Passage At Arms

5 On Patrol

It's a twelve-day passage to the squadron's patrol sector. As the days drift away, the men become quieter and more reserved. They have a crude, seldom reliable formula. A day's travel outward bound translates to three days' travel coming back. We've been aboard the Climber seventeen days.

Fifty-one days to go? That seems unlikely. Few patrols last more than a month. There's so much enemy traffic.... Hell, we could run into a convoy tomorrow, scramble, clear our missile elevators, and be home before the mother.

Eventless travel leaves a lot of free time, despite the depressing frequency of drills. I'm spending a lot of time with Chief Energy Gunner Holtsnider. He of girder-clinging fame. He's refreshing my knowledge of ballistic gunnery.

"This's your basic GFCS Mark Forty-six system," he tells me. I guess this is the fifth time we've been through this. "You got your basic Mark Thirty gun order converter, and your basic gyros, stabile element, tracking, and drive motor units. Straight off a corvette secondary mount. You just got your minor modifications, what they call your One-A conversions, for spherical projectiles."

Yeah? Those are killing me. My poor senile brain keeps harking futilely after my Academy gunnery training.

Half the problem is my sneaking suspicion that the Chief On Patrol 107 is learning while I am, staying a few pages ahead in the crisp new manual.

"Now, off your radar, and your neutrino and tachyon detectors if you have to, and even your visuals if it comes to that, and your transiting missiles in norm, you get your B, your R, your dR, your Zs, your dE, and your dBs. You feed them all to your Mark Thirty-two. Then you get your Gf...."

I keep getting lost in the symbols. I can't remember which is relative motion in line of sight, angular elevation rate, angular bearing rate, gravity correction, relativity correction, light velocity lag time—"

"And send your RdBs over V and your RdE over V to your Mark Thirty..."

I could strangle the man. He has a too-ample store of that most essential of instructor's virtues: patience. I don't. I never had enough. Many a project and study have I abandoned for lack of patience to follow through.

"... which brings your B prime gr and E prime g to your cannon train and elevation pump motors."

For all his patience, the Chief is ready to give me up.

"Cheer up, Chief. We could be trying to program a twenty-meter ahburst in tandem quad with the cobattery in nadir."

"You did time in the bombards?"

"Second Gunnery Officer on Falconier. Before this." I tap the bad leg. "Thought everybody knew."

"I was in Howitzer before I cross-rated Energy."

We exchanged reminiscences about the difficulties of putting unguided projectiles onto surface targets from orbit. Tandem quads are the worst. Two (or more) vessels each fire four projectiles, over each pole and round each equatorial horizon, so that they all arrive on target simultaneously. Theory says the ground position can't duck it all because it's coming from everywhere at once.

The bombards, or planetary assault artillery ships, are a poor man's way of softening ground defenses. A way which, in my opinion, is a little insane and a whole lot optimistic. Budget people find the system attractive. It's cheap. A sophisticated missile delivering the same payload costs a hundred times as much.

Once a world's orbital defenses are reduced, bombards are supposed to blast away, creating neutralized drop zones for the Fleet Marines. The main weapon is a 50-cm magnetic cannon. It launches concussion projectiles of the "smart" type. The bomb packs a hell of a wallop but has to be on target to do its job.

Bombard tactics were theoretical till the war. I was involved in just one live operation, against a base used by commerce raiders. I did most of my shooting in practice.

The system was worthless. In practice on planetary ranges we found the ballistic ranges so long, and so plagued by variables, that precision bombardment proved impossible. My First Gunnery Officer claimed we couldn't hit a continent using "dumb" projectiles.

The other firm uses bombards, too. For harassment. For accuracy they rely on dropships, or use a missile barrage.

"Ever shoot the range at KincaidT Holtsnider asks.

"That's where I screwed up the leg." Kincaid is a Mars-sized hunk of rock in Sol System's cometary halo. Its orbit is perpendicular to the ecliptic. It's so far out Sol is just another star.

"I wondered. Didn't think it would be polite to ask."

"Doesn't bother me anymore," I lie. "Except when I remember that it was my own fault."

Holtsnider says nothing. He just looks expectant.

I have mixed feelings about telling the tale. The man shouldn't give a damn, and probably doesn't want me to bore him with the whole dreary story. On the other hand, there's a pressure within me.

I want to cry on somebody's shoulder.

"Remember the Munitions Scandals? With the Mod Twelve Phosphors for the Fifties?"

"Bribes to government quality-control inspectors."

"Yes. Flaking in the ablation shields. Normal routine was to blow a cleaning wad every twentieth shot during prolonged firing. With the Jenkins projectiles we were getting flakes instead of dust.

