Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 29

“Jay?”

I awoke from deep-down slumber. Sensations cut in, one after another. Free-fall. Darkness. Silence. A cold hand touched my face.

“Jay!” It was Doctor Eileen’s voice, insistent, whispering close to my ear.

“What’s wrong?” The ship’s engines been turned off.

“Nothing. Shh! I don’t want to wake Mel. Come on.” She tugged at my sleeve.

“Wait a second.” I had to disentangle myself. Mel was sleeping with one arm across me. As soon as I was free I drifted after Doctor Eileen, out into the general living area.

“What’s happening?” I saw that the lighting level had been cut way back, and the little blip of the communicator was like a winking red eye in the darkness.

“You didn’t hear it?” Doctor Eileen was no longer whispering. “I wish I could sleep like you and Duncan. I gave him a good shake, but he went right back to sleep. A call came through two minutes ago. We’re clear of the Eye. Captain Shaker wants us in the control room.”

“But why were you whispering?”

“Do you want to explain to Mel why she can’t go along with us to the bridge?”

And I thought I was the one who found her hard to handle.

“We may have a real problem coming up.” I followed Doctor Eileen outside, and locked the door of the living quarters. “If the drive on the Cuchulain isn’t able to take us back, we’re going to have trouble with Mel.”

As we started toward the control room I explained that the Godspeed ship was far too small to conceal a stowaway, even for a minute.

Doctor Eileen listened, but I think that her mind was mostly somewhere else, because when I was done she said, “You’re overreacting, Jay. If we fly back to Erin in the ship with the Godspeed Drive we won’t need to hide Mel, because we’ll get there in no time. And the crew aren’t animals, you know. They’ve had the excitement of finding the Base and the Godspeed Drive, and their mood must be a lot better than it was when they were plowing through the mud on Paddy’s Fortune. I’m sure they’ll treat Mel with respect when they find out she’s on board.”

There was no point in arguing. Doctor Eileen hadn’t seen Joe Munroe’s face after he ripped away Mel’s shirt. She hadn’t heard Rory O’Donovan and Connor Bryan talking about women. If the crew weren’t animals, it was because animals were better behaved.

The trouble was, Doctor Eileen took her cues as to what spacer crew members were like from Danny Shaker, and he was simply not typical. When we entered the control room he was standing relaxed by the pilot’s chair, his smooth face thoughtful and his long hair neatly pulled back and tied. Tom Toole was at his side. The screens behind them showed open space, with the Godspeed ship hanging close to the Cuchulain.

“Just the people I wanted to see,” Shaker said affably. “Let me bring you up to date. First, the Godspeed Drive. It’s over there in the corkscrew ship. It works, and we know how to use it. That’s the good news. Now for some bad news: the Cuchulain. The engines still work, after a fashion, but neither I nor anyone else believe the ship is in much shape to fly us back to Erin.”

Doctor Eileen looked puzzled. “That doesn’t sound like bad news. Can’t the Godspeed ship find room for everyone?”

“It can.” Danny Shaker was talking to Doctor Eileen, but he was staring at me in an odd, speculative way. I got goosebumps. Something had changed. I could see it in Tom Toole as well as in Danny Shaker. Tom was grinning at some private joke, and eyeing Eileen Xavier.

“It has enough room,” Danny Shaker said. “And even if it didn’t, you could make ten trips to Erin and back in the time we’d take to overhaul the engines once on the Cuchulain.”

“So what’s the problem?” Doctor Eileen’s voice had changed. She was beginning to sense something offkey.

“It’s the crew. You see, they’ve had a meeting. And they don’t like the deal we made. Don’t like it at all.”

“Ah.” Doctor Eileen went forward, and sat down uninvited in the pilot’s seat. “So that’s it. A little bit of blackmail. I have to agree to better terms for you, right, or you won’t agree to fly us back? Well, Captain Shaker, I don’t know if you’re in on this yourself, or if it’s really all the crew’s doing, the way that you say. But either way, it’s no deal. We needed you to fly us to Paddy’s Fortune, and to get us here to the Needle and the Eye. But we don’t need you now. James Swift assures me that he is perfectly capable of flying the Godspeed ship himself. Do you disagree?”

