Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 21

The first job was to find a hiding place for Mel Fury. Shaker stowed her away behind a false bulkhead, tucked away among spare parts for the beetle’s drive unit. It was crowded and not too comfortable, but he ordered her not to move or make a sound until he came to get her. By that time, he said, we would be on board the Cuchulain.

She nodded cheerfully enough, but I wasn’t too happy. I was beginning to wonder about Mel. She had met her very first male—me—only a day or so earlier. A few hours after that she had seen Sean Wilgus killed. Then she had been explicitly forbidden by the controller that ran Paddy’s Fortune to go back to the surface. She had followed me anyway. And now she acted as though everything was part of some big, exciting game. I decided that either young Mel had a few screws loose in her head, or she was at least ten times as tough as me. Maybe both. Would she sit still when she was asked to?

Then Danny Shaker came up with his own surprise. He wanted me out of the way, as well as Mel, when the crewmen returned.

“Just listen closely, and you’ll find out why,” he said, when I asked him. “Nine-tenths of running a ship, or anything else, is psychological advantage. I don’t want you hidden, exactly, the way Mel Fury is, but I do want you in a place where you won’t be noticed first thing. Aye, and you’d better be given a real job to do, preferably something that everybody hates. This should do fine.”

He showed me a hatch in the floor of the cargo beetle. It led to a cramped lower level, a ring-shaped region with a ceiling only a couple of feet high. “That runs around the cargo beetle drive,” Shaker said. “It’s supposed to be checked for dirt and leaks and general condition every time the beetle flies. But you can imagine Pat O’Rourke or Tom Toole trying to squeeze in there.”

Or Jay Hara. But Shaker forced me down through the hatch. “Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours,” he said cheerfully. “I expect you to do a decent job of it while you’re waiting to come up, too. Otherwise I’ll be forced to put you back.” He slammed the hatch shut.

I sat on a hard metal floor. At least there was light. Mel would be sitting in the dark. I didn’t feel particularly sorry for her.

I did nothing for a few minutes, then began to crawl around the inner wall of the ring. I saw no sign of any breaks, but dirt and junk there was, plenty of it, and I collected it in the bag that Danny Shaker had given me.

I was almost back to where I started when the floor vibrated to footsteps above my head, and I heard voices. I stopped working and sat motionless. I could hear—but if only I had been able to see!

Because an argument was starting up, no more than a few feet away.

“Aye, and look at us.” That voice belonged to Joseph Munroe, sulky as ever. “Starved and tired out, with nothing to show for it.”

“The galley’s on, Joe.” Danny Shaker sounded conciliatory. “You’ll have hot food in a few minutes.”

“And soaked, every one of us. No more dry clothes, either.”

“Not until you’re back on the Cuchulain. I’m sorry, but I didn’t expect rain here.”

“Or much else that’s happened, far as I can see.” Munroe raised his voice, from sulky to angry. “I’m going to say this, Dan Shaker, if no one else will. This trip’s been a disaster, botched from start to finish. And you can’t say we didn’t try to warn you. You ignored us.”

“Never. I listen to everything any crewman wants to tell me. You know that, Joe, if you’ll stop and think.”

“What about the woman on board, then? Didn’t we all tell you that was asking for bad luck, that nothing good could come of a woman on a ship?” There was a mutter of agreement from the other crewmen, Robert Doonan and Patrick O’Rourke. “And hasn’t there been bad luck,” Munroe went on, “and more than bad? That scientist fellow dead, and Sean as well.”

“Sean Wilgus didn’t have to die. It was from his own actions. He killed Dr. Hamilton, and he would have killed me, too.”

“Maybe. But Sean was a good crewman, you’ve said so yourself.”

“And I’ll say it again, Joe. Sean was first-rate.”

“So what do you call that, if not bad luck? A good man gone, with the Cuchulain ready to fall apart, and every able-bodied crewman needed to hold it together and fly.”

“I know that better than anyone.” Shaker didn’t raise his voice, but his tone became more intense. “Hold your distance, Joe Munroe, and listen to me.”

The floor above my head sounded with a sudden clatter of heavy boots. I was in agony. What was going on up there? If only I could see.

“Think, before you threaten me.” It was Danny Shaker again. “Wasn’t I the one who said we needed something more than the usual trip out, something profitable enough for us to afford a complete refit? Didn’t we all agree on that, long before we left Erin?—back even when Paddy Enderton was aboard with us. Didn’t you agree with it, and drink with me to fame and fortune?”

“You had the golden tongue, and you know it. Promising us fortune, more money and women than we knew what to do with—”

“Not women, Joe. I never said one word about women. That came from Paddy, and your own ideas about what he’d found. No, what I promised you was simple: triple wages, guaranteed, and a shot at something more valuable than anything on Erin. I said we’d have a shot at the Godspeed Drive.”

