The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 6 Read online

  And then, having rafted up, the two ships began the process of transferring the cargo, without the interference of the human crew. A thousand things had to happen, yet the ships performed this feat with casual efficiency. It was a beautiful thing indeed, Ned thought, when a machine knew what to do and just did it as simply as that, not even aware of the wonder it was accomplishing. There wasn’t even any communication. The Virginia approached in silence, computers making all the courtesies necessary, even to giving pre-programmed signals of salute from the captain and crew. This was the precursor to the days when humans would no longer need to risk their lives in space for the sake of cargo. They could leave such chores to machines, and go on to better destinies.

  Ned put aside the screaming of his hands and shoulders to enjoy the sight of the ship making its own transfer happen. From behind the broad airtight observation windows, he sat between his sister and Leigh—a happy place for sure— and watched in fascination as the captain and Mr. Nielsen narrated what he was seeing. The ship, which had before this been so tomblike, had jumped to life. The big flank bays, two giant holds on either side of the ship’s middle body, previously dim and lit only for safety, were now bright with scene lighting, like stadiums before a game.

  Overhead, boom davits on huge stanchions worked robots’ turnbuckles on and off mooring cleats, moving enormous containers of bulk freight hanging from X-shaped cargo bridles, which held massive magnetic disks, big around as garage doors. The magnets could be turned on and off, and when they were on they held the huge containers by their tops and swung them along. Robotic arms telescoped out to adjust chafing gear as needed, looking like the arms of giants carrying rags. Deck-winch drums rolled purposefully. Long girders called “strongbacks” ran down the centerline of each of the two long holds, along which the containers flowed one after the other. Then things called “devil’s claws,” which the captain described as super-strong split-hooks, reached out at the right moments from different places along the route, snagged the links in the chain cables, and took possession of the containers one by one, moving them to their places in the stacks. The high-industrial quality of the operation was very similar to a factory, fully automated servants doing their pre-programmed duty, and somehow making decisions about the weight and stacking and trimming of hundreds of containers, each the size of Ned’s barn back home. They carried everything a working city would need—goods, tools, clothing, condensed food, and wares of all types, but the most interesting part was the animals, the herds and flocks, pods and gaggles, swarms and prides in cryo-sleep for the voyage.

  “The standard containers are one hundred and forty-five feet,” Mr. Nielsen was narrating for the cadets. “They actually come in different sizes, but the sizes have to be compatible for stacking configurations. They’re all the same width, but can be different footprints and different heights. And the average weight, regardless of size, is about ninety tons. Some of them might be smaller but are carrying more dense cargo. The boatswain’s loading computer will decide by length, height, and weight where to stack them so we keep the ship in trim and to fit the cubic capacity of our holds. In space, being ‘in trim’ is different from on the ocean, because it’s a 3-D environment, but it’s still important to the navigation accuracy that we have certain equations of balance.”

  “How can the magnets carry so much weight?” Dylan asked. “The ratio doesn’t seem right to me. Dustin told me that the magnets carry about twenty thousand pounds max. But if the containers are ninety tons—”

  “Think about it,” the captain challenged. “Why are there no life-forms allowed in the bays during loading?”

  Dylan’s round dimpled face worked in a shrug. “Don’t know.”

  “Gravity,” Adam said. “It’s turned off.”

  “Correct,” Mr. Nielsen said. “The containers only weigh about four tons under the diminished gravity. The gravity’s not totally off, but reduced so that the containers remain in place when they’re stacked, but light enough to be moved around by the electromagnets.”

  “That’s what the spray metal was for!” Dylan exuded. “Those spray guns full of liquid metal, right?”

  “Right,” Mr. Nielsen said. “The containers aren’t metal. They’d be too heavy. They’re carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic.”

  Dylan was brimming with excitement. “And you just spray the top with liquid metal, just like paint! Cosmic!”

  His enthusiasm sent laughs of delight through the viewing bay.

  Ned glanced between Stewart and Dylan. “So the metal is like paint and the nano-glue is like paint… at least you know your artwork will both stick and last a long time!”

  There were more laughs, which seemed to irritate the captain. He raised his voice to bring them back to the operation at hand.

  “After they’re loaded,” the captain finished, “we turn the gravity back on so we can move around in there and do our work.”

  “What kind of work?” Stewart asked.

  “Maintenance, mostly,” Dana explained. “And it’s very important to monitor the condition of the contents being shipped inside the various containers, since we’re carrying living things. The cryo systems have to be checked regularly, because a mistake or a malfunction can cause death inside. Oh—a perfect case in point—how I love it when a perfect example floats by—look at this container coming up right now.”

