Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 22

I had my spaceflight lesson while we were still on the surface of Paddy’s Fortune: a short one, and more theory than practice, but enough to convince me that Mel and I could have been in space for days before we reached the Cuchulain. The cargo beetle in the hands of Danny Shaker or Pat O’Rourke seemed trivially easy to fly. It was anything but. Half the computer and navigational aids shown on the control panel were actually missing or out of action. When it had been a choice of cannibalizing equipment for the Cuchulain or for the beetles, the big ship had won every time.

Pat O’Rourke showed me the basics for seat-of-the-pants navigation and flight without instruments. I would like to have continued at the beetle controls, but once Danny Shaker finished his conversation with Eileen Xavier he wanted a rapid passage back to the Cuchulain. At the time I thought it was their talk that provided the urge for speed. Later, I decided that a stronger motive was probably Shaker’s lack of confidence in Mel. He didn’t know her well, but he was certain of one thing: She had to sit in the dark until the beetle was safely docked at the Cuchulain and we had a chance to smuggle her aboard.

I wondered what would happen to Danny Shaker if Mel were discovered by one of the crew members. Then it became obvious. Shaker would tell them that I had brought her aboard, unknown to him, while he was away from the ship. Whether the crew were angry or not, he would not be blamed.

I was ordered out of the pilot’s chair before liftoff and left reluctantly, convinced that now I really knew how to fly a cargo beetle. I was desperate to prove as much to Shaker and O’Rourke, but I was not offered the chance.

There was nothing else for me to do until we reached the Cuchulain, and I retreated to an out-of-the-way spot near the cabin wall. After a few minutes I reached in my pocket for the book I had taken from Walter Hamilton’s body. I had been carrying it around all this time, but without much thought as to what was in it.

I was not much better informed after half an hour of leafing through the electronic pages. I had not realized that the little book had such enormous storage, and without a road map I was pretty much hunting blind. The first two thousand pages were the result of Hamilton’s patient screening of every available record, on Erin or off it, for references to the Isolation. A global data search showed me that the Godspeed Drive was mentioned dozens of times, but never in solid detail. No one who made the old records had ever actually seen the drive. What did emerge from my rummaging, clearly and directly enough to horrify me, was the devastating effect that the Isolation had produced on Erin. Walter Hamilton in his search had visited hundreds of deserted towns and villages across the planet, looking for old records. Once each had been a thriving settlement. Now most of them were derelict ruins. The population of Erin had once been more than a billion people. Today it was one thirtieth of that, and shrinking.

I wondered about the drive that powered the Cuchulain. It was clearly not a Godspeed Drive, although according to Danny Shaker it dated back to before the Isolation. I did a general search on the word, “drive,” and was offered a dozen different varieties. Apparently there were cargo drives, planet-to-orbit drives, ship drives rated for humans, hundred-gee drives for urgent unmanned shipment only, low-gee drives for bulk cargo, and a perplexingly named “Slowdrive.” The last one was described as experimental and unique to the Maveen system, but it was hard for me to see why anyone might find a use for something that went especially slow. The electronic book also offered three-D images of the Slowdrive. As I rotated them they outlined a round-cornered cube, a little bit flattened, with underneath it a set of rings of different sizes, placed one above the other so that they formed a blunt cone with its thick end attached to the cube. The written description of the drive was beyond me. I tagged the whole “Slowdrive” entry with a high-level pointer, to draw my attention to it again when I had more time, and glanced over to the control panel.

We would dock at the Cuchulain in a few more minutes—and I would have a meeting with Doctor Eileen that I would rather not think about.

I skipped to the last part of the record. Walter Hamilton had swallowed his initial disappointment on arriving at Paddy’s Fortune, although he had rejected it at once as a possible site for Godspeed Base. I could almost hear his disdainful sniff as he plowed through the head-high vegetation. But then the scientist had taken over, and in spite of himself he had become fascinated by the biology of the worldlet. Before he died, it was quite apparent to Dr. Hamilton that not only was the world itself an artifact, but the present ecology must be sustained by something other than a natural biological balance.

In another half day he would have been thinking in terms of access to the interior of Paddy’s Fortune and the control mechanisms that ran the little world. If Sean Wilgus had not been such a bloodthirsty fool, Walter Hamilton might have led the crew to what they were seeking.

