Rimrunners

CHAPTER 12

We got a water-leak in galley," Musa said wearily, "Bernstein wants you to fix."

Then Musa stopped and looked at her twice.

So did anyone who got up close.

"You caught hell," Musa said. "You got trouble from anybody?"

Bet shook her head. "In the shop," she said. "Tried to recoil some line, it snaked round and got me."

Best lie she could think of, that could account for a bruise on her head and a cut lip.

"Hey," Musa said, worried-looking, "you got to watch that stuff, Bet, don't pick any fights with it."

Like hell Musa believed that story.

"I'm all right," she said.

And got on the damned leaky coupling in the galley, a crawl through an access barely body-wide, and a nice flat-on-her-back and slightly over to the side reach next to a damned, noisy refrigeration compressor in a space that gave you barely enough room to get a wrench on the bastard. Bernstein, she figured, was well through the necessary jobs and into the real busywork scut.

"Sonuvabitch," she kept saying between her teeth, just to keep the breath moving, and other things, while hot water dripped in her face.

She got the line disconnected, got the failed coupling off and stuffed it, the work of the two fingers that could reach it, into one pocket, got the replacement out of the opposite and lay there blinking hot water drip and trying to get the damn line dried off to take the adhesive on the coupling.

Effin' plumbing. Effin' same effin' system since humans blasted out of atmosphere. Maybe before. Modern effin' starship and the effin' plumbing got stressed in the effin' expensive swing-section galley and cheap little effin' gaskets had to be seated or nothing worked.

And the drip never ran out. Ran over her face and into her eye and down her cheek into her hair, while the damn thing had to fit on just so, and the damn com was sputtering at her ear, the plug come loose and about to fall out where nobody human could get at it—had to wear the damn thing, reg-u-la-tion, when you were working in a hole like this.

"Yeager," it said, nattering at her personally this time.

"Yeah," she said, but the mike was out of reach too, the way she had to tilt her head to get the band-light to bear on what she was doing. "Yeah, I got my page—just a minute—

Bernstein checking up on her.

"Yeager."

"I got my fuckin' hands full!" she yelled at it.

"Yeager! Check in!"

She held the line and the coupling with one hand, shaking head to foot, made a desperate reach to adjust the com. "Yeager here!" she yelled.

And heard Bernstein's voice. "—forty seconds to firing."

Oh, my God.

"Say again," she said. Like a fool she grabbed after the coupling and jammed it home on the snap-ring.

"This ship is moving, Yeager! Thirty seconds!"

She reached after the cut-off valve, screwed it open, a half-dozen fast turns. The coupling held.

"Yeager!"

She started eeling out of that access, using heels and hips and hands, fast as she could go.

The take-hold bell started ringing.

"You got hot water!" she yelled to the com. "Can't get your access-door!"

"Dammit, where are you, Yeager?"

She scrambled up and grabbed the E-belt, bright yellow D-ring, put her back to the galley wall and snapped the shoulder-hip restraint closed, put a hand behind her head, pulling her head down. "Clear!" she yelled. "Clear!"

Loki kicked, her neck-muscles strained, feet lost their footing and the whole galley-cylinder rumbled on its track, reorienting until the strain became weight on her feet, and the general com was yelling: Going for jump. Move with caution. You have time to secure doorways and stow hazards. Burn-rate will increase two hundred forty-five percent over the next three minutes…

She unclipped the E-belt and let it snap back into its housing, she knelt down, swung the access to and screwed the bolts tight by hand, fighting the drag that tried to tear her hand down.

Up, then, weighing near double, hauling that weight erect, hand back to pull the jumpseat down, straddle it, pull the yellow D-ring again, to haul it over, get the tab inserted.

Down the burn-deck, complete vacancy—crew had gone to whatever E-clips they could find, against solid surfaces, inside compartments, no time to rig the hammocks.

Hell and away more comfortable, flat on your back on the inside burn-deck, than upright on a jumpseat in a swing-section.

This ship is approaching jump…

Got a problem, we got a problem, God, something's on our tail out there…

I had to stop for the damn cut-off valve. God, I could've been stuck in there—

God, God—we're really moving—got a hell of a push on this ship—where's my trank pack?

She fought for air, felt the drag at gut and joints, lifted a hand up after the trank pack in her breast-pocket, found it, got her fist around it and squeezed the trigger against her neck, only bare skin she could orient to.

We going to shoot at that sonuvabitch or what?

Where's NG? Musa and Bernstein?

Everybody all right?

Got hot tea when we get there.

Wherever…

… coming up again, siren blowing… Battle stations, condition red, condition red. … This ship is now inertial… Stand by…

Crew may attend emergencies with caution…

Condition still red… Medical to 23…

Hell of a way to be first in line, she thought, helping Johnson the cook throw trank-packs and c-packs at crew who got themselves to the counter, handing out ten-packs for the scarcely mobile to carry back to friends a little wobblier, while the com thundered advisories at them—

"A second jump is possible but not imminent. We are presently in transmission silence…

"We have suffered one fatality. Scan-tech John Handel Thomas—"

"Shit!" Johnson groaned.

"—died instantly on impact. The captain expresses his personal regrets.