We had orders from topside to use them up practicing. The Old Man had us blowing a wad after every shot."

"Royal pain in the ass, what?"

"In the kneecap, actually." It's easy to recall the frustration, the aggravation, and the sudden agony. They're with me still. "We'd been at it watch and watch for three days. Trick shooting.

Everything but over the shoulder with mirrors. We were all tired and pissed. I made the mistake. I blew the tube without making sure my trainee had opened the outer door."

"Recoil."

"In spades. Those outer doors can take a lot more pressure than the inner ones. So the inner door blew back while I was climbing up to reset for live ammo."

Holtsnider nods sympathetically. "Saw a guy lose his fingers that way. Our magnetics went out. We had a live time shell in the tube. He tried to blow it like it was a wad. Worked, too. But the inner door locks snapped. Lost two-thirds of our atmosphere before we got the outer door sealed."

He glances at my leg. "Medics had him good as new in a couple months."

"Wasn't my day, Chief. We were alone out there. Nearest medship was in orbit at Luna Command. And the reason we were screwing around out there in the first place was because our number two hyper generator was down.

"The medship hypered in fast, but by the time she arrived my knee was beyond salvation—more through the agency of an overzealous medical corpsman than from the initial injury.

"Falconier was so old she wasn't fit for training Reserves anymore, which's what we were doing."

Funny. This sharing of an unpleasant past is loosening me up. I'm more relaxed. My mind works better. I feel the old data coming back. "Chief, let's try it from the top."

I haven't spent all my time in Weapons. I've tried, with limited success, to visit with each crewman. Other than the officers I met on Canaan, only Holtsnider, Junghaus, and Diek-ereide have cooperated. Varese's Engineers barely remain civil. The men in Ship's Services tolerate me only because they have to live with me. I hear they've convinced themselves that I'm the dreaded eido.

My sessions with Holtsnider have eased the situation in Weapons. But only in Ops do I have much chance to ask questions.

The Ops gang considers itself the ship's elite. That pretense demands more empathy with the problems of another "intellectual."

I'm worried. Seventeen days gone, and no headway made. I still don't know half the names. Climber missions don't last long once the ship reaches its patrol zone. It's in, make a couple of attacks, and get out fast. The other firm is sending so much traffic through that quick contact is inevitable.

Westhause says it takes about a week to get home once the missiles are gone. Meaning I can't count on more than another ten days to find my story.

I mention it to the Commander during a lonely lunch in the wardroom. The others are preparing the shift to operational mode. I figure he has similar problems acclimating new men each patrol.

"One thing to remember. No matter how much alike they act, they're all different. When you get to the bottom line, the only thing they have in common is that they stand on their hind legs. You have to find the right approach for each man. You have to be a different person to every one."

"I can see that. From your viewpoint..."

"You and me, we're crippled by our jobs. What have they got to judge you by? The news nosies they've seen on holo. You have to break that image."

I nod. Those people are the pushiest, most obnoxious ever spawned. I understand their Tartar style, but I don't like it and don't want to be lumped with them.

"Guess my best chance is a long patrol."

The Old Man doesn't say anything. His face speaks for him. He's ready to go home now.

A Climber is, I'm convinced, our most primitive warship. Cheap, quickly built, and highly costeffective if the combat statistics are valid. Balancing the statistics against the reality of Climber life, I develop a conviction that High Command considers our ships as expendable as the missiles they carry.

We're almost ready. The tension began building yesterday. We're tottering at the brink. This fly, deep into the patrol zone, is sandpapering nerve ends. It's about to climax. Action and death may be no more than an hour away.

As senior ship, even though we don't carry the squadron flag, we rate first separation. This is a tradition of Tannian's Fleet. To the proven survivors go the small perks. Will the head start be worth anything in the long run?

Suddenly, we're beyond the moment of peak tension. The sealed orders have come through. The mother is about to drop hyper. We'll be operational soon.

The Old Man's face is stiff and pale when he leaves his stateroom. His upper lip is lifted to the right in a faint sneer. He gathers Westhause, the First Watch Officer, our two Ops Chief Petty Officers, and myself. He whispers, "It doesn't look good. Figure on being out a while. It's beacon to beacon. Observation patrol. We start at Beacon Nineteen, Mr. Westhause. I'll give you the progression data after I've gone over it myself."

Well. I may get time to break the ice after all. Running beacon to beacon means there's been no enemy contact for a while. If they're out there, they're slipping through unnoticed. Because nothing is happening, the squadron will roam carefully programmed patterns till a contact occurs.

I begin to comprehend the significance of our being on our own. We'll be out of contact completely, unless we touch the rare instelled beacon. No comforting mother ship under our feet.