“Godspeed Drive!” There was contempt in Joe Munroe’s voice, and again Doonan and O’Rourke were muttering in agreement, louder than before. Even without seeing them, I could sense the swing in mood.

“Aye, you heard me, the Godspeed Drive,” Shaker said. He lowered his voice, so I could only just hear him. “You don’t understand, even now, what that drive would mean to anyone who had it. All of you, I want you to think about it for a minute. Imagine this: Instead of the poor old Cuchulain, staggering along through space for months at a time, you’d have a ship that could whip across the whole Maveen system in seconds. From Erin to Antrim, like that. “I heard him snap his fingers. “And more than the span of the Forty Worlds. If you couldn’t find what you wanted here, you’d be able to take a hop to another star, and find it there. With that sort of power, think about what it would bring to you and me and the rest of the crew. We wouldn’t just do well on Erin. We’d control the supply of every rare material. We’d make every other ship in the system obsolete. We’d own the whole Forty Worlds, and everything in them. You talk about wanting women? People would find you women by the hundred—by the thousand—and push them at you, for a sniff at the sort of power we’d have. All of that, and more. It can be ours—it will be ours, once we get to the Godspeed Base. That’s my goal now, as it has been all along: Find Godspeed Base, and lay our hands on a ship with the Godspeed Drive.”

I thought it was a great speech, but it didn’t work.

“Which we’ll never do.” It was a new voice, and so wheezy and throaty it could only be Robert Doonan. “I don’t know where it is and what it is, this hellhole you dragged us to, but I know one thing. It’s no more your damned ‘Godspeed Base’ than I’m the Skibbereen Whore. As for that rotten kid, the one who gave us the coordinates to come here and has had us running all over in the rain and mud for the past two days until we’re ready to drop… if ever I set eyes on him again, I’ll slit his skinny throat.”

Doonan stopped, but only to start coughing.

“I hate to say this, but Joe and Robbie are right.” It was Pat O’Rourke, his deep voice rumbling. “This can’t be the Godspeed Base. Couldn’t ever have been. We’ve been talking, the three of us, and we agree you’ve done us wrong. It’s time for a change. A change of leader.”

There was a long silence. I strained my ears, and heard no more than air pumps and the background hum of electrical equipment.

Something was going to happen, I just knew it. But what?

“So it’s come to that, has it?” said Danny Shaker at last.

“It has,” Pat O’Rourke replied, and the other two murmured assent.

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Pat. I’m not a man to stay where he’s not wanted. We’ll go on back to the Cuchulain, and you and the rest can pick your own chief. But while we’re doing that, I’m going to give all of you a few things to stew on. First, I never said this had to be Godspeed Base. Think back, and you’ll recall what I did say. This was a place that we had to go to, because it could lead us to find the Godspeed Drive. It was, and if we just keep going, I say it will. Second, you’d better decide who’s going to do the hard thinking for you when it’s not my responsibility.”

“We’ll manage.” But Munroe didn’t sound too confident.

“You will? Then start with this one, Joe Munroe. You’ve been looking for a world full of women, a place to make you all rich. How? You’ll have your fun with any women you find, that I believe. But women can’t make you rich if you leave them out here in the Maze. Are you proposing to ship a load of them away on the Cuchulain ?—you, who was the first to say that even one woman on board brought nothing but bad luck. No? What, then? Are you proposing to set up some sort of pleasure camp out here in the middle of nowhere, where other ships will come for a bit of bought fun? I could organize that sort of thing, yes, and make it work. But are you sure that you could? Just how are you going to become rich? I can answer that question, and see a dozen ways to turn women in the Maze into real wealth on Erin. But can you, Joe?”

There was a long silence, until finally Danny Shaker continued: “And even that’s not the whole story. You see, there’s something else you don’t know, something that happened when you were off on this last run around on the surface—a chase, you’ll remember, that I told you before you left was going to be a big waste of time and effort. I walked a little way to see what conditions on the ground were like, but I stayed close to the ship. And guess who was waiting here for me when I got back.”

I heard Shaker’s footsteps approaching. The hatch above my head was suddenly lifted, and Danny Shaker’s face appeared in the opening. “Come on out, Jay,” he said. “There’s a few people who’d like to talk to you.”

The way the crewmen reacted to my appearance, I thought I was going to be murdered on the spot. Only surprise kept them fixed where they stood.

“Jay’s been down there cleaning up the lower hold,” Shaker said. “Everybody’s favorite job.” And then to me. “Here. Show the lads this, and tell them what you told me.”

He was holding out the navigation aid. I took it with hands that trembled.

