All That Outer Space Allows (Apollo Quartet Book 4) (9 page)

He turned away and swore under his breath. Striding across to his desk, he jabbed a finger down at his intercom. “Nirmala,” he snapped. “I’m going to be out of the office for—” He glanced back over his shoulder at Suzanne, who was smiling uncertainly— “For about thirty minutes,” he said. “Maybe an hour.”

Returning to Suzanne, he added, “I don’t know why you want to see the docks. You won’t understand anything, and I’m really busy at the moment. I wish you women could have picked a better time.”

“Is it because of Project Philadelphia?” she asked.

He glanced at her sharply. “How do you know about that? It’s supposed to be top secret.”

“Kristin told me.”

“She shouldn’t know herself. But I guess that’s her husband’s problem.”

They left the office and took an elevator to a higher floor
, which was obviously for senior management: the linoleum floor was now carpeted and the walls were covered in discreetly patterned wallpaper. They stopped before an imposing double-door and, after a nod at the secretary sitting behind a desk to one side, the door swung open. This was the office of Kristin’s husband, and it was three times the size of a project engineer’s, with a deep carpet, a large polished steel desk, some upholstered plastic chairs, and a wall of television screens giving views over the entire spaceyard. Standing before the desk were three men and four women. Suzanne recognised Kristin straightaway, and with her were Eniola, Layla and Aiko. Their husbands were project engineers too, and they were the only other wives who had declared an interest in a tour of the docks. Kristin’s husband had agreed to it because, she claimed, he couldn’t refuse her anything.

Kristin’s husband, who had been sitting behind the desk, rose to his feet and led the small party out of his office, into an elevator, and out of the building onto the large open area fronting the docks. There were fifteen docks arranged in three rows. To the right were workshops and hangars and that single solitary dock, and to the left storage yards and tank farms.

After being led past docks one through five, while their husbands explained the progress of each spaceship and its construction, and then back up past docks ten to six, Suzanne had to admit she was bored.

“Is that Project Washington?” Suzanne asked her husband, pointing at the spaceship in a dock to one side of the other fifteen.

“Philadelphia,” he snapped, “it’s Project Philadelphia. And yes, it is.”

“Can we have a look at that? It sounds really exciting—an invisible spaceship!”

After some discussion, Kristin’s husband decided it was permissible for the women to be shown around the Project Philadelphia spaceship. In fact, since there was no work being done on the spaceship at the moment, it was the perfect time for a tour of her interior.

She was far from prepossessing. Her
sleek hull was battered and streaked, and the great round engine bells of the spacedrive were blackened and charred. The five women stood at the railing beside the entrance ramp to the spaceship and gazed, puzzled and a little fearful, at its battle-scarred bulk.

“The United Earth Space Ship
Aldridge
,” said Kristin’s husband. “She’s a Procyon class destroyer. Normal crew is sixteen, but we only use six for this project.”

“To make her invisible?” asked Suzanne.

“Yes, to make her invisible. I won’t explain how it works.” He gave a forced laugh. “You have to let us keep some secrets, you know.”

“Let’s go aboard,” one of the other men said.

Suzanne’s husband led the way up the ramp and through the open airlock into the UESS
Aldridge
. Both airlock hatches had been left open, and from the inner one a straight passage led both forward and aft. The party headed toward the bow. The interior of the destroyer was exactly how Suzanne had pictured it: grey metal decking underfoot, grey metal walls to either side, light-fittings enclosed in grey metal guards, grey metal hatches every ten feet. She felt a little silly, walking along that grey military gangway in her burgundy peplum jacket and matching skirt. All five of the women wore brightly-coloured outfits: burgundy and orange and scarlet and lilac and aquamarine. It was as if a flock of tropical birds had invaded the spaceship.

The party came to a steep staircase, a “ladder”, and the wives halted in consternation. It looked too steep to climb in high heels, but the women were reluctant to remove their shoes because they might get a run in their nylons. Since they had no choice, the wives ascended the ladder as carefully as they could.

“We should have put them in overalls,” complained one of the husbands.

The men all laughed.

At the end of the upper passage, they stepped through a hatch and onto the ship’s bridge. It was a cramped space, filled with acceleration couches and consoles, with readouts and dials and buttons and switches on every available surface. Suzanne’s husband leaned forward and flicked a set of switches on an instrument panel on the roof. There was loud
thunk
, causing a couple of the women to give muted shrieks, and then a horizontal line of bright light appeared at the front of the bridge. It slowly widened, dispelling the dimness, until a wide forward-looking viewport was revealed.

“Armoured shutter,” explained Suzanne’s husband.

He took her elbow and directed her further forward between two of the acceleration couches. “The pilot sits here and the astrogator here. Over there is where the sensor tech sits, and behind him is the engineer. The captain sits at the back there, and beside him is the head gunner, the torpedo man and the fireman for the space lance.”

Suzanne had to admit this tour was proving less interesting than she had expected. She only hoped it would make her husband feel more comfortable talking to her about his work, so he wouldn’t lock himself away in his study every evening. Nonetheless, she smiled and tried to appear engaged but, looking about the bridge, she saw exactly the same expression on the other wives’ faces.

Something began to make a noise outside, a strange whoop-whoop unfamiliar to Suzanne.