No pretty ladies in a sister ship to taunt and tease when Throdahl isn't using the radio more professionally. Alone! And without the slightest notion how near we are others of our kind.

This could get rough, emotionally. These men aren't the sort I'd choose as cellmates.

Some three hundred observation/support beacons are scattered around Climber Fleet One's operations zone. On beacon-to-beacon patrol a Climber pursues a semirandom progression, making a rendezvous each twelve hours. Ours is to be an observation patrol initially, meaning we're supposed to watch, not shoot.

The Commander shuffles order flimsies. "I'll tell you what we're looking for when I get this crap straight."

"What're observation pauses?" I ask the First Watch Officer. The Old Man says we have to program several into our beacon progression.

"Just go norm to see who did what last week."

"I don't follow."

"Okay. If we're not looking for something specific, we'll make equally spaced pauses. Say each four hours. If Command is looking for something, we'll drop hyper at exact times in specified places. Usually that means double-checking a kill. Ours or theirs."

"I see."

The beacons are refitted hulks. They form a vast irregular three-dimensional grid. When a Climber makes rendezvous, it discharges its Mission Recorder. In turn the beacon plays back any important news left by previous callers. The progress of a patrolling squadron is calculated so no news should be more than twenty-four hours old. It doesn't work that well in practice, though.

One in twenty beacons is instel-equipped, communing continuously with beacons elsewhere and with Climber Command. Supposedly, a vessel can receive emergency directives within a day and news from another squadron in two. On the scale of this war, that should be fast enough.

Sometimes it does work, when the human factor doesn't intrude too much.

The other firm occasionally stumbles onto a beacon and sets an ambush. The beacons are manned but have small crews and few weapons. Climbers approach them carefully.

Fortune has smiled on us in a small way. The competition hasn't broken our computer key codes. If ever they do, Climber Fleet Tannian is in the soup. One beacon captured and emptied of information would destroy us all.

The other firm wastes no time hunting beacons. It takes monumental luck to find one. Space is big.

We're operational now. Past our first beacon.

Operational. Operational. I make an incantation of it, to exorcise my fear. Instead it has the opposite effect.

The web between the beacons. The spider's game. The vastness of space can neither be described nor overstated. When there's no known contact the Climber's hunt becomes analogous to catching mites with a spider's web as loosely woven as a deep-sea fishing seine. There are too many gaps, and they're too big. Though Command keeps the holes moving, ships still slip through unnoticed.

Climbers often vanish without trace.

After we leave the beacon the Commander repeats all the tests made at Fuel Point. We commence our patrol in earnest.

I watch a Climber die. Twice. Our first two observation pauses bracket the event. We drop hyper, allow the light of it to overtake us, then jump out and let the wave catch us again. Like traveling in time.

There's little but a long, brilliant flash each time, like a small nova. The spectrum lines indicate massive CT-terrene annihilation. Ops compartment remains quiet for a long time. Laramie finally asks, "Who was it, Commander?"

"They didn't tell me. They never tell me-----" He stops.

His role doesn't permit bitterness before the men.

"Forty-eight souls," Fisherman muses. "I wonder how many were saved?"

"Probably none," I say.

"Probably not. It's sad. Not many believers anymore, Lieutenant. Like me, they have to meet Him, and Death, face to face before they'll be born again."

"It's not an age of faith."

For four hours men not otherwise occupied help maul the data, searching for a hint that the other firm precipitated the Climber's doom. Nothing turns up. It looks like a CT leak.

Climber Command will add our data to other reports and let it stew in the big computer.

"It doesn't much matter anymore," Yanevich says. "She blew three months ago. The way they bracketed us, they were rechecking something they already knew. Glad we didn't have to take a closer look."

"There wouldn't be anything to see."

"Not this tune. Sometimes there is. They don't all blow. Ours or theirs."

I feel cold breath blowing down the back of my neck. Firsthand studies of a gunned-out hulk aren't my notion of fun.

There's nothing going on in this entire universe. Beacon after beacon, there's nothing but bored, insulting greetings from squadron mates who were in before us. Decked out in his sardonic smile, the Old Man suggests the other team has taken a month's vacation.

He doesn't like the quiet. His eyes get narrower and more worried every day. His reaction isn't unique. Even the first-mission men are nervous.

First real news from outside. Climber Fleet Two says a huge, homebound convoy is gathering at Thompson's World, the other team's main springboard for operations against the Inner Worlds.

Second Fleet hasn't had one contact during the forty-eight hours covered by their report.

Neither have we.

"Them guys must be taking the year off," Nicastro says. Today he's Acting Second Watch Officer, in Piniaz's stead. Weapons is having trouble with the graser.