I closed the book. The right person to have this was not me, it was Jim Swift. He was also the logical person for the new navaid, because of the data on the Godspeed Drive that the controller had loaded onto it. The problem was that without help from Mel neither I nor Jim Swift might be able to read those data.

I hoped I wouldn’t be there when Jim was told what had happened to Walter Hamilton. He had described Hamilton as pompous and conceited, but all the same the two had been friends for many years. I found myself thinking that it simplified matters that the person who had killed Walter Hamilton was himself dead. Was that how real spacers dismissed a killer’s death, as natural vengeance?

We were docking at the Cuchulain, and the automatic procedures from the mother ship had already taken over. I felt a series of unsettling changes of direction. Danny Shaker seemed immune to them as he walked across to where I was sitting.

“I told the crew that I’d be showing you how to lock the beetle in hull storage. So we’ll be the last ones off. I’ll also be giving you bigger than usual quarters, until you get used to living spacer-style.”

There was no wink or change of facial expression, but I knew exactly what he was saying. As soon as the others were gone he and I would smuggle Mel Fury aboard. Mel would occupy the same quarters as me, and it would be my job to make sure she was not discovered until we had a plausible reason for a passenger’s presence—or until we had found a Godspeed Drive. After that, the crew of the Cuchulain would be so exultant they would not care if Danny Shaker had on board a hundred passengers.

Like everything that Danny Shaker did, the docking and crew disembarkation went without a hitch. As soon as Pat O’Rourke, the last to leave, had gone, Shaker glanced across to me. “Time to get Mel out, and safe into quarters. I’ll go and bring her. By the way, I hope she has no special food requirements?”

“No, she eats whatever we—” I stopped in horror. “How did you know?” Danny Shaker frowned down at the deck. “You should ask, when did I know. That’s a harder question to answer. The first hint was when you had been outside on the surface, and I kept Mel in the beetle with me. I asked you when you came back what you had learned inside Paddy’s Fortune. You didn’t know what Mel had said, and you were so keen to avoid that question, you pulled out the navigation aid right away and told me all about the Net and the hardware reservoir. That struck me as a desperate act. You had something to hide. Mel had admitted that there were females inside Paddy’s Fortune. Yet when I told you I was going to discuss later what Paddy’s Fortune contained, you never once asked me to do it. I could tell from your face that you didn’t want to hear about it. I started thinking, female, and after that there were a dozen clues.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bring Mel Fury out of her hiding place. And then you are going to take her to your new quarters, while I make sure the crew are busy elsewhere.”

“You’re not going to tell them?”

“That Mel is a girl? Jay, you have a good brain. Use it. Why do you think I wanted to leave Paddy’s Fortune so quickly?”

“In case Mel became impatient, and wouldn’t stay hidden.”

“That could have happened, but it wasn’t my big worry. I was afraid something might change, and young women would start popping out onto the surface of Paddy’s Fortune like summer locusts.”

“They wouldn’t. Mel’s an exception.”

“How was I to know that? And what sort of control do you think I’d have had over the crew if girls—even one girl—appeared on that world? They would have torn the place apart. They’re good spacers, all of them, but they can’t hold the big picture in their heads. Women are important, and rare, and they could bring riches. They know that, I know that. But the Godspeed Drive is the key to the whole universe.”

“Then why did you bring Mel with us at all? Why not leave her back there?”

“That’s good, Jay. You’re asking better questions, and I’ll give honest answers. If the crew learns that she’s a girl, we both know what will happen. I won’t be able to stop it. So bringing Mel is no real risk to me, but it is a risk to you, and most of all to her. You realize that as well as anyone—and that’s why I wanted her along.

“You see, Jay, the one person on this ship who can really help or hinder me isn’t Joe Munroe, or Robbie Doonan, or Pat O’Rourke. No, and it’s not Eileen Xavier either. It’s Jay Hara. You know how to work that gadget you brought along, and I don’t. Nor does anyone else, except Mel. Now, maybe I could squeeze it out of either one of you. But isn’t it a whole lot better if a person cooperates because he has a mind to? If you and Mel work with me, you have my solemn word: Not a man on board this ship will learn from me that Mel Fury is a girl. Of course, I can’t guarantee that one of you won’t give the game away—as you did to me just now. And I’m going to rely on you to explain to Mel Fury just why she needs to stay hidden, because I don’t know if she would believe me. Maybe she won’t even believe you. But you have Dan Shaker’s word for my end of it, my mouth stays shut as long as you play straight.

