John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel (3 page)

"Bertrand Sims," an elderly white-haired man next to Finn announced. "I am supercargo, accountant, and philosopher. The exotic beauty seated across from me is Nancy Wu, officer of Communications and Hydroponics and sometime specialist in alien botany." Petite, raven-haired, and almond-eyed, Nancy seemed far too young to be a ship's officer.

"Does everybody double up on duties here?" asked Torwald.

"Usually," Ham replied. "We're a multitalented bunch. Michelle's a zoologist, Finn's a chemist, I'm a heavy-weapons specialist, Bert knows history, Nancy plays the violin, and Achmed's a holographer. What do you do besides what you signed on for, Torwald?"

"Should I tell you? I'll get roped into a lot of stuff that's outside my duties."

"That's for sure," Ham said blandly. "But you might as well own up to it now. We'll find out eventually."

"Well, just about everything. I was on solo, two and three-man scoutships for most of the War. That took training in just about every ship's position. I'm good at reconnaissance and charting, I know a little geology, and I can handle mining and quarrying. I can pilot atmospheric craft and small watercraft. I can handle light weapons and explosives."

"That's good," said the mate. "With a crew this size, we can use as many capabilities as we can come by. What was your last ship?"

"The
Purple Turkey.
She was a small prospector for Orion Metals and Crystals. The company went bust and the ship was put up for auction."

"Their loss is our gain." Ham turned to Kelly, "Son, you're about to learn spacing from the bottom up. Who wants him first?" He looked around the table.

"Dibs!" said Achmed. "Lafayette and I are going to do a complete overhaul and cleaning of the engine room once we're in space. We can use another hand."

"I'll come down and give you a hand if I can spare the time," said Torwald.

"Appreciate it," said the Arab. The intercom bonged.

"Up ship in five minutes," Ham announced. "Secure those cups. Lafayette, escort Kelly to his quarters and show him how to prepare for lift-off. Torwald, you come with me."

Kelly followed Lafayette from the mess. They descended the ladder to the lower-deck companionway, then scuffled quickly over the catwalk through the hold. Just past the hold, Lafayette opened a hatch that revealed a cramped cubicle outfitted with a folding bunk, a table, and a chair. Kelly stretched himself on the bunk at a gesture from the older boy.

Lafayette drew two broad straps across Kelly's belly and thighs, leaving his arms outside. "These aren't really necessary, Kelly, but the safety regs say you have to be strapped in when you take off. With the grav field on, you don't usually feel much. My cabin's just across the companionway, and Achmed's in the one next to mine. You can unstrap when you hear the next
bong."
With that, he darted out, closing the hatch behind him.

Kelly waited tensely, still unable to believe that it was all happening. Less than two houis before, he had been moping in a spaceport cafe, no closer to space than on the day he was released from the orphanage. Now, he had a berth aboard a tramp freighter preparing to take off for who knew where, lie was terrified that, the dream over, he would awaken on a bunk in a State transient house.

The
Space Angel
began to vibrate, and Kelly felt a :.low, directionless pressure that lasted several seconds, then stopped, to be replaced by a feeling of almost-wcightlessness. Suddenly, normal gravity resumed. In a perfect artificial-gravity field, acceleration should be undetectable except by instruments, but the new ship's boy was becoming aware that nobody had developed a perfect grav field yet.

At the next
bong,
Kelly unstrapped, rose, and examined his cabin.
His
cabin! He had never had a private room in his life. The closest he had ever come was sleeping under bushes in a park out of sight of other people. The compartment was a small Spartan chamber, but he wouldn't have traded it for a suite in the most luxurious hotel on Earth. This was a spacer's cabin, perhaps four paces long and three wide, the bunk, small desk, and chair folding neatly against the pale-green bulkhead. Former occupants had left their mark: welded to a bulkhead was a hook that must once have held a punching bag; someone had laboriously engraved an alien landscape above the bunk, apparently using manual chasing tools.

He shook his head as he surveyed his new domain, remembering the orphanage, the State transient houses he had lived in; long dormitory halls lined with stacked bunks, never any privacy, and the inevitable thefts and victimization by gangs. He was still musing when Torwald's head appeared through the hatch.

"Got your stuff stowed?"

"I just got out of the bunk a minute ago."

"You'll never cut it in space if you're going to move so slowly, Kelly. Here, your clothes go in this locker." Torwald opened a door into the bulkhead opposite the bunk. He helped Kelly hang his clothes and showed him where to stow his personal belongings. There was pathetically little to put away. They were interrupted by Finn, the navigator, who stuck his head through the hatch.

"Come forward to the laundry and draw your linen, you two. Torwald, the laundry'll be in your charge now, by the way."

"I figured that. The quartermaster usually gets stuck with the odd jobs that don't fall into anyone else's realm of competence."

When Kelly returned with his linen, Torwald showed him how to fold his bunk neatly into its wall slot, then disappeared. Kelly gave his room a final fond glance, then he wandered forward to the mess, where he found Ham and the skipper reviewing some paperwork. The skipper looked up and caught sight of him.

"Kelly, why don't you give Michelle and Tor a hand in the galley?"

"Aye, aye, Skipper," Kelly said, feeling very spacemanlike. He found Michelle and Torwald sweating away in the cramped galley. An unfamiliar but delicious odor hung in the air.

"What's that smell, Torwald?" Kelly asked.

"That's fresh bread baking, can you believe it, kid? We landed in a gold mine!"

"Of course I'm baking bread," Michelle said. "As long as the flour holds out, anyway. Kelly, get some plates out and set the table. Tor, fetch three onions from the lower bin, there, and begin chopping them up." Torwald tied on an apron and set to work while Kelly tried to figure out where the plates were secured. When he returned from setting the mess table, he found Torwald bent over a retractable chopping board with his sleeves rolled up.