I'm exhausted. I hung around past my own watch to observe Piniaz in command. Guess it'll have to wait. The hell with it. Where's my hammock?

Climber Fleet Two reports a brush with hunter-killers way in toward the Inner Worlds. Nothing came of it. Even the opposition's baseworlds are quiet.

This patrol zone is dead. We're caught in a nightmare, hunting ghosts. You don't want action, but you don't crave staying on patrol, either. You start feeling you're a space-going Flying Dutchman.

Beacon after beacon slides by. Always the news is the same. No contact.

Once a day the Commander takes the ship up for an hour, to keep the feel of Climb. We spend the rest of our time cruising at economical low-hyper translation velocities. Occasionally we piddle along in norm, making lazy inherent velocity corrections against our next beacon approach. There isn't much to dp.

The men amuse themselves with card games and catch-the-eido, and weave endless and increasingly improbable variations in their exchanges on their favorite subject. To judge by their anecdotes, Throdahl and Rose have lived remarkably active lives during their brief careers. I expect they're doing some creative borrowing from stories heard elsewhere. They have their images to maintain.

I'm making some contact with the men now. Through no artifice of my own. They're bored. I'm the only novelty left unexplored.

The days become weeks, and the weeks pile into a month. Thirty-two days in the patrol zone. Thirtytwo days without a contact anywhere. There are three squadrons out here now, and the newly commissioned unit is on its way. Another of the old squadrons will be leaving TerVeen soon. It'll be crowded.

No contact. This promises to become the longest dry spell in recent history.

The drills never cease. The Old Man always sounds the alarm at an inconvenient time. Then he stands back to watch the ants scurry. That's the only time we see his sickly smile.

Hell. They're breaks in the boredom.

This is oppressive. I haven't made a note in two weeks. If it weren't for guilt, I'd forget my project.

I think this is our forty-third day in the patrol zone. Nobody keeps track anymore. What the hell does it matter? The ship is our whole universe now. It's always day in here and always night outside.

If I really wanted to know, I could check the quartermaster's notebook. I could even find out what day of the week it is.

I'm saving that for hard times, for the day when I need a really big adventure to get me going.

We're a hairy bunch now. We look like the leavings of a prehistoric war band. Only Fisherman has bucked the trend and is keeping some order about his person. The only smooth faces I see belong to the youngest of the young.

The Engineers express their dissatisfaction by refusing to comb then" hair. I'm the only man who takes regular sponge baths. Part my fault, I suppose. I spend a lot of time in my hammock. And I won't share my soap, which is the only bar aboard. .

Curiously, these filthy beasts spend most of their free time scrubbing every accessible surface with a solution that clears the sinuses in seconds. Our paintwork gleams. It's a paradox.

One point of luck. No lice or fleas have turned up. I expected herds of crab lice, acquired from hygienically lax girlfriends.

Fearless Fred is sulking. He's the most bored creature aboard. No one has seen him for days. But he's around, and in a foul mood. He expresses his displeasure by leaving odiferous little loaves everywhere. He's as moody as the Commander.

Something is bothering the Old Man. Something of which this patrol is just part. It began before the mission, before I found him at Marie's.

He's no longer my friend of Academy days.

I did expect to find him weathered by the Service, changed by the war. War has to change a man.

Combat is an intense experience. Comparing him to other classmates I've encountered recently, I can see how radical the changes are. Even Sharon wasn't this much transformed. The Sharon of the Pregnant Dragon always existed inside the other Sharon.

A few of the changes are predictable. An increased tendency toward withdrawal, toward selfcontainment, toward gloominess. Those were always part of him. Pressure and age would exaggerate them. No, the real change is the stratum of bitterness he conceals behind the standard changes.

He was never a bitter person. Contrarily, there was a playful, almost elfin streak behind his reserve. A little alcohol or a lot of coaxing could summon it forth.

Something has slain the elf.

Somehow, somewhere, while we were out of touch, he took one hell of an emotional beating. He got himself destroyed, and all the king's horses...

It's not a career problem. He's very successful by Navy standards. Twenty-six and already a full Commander. He's up for brevet Captain. He may get his first Admiral's star before he turns thirty.

It's something internal. He's lost a battle to something that's part of him. Something he hates and fears more than any enemy. He now despises himself for his own weakness.

He doesn't talk about it. He won't. And yet I think he wants to. He wants to lay it out for someone who knew him before his surrender. Someone not now close, yet someone who might know him well enough to show him the path back home.

I admit I was surprised that my request for assignment to his Climber went through. There were a hundred hurdles to surmount. The biggest, I expected, would be getting the Ship's Commander's okay. What Commander wants an extra, useless body aboard? But the affirmative came back like a ricochet. Now I know why, I think. He wants a favor for a favor.

