Daring

51

The question of who would go into the reactor, or the reaction-mass plasma-mixing chamber, or whatever, came quickly to mind as the reports came in on their next jump.

The solar system was blessedly empty of life and hostilities.

It was roughly on the path Nelly said would take them back home.

The system was also very sparse. All it boasted was a small yellow sun and a few rocky planets too close to the sun to support life.

Other than that, the system was dust, some asteroids, and a few passing comets.

“There are some jumps out of here, aren’t there, Chief?” Captain Drago asked as the long litany of nothing went on.

“There is one of Nelly’s fuzzy jumps not too far away. It won’t take us long to get there at our present speed.”

“Sulwan, set a course for it,” Captain Drago ordered. “Use as little reaction mass as you can.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll use a quarter gee to aim us at that puppy, then close down the engines. The chief is right, with the speed we have on the boat, we’ll be seeing what’s on the other side of that jump in half a day at most.”

“And I don’t want to hear any quips about a Flying Dutchman from anyone of the bridge crew, you hear me?”

“Yes, Captain,” came back from all hands.

“Good. Commodore Longknife, I’d like a word with you in my quarters. And bring that damn computer of yours as well.”

“Yes, sir,” came in two-part harmony.

NELLY, DOWN GIRL.

BUT HE ASKED FOR ME!

YES, HE DID. NOW ENJOY THE VINDICATION AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT UNLESS HE TALKS DIRECTLY TO YOU.

THAT’S WHAT I INTENDED TO DO, KRIS. I AM NOT AS INEXPERIENCED AT HUMAN AFFAIRS AS SAY CARA.

GOOD.

Kris and the captain stayed in their seats until Sulwan took the spin off the Wasp. Moving around in even a quarter gee was not to be tried when the ship was spinning like a top.

Captain Drago’s in-space cabin was a tiny thing, with just enough room for a desk and a bunk. He took the desk chair, and Kris found a handhold to keep her in place as the Wasp settled on its course and went to free fall.

Standing there, holding on, seemed rather tiresome, so Kris pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged in midair. She smiled at the thought that she must look like some sort of genie.

Captain Drago allowed himself a dry smile. “I’m glad to see you’re getting your space legs.”

“Or space seat,” Kris quipped.

“There you humans go, telling jokes and not letting me in on the fun.”

“Nelly, you said you’d only talk when talked to.”

“Oops, sorry, Your High-Handedness.”

“I’m glad your pet rock is in fine fettle,” Captain Drago said. “Nelly, show us our course so far.”

His wall screen suddenly became a view of the Milky Way from above. Human space was tiny, but it was marked with HOME in a font that was fit for a classic hand-embroidered sampler. From it were a series of white dots, taking them from Wardhaven to Santa Maria to their wanderings. The battle was marked with a flashing red dot, and their flight since then was green.

“Thank you, Nelly,” the captain said. “What is your estimate of where the next two jumps will take us if we keep up this speed?”

Their present location sprouted a cone of probability that widened even more as it extended a second time for that jump. It showed them getting close to human space. It also gave them a twenty-five-percent probability of landing somewhere in the Iteeche Empire.

Captain Drago gnawed his lower lip as he studied Nelly’s estimate. Then he turned to Kris. “I hadn’t planned on refueling in this system. Still, I don’t much like the look of it, either. Choosing not to refuel is one thing. Not having a choice to refuel is something else entirely different. You have an opinion?”

“Captain, I’ve left the ship driving to you,” Kris pointed out.

“But you’re the princess who needs to make a report to the king, my dear. It wouldn’t do to have us declare war on some bug-eyed monster and you not get home to warn the home front of what’s coming our way.”

“They aren’t bug-eyed monsters,” Nelly pointed out. “In fact, they look amazingly like you humans.”

“Thank you for pointing that out,” Kris said. “Whatever they look like, they’re acting like bug-eyed monsters. And that is what I’ll call them until they’re kind enough to tell us what they want us to call them. Right, Captain?”

“It’s a human thing, Nelly,” the captain said.

Kris found his rather amazing acceptance of Nelly’s viewpoint startling. But then, he couldn’t value her for setting his course and keep thinking of her as a rock, could he?

“Thank you, sir,” Nelly said.

“Captain, for what my views are worth, I suggest we take each jump one at a time. If we go through the next jump, and there are several large gas bags, then we slow down and refuel. If the next system is the same as this system, we keep on going.”

“The probability of there being two rocky systems in a row is quite low,” Nelly put in helpfully.

“The mere fact we’re still alive means we’ve used up a whole lot of good luck, Nelly,” the captain pointed out. “We can’t expect the princess’s pot of gold to keep sprinkling us with the good stuff forever.”