“Is it a deal then, Jay?” He held out his hand. “You help me, best you know how, and Mel stays our little secret.”

After a moment I took his hand and shook it. Of course, I had no choice. For what Danny Shaker didn’t need to say was the other side of his promise: If I didn’t help him, “best I knew how,” he would certainly make sure that the crew of the Cuchulain learned that a young female was on board. After that, nothing he said or did would be able to protect her.

Danny Shaker probably realized what we were getting into when we decided to keep Mel Fury smuggled away on board the Cuchulain until we reached the Net and the hardware reservoir. I know for sure that I didn’t, although I suppose I should have, because I already knew that back on Paddy’s Fortune she had been in the habit of disobeying the controller.

The sort of problems I might face became clear even before we reached my new quarters. I knew the layout of the ship, and I knew just where we were going. Shaker had told us to wait fifteen minutes after he left, and then he promised us another clear quarter hour during which the interior passageways would be deserted.

The trip from the cargo beetle to the living area would take only a few minutes. I knew we had ample time—and made the mistake of telling Mel that. Then every three steps it was “What’s this?” and “What does that do?” and “Wait a minute, Jay, this looks really neat.”

I drove her along, ready to scream. When we finally reached our destination I closed and locked the cabin door and pulled the navaid from my pocket.

“You’re not going to play with that now, are you?” asked Mel.

“I am. Or better still, you are. I want to know just how long it will take the Cuchulain to get from here to the Net.” “Why?”

“Because I need to know how long I’ll have to sit on your head. Mel, you don’t seem to understand that you’re in danger until we get there.”

“Phooey. I heard Shaker talking to his crew before we took off. They came in mad as could be, and in two minutes he had them wrapped round his finger.”

“Sometimes. But you didn’t hear what Shaker said to me after we took off, did you?”

“I couldn’t hear anything. There was too much engine noise.”

“Then let me tell you. He said—and I believe him—that if the crew ever learn that you are on board and are a girl, he won’t be able to stop them.”

“What will they do?”

I felt myself going red. Back on Erin I had been told lots about sex, but never with girls present. And what I had to tell Mel was pretty extreme.

“They’ll want you.” And, when she didn’t seem worried by that. “I mean, they’ll fight over you.”

“So?” She certainly wasn’t making this easy for me.

“And they’ll rape you. You do know what rape is, don’t you?”

Mel didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened and her pale face went even paler. She reached out without a word and took the navaid from me. As she started to manipulate the indents on its surface I realized that what I had learned about the navaid in my blind experiments with Paddy Enderton’s stolen model was nothing. Displays flickered into existence around Mel’s busy hands, and were gone again before I had time to take in what they were.

She asked one question: “What’s the top acceleration of this ship?”

“It ought to be seven-tenths of a gee, but the engines are in terrible shape. No one dares to run the Cuchulain at anything more than a quarter gee. Even then it feels like the ship is falling apart.”

She touched one more indent, and nodded to the display that formed in the air. “It’s an eight-day trip at a constant quarter gee, allowing for Maze direction changes. Twelve days if you use boost-and-coast.”

Danny Shaker would go as fast as the failing Cuchulain could manage. At best, I would have the job of controlling Mel’s curiosity for at least eight days. But she knew the stakes now: her body, and then probably her life.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “Shaker told me to go along to the main control room as soon as I could, otherwise the crew may start to wonder. Before I go, though, show me what you did to get that time-of-travel calculation.”

She ran through it again, this time including a display of thrust times and attitudes. It was done almost too fast for me to follow completely, but it would have to be enough for the moment.

I grabbed the navaid from her.

“And whatever you do, don’t leave this place.”

She nodded. Maybe I wasn’t going to have a problem with her after all.

I headed for the main control room—the same place where Danny Shaker had reached into the air duct and lifted me out like a landed fish. That had happened two days ago. It felt like two centuries.

I didn’t waste a second going from my new quarters to the control room, but Mel’s dawdling and my own use of the navaid had taken longer than I realized. The only people there when I arrived were Tom Toole and Robert Doonan, who gave me a wheeze and a glower and at once hurried out.

