John Racham (2 page)

"Query!"
The penetrating squeal made him halt, turn,
and pick up his feet to double across to where
Keast
waited for him.

"
You
been
outside again!"

The
lung-pack over his shoulder made it obvious and no comment was called for, but
Query said, mildly, "I do have your permission, Sergeant, on my own
time."

"Don't
remind me. In fact, don't say anything to anybody about it. Return that pack
to stores and get on over to the commandant's office right away. The P.A.'s
been shouting for you for the past ten minutes!"

"For me?"
Query was jarred out of his usual reserve.
"Why
me?"

Keast
contorted his
leatherlike
face into what he probably thought was a smile. "You're shipping out, of
course. What else?"

"Shipping
out?" Query was stunned, and
Keast's
smile died.

"I
don't read you, Query.
Sixty-two men on this dump.
Sixty-eight, now.
And I would have bet every damned one of
them, including me, would give a year's pay and an arm just to get off the
place.
But not you.
Trust you to be different! Here,
gimme
that pack
. I'll
stow
it. Get going,
Instrumentman
,
before you're on a charge for keeping the commandant waiting. Get!"

Query
saluted mechanically and departed at a heavy trot, his mind in chaos over this
shocking news. New arrivals meant a ship in, also meant a possible "end
of sentence" for some others, so
Keast's
deduction was legitimate. But Query prayed it was wrong.
Especially
now.
Just suppose, though, that he was right. Wild thoughts crossed his
mind.
"Permission to refuse the transfer, sir!"
"Why?" "I like it here, sir!" Even in the theater of
his own
mind that dialogue sounded unreal. Commander
Eldredge
would think him crazy, and he would indeed be
shipped out, probably under heavy escort! And there was no more time for miserable
apprehension. He reached
Eldredge's
door, rapped, and
went in on the call. Commander
Eldredge
stood alongside
his desk, and someone else sat in the seat of power. Query trod up to the
commander glumly, saluted.

"
Instrumentman
Query, sir. You sent for me."

Eldredge
gave him a beaky-nosed glare, a nod, then

12
wheeled to the man in the chair. "This
is your man, Admiral. Do you want me to stay?"

"That's
all right,
Eldredge
. Go and see about chow. I'll join
you later. This won't take long and I would rather do it alone. Oh, and pass
the word along to your servicing detail. I want that ship of mine ready to lift
in an hour. Not less!"

Eldredge
went away, leaving Query face to face with
the one man he liked least in
all the
world. That
well-remembered "rocks in a bucket" voice, the astonishing mane of
white hair, the jutting eyebrows and blue cold eyes, the pompous red face and
overbearing manner, the dazzle of gold braid on a black suit that betrayed the
bulge and sag of a flabby, old man.
Admiral Gareth—Gravel
Guts-Evans.

Query
stared for one breath, then lifted his eyes to stare ahead, and saw, off to one
side, discreetly in the background, the slim and erect figure of an aide, a
lieutenant with a loop of braid from one epaulet to belt line. One breath more,
to see that "it" was a female, her black uniform skintight, tailored
to show off her arrogantly jutting bosom and slim waist, her carved profile and
bleak eye disdaining his stare. Then Evans cleared his throat

II

"S
tephen
Q
uery
,
Instrumentman
,
First Class." The old man stated it as if reading from a record.
"Posted here to Step Two six months ago. You know who I am, Query?"
"Yes, sir."

"You were charged with insolence and
insubordination and other conduct considered to be prejudicial to discipline
and good order."

"None of the charges was substantiated,
sir."

"Silence!
Those charges were substantial, Query. Perhaps not in the official
jargon, but in fact they were. In the mind of every Service officer present at
your court-martial you were guilty as hell!"

"Of what, sir?"
Query demanded, and the red face opposite
him grew redder and savage.

13

"Of what you are doing right now,
damnit
!
Arguing.
Doubting.
Violating the spirit of the Service.
Perhaps there was no
crime, not in black and white rule and regulation, but your attitude, your
whole way of thinking is and was offensive to the underlying ethos of the
Service. Man, you can't run an efficient Service unless you have instant and
unquestioning obedience at all times!"

"Even when the given order is obviously and destructively wrong,
sir?"

"That
has nothing whatever to do with it, Query!" Evans was snorting now, as if
trying to breathe fire. "That is somebody else's responsibility, not
yours!" Query let it go. This had all been hashed over before, was a dead
issue. He wondered what Evans was leading up to, and then it came.

"However,"
the old man said, in a slightly milder tone, "it has since come to my
attention that the person with whom you had your argument, your superior
officer—in name, at least—is, in fact, a stupid, blundering and incompetent
fool. He has been stripped, and there are inquiries in hand designed to reveal
how he ever got where he was; the fools who put him in that rank will regret
it. I considered it my duty to inform you of that, and I have done so.
Well?"

Query frowned at the ruddy face before him.
What did the old fool want now, gratitude? "I don't know what to say, sir.
I can't see how the action you describe has anything to do with me, sir."

"Right!
Nothing at all to do with
you.
But it has to do with me. Query, I know something of what the rank
and file
think
of me, and it doesn't bother me in the
least. I've never tried to be popular. Not my job. But I do claim, and like to
think, that I am a fair man. I made an error. It is human to make errors, Query,
and I am human, no matter what you may have heard to the contrary. I made a
mistake, and I have admitted it to you. Had I known what a blasted incompetent
fool Lieutenant Rostov was, your case would have ended differently. As it is, I
am out one technician lieutenant, and one highly competent
instru-mentman
is wasting his skill here. I have examined your records. You are more than
competent. It is in my power, and it is my decision, that you are, as of now,
Technical

Sergeant
Query. Understood? I heard your chow bell just now. Go and eat, then pack your
kit and be on my ship before I lift off!"