One of the men swore: “What the hell’s going on?”

Kristin’s husband pulled a porta-phone out of his pocket and spoke quickly into it. “There’s a fire in workshop thirty-two,” he informed the other men.

“That’s right next to tank farm fourteen!” exclaimed Eniola’s husband.

“If that goes, we lose half the stores,” Layla’s husband pointed out.

The men pushed their way to the bridge hatch.

“What about us?” asked Kristin.

“Stay here,” ordered her husband. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll send someone to come and fetch you.”

The men hurried off the bridge.

Kristin shrugged theatrically. “Well, ladies,” she said, “so much for that. I guess we ought to make our way back to the main door, or whatever it’s called.”

“Oops,” said Aiko.

Something began to thrum deep in the spaceship. The deck began to vibrate and a smell of ozone filled the bridge.

“Oh my God!” said Kristin. “What have you done, darling?”

“I didn’t see the button,” Aiko protested. “Look, it’s not even supposed to be here, it’s like it’s just stuck on or something.”

They all started bickering. Kristin was blocking the exit from the bridge, and Suzanne wanted to leave the spaceship. She didn’t like it in here—even with the window uncovered, there were too many dark corners. Layla complained there was oil on her lilac skirt and she’d never get it clean. Eniola was scared of whatever it was Aiko had switched on—out of fear of what the spaceship might do or what her husband might do Suzanne could not tell. Aiko was adamant it wasn’t her fault—whatever it was—and Kristin was determined they stay where their husbands had left them.

Aiko and Kristin snapping at each other started to annoy Suzanne, so she made her way to the front of the bridge, hoping she might see the men returning through the window. She thought about sitting in one the acceleration couches, but it would mean clambering over the armrest and she couldn’t do that in her skirt and heels. She could see some figures strolling toward the dock. As they drew closer, she recognised her husband. And with him were the husbands of the other women.

As the men reached the dock, they stumbled to a halt and gazed up at the spaceship. They looked this way and that, some put their hands to their brow to shade their eyes. One of them pointed along the length of the dock at something, and suddenly they were slapping each other on the back, shaking hands and looking very pleased with themselves.

“Kristin?” said Suzanne. “Can you come here a moment?”

“What is it, darling?”

Kristin asked Aiko to be quiet with a raised hand, and wormed her way to the front of the bridge to stand beside Suzanne.

“Look at them,” Suzanne told her. “Why are they behaving like that?”

“I’ve no idea,” replied Kristin. “But that humming noise is really starting to get on my nerves.”

“Now what are they up to?”

They watched the men run along the side of the dock to the ramp leading up to the hatch. One of them stepped onto the ramp and hesitantly approached the side of the spaceship.

Five minutes later, Suzanne’s husband arrived panting on the bridge. “What the hell did you do?” he demanded.

All of the women pretended not to know what he meant.

“One of you did something,” he insisted.

“We’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re on about, darling,” declared Kristin.

“The invisibility!” he exclaimed. “It works!”

Another figure appeared in the bridge hatch. It was Layla’s husband. “Did you turn it off?” he asked.

Suzanne’s husband turned to him. “Turn what off?”

“The field. As soon as you entered the ship, it became visible.”

“I haven’t touched anything.”

“I can still hear that hum,” Kristin complained.

“What did you do?” demanded Suzanne’s husband.

“I don’t remember,” replied Aiko, either because she truly didn’t or because she was afraid to admit she had done anything at all.

Suzanne’s husband began to herd the women from the bridge. They trooped along the corridor until they reached the top of the ladder. The two men clambered down it, and the women followed gingerly. Halfway down, the heel of one of Eniola’s scarlet pumps stuck in the edge of a tread. Layla was behind her. While the two struggled, the rest followed the men to the airlock and out of the spaceship onto the ramp. Suzanne saw Kristin’s husband look up in surprise. He grabbed one of the other men and pointed at the women. No,
past
them. Suzanne looked behind her. What was the problem? There was the UESS
Aldridge
, looking just as large as life, its grey bulk filling the dock.

Eniola and Layla appeared in the airlock. Eniola was limping, but not because she was injured, and complaining of a run. As the two of them stepped through the hatch and onto the ramp, the men began to talk excitedly amongst themselves.

It took the men less than thirty minutes to determine that the invisibility field only worked when two or more of the women were aboard the spaceship. A single man, however, and UESS
Aldridge
remained stubbornly visible. It wasn’t just Suzanne, Kristin, Eniola, Layla or Aiko, either. The men fetched secretaries and nurses, and they too triggered the invisibility. But no man could do it. Aiko eventually confessed to having pressed a button, and it proved to be the main power switch for the invisibility field generator. None of the settings had been changed from the last test, which had of course been unsuccessful, before the wives had boarded.

The men began to talk among themselves.

“I don’t understand it at all,” Suzanne’s husband said.

“Something to do with women’s bio-electric field?” suggested Layla’s husband.

“We need to do more tests.”

“We can’t tell the navy it needs to crew all its destroyers with women.”

“They’ll cancel the project.”

“Whoever heard of an all-female space navy? It’s damned ridiculous!”

Kristin took umbrage at this last comment. “Why is it ridiculous?” she demanded. “We can fight as well as men. Women have fought throughout history.”