Tom Toole was standing near the controls, examining a display of the Cuchulain’s interior. He pushed his long jaw out at me and sniffed. “So you’re one of us now, are you? Replacing old Sean, as the chief says it.”

I couldn’t tell from the look on his cleanshaven red face if he approved of that. “Not a replacement. I don’t know enough to be a replacement.”

“Don’t know enough.” Tom Toole grinned. “And don’t flare up nor cuss enough, neither, to be Sean. You’ll manage, Jay. Anyway, the chief says, soon as you got here, you follow him to Doctor Xavier’s quarters. Better get along.”

I think Tom Toole regarded me as being a bit under his wing, because he was the first on the Cuchulain that I’d ever done a job for, back before we even left Erin. And I’m sure he was delighted to hear that I wanted to join the crew, and leave Doctor Eileen, because the two of them had been at each other the minute they met. Certainly he didn’t need to add, as I was turning to go, “Before you leave, Jay, here’s a word to the wise. There’s some on board the Cuchulain who are no friends of yours. I don’t know what you did down there on Paddy’s Fortune—and don’t want to know, neither, not right now—but whatever it was, it got up the nose of a couple of people. That, and the chief saying we have to partition off your living quarters in the Cuchulain with heavy duty bulkheads, which is going to be a lot of work and was certainly a surprise to me. Some people will blame you for their share in that work, too. Anyway, don’t count on Joe Munroe as a friend, nor Robbie Doonan, neither. And now scat out of here. I’ve spoke too much already.”

For Tom Toole, he certainly had. He was one of Danny Shaker’s right-hand men, but he was more of a doer than a talker. I pondered his warning as I retraced my steps and headed for the part of the ship where Doctor Eileen and the rest of our group were quartered. On the way I passed tubby Donald Rudden and Connor Bryan. They were dangerously close to my quarters, hauling heavy-duty partitions. They pointed to them as I passed.

“To keep you in, or somebody out?” Connor Bryan called to me.

They seemed to think I knew all about the proposed separation of my living quarters from the rest of the ship, but it was as big a surprise to me as it was to them. On the way to my old quarters, though, I had an answer to Connor Bryan’s question.

To keep me in, or them out? Both, and maybe more than that. Danny Shaker never did anything for just one reason.

The meeting with the Erin group had begun when I arrived. I could tell from Jim Swift’s stunned expression that Danny Shaker had already given him the bad news about Walter Hamilton. Jim was sitting well away from the table, with Duncan West and Eileen Xavier closer to it and facing Danny Shaker.

I received one quick glance from everybody as I came in, and that was all. I sensed the strained atmosphere as I tiptoed across to Jim Swift.

“Here,” I whispered, and handed him the electronic book. “I don’t understand most of this, but he was making notes just before he died.”

No need to say who “he” was. Jim nodded absently, and tucked the book away without even looking at it.

“Well, why don’t we look at the contract, then?” said Uncle Duncan. He was using his most casual and easygoing voice, and it sounded as though he was trying to lower the tension.

“No need for that,” said Doctor Eileen. She was miffed. “I know very well what it says.”

“One trip,” Shaker said. “To a destination to be given to me upon our departure from Erin. And then a return journey. Nothing about a second destination.”

“But my God, Captain!” Doctor Eileen glared at him across the table. “I mean, this is ridiculous. Of course the contract was written for one trip—we had no reason to expect more. And you were paid triple rates.”

“That’s standard for winter work.”

“And you are the one who’s telling me we ought to be looking elsewhere for Godspeed Base.”

“No.” Danny Shaker pointed to me. “He’s telling you.” I became the center of attention.

“Tell them, Jay.” Shaker’s expression was unreadable. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say, but I was very aware that my words alone stood between Mel and the crew of the Cuchulain.

I took the navaid from my pocket. To Eileen Xavier and the rest of them, it must seem identical to the one I had found on Paddy Enderton’s body. “There’s more information in here,” I said. “It provides the course from Paddy’s Fortune to a place known as the Net. It looks as though there, if anywhere, we’ll find a Godspeed Drive.”

“So why don’t you want to go there?” Doctor Eileen addressed Shaker in exasperation.

