A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (18 page)

But before responding to the order she rummaged around the cushion less bunk in which she had slept off her stupor, finding a moist canvas bag filled with grimy working clothes and a damp, greasy cap, which she donned, tucking her shoulder-length hair into it; but there was no time to change the rags she wore—still wet from the swabbing—for dry ones and she stood in that disheveled crew perhaps the sorriest-looking of all in the limp, oversized shorts and sleeveless vest that effectively transformed her natural ranginess into a lanky, hungry look. The engineer appeared prosperous enough, however, and the cook shone in immaculate white, but the crew were badly blessed by nature and fate. Here and there showed a clean article of apparel—a new cap or hat, shaming the garments beneath, or perhaps a new shirt or a new sheath-knife and belt. But aside from these the men and women wore the patched, fringed and greasy garments either of their last voyage or what they had been able to glean from the spaceship’s slop chest; and on each face was a common expression of canine earnestness and human hopelessness—those that were human, of course. Judikha picked out the craggy profile of Wopple. In the front rank stood the incognito Lieutenant Birdwhistle of the Space Patrol, picturesque in his rags and with that woebegone countenance peculiar to a shanghaied graduate of the Space Academy. The steward was at the helm and scowling down on them from the catwalk were Glom and a stony-faced man in an old-fashioned black spacer’s uniform two decades out of style, in the pockets of which his hands were deeply plunged. She needed no rush of intuition to recognize the captain of the
Rasputin
, who slowly scanned each of the twenty faces below, paced a few turns back and forth, then brought himself up squarely against the railing, his hands still in his pockets.

“My name’s Krill,” he said slowly and importantly; then, after moment’s silence, he repeated in a louder voice, “My name’s Krill!”

The name must sound better to him than it does to me
, Judikha thought. However, the name seemed to mean something to the people around her, who shuffled their feet, claws, pads and tentacles uneasily under the captain’s stare; but none answered.

“I’m Captain Slitner Krill, of Rastabranaplan,” continued the captain, “and I’ve lifted ships out of Port Farbarten and Outer Lesser Nozzlottle for twenty-five years and I allow that in all that time I never let any measly gang of candy-assed pipefitters get the best of me. You hear me? You hear what I say, you snake-fornicating sons of squint-eyed streetwalkers?”

He took another nervous stroll down the catwalk and returned. Judikha glanced at the lieutenant to note the effect of this language on him, but his dejected face was noncommital.

“In all my time spacing,” continued the captain, his voice rising, “I never seen a worse lot of port scum and useless humans—them’s of you what
is
human, of course. There ain’t a whole man among you—there ain’t even
half
a man, and I’m counting in you women. But there’s a murdering scoundrel among you what I want. Last night, along about 0400, my first officer, all fagged out from trying to lift a ship with a crew that don’t know a reversing fuel deionizer from a Mark VI interociter, was woke up by a sneaking thief going through his desk. Yes, sir—a sneaking, bloody-minded thief what tried to kill him, too, before he got thoroughly woke up. Then the thief ran out into the corridor and forrard to the rest of you. And that poor man is down there groaning, with his arm broke at the elbow, while the murdering thief what done it is among you, laughing up his sleeve, and wishing he’d finished his bloody work. Now, I want that man to step out and own up.”

No one stirred. The crew looked at one another with dull inquiry on their faces, then up at the captain, only to fall back, crouching and scattering to the right and left, involuntarily raising their arms to screen their faces for Krill had brought his hands out of his pockets and in each was a weathered, well-used 500-watt DeLameter toaster.

“Shove him out,” he thundered as he leveled the guns. “Give up that low-down scoundrel. I’ll show him what he can do and what he can’t do. Quick, you damned spacerats, or I’ll hurt some of you!”

“Hold on, Cap’n,” said Wopple.

“You the man? Come up here.”

“No, Cap’n, I’m not,” said the old spaceman, stepping bravely up to the ladder. “I’m no thief, and if I was, I wouldn’t be fool enough—hold on, sir; I wish you’d point those the other way, sir. They might go off. What I want to say, Cap’n, if you’ll excuse me, is that you’re taking a mighty poor way to get that thief, whoever he is. You begin by damning us all around, and then you pull your toasters. Now, what man’s going to own up in the face of the threat of being shot where he stands?”