The Commander's moods are a ship's moods. The men mirror their god-captain. He's aware of that and must live the role every minute. This's been the iron law of ships since the Phoenician mariners went down to the sea.

The role makes the Old Man's problem that much more desperate. He's tearing himself apart trying to keep his command from going sour. And he thinks he's failing.

So now he can't open up at all.

I now dread the future for more than the usual reasons. This is a miserably long patrol. And it's demonstrated repeatedly that the best Climber crew, highly motivated and well-officered, can start disintegrating.

More than once the Commander tracked me down and asked me to accompany him to the wardroom.

He makes a ritual of our visit. First he gives Kreiegshauser a carefully measured bit of coffee.

Just enough for two cups. There's been no regularly brewed real coffee since we learned we'd be on beacon-to-beacon patrol. What we call coffee, and brew daily, is made with a caffeine-rich Canaan bush-twig that has a vague coffee taste. That's what the Commander drinks during his morning ritual. After yielding his treasure, the Old Man stares into infinity and sucks the stem of his tireless pipe. He hasn't smoked in an age. The old hands say he won't till he decides to attack.

"You're going to chew that stem through."

He peers at the pipe as if surprised to find it in his hand. He turns it this way and that, studying the bowl. Finally, he takes a tiny folding knife and scrapes a fleck off the meerschaum.

He then plunges it into a pocket already bulging with pens, pencils, markers, a computer stylus, a hand calculator, and his personal notebook. I'd love to see his notes. Maybe he writes revelations to himself.

He has his ritual question. "Well, what do you think so far?"

What's to think? "I'm an observer. The fourth estate's eido." My response is a ritual, too. I can never think of anything flip, or anything to start him talking. We drift through these things, waiting for a change.

"Remarkable crew?" Today is going to be a little different.

"A few individuals. Not as a whole. I've seen them all before. A ship produces specific characters the way the body produces specialized cells."

"You have to get through the hide. Get inside, to the meat and bones."

"I don't think I'm that good." I'm not. I keep seeing the masks they want me to see, not the faces in hiding. I may have been exposed too long now. An immunological process may be taking place.

Something of the sort happens in every closed group. After jostling and jousting, the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place. People adjust, get along. And they stop being objective about one another.

The Old Man says, "Hmm." He's developing that sound into a vocabulary with the inflectional range of Chinese. This "hmm" means "do go on."

"We've got people who want to be something the ship has no niche for. Take Carmon. He believes his propaganda image. He wants to be Tannian's Horatio at the bridge. The rest of us won't let him."

"One right guess. Carmon aside, did you find anybody who gives a rat's ass about the war?"

Have I stumbled onto something? They are volunteers----- This is as near an expression of doubt as I'll ever hear from the Commander.

I'm too eager to pursue it. My sharp glance spooks him.

"What did you think of Marie?"

I think the relationship is symptomatic of a deeper problem. But I won't say that. "She was under a strain. An unexpected guest. You about to leave..." There're things a man doesn't do. One of mine: Never say anything bad about a friend's mate.

"She won't be there when we get back."

I knew that before we left.

Well, it isn't the realization of his own mortality that has gotten to him. This isn't the oddsclosing- in blues that plagues Climber Commanders. If I look closely, I can catch glimpses of the it can't happen to me of our age group.

Is it the realization of his own fallibility? Suppose last patrol he made a grotesque error and got away with it through dumb luck? The kind of man he is, that would bother him bad because fortyseven men might have gone out with him.

Maybe. But that's more the kind of thing that would break a Piniaz. The Old Man never claimed to be perfect. Just close to it.

"She'll be gone when I get home." His eyes are long ago and far away. He had had these thoughts before. "She won't leave a note, either."

"You really think so?" I nearly missed the cues telling me to ask.

Marie isn't his problem. A problem, and a symptom, but not the problem.

"Just a feeling, say. You saw how we got along. Cats and dogs. Only reason we stayed together was we didn't have anywhere to go. Not that it didn't look worse."

"In a way."

"What?"

"Hell probably offers a sense of security to the damned."

"Yes. I suppose." He draws his pipe from his pocket, examines its bowl. "You know Climber Fleet One hasn't ever had a deserter? Could be."

For a moment I envision the man as an old-time sea captain, master on a windjammer, standing a lonely, nighted weather-deck, staring at moon-frosted wavetops while a cold breeze fingers his strawlike hair and beard. The sea is obsidian. The wake churns and boils. It glimmers with bioluminescence.

"For what distant, heathen port be we bound, o'er what enchanted sea?"

He glances up, startled. "What was that?"