Michelle was staring at his exposed wrists, which were encircled by bands of thick scar tissue.

"My God! Where did you get those?"

"Never seen manacle scars, Michelle? You should
see
the ones on my ankles. Leg irons are heavier than manacles."

"I'd heard they did things like that to POWs, but I didn't believe the stories," she said, with a slight shudder.

"You shouldn't believe all the propaganda you hear; nevertheless, some of it's true."

Kelly had seen similar scars on discharged veterans in Earthport, and he had heard some of their stories - enough to realize that Torwald must be an exceptional mental and physical specimen to have survived such treatment with his mind and health intact.

Torwald and Michelle worked together smoothly. Both were proficient from long experience at producing large meals from the tiny space of a ship's galley. Kelly was kept busy hunting up utensils while Torwald prepared the ingredients and Michelle did the cooking.

"I just remembered something," said Michelle. "Kelly how many places did you set?"

"Ten."

"Set another. There's a man aboard you two haven't met yet. He's a factor or something for the company we've contracted with for this voyage."

"Just what is our job this trip?" Torwald asked. "The holds are empty."

"It's all very hush-hush. The skipper and Ham wouldn't say anything before we left Earth. We're supposed to find out after dinner."

Little was said during the meal, but everyone occasionally glanced at the man seated to the skipper's left. He was a serious little man, balding and paunchy, obviously not a spacer.

Though he had never eaten so well in his life, Kelly was relieved when the meal was finished, because he found the exigencies of spacer table manners nerve-wracking. First, Lafayette had rebuked him for passing the salt with his left hand: many spacers came from cultures that forbade handing things with the left hand, so the custom was generally observed throughout the spacing community. When Kelly later passed a plate piled with sliced ham—carefully using his right hand—to Achmed, the boy was surprised to learn that both the engineer and the skipper belonged to faiths that did not permit them to touch pork. Kelly was thoroughly mortified by the time the meal ended and was grateful when the skipper introduced the stranger.

"This is Sergei Popov, factor for Minsk Mineral. He'll be along to supervise the operation we're embarking upon. Suppose you outline the project for the benefit of the crew, Sergei."

"Minsk Mineral is a small, new company," Popov began. "The company was founded by Aleksandr Strelnikov, a geologist. During the War he was a site surveyor for construction outfits building bases in advance of Naval expansion. As geologists will, he made frequent side trips from the construction sites to explore the peculiarities of planetary makeup.

"On Alpha Tau Pi Rho/4, a planet of geological singularity, he made a find. In a range of hills near the base site, he found a stratum of pure diamond crystal so large that it could be cut in slabs. Needless to say, Mr. Strelnikov said nothing about his find to his superiors."

"Shortbeams!" Torwald said.

"I beg your pardon?" Popov looked perplexed.

"When I was interviewed, the skipper asked if I could handle a shortbeam cutter."

"Precisely. Your quarrying skills will be necessary when we reach our destination. Now, where was I? Oh, yes! When Strelnikov returned home at the end of the War, he found some supporters. Together, they scraped up enough financial capital to form Minsk Mineral. For camouflage, we have spent several years working small claims for marginal profit. Now, we go after the big prize. We filed a mineral claim to this small site, supposedly on wildcat speculation. With the proceeds from this voyage, we'll take the mineral option for the entire planet. We decided to hire a tramp for the project in order to escape the notice of our very powerful competition."

He had their full attention. Diamond crystal was one of the most valuable of natural materials, in heavy demand by hundreds of industries. The scent of a pure stratum on an unclaimed world would bring the big mining interests down on it like piranhas. If they could get a full cargo off that world and on the market before they were detected, they would be rich and safe.

"Minsk," the skipper said, "has cut the
Angel
in for a decent share of the profits of this voyage, plus a generous bonus for every member of the crew." At once it was clear that there was no regular ship's hire. If the voyage failed, the ship would be insolvent and they would all be stranded when they reached port. "Any objections?"

"Hell, no," Torwald ventured when nobody spoke up. "When you roll for the big stakes, you take the big risks."

"Why didn't Strelnikov come along personally?" Finn asked.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Strelnikov was blinded during the fighting on Li Po. It will be several years before his new optics are reliable enough for him to space again."

"Any more questions?" the Skipper asked. There were none. "All right, then, Lafayette, you and Kelly wash up after meals. We'll let the artists handle the preparation. Torwald, you'll be Michelle's assistant in the galley from now on." There was no objection from Torwald.

"Tor," Ham said, "tomorrow, familiarize yourself with the supply room. That's your new bailiwick and it's a mess. Among other things, there's a set of short-

pa beam cutters in there that we picked up at an auction on Earth. They were operative then. You'll have to maintain them as best you can."  

"Any other business?" asked the skipper.

"One thing," Michelle chimed in, "Kelly, take this,"

she tossed him a flat metal box, about five centimeters on a side, with a metal chain. "Wear that around your neck at all times from now on. Those are your tracetabs. They contain all the trace elements your body needs. There are about three thousand tabs in that box. If we go on xenorations, you'll

need them."

Kelly seemed puzzled.

"There are about a thousand planets,"

Sims ex-plained, "that supply native food edible by humans. On maybe half a dozen of them, all the trace elements necessary for human survival are present in the food."

"If the soil and atmosphere are comparable to Earth's," Michelle continued, "native flora and fauna may give you all the protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins you need, but trace elements can be hard to come by. You'll die just as dead from lack of magnesium, phosphorous, or any number of other elements as from lack of water. If you get stranded on a xenoworld, that box can be your lifeline. Always keep it filled."

Kelly looked down at the box in his palm, then he