“None of your back lip! Don’t you talk to me. Come up here. I think you know too much about this.”

Wopple ascended the steps and was collared by Glom. He was hurled against the wall with a sonorous
bong
, where he remained as though stuck, with the second officer watching him out of the corner of one of his tiny black eyes.

“Where’s that pantywaist what come aft when he shoulda been working, swearing he’s an officer of the Patrol?” demanded the captain. His eye wandered over the crowd until it settled on Birdwhistle.

“You the man?” he inquired, swinging one of the pistols in his direction.

“It might have been me, sir,” whined the lieutenant, mournfully. “Please don’t shoot me, sir. I had dreams, sir. Bad ones. I’ve been drugged and kidnaped on this boat, sir, but I haven’t done any harm, sir.”

Judikha was astonished and embarrassed, but remained stoically impassive. She had never before seen the lieutenant’s obsequiousness so publicly displayed and it was a disturbing sight. She fervently hoped that the most of it was play-acting. The captain, keenly searching the sorrowful face blanching beneath the gaze of his toaster, said, “
Dreams?
What’re you driving at, man?”

“I’ve always had dreams, sir, that I was an officer in the Patrol, and I was having such a dream when I woke up on that platform up there, sir, and you were kicking me.”

“Well, I’ll swear you ain’t no spaceman and you sure ain’t no Patrolman. I got no love for the Patrol, but I think better of them than to think they’d tolerate a yellow rat like you. What’s your trade?”

“I’m a gentlemen’s man, sir.”

“What?” roared the captain. “I’ll have no flaming pansy on this ship, you limp-wristed...”

“No, sir. You misunderstand me. A gentleman’s man, sir—a valet. I cook for my master, and wake him up in the morning and see to his bath and sometimes I shave him and I always have to press his trousers and answer the phone and...”

“So you’re just a damned flunky, you mean?”

“Uh, you might say that, sir.”

“Well,” considered the captain, thoughtfully and contemptuously, “I guess no pansy flunky broke my first mate’s arm.” He returned the DeLameters to his pockets and turned to Wopple.

“You a Rastabranaplanian?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” answered Wopple, vehemently. “A Rastabranaplanian, out of Udskaya, and an able spaceman. I’ve held command before and I’m not fool enough to break into a first mate’s cabin in this kinda ship before I’m twenty-four hours aboard.”

“Held command, you say? What in?”

“Interorbit shuttle, sir. I’m no navigator, but neither am I any fool thief—”

“All right, all right. Get on back down there. Find out who broke Mr. Grool’s arm and I’ll make you third mate.”

Wopple knuckled his forehead respectfully and descended, while Captain Krill ordered Glom to set the thrust monitors, relieve the steward at the helm and dismiss the starboard watch. Wopple’s logic had apparently been convincing.

Later on, Wopple said to Judikha, “Make me third mate, would he? If I knew the hero that broke that slave driver’s arm I’d marry him and have his children.”

V.

Judikha wanted to talk further with Lieutenant Birdwhistle before she turned in, but he was at the helm with Glom. So instead she retired to the crew’s quarters, where she examined the contents of the duffel she’d been assigned. It was filled with clothing no less ragged than what she was already wearing. They had been washed so often that they were more a mass of soft lint than real cloth, a kind of thin, fragile felt, so she spread them across her cot for bedding and slept until noon. She awoke at eight bells, her headache and fogginess entirely gone. She sat on the edge of her berth for a moment, for the first time in forty-eight hours able to look around with clear eyes and mind, though that made no real improvement to her surroundings. Indeed, seeing them clearly was enormously depressing. She was in a featureless steel cubicle furnished only with four sets of bunks, three berths to a set, all made of rusty steel pipe and wire. Most of them were already empty. A few battered barrels, cans and crates passed for furniture and the only light was what filtered in through the open door. Wopple’s sleepy voice came from above: “Better get yerself some grub, youngster.”

She arose, stripped off the stiff and sticky garments in which she had fallen asleep and wiped her body as clean as she could with a sponge and cold grey water from a half-filled bucket that had already done duty by most of the rest of her watch. She then separated the best and most complete pieces of fresh clothing—a pair of brief shorts and a sleeveless vest, both made of a kind of lank cheesecloth—from her bedding and, going to the galley, she found that the unfortunate lieutenant had already managed to suffer further injury. He was at the galley door scrubbing a carbonized pot with a handful of metal waste, with a pile of even filthier pots, pans and utensils behind him. His handsome face was disfigured by a black eye.