“I don’t have any magic supply of luck,” Kris snapped in good humor.

“Don’t tell me that,” the captain snapped right back, though with a broad smile on his swarthy face. “Without that bucket of luck, you and Ray and Trouble would have been dead long ago.”

Kris chose to let the captain have the last word concerning her notional luck and left him staring at Nelly’s map of hopeful outcomes of the next two jumps.

Hungry, she dropped down to the wardroom to find chow was bread made before the last jump. With no weight on the ship, even the vaunted Cookie was reluctant to try his hand at baking fresh bread. The last of the deli-cut meats had been slapped on with the last of the condiments.

Kris took a turkey sandwich and found that Maggie and Vicky were there before her. Rather than avoid the grand duchess, Kris asked if the seat across from them was taken. Maggie glanced at her young friend and interpreted a minuscule blink of an eye as, “No, please sit down.”

Kris did.

She took a bite of her sandwich. The bread was not up to Cookie’s usual high standards. As she chewed, she eyed Vicky.

The not-so-grand duchess took a sip from tea that no longer steamed.

“You enjoying the hangover?” Kris asked in a voice even she knew was way too cheerful.

“What good is a doctor who can’t cure agony like this?” Vicky whispered.

“When the agony is self-inflicted,” Maggie said, “it only seems right that the path through it should be on your own. But I must point out that I did give you the best medicine available for what ails you.”

“You lie,” the Greenfeld scion mumbled.

She sipped her tea, then managed to raise her eyes to level with Kris. “I hear we’re going to be the real Flying Dutchman.”

“Not from anyone of the bridge crew. The captain strictly forbids it.”

“You have, have you?”

“Not me. Captain Drago.”

“I thought you outranked him. Something about papers and all.”

Kris quickly explained about the rearrangement of commissions on the Wasp but that she had left the experienced captain in his chair.

“You are a whole lot smarter than me,” Vicky said. “I’d have leapt at the chance to sit in the command chair.”

“And ended up like your brother,” Maggie said darkly.

“No doubt,” Vicky said, and sought solace in her tea.

“So where are we going?” Vicky asked.

Kris could almost hear the silence fall in the room. What she said next would be spread from one end of the ship to the other in five minutes. Maybe less.

“We’ve got enough speed on the boat to make a long jump, and since the next jump point is in easy reach, we’re saving our reaction mass. That will let us make two more jumps if we want to before we have to slow down and refuel. If the next system looks like a good place to gas up, we may do it there, or just keep going. I like life when it leaves me lots of choices, don’t you?”

“Speak for yourself,” Vicky grumbled. “This morning I am none too sure that life is all it’s cracked up to be.”

“What do you expect when you’re coughing up a hairball from the hair of the dog that bit you,” Maggie said.

“See the kind of concern I get when I’m on death’s door,” Vicky complained.

“You put yourself on that door, and you’ll walk yourself back from it and think twice about going there again. Right, Your Highness?” Maggie said.

“The agony and the puking was the only thing that cured me,” Kris admitted.

That and the joy of skiff racing from orbit. It was amazing what life had to offer when you weren’t looking at it from the bottom of a bottle every waking moment.

Kris left the wardroom and headed for her bunk. She hadn’t gotten there when Nelly said, “Kris, Captain Drago sends his thanks for you spreading the word that we’ve got several more jumps in this old girl.”

“He could have announced it to all hands.”

“Yes, Kris, but he suspects that its leaking out from you was a much better way to go. Overhearing it in the wardroom seems to lend more credibility to countering the Flying Dutchman myth than the captain himself saying so. I really think you humans are all crazy,” Nelly said.

“Very likely so,” Kris said, letting herself into her empty stateroom. “Nelly, I need some help from you.”

“Just ask.”

“Is it really impossible to fly three shuttles in formation with a balloot between them?”

“Kris, what with the air currents, the launches will be knocked all over the place. The chances of keeping the balloot open enough to gather anything are slim, and there’s the bouncing around. You’re bound to fly into each other, or rip something loose as you get knocked farther apart than your cable allows. Kris, it’s not a mission, it’s a quick suicide.”

“Okay, I understand. You’re right, Nelly. Now, given all that, how do we do it, because I don’t think the Wasp can hold up if it does another dance with a gas giant. Do you?”

“I think the chances of the Wasp’s surviving a refueling pass are about equal to three shuttles managing the same, Kris. Neither one works.”

“Sorry, Nelly. I will not end up dead in space this close to home. We must refuel. We will refuel. You put your kids together, get any help you need from any of the boffins left aboard, and you figure out how we do this. You’re the Great Nelly. Let’s see some of that greatness.”

Nelly called Kris a bad name, but she was very quiet as Kris strapped herself into her bunk.