Query gulped.
"Sir?
Your ship?"
_

"Not
as crew, man! It's not a blasted battleship! It's my staff transport. You'll be
a passenger. I'm on my way to the war zone. I only stopped off here for a quick
check, to drop off six replacements . . . and to collect you. You'll be posted
properly, Sergeant, when I turn you over to Fleet Admiral
Nimson's
H.Q. Is that clear?"

It
was all too clear, and disastrous. Query gulped.
"Sir!"
It came out choked and he tried again, desperately.
"Sir!"

"Now
what?"

"Sir,
is there any way in which I can request permission to—to refuse the
appointment, sir?"

"Blast
my eyes, you're doing it again!" Evans
purpled,
hit the desk with a fist. "Get out of here. Get your chow. Get your kit.
Get yourself aboard my ship. Report yourself to my aide, Lieutenant Evans,
here.
Do
it like that, or God help you! I mean that,
Sergeant! Now get!"

Query
got. Shocked into a daze, he found his seat at the meal table and ate
mechanically, unaware of the taste, half hearing the chatter about his ears.
For once in his life his mind failed to work. Always, until the Service had
reached out and captured him, he had been able to think his way over and around
anything and anyone, had been able to stay indifferent to the puerile play of
other people. Space Service had changed that, had screwed him down into a slot
where he couldn't wriggle out, had
made
him
be involved, like it or not, and had hurt him severely many times. "The
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" had been hard sometimes, but this
dwarfed all the rest. A quiet obscurity, an exciting secret all his own, and it
was all to be ripped out of his grasp—and there was nothing he could do!

"Old Gravel Guts has his nerve, you have
to admit!" The nearby speaker caught Query's stunned ear, set him
listening.

"That
old adjective doesn't have nerves!" someone else disagreed. "Look at
it. Every last man in this dump hates his insides, and he knows it, and yet he
jets in here, bold

15
 
.

as
brass, and drops off six more men. And you can guess the trip they had. That
bucket of his rates four, all told!"

"And
then," somebody else chimed in, "he has the plastic-lined gall to
demand a full service check out in an hour!
Nerve?
He
ain't
even human!"

"Me,
I'd like to stuff a warhead up his stem tubes. Man, would he ever lift off
then!" There came a general chuckle, not mirthful, until one more voice
piped up.

"He's
human, all right. You should take a good look at that aide of his and you'd
know why he's in such a blazing rush to get on his way. She is built like every
dame I ever dreamed of and then some!"

"She?"
there came an unbelieving chorus, and then another voice, slow and cynical,
full of conviction.

"She's
a she, all right. I was on the tube when they came inboard. And she has the
giant economy size of everything you dream about. And she knows it, too. But
you can have my ration of that any time."

"Fussy
in your old age, Ham?"

"Just careful,
Buggsy
.
She's his daughter. If you want to fool
around with a chip off that old block, you can have mine."

The
badinage went away as Query remembered. The old man had said "Lieutenant
Evans" sure enough.
His pilot-aide.
His daughter.
It was a safe bet she'd never won her
commission the hard way. And the old devil had the nerve to call
himself
a
fair
man?
Somehow, that touch of cynicism put the capper on Query's helplessness, dropped
him to the nadir of despair. He finished eating and went to pack, not a long
job at all. And he had no one to call friend, to say good-bye to, no one to
give a damn as he made his way through the workshop dome and to the service
tube. As he shook his duffel bag onto his shoulder and stooped to enter, there
was one who came close to touch his arm. A lean and wild-looking power man he
knew only by sight, and the name, Michaels.

"
Instrumentman
!
You got a job detail on that ship?"

"Do I look like I'm on
a work detail?"

"No.
I guess not. But why else would you be going aboard?"

Deep down inside, Query had a primitive
savagery that he was ashamed of and usually able to control, but it

16
burst out now. "Would you believe Admiral Evans is giving me a
lift out to the war zone, so I can get in the fighting?"

The
reaction that came was not what he expected. Michaels looked suddenly
stricken. "You wouldn't fool a guy, would you?"

"No,"
Query sighed, his rage going as fast as it had come. "No, I'm not fooling.
I got an honorable forgiveness, and I'm on my way to
Alkaid
in that ship. Why?"

"Nothing."
Michaels grew suddenly furtive. "Forget it. I don't know you.
Nothing!"
And he went away, leaving Query to frown,
shake his head, and then duck into the tube along its concertina length to the
air lock. His experience of ships was slight, and he had never seen one this
small before. It took him a moment to get his bearings.
Probably
somebody's private yacht, before the war.
People had private lives
before the war, too. Like Query, who had been
a
designer, architect, artist and dreamer, with little success in any but
the
last.
Not now. He shrugged, went up
a
ladder, then another, and he was in the control room,
a
small and compact space like an upturned pudding basin. The roof was a
dome of
glassite
with titanium panel shutters. The
small space was packed with instruments in panels and boxes, and there were
three seats.
And one occupant.

Seen
this close, she was definitely female. Her black, one piece suit fitted like
paint over a shape that was studied insolence, blatantly exhibitionist,
swelling close to him as she turned, but the gold braid on wrist and shoulder
put him in his place and her level, brown-eyed stare kept him there coldly. She
had to put her head back to look him in the eye, but she still conveyed the
impression of looking down her nose at him.

"Technical
Sergeant Query," she acknowledged his presence and her grasp of the
situation crisply, "we have
a
moment
or two before lift-off. Stow your duffel in cabin four and then check over the
engine space. Make sure none of your repair and maintenance colleagues have
left anything undone or bits sculling about. Give
a
special look at the second stage heat exchangers. They were reading high
when we came down. I reported that. It should have been dealt with. Check
it!"