“Kicked away from the helm for not knowing the hypercelestronavitron,” he explained cautiously, responding to Judikha’s inquiring glance. “Inconvenient and unpleasant, but necessary. I’m supposed to be an ignorant landsman, you know. Remember
your
part: do your work as a common spaceman and avoid any trouble. See me during the dog-watch. Go ahead now and get your dinner.”

He shifted the pot in his lap and resumed his concentrated scrubbing. Judikha wished that he’d stop trying to explain himself to her. She found it discomfiting.

As Judikha entered the galley, the ship’s engineer, carrying a bag of tools and a four-foot pipe wrench over one shoulder, came in behind her.

The cook shoved a pail of something translucent and quiveringly glutenous at her. She took it—though she avoided looking at it, partly out of fear that it might be looking back—and moved on. The second-watch man behind her was either less tolerant or more fastidious and let the cook know it.

“Don’t stand around asking fool questions,” the cook snarled. He was a massive Serpukhoffian—a race not so distantly removed from the trilobite as it might have been. “There’s your ration—government whack for all hands forward until you gives up the thief. Take it and get on.”

The man sniffed the mess in the dishpan handed to him. “Government allowance isn’t much worse than the regular thing. But why don’t you sift out the maggots, Doc, before you cook up something left over from the last voyage?”

“Don’t you talk back to me, you no account trash. Don’t you tell me how to cook, or I’ll cut you up into tomorrow’s stew.”

“Yeah? Well, you can eat me right now, you overinflated bug.”

The cook drew a glinting carving knife. It appeared as suddenly as an electric spark. The blade was large enough that Judikha could clearly see her reflection in the shining metal. The still-fuming but outwardly quailed spaceman went forward with his pan while Judikha gingerly picked up her pail of whack. There were curses behind her. Turning, she saw the engineer, MacHinery, a burly, red-faced, red-haired Stilhoofian, with his hand on Birdwhistle’s collar. The engineer had dropped his bundle of tools, but still held a massive wrench. Near them, the cook still had his knife drawn. Something interesting was about to happen and Judikha set her bucket down and watched.

“You great thundering loon,” roared the big engineer in the ear of the slimly-built lieutenant, “and why don’t you go inside with yer pots and pans. Who put you here, to scar up a good deck and make work for a man who already has plenty to do?” He gave Birdwhistle a shake then flung him against a wall. Judikha awaited orders.

“If you please, sir,” whined the lieutenant, “I was told by the captain to clean pots for this gentleman, sir, and he told me to do it here.”

“He did he? And say,” MacHinery addressed the cook, “don’t you know enough of the value of good plating than to sanction this?”

Out came the cook, his eyes gleaming and the customary carving knife gripped tight.

“Don’t you come around interfering between me and my boy! He’s my boy and he’s going to polish my pots wherever I want him to polish ‘em. You hear? And if you don’t like it, you can go aft and talk to the skipper!”

“I’ll talk to the skipper, no doubt,” replied the engineer steadily, as he eyed the flourished knife. “But the question now is, are you threatening me with that weapon? If you are, I’ll get along without him. Put it down.” He took a step toward the cook.

“Keep away there, sir,” stormed the cook, as he raised the knife over his head. “I’m a peaceable being until I’m roused, when I’m mighty bad. You hear—”

The pipe wrench struck him squarely between the central pair of eyes. Anyone who has seen a ship’s engineer at work can understand the development and mobility that those immense wrist-muscles brought into play, and with those muscles alone the engineer had shot the wrench from his shoulder with the speed and accuracy of heat-seeking missile. The cook went down, but arose a second later, smiling—or rather grimacing—apparently heedless of the deep and seeping dent in his scaly forehead—and looked around wildly for his knife, which had flown from his hand.

“Fair exchange is no robbery,” said the engineer cooly, as he twirled the knife by its handle, “and I thought I’d trade weapons with you. But if you’d have mine you might get spaced for the effort. It was not constructed for armor-piercing, and caromed off your superstructure. Get back into your galley, you over evolved bug, or I’ll make space garbage of you. And I might even report you to the skipper and keep your toothpick for my toenail clipper.” He stepped forward, but the cook retreated into the galley.