“This world,” I said. “Paddy’s Fortune—it isn’t Godspeed Base, and there’s no Godspeed Drive here. But you have to come here first, because this”—I held out the navaid—“gives directions as to how to get to the real Godspeed Base from here. If we hadn’t come here first, we wouldn’t know where to go next.”

What I said was true, and I prayed they would not ask for too many details. Danny Shaker made sure of that.

“And now tell us all why you’re here at the beetle, Jay,” he said. “Explain why you came to see me.”

I turned to face Joe Munroe, Robert Doonan, and Patrick O’Rourke. They towered over me, every one of them. What I was going to say sounded preposterous, but I had no choice. I had to assume that Danny Shaker knew what he was doing.

“I want to join Captain Shaker and the rest of you,” I said. “I know I’m young, but every one of you started young. I’m tired of being told what to do every minute of the day by Eileen Xavier, and I’m tired of being treated like a kid. I’m not a kid. I’m sixteen years old. I know how to work this”—I turned on the navaid, set up to show as a sample a shimmering three-dimensional display of the Maze—“and no one else does, in Doctor Xavier’s group or in yours. I can be useful, and I’m willing to work hard on anything that Captain Shaker tells me to do.”

“Or he would have been,” Shaker said softly. He was not talking to me at all. “Except that you lads will have a new chief, as soon as you get back to the Cuchulain. I don’t know if Jay Hara will feel the same about working for him.” He stared around vaguely, then headed for a seat by the control panel. “Well, that’s going to be your problem,” he said as he settled down. “That, and deciding how any women you do happen to find will give you more profit than an hour’s fun. Me, I’ll go back to being a simple crewman, and glad to do it. There’s nothing takes the heart out of a man more than doing his level best for everybody, and then being spit on by the same people he was trying to help.”

I couldn’t believe he could be so relaxed, because the anger on the faces of Pat O’Rourke and Robbie Doonan had to be obvious to anyone. Then I saw that they were glaring not at Shaker, but at Joseph Munroe.

“There, Joe Munroe,” said Pat O’Rourke. “Now you’ve done it. Didn’t I warn you we might be going off half-cocked? Do you think you’re the man that can lead us all to fortune? Because if you do, I’ll tell you something: It’ll be a cold day on Tyrone before Patrick O’Rourke will follow you.”

“I never said I’d be leader.” Munroe was as nervous as he was angry. “Robbie, you can vouch for that. All I said was we needed a change. And that was before we heard all this from the chief.” He turned to Shaker. “You can see it from our point of view, can’t you? We didn’t have all the facts you had, all we knew was, we seemed to be going nowhere. Now we’ve heard the plan, everything’s different.”

“Not different from where I’m sitting.” Shaker had his back to the other three. “I’ve heard my competence questioned—aye, and had a gun raised against me, when everyone here knows I’m a man who never carries a weapon.”

“Joe didn’t mean it, Chief.” Pat O’Rourke moved around the cabin, so he could see Danny Shaker face to face. “He was just being hasty. You’ve said yourself that’s his biggest fault.”

“And one I admit to,” said Joe Munroe. “I’d never have fired that gun, Chief, you know that. If you could find a way to forget it, and all we said about needing a change—”

“I can’t. I told you, go find somebody else to do the worrying.”

“There’s nobody else,” Robert Doonan wheezed. “An’ it’s worse than that, Chief. If we go back and tell the others on the Cuchulain what we did to you, they’ll stuff us out the airlock.”

Danny Shaker was leaning back in his chair, arms folded, staring up at Pat O’Rourke. “Tough. You should have thought of all that before you started. But I’m a reasonable man. I can’t forget what’s happened, but I’m willing to give it one more go. Only I’ll tell you something: If I stay on as chief, there’ll be no more threats of violence to me. And I’ll not stand any talk of cutting Jay’s throat, either. He’s the one who gives us our best shot at something more than we’ve ever had, the Godspeed Drive, and he wants to come over to our side. I’m saying I’ve accepted him as one of ours. You three had better do the same.”

There was a general murmur of agreement and relief. “I’m sorry, Jay Hara,” said Joe Munroe—a more insincere apology I never heard. “Sorry about what I said. You’re crew now, as good as the rest of us. If I can help you with anything, let me know.”

“For a start, you fellows can show him how to pilot this beetle,” Danny Shaker said. “He’s been itching to have a go since first he set eyes on one. Pat, why don’t you sit here and give him a bit of a runthrough on the controls. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to send a message to the Cuchulain. We need a meeting with Doctor Xavier, and I’d rather have it up there than down here.”

He grinned at me. “Time you learned to fly, Jay, if you’re going to be a spacer. Ready for a lesson?”

I nodded. But it occurred to me that I had just had a lesson, and one more important than flying a cargo beetle.