"An image that came to me. Remember the poem game?" We played it in Academy, round robin. It was popular during the middle class years, when we were discovering new dimensions faster than we could assimilate them. The themes, then, were mostly prurient.

"My turn to come up with a line, you mean. All right." He ponders. While he does so, Kriegshauser delivers the coffee.

"Zanzibar? Hadramaut? The Ivory Coast? Or far Trincom-alee?"

"That stinks. It's not a line, it's a laundry list."

"Seemed to fit yours. I never was much good at that, was I?" He puts his pipe away and sips coffee. Under ship's gravity we can drink from cups if we like. A small touchstone with another reality. "I'm a warrior, not a poet."

"Ah?"

"'Ah?' You sound like a Psych Officer."

Whatever its nature, his bugbear won't reveal itself this ! time. Not without inspired coaxing from me. And I have no j idea how to bait my hook.

'

I think I know how a detective hunting a psychopathic killer ! must feel. He knows the man is out there, killing because he wants to be caught, yet the very irrationality of the killer makes him impossible to track----- Can his problem be this role he lives? This total warrior performance? Is there a poet screaming to get out of the Commander? A conflict between the role's demands and the nature of the actor who has to meet them?

I don't think so. He's the quintessential warrior, as far as I can see.

He chose me because I'm not part of the gang. And maybe now he's hiding from me for the same reason.

"You slated for Command College?" I ask, shifting my ground. If he hasn't made the list, that might take him by the balls. Passing an officer over amounts to declaring he's reached his level of incompetence. No one gets pushed out, especially now, but the promotions do end.

"Yes. Probably won't get there before this fuss is over. I'm slated for the squadron next two missions, then Staff at Climber Command. Won't get off Canaan for at least two years. Then back to the Fleet, probably. Either a destroyer squadron or number two in a flotilla. No time for war college these days. All on-the-job training."

A weak possibility lurks here. Upward mobility threatened by war's master spirit: Sudden Death.

"Why did you volunteer?"

"For Climbers? I didn't."

"Eh? You said..."

"Only on paper. I asked for Canaan. Talk to the officers our age. A lot of them are here on

'strong recommendation' from above. What amounted to verbal orders. They're making it simple. The Climbers are the only thing we have that works. They need officers to operate them. So, no Climber time, no promotion. You have an unprofessional attitude if you don't respond to the needs of the Service." A bilious glow of bitterness seeping through here.

He drains half his cup, asks, "Why the hell would I ask for this? The chances of me getting my ass blown to ions are running five to one against me. Do I look fucking stupid?"

He recalls his role. His gaze darts to Kriegshauser, who may have overheard.

"What about rapid advancement? Glory? Because Canaan is your home?"

"That's shit for the troops and officers coming up. Navy is my home."

My stare must be a little too sharp. He changes the subject. "Strange patrol. Too quiet. I don't like it."

"Think they're up to something?"

He shrugs. "They're always up to something. But there are quiet periods. Statistical anomalies, I guess. They're out there somewhere, slipping through. Maybe they've found a pattern to our patrols. We don't really run random. Human weakness. We have to have order of some kind. If they analyze contacts, sometimes they figure a safe route. We change things. The hunting is good for a while. Then, too, Command wastes a lot of time taking second and third looks at things."

There's bitterness whenever he mentions Command. Have I uncovered a theme? Disenchantment? He wouldn't be the first. Not by thousands.

There's no describing the shock, even despair, that clamps down on you after you've spent a childhood in Academy, preparing for a career, when the Service doesn't remotely resemble classroom expectations. It's worse when you find nothing to believe in, or live, or love. And to be a good soldier you have to live it, to believe your work has worth and purpose, and you have to like doing it.

There's more going on in the Climber than I thought. It's happening beneath the surface. In the hearts and minds of men, as the cliche goes.

I'm sipping coffee with the Commander when the alarm screams.

"Another rucking drill?" The things have worn my temper to frayed ends. Three, four times a day.

And the only time that bitching horn howls is when I have something better to do.

The Commander's pallor, as he plunges toward the hatch, is answer enough. This time is for real.

For real. I make Ops before the hatch closes, barely a limp behind the Old Man.

It is easier in operational mode.

Yanevich and Nicastro crowd Fisherman. I wriggle into the viewscreen seat. The Commander elbows up to the tachyon detector.

"Ready to Climb, First Watch Officer?"

"Ready, Commander. Engineering is ready for annihilation shift."

I hunch down, lean till I can peek between arms and elbows. The tachyon detector's screen is alive for the first time since we lost touch with the mother. It shows a tiny, intense, sideways V at three o'clock, which trails an almost flat ventral progression wave. The dorsal is boomerangshaped.

A dozen cloudy feathers of varying length lie between the two.