“I believe that James Swift knows how to fly the Godspeed ship.”

“So we stick with the original terms of the deal. And I’m being generous doing so—because you and the Cuchulain are in no position to fly us home, which is what you agreed to do. I suggest that you go and inform the rest of the crew of that, wherever they are.”

Tom Toole laughed, and Danny Shaker frowned at him in disapproval. “I don’t think that the original terms are relevant, doctor,” he said. “James Swift may know how to fly the Godspeed ship, but he will not be doing so. For several reasons. Here’s one of them.”

He turned and gave the fluting whistle that I had first heard at Muldoon Spaceport. Patrick O’Rourke entered the control room. Floating along behind, dragged by his mop of red hair gripped in O’Rourke’s huge hand, came the body of Jim Swift. His face was a bloody mess. When O’Rourke released him, he came drifting toward us.

Doctor Eileen gasped. She was already moving forward. On Erin or in space, a patient took priority over everything.

I felt sure that Jim Swift was dead, but Doctor Eileen was feeling for a pulse and lifting an eyelid.

“His own doing entirely,” Shaker said. “He became involved in a dispute with Alan Kiernan—and Swift was the one who started it. Isn’t that right, Pat?”

O’Rourke nodded. “Bloody fool took a swing at Alan. Lucky he’s not a dead man. If I hadn’t stepped in…” His voice deepened to a chesty rumble.

Doctor Eileen had finished her first examination. “Doesn’t seem too serious,” she said. “His nose is broken, and that’s where all the blood is coming from. This bruise on his temple is what knocked him out. He’ll feel awful when he comes around, but he won’t be unconscious for more than a few minutes. It won’t stop him from flying us home.”

Danny Shaker was standing with his arms folded. He made a little gesture of his head toward Pat O’Rourke and Tom Toole. They left the control room without a word.

Shaker moved to stand in front of Doctor Eileen. “I mentioned that there are several reasons why Doctor Swift will not be flying you home on the Godspeed ship. The fight was just one of them, and not the most important. As you remarked, doctor, the crew wants to change the deal. But not in the way that you seem to be thinking.”

“In what way, then?” Doctor Eileen was busy wiping the blood from Swift’s face with the front of his own shirt. She did not look up.

“My crew believe that they are the legal owners of the Godspeed ship and the Godspeed Drive, and that you have no claim to either. They are spacers, and space salvage rights traditionally go only to spacers. You and your group are Downsiders, and have no such rights. However, the crew does not wish to be unreasonable. They are willing to give you the Cuchulain.”

Doctor Eileen froze in place, her fingers at Jim Swift’s temple. “That is a totally preposterous suggestion, as you well know. The Cuchulain is not fit to fly. You told me yourself that it’s in no condition to take us back to Erin.”

“I told you that if I had to make this ship fly to Erin, I would find a way to do so.” Shaker might have been discussing a minor change in flight plans for all the emotion in his voice. “But I do not have to fly the Cuchulain, Doctor. You do. You and Doctor Swift. Just half an hour ago, he was boasting to the crew of his abilities as an engineer and space navigator as well as a scientist. He will have an opportunity to prove himself.”

Danny Shaker turned to me, and the coldness left his voice. “But you, Jay, you don’t need to prove anything. The crew agrees that you already did that. You made your decision when we left Paddy’s Fortune, to become a spacer and a crew member. And you’ve been blooded. When it came to the point you killed your man. The crew’s vote was unanimous: Joe Munroe deserved what he got. There’s a place for you with us.”

“A vote.” Doctor Eileen let Jim Swift float free and stood up to glare at Danny Shaker. “There’s no voting on any ship of yours, Captain Shaker, and you know it. The crew takes your orders. You don’t take theirs. My God, what an idiot I’ve been, to trust you and believe you for so long. If there’s a plot to rob us of our rights—and of our lives, too, from what I can see of it—then it’s not a scheme hatched by the crew. They don’t have the brains for it. Anything like that starts in your head, and nowhere else.”

