’s a deal, then, Doctor Xavier,” he said. “Now, if we’re to lift tonight and have the Cuchulain ready to leave the day after tomorrow, there’s a thousand things to be done.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Come on, Jay Hara. You’re a spacer now. Tom Toole says you’re a useful extra pair of hands, and I need all the help I can get.”

I had managed to listen and eat at the same time, and my breakfast was all gone. Even if it had not, I would have been more than happy to go with Danny Shaker. You’re a spacer now. And the fact that Mother would not be going to space with us did not upset me at all. It pleased me. I wanted to be seen as a spacer, not as somebody’s child.

It was a long time before I realized that Danny Shaker, even more than Doctor Eileen and me, had achieved just the result he wanted from that first meeting.