"One of ours," I remark. "Battle Class cruiser. Probably Mediterranean subclass. Salamis or Lepanto. Maybe Alexandria, if she's finished refitting."

Four pairs of eyes drill holes into my skull. Too wary to ask, both men are thinking, "What the hell do you know?"

Chief Canzoneri calls out, "Commander, I've got an ID on the emission pattern. Friendly. Cruiser.

Battle Class. Mediterranean subclass. Salamis or Alexandria. We'll have to move closer if you want a positive for the log. We need a finer reading in the epsilon."

"Never mind. Command can decide who it was." He continues staring holes through me. Some of the men look at me as if they've just noted my presence. "Mr. Yanevich. We'll take her up for a minute. No point them wasting time chasing us."

Making a Climb is a simple way of saying friend.

Back in the wardroom, the Old Man demands, "How did you do that?"

Why not play a little? They're always playing with me. "What?"

"ID that cruiser."

I was surprised when they stared but was more amazed that Fisherman bothered with the alarm. "The display. Any good operator can read progression lines. I saw a lot of the Mediterraneans, back when."

"Junghaus is good. I've never seen him do anything like that."

"Battle Class ships have unique tails. Usually you look at the feathers. But Battle Class has a severe arch in the dorsal line. The Meds have a top line longer than the bottom. From there it's just arithmetic. There're only three Meds out here. I can't remember the feathers or I would've told you which one. I didn't do any magic."

"I don't think Fisherman could've done it. He's good, but he doesn't worry about details. He'll argue Bible trivia from now till doomsday, but can't always tell a Main Battle from a Titan tug.

Maybe he doesn't care."

"I thought that was the point of having an operator and a screen."

"In Climbers we only need to know if something's out there. Junghaus is just cruising till he gets his ticket to the Promised Land."

"That's a harsh judgment."

"The man gets on my nerves— But they all do. They're like children. You've got to watch them every minute. You've got to wipe their noses and kiss their bruises...Sorry. Maybe we should've had a longer leave. Or a different one."

Fearless Fred wanders in. This is the first I've seen him this week. He one-eyes us, chooses my lap.

"Remember Ivan the Terrible?" I ask, scratching the cat's head and ears.

"That idiot Marine unarmed combat instructor? I hope he's getting his ass kicked from pole to pole on some outback—

"No. The other one. The cat we had in kindergarten."

"Kindergarten? I don't remember that far back." After a moment, "The mascot. The cat that had puppies."

"Kittens."

"Whatever. Yeah. I remember."

First year in Academy. Kindgergarten year. You were still human enough and child enough to rate a few live cuddly toys. Ivan the Terrible was our mascot, and less reputable than Fearless. All bones and battle scars after countless years of a litter every four months. The best that could be said for her was that she loved us kids as much as we loved her, and brought her offspring marching proudly in as soon as they could stumble. She died beneath the wheels of a runaway electric scooter, leaving battalions of descendants behind. I think her death was the first traumatic experience of the Commander's young life.

It was my biggest disappointment for years. That one shrieking moment unmasked the cruel indifference of my universe. Thereafter it was all downhill from innocence. Nothing surprised or hurt me for a long time. Nor the Commander, that I saw, though we eventually suffered worse on an adult value scale.

"I remember," the Commander says again. "Fearless, there was a lady of your own stripe."

"Bad joke."

Fred cracks an eyelid. He considers the Commander. He yawns.

"But he don't care," I say.

"That's the problem. Nobody cares. We're out here getting our asses blown off, and nobody cares.

Not the people we're protecting, not Navy, not the other firm, not even ourselves most of the time." He stares at the cat for half a minute. "We're just going through the motions, getting it over so we can go on leave again."

He's getting at purpose again, obliquely. I felt the same way during my first active-duty tour.

They hammered and hammered and hammered at us in Academy, then sent us out where nobody had a sense of mission. Where no one gave a damn. All anyone wanted was to make grade and get the retirement points in. They did only what they had to do, and not a minim more. And denied any responsibility for doing more.

Admiral Tannian, for all his shortcomings, has striven to correct that in his bailiwick. He may be going about it the wrong way, but... were the Commander suddenly deposited on one of the Inner Worlds, he'd find himself a genuine, certified hero. Tannian has made those people care.

Even the smoothest Climberman, though, would abrade the edge off his welcome. Like a pair of dress boots worn through a rough campaign, even Academy's finest lose their polish in Tannian's war.

"Don't scratch. It'll cause sores."

I find myself digging through my beard again. Is that a double entendre? "Too late now. I've got them already. The damned thing won't stop itching."

"See Vossbrink. He'll give you some ointment."