"Station-chiefs and area monitors, medical is attending two serious injuries: do not send minor injuries to sickbay…"

"Yeager," her personal com said, Bernstein alive and functioning.

"Yessir!" she said, never stopping the rhythm.

"See me when we're stable."

"Yessir." That tone was trouble. Her stomach had a new reason for upset.

"This is the captain speaking. A bogey of carrier-class entered system. Our exit at an opposed angle gives us a considerable lead time into this system, we hope enough to make finding us difficult. We are presently low-V and positional calculations are virtually complete. I'm allowing crew to stand down from battle stations on a condition yellow. Off-shift crew, rig for jump. We'll remain in condition yellow until further notice from command. …"

"We will manage a shift-change in five minutes," came the precise, clipped voice she'd learned as alterday command, Orsini—via the general com, while she was having a sandwich, privilege of being stuck in rec with the mainday lot. "Alterday crew prepare your lists."

"What do I do about shift-change?" she asked Bernstein via com.

Bernstein said, "Call it luck. I'll skin you next shift. Tell Jim Merrill get his butt up here on call."

"I got to tell him?" she protested. Merrill probably reckoned that her presence here in rec having a sandwich meant she'd been half-shift on a temp, and that Jim Merrill was therefore going to skip a little duty-time.

"He can bring your stuff up," Bernstein said.

So she had to go to Merrill, over on the bench contentedly having his sandwich, and say, "We're complete on the galley plumbing job. I got a call from Bernstein says tell you report on the change and bring the gear up."

"Shit!" Merrill said. She unbelted the tools, took off the com and turned it and the duty over to him.

But before she could get back to the counter she had Liu-the-bitch on her, telling her she was low man in Engineering and she was pleading off on Bernstein, getting special privileges like a half-shift and that sandwich and by implications too vague to prosecute, fraternizing with some unnamed officer to do it.

You didn't argue with Liu, the word was. Liu was senior on mainday Engineering, a small, almond-eyed, black-haired woman who carried a knife, at least on dockside. Bet looked down at the shoulder-high attack, Bet listened patiently to the high-decibel shouting, then said: "I got no quarrel with your worrying about it, mate. But I spent down to jump under that damn galley cabinet, and she's all fixed and you got hot water and the sandwich was free, so I'm not going to turn it down. Matter of fact, I was up there handing out packs and hauling out sandwiches with Cook, it being my shift. Don't tell me about lay-abouts."

Liu fumed. Merrill sulked. Other crew stared, a whole shift of people she didn't know—a scary lot of people she didn't know, who had themselves a shouting controversy to entertain them instead of the chance of a take-hold and another jump.

She got speculative stares, caught a little edge of a whisper to the effect that: "That's Yeager. Liu better watch herself. Want to lay a bet?"

The other man made the obvious pun.

She'd heard that one since she was eight. Funny, she thought.—Like hell.

"Shift-change! No loitering and no talking!" Fitch's voice went straight to the bone. "Inverse order of seniority, sign-off protocols are word of mouth! Go, go, go!

Everybody made it, mainday to stations, alterday back to quarters, at least to the corridor where mainday had rigged the hammocks. She saw Musa and NG come in and she treated herself to a beer, since Cook said her credit had come through, and she bought them both one, no question about her being polite to her whole shift, and getting briefed while she was doing it. "Go on, sit down," she said, to both of them, while they were drawing the beers, "I can buy my mates a drink, f'God's sake, NG, you don't have to be such an effin' stand-off—" Innocent as could be, for the benefit of whoever was listening.

And: "Yeah, NG, sit down," Musa said. "Woman wants to buy you a beer, you better be polite about it."

NG sat down, worried-looking, on Musa's other side, in the crowded goings-on in rec, people so busy getting fed and settled, Bet thought, nobody was going to notice.

"Everything come through all right?" she asked.

"Damn press was running," Musa said, "and we got the master shut-down, but we got stuff stuck all over the mold. Mainday's going to bitch—"

Liu was Musa's opposite number. Bet grinned and sipped her beer.

And NG, quietly, never looking exactly at her while he ate: "Bernie couldn't raise you." With the implication of no little worry around Engineering.

"Damn compressor going in my ear," Bet said. "I never heard the bell. Bernstein wants to see me, I got an idea I'm going to catch hell."

"Well, lookit what we got," a tech named Linden jeered at NG's back, sitting down with a couple of his buddies, and NG heard it, Bet figured, since she did; but Musa leaned over to look past NG, and said, loudly:

"Is that Linden Hughes down there? H'lo, Lindy! How's it going?"

"How you doin', Musa?" the answer came back, man leaning to see who that was, a whole lot more polite.

"Not so bad." Musa leaned back again, and Linden Hughes leaned back, avoiding conversation. NG, between, swallowed a last gulp of his sandwich and washed it down, fast, finishing the beer.

"Going to my hammock," NG said. "Thanks."

"Damn mouth," Bet said. "NG—"

"Let it go," Musa said, putting a hand on her knee; and NG just went to wash up and turn in.

"It's not damn right," she said.

"Shut up," Musa said.

So she shut up, Musa's advice generally seeming worth listening to.