“You flatter me, Doctor.” Shaker uncrossed his arms and stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. “A ship can have only one captain, true, or it will run into chaos. But I’m the servant of my crew more than their master. They, not me, decided that the Godspeed ship was theirs. They, not me, offered a place among us to Jay Hara—although I certainly agree with that decision.” He turned again to face me. “You’ve not said one word, Jay, though it’s you we’re talking about. How about it? I’d love to have you aboard. I wouldn’t ever mention this with Tom Toole or Pat O’Rourke present, but you have more potential than any crewman on the Cuchulain. Sign on with me, and I’ll teach you everything I know.”

Those words were designed to tempt me, and they came close. But suddenly all I could think of was what Danny Shaker knew how to teach. How to hunt down Paddy Enderton, and hound him to his death. How to manipulate Doctor Eileen, and me, and Mel, and who knew how many others, so that he would be led to the Godspeed Base and the Godspeed Drive. How to trick his own twin brother, so that the hands of Stan Shaker would become those now reaching deep into Danny Shaker’s coat pockets.

I thought all that, but I was not fool enough to say it. Doctor Eileen and Jim Swift and I would never be able to fly the Cuchulain home to Erin. I knew that, and so surely did Danny Shaker. He might be able to fix the Cuchulain, but we could not. Leaving us behind while they flew off on the Godspeed ship was sentencing us to a slow death, drifting in space as our supplies of food, water, and air slowly dwindled away.

Our only hope was to fight now, when Danny Shaker was alone and unarmed. Then we might be able to get back to the upper level living quarters, and find the weapons that Doctor Eileen had taken to Paddy’s Fortune.

I thought I could hear faint sounds outside the control room. No one entered, but it reminded me that Tom Toole or Pat O’Rourke might be back at any minute.

I had to make Shaker relax by thinking that I was tilting his way, and I had to do it fast.

“I want to come with you,” I said. “But what about Mel Fury? Is there any way that she can—”

I never could carry off a lie. My face must have showed the inside of my head, because Shaker at once pulled his right hand out of his coat pocket. It was holding a pistol.

“Nice try, Jay, but I’m too old for that.” He saw me start forward. “Don’t even think of it. Normally I don’t carry weapons, but there have to be exceptions to every rule. And I’d never carry a gun that wasn’t loaded.”

He was standing with his back to the entrance of the control room. No more sounds came from that direction, but I thought I saw something: a flicker of movement in the big convex mirror that hung in the doorway.

Someone was in the corridor. It might be Tom Toole or one of the other crew members—or, just possibly, it might be Mel. She’d have to be crazy to come out of hiding.

But Mel was crazy, that was part of her charm.

“You didn’t answer my question.” I tried to speak loudly, but instead my voice cracked and squeaked. “You were the one who wanted Mel to come onto the Cuchulain. You encouraged her.”

I could see the reflection. It was not Mel. It was too big to be Mel.

I felt a moment of despair. And then I realized that the new arrival was Duncan West. He was at the entrance to the control room, and he was holding a gun—Walter Hamilton’s white-handled pistol.

I launched myself through the air straight at Danny Shaker. “Now!” I shouted, when I was just a few feet away. I had little hope of disarming Shaker or knocking him out, but I hoped that by distracting him I would allow Duncan to gain control.

Danny Shaker hardly seemed to move, yet I missed him completely. I went flailing on until I collided face-first with the side of a big display screen. I clutched my nose, convinced that it was broken like Jim Swift’s, and spun around dizzily in mid-air.

I had bought Duncan West the time that he needed. He had stepped into the middle of the room. He stood by Danny Shaker, gun raised. And Shaker was lowering his.

But then Duncan was moving right past Danny Shaker.

“Duncan!” Doctor Eileen shouted, and I croaked the same word through a spray of blood from my nose.

“Save your breath.” Shaker nodded to Duncan, who casually stuck Walter Hamilton’s gun back into his belt.