"What I want is a razor." Mine disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In a ship without hiding places it's managed to stay disappeared.

"Candy ass." The Commander uses his thin, forced smile. "Want to ruin our scurrilous image? You might start a fad."

"Wouldn't hurt, would it?" The atmosphere system never quite catches up with the stench of a crew unbathed for weeks, and of farts, for which there are interdepartmental olympiads. Hell, I didn't find those funny in Academy, when we were ten. Sour grapes, maybe. I was a second-rate athlete even in that obscene event.

Urine smells constantly emanate from the chamberpots we use when sealed hatches deny us access to the Admiral's stateroom.

Each compartment has its own auxiliary air scrubber. These people won't use them just to ease my stomach. "Feh!" I give my nose a stylish pinch.

"Wait a few months. Till we can't stop the mold anymore."

"Mold? What mold?"

"You'll see, if this goes on much longer. First time they make us stay up very long." What looked like a drift toward good humor ends as that thought hits the table. The ship will stay out as long as it takes.

"Enough piddling around. Got to write up the war log. Been letting it slide because there's nothing to say. Shitheaded Command. Want you to write twice as much, saying why, whenever there's nothing happening. Someday I'll tell them."

I've glimpsed that log. Its terse summations make our days prime candidates for expungement from the pages of history.

The minimum to get by. From bottom to top.

I clump after the Old Man and consequently reach Operations in time for a playback of the news received last beacon rendezvous.

Johnson's Climber preceded ours in. The girls left love notes.

"How the hell did they know we were behind them?" I ask.

"Computers," Yanevich says, amused. "With enough entries you can determine the patrol pattern.

It's never completely random."

"Oh." I've watched Rose and Canzoneri play the game when they have nothing else to run. They also try to identify the eido. It's just time-killing. The eido is as anonymous as ever.

They're making a huge project of trying to predict first contact. To hedge the pool. They .run a fresh program every beacon call, buy more pool slips, and are convinced they're going to make a killing. The pot keeps growing as the weeks roll along. There're several thousand Conmarks in it already.

The compartment grows deadly still. Reverently, Throdahl says, "Here it comes."

"... convoy in zone Twelve Echo making the line for Thompson's System. Ten and six. Am in pursuit.

Eighty-four Dee."

I estimate quickly. We aren't that far away. We could get there if we hauled ass. Must be an important convoy, too. Six escorts for ten logistical hulls is a heavy ratio, unless they're battle units coincidentally moving up. The other firm likes to kill two birds with one stone.

The orders don't come. Climber Command won't abandon patrol routine to get something going.

Yanevich tries to raise my spirits by telling me, "We'll get our shot. Maybe sooner than you really want."

The Commander shouts down. "I'm going to give him a chance to work off his boredom, Mr. Yanevich.

Gunnery exercises next observation break. We'll see what he can do with his toy."

Now I know why Bradley has been hoarding waste canisters. They'll make nice targets.

Always something strange going on here. And no one explains anything till it's my turn in the barrel.

The Old Man is no help. For no reason I can fathom, he keeps every ship's order ultra top clam till the last second. What point security out here? The only rationale I can see is, he wants the crew ready for anything.

He is, probably, following Command directives. Logic never has much to do with security procedure.

Do those clowns think our competitors have an agent aboard?

Not bloody likely. There's a limit to the power of disguise.

Gunnery exercises are little more than gun error trials. Everything but the final firing order is handled by computer. A dull go. No sport. But a break in an otherwise oppressively monotonous routine. The Energy Gunners spear their targets on second shot. I batter mine to shrapnel with my third short burst. The range, however, isn't extreme.

Later, I suppose, there'll be exercises on full manual, or with limited computer assistance, simulating various states of battle damage.

I do find a constant error in gun train or gun train order. I enter a correction constant. So much for another exciting day.

Curious that gunnery exercises weren't scheduled till this late in the patrol. Did the Commander know there would be no action? The man nearest me is an Energy Fire Control Technician named Kuyrath. I ask him, "How come the Old Man put this off so long?"

"Typical crap, probably. Command probably sent us out knowing we wouldn't run into anything. Just for the hell of it. Just to have us jacking around. And you wonder why morale stinks?"

He has a lot more to say. None of it compliments Command. He hasn't a bad word for the Commander.

But now I'm wolfing off along a new spoor.

ITve decided that I've been overlooking an inexplicable undercurrent of confidence among the more experienced men.

As if they knew no action was imminent. If gunnery exercises are a signal, that should change. We shall see.

The changes comes, and sooner than any of us expect. With the possible exception of Climber Command.

The word is waiting at the next beacon, which is the contact-control for our present patrol sector.

There won't be time for manual gunnery exercises.