“You misunderstand me.” He crossed his arms and began to massage his biceps. “Speaking for myself alone, I would love to go. But there are complications. The first is the ship itself. The engines of the Cuchulain were in poor shape when we left Erin, and they are worse now. I can nurse them along, but they need a major overhaul. They can only receive that back at Upside Muldoon, and the crew know it very well. It will require a major effort on my part to talk them into a new journey, to another unknown destination. Paddy’s Fortune was as big a disappointment to them as it was to you.”

“I doubt that.” But Doctor Eileen had calmed down. “What’s the second reason?”

“He is.” Shaker was pointing at me again. I knew something horrible was on the way, and I didn’t know why it was necessary. When it came to finding a Godspeed Drive, Danny Shaker was as keen as Eileen Xavier. Why not just agree, and go?

“While we were down on the surface,” Shaker said, “Jay came to me and asked if he could join my party. I considered his request, and discussed it with the rest of the crew. They agreed, but that put me in a difficult position. The information that Jay has about the new destination no longer belongs to your group. It belongs at least as much to mine, and I am forced to respect their rights.”

“The navigation computer is ours!”

“Are you sure? I’d say from what I’ve seen that it’s his. What do you say, Jay.”

“The navaid was given to me.” I couldn’t bear to look at Doctor Eileen.

“Oh!” She gasped in exasperation. “This is quite ridiculous. Let’s get the farce over. Captain Shaker, tell me what you are proposing.”

“The minimum that I believe my crew—I am including Jay—will accept. I suggest that in addition he is still entitled to whatever he was promised by your group.”

That made Doctor Eileen squirm. No one had promised me anything definite, and she knew it.

“Assuming that the engines hold out,” Shaker went on, “I and my crew will fly the Cuchulain to the destination that Jay provides to us. If we find nothing there, then you will simply pay us triple rate for the additional journey that we make. If we find something valuable, you will cut us in for twenty-five percent of whatever is found there.”

I know nothing at all about business, but what Danny Shaker was asking didn’t sound like a lot—a quarter share, but to be split among all his crew. I had expected him to ask for a lot more.

So clearly had Doctor Eileen, because she frowned at him and said, “Twenty-five percent of the value of what we find. And nothing more?”

“One thing more.”

“Ah!” Doctor Eileen said, meaning, Here it comes.

“Only one thing,” Shaker said quietly. “If we do discover a Godspeed Drive, I want to be the man who pilots it on its first interstellar trip.”

I don’t know what she had been expecting, but Shaker’s last condition bowled Doctor Eileen over. All the tension vanished from her face. She stared at him, and shook her head.

“Captain Shaker, you never cease to amaze me.” She didn’t say, you have a deal. But that’s what her words meant, because she was turning again to me. “Jay, I am in a very awkward position. I promised your mother that I would look after you while we were away. Do you realize I will not be able to do that if you join Captain Shaker’s crew?”

“I realize it,” Danny Shaker said, “even if Jay does not. I intend to take precautions against anything happening to him. His new living quarters will be reinforced. My crew have orders not to enter them without my permission.”

Doctor Eileen was beginning to nod, at least partially satisfied, when Shaker added, “And I expect no less from you and your group. Keep your hands off him, too. Jay is smart, he’ll learn fast—if he’s left free to learn.”

“He is smart,” Doctor Eileen agreed, to my surprise. Then she spoiled it by adding, as though I was not there, “And I’m afraid he knows it.”

Danny Shaker grinned at my reaction. “The right combination. As I understand it, Jay has wanted to be a spacer all his life.”

He understood it very well, and Eileen Xavier knew it better than anyone aboard. She was in a very awkward position, because Danny Shaker was being unreasonably reasonable.

At last she nodded. “It is impossible for me not to go along with this. But I too have a condition: Jay must have a direct line to me.”

“I told you I don’t want you talking to him.”

“I accept that. Give him a communication line that can only be activated from his end. If he needs me, I insist that he be able to reach me.”

“No problem. Provided that I can listen in on it, too.”

“Agreed.”

That was it, and the meeting broke up. As I headed for my living quarters I felt more than ever convinced that the new walls around me were going to serve multiple purposes: to keep the crew out; to keep Doctor Eileen from talking with me in a way that Shaker couldn’t monitor; and to keep Mel Fury—and maybe me, too—safe inside.