“Duncan and I had our little talk a long time ago,” Shaker went on. “He made his decision before we ever lifted off from Muldoon Spaceport. He was tired of being treated like a nothing. And he wanted to be on the side of the winners. Right, Crewman West?”

Duncan nodded. He smiled at us, the same amiable, charming, uncommitted smile that I had known all my life.

“It’s a pity—I mean from your point of view, Doctor,” Danny Shaker continued. “Because if there’s any man in the Forty Worlds who could coax another flight out of the poor old Cuchulain, I’m convinced that it’s Duncan. But he’ll be going with us.” He turned to me. “What about you, Jay? You don’t give up, and that’s the first requirement of a good spacer. I’d like you with me. But this will be my last time of asking.”

I shook my head, and Danny Shaker sighed.

“That’s the end of it, then. I guess there’s more of your mother than your father in you after all. Duncan and I have to be off. The rest of the crew are waiting. So I’ll say good-bye. And good luck, too, to all of you. I hope that you make it back to Erin, I truly do.”

“Wait.” Doctor Eileen had not spoken since her one word cry to Uncle Duncan. Now she moved closer to Danny Shaker. Duncan put his hand on the gun in his belt.

“Stop that, Duncan West,” she said reprovingly. “I’m not one for violence, and you know it. I want to say something to Captain Shaker. It won’t take long.”

Shaker nodded to Duncan. “No gun needed here. Go on ahead, tell Tom Toole that I’m on my way.” And, as Duncan left the control room, “All right. Say your piece, doctor.”

“You’re going to maroon us in the middle of the Maze, on a ship with a dying drive. You can pretend that we have a chance to get home again, but you and I both know better than that. Anyone who stays on the Cuchulain is doomed. I can live with that thought for myself. Space is as good a place to die as anywhere else.”

“Better than anywhere else. You’re a wise woman, Doctor Xavier, and a brave one. Pity you’re not a man. You’d have made a great spacer.”

“I don’t need flattery. I’m too old for it. But Jay Hara and Mel Fury are children. Jay will say he wants to stay with me, because I’ve known him all his life and he feels loyal. But I want you to take him with you, no matter what he wants. And Mel too. Don’t kill children, Dan Shaker. It’s beneath you.”

Shaker sighed, and shook his head. “You are a fine advocate, Doctor. There’s just one problem with what you’re suggesting: It’s wrong. Jay and Mel are not children. Look at them. He’s become a tough, self-assured young man in the past couple of months. It would be insulting—and dangerous—to treat him as a child. And from what Duncan tells me, Mel is now very much a young woman. I think he’s had his eye on her himself, and compared with most of my crew he’s an absolute gentleman.

“So it has to be no. I admit that I control most of what the crewmen do, but I recognize my limits. I’d be insane to take a woman—just one woman—onto the Godspeed ship. I owe my crew something, but that’s not the way to give it to them. After we’ve made a trial run of the Drive I propose to take another look at Paddy’s Fortune. I gather we’ll find enough inside to please everyone.

“That’s enough of future plans. I have to leave. The Drive is primed.”

Shaker nodded to one of the screens. The Godspeed ship hovered in the middle of it. Once more the shimmering smoke rings of violet haze were running back and forth along the axis of the corkscrew and spiraling away into space.

“Goodbye, Doctor. And good luck. I’d like to think we’ll meet again. Somewhere, somehow. And good-bye and good luck to you, too, Jay. I only wish you could have seen things differently, and come with me. But remember the Golden Rule: Don’t give up—ever.”

He turned and left without another word. His departure from the bridge drained the room of every particle of life and hope. Doctor Eileen leaned on the pilot’s chair, head bowed in exhaustion or despair. Jim Swift, beginning to twitch and groan and groggily move his head, floated a few feet away from her.

And I, the “tough, self-assured young man” who could no longer be “treated as a child”? I put my swollen cheek and bleeding nose against the cool metal of the cabin wall, and I cried until big globular tears mingled with drops of blood, and floated away across the control room.