  They craned forward to watch as an astonishing container came by—it was the size and shape of all the others, but the walls were completely transparent, and they could see what was inside. Marked with giant “OPEN WATERS” emblems, the huge container was an oasis of beauty. Inside was a contained coral reef, lit brightly with interior lights of its own. Shoals of fish, reefs of coral, banks of kelp, and all the creatures of the deep sea that lived in such places, from jellyfish to octopeds, moved about in happy oblivion.

  “Jee-ach!” Ned gasped as he watched, fascinated.

  “Beautiful!”

  He sprang from his seat and pressed his hands against the viewing window, just as a giant octopus came to the side of the container’s clear wall. It spread its thick arms and flared its tentacles, then curled its arms under itself to morph up a strangely human face.

  The cadets and crew laughed at the antics.

  Stewart said, “Nice mirror, Ned!”

  Ned laughed and pretended to fluff his hair as if the octopus were his alter-ego. The octopus apparently saw him, for it flared its arms and reconfigured itself, puffing along the side of the moving container so that it stayed with Ned.

  “It’s got a crush on you, bloke!” Dan howled.

  The container was a gigantic aquarium, god-sized versions of the mesmerizing salt-water aquarium in his schoolroom back home. Imagine!

  Ned loved that aquarium. He had been drawn to it again and again, to watch the brightly colored clownfish dart among the anemones, and the baby moray eel poke its thumb-sized head out of its hole in the resin rock, gulping steadily in a perfect imitation of its parents, mouthing over and over, “I’m big. I’m big. I’m big.” It always reminded him of a little boy walking around in his father’s shoes.

  Now the octopus, the biggest of its kind, was saying the same thing. Take me seriously! I insist!

  “We have several of these aquaria aboard,” Mr. Nielsen explained. “Obviously these animals and corals are not in cryo, because they wouldn’t survive it. So we just transport a whole contained environment, with the coral and the sea bottom, and all. And the sides are clear so that the light from outside penetrates and there’s a sense of natural conditions. They tried just lighting them from inside, but somehow the animals didn’t thrive. They’re still trying to figure that out. So far, it’s just been best to transport them in transparent boxes. Sometimes they set them up on display, just like you’re seeing them now.”

  Ned bade goodbye to his octopus as the container floated on past the viewing bay, and his line of sight was interrupted by the huge letters OPEN WATERS.

  “What do
the markings and emblems mean?” Chris asked. “Logos?”

  “Just like on trucks and planes,” Captain Pangborn interrupted. “You’ve seen trucks and planes before, haven’t you? You’re not an idiot, right?”

  Chris absorbed the put-down. “No…”

  “The markings are temporary identifications. Those marks will change as the containers are hired by different companies to move their goods. You’ve bought products all your life. Don’t you recognize advertising?”

  Dan spoke then. “I can’t see where the boxes are coming in from,” he asked. Ned got the feeling he had asked to get the pressure off Chris.

  “Well, look at the loading flow,” Pangborn said, irritated. “If you pay attention to the far end of the flank bay, you can see the accordion chamber that links our hold to the Virginia’s. That’s our method of engagement, where the containers are funneled in. They’re coming in on the lifting gear on those two king posts all the way forward, and being floated into the flank bay by the winches on strongback strakes overhead.” Then Pangborn lost his thought for a moment, stood up, and moved to the observatory window, his eyes fixed on one of the cargo bridles.

  “Mank,” he spoke sharply.

  At first Ned hadn’t understood the utterance and was busy watching a beautiful aqua OPEN WATERS container fly past him.

  “Ned,” Dylan whispered. “Ffft!”

  Ned flinched out of his trance. “Hm? Pardon?”

  The captain was looking at him. Only now did Ned digest the word that had been used instead of his name. He scolded himself for not being attuned to it.

  He vaulted to his feet. “Sorry!”

  “Have you got a good memory?”

  “Oh, I… suppose I do…”

  Seated on the end of the observation deck, Pearl throated out a laugh. “Memory. Hah-hah! Heh!”

  “Pearl,” Mr. Nielsen quietly reprimanded. She shrank immediately, but he reached over and patted her hand as if calming a mentally deficient person, but she snatched her hand away and warned him off with her eyes, like a bird.

  Everybody looked at her for an uneasy moment. What a beyond-strange little person…

  But Ned’s attention stayed with the captain. He was on the hook for something—what?

  Pangborn shook off Pearl’s oddness and looked at Ned. “Can you remember some instructions for Dana?”

  “I’ll sure try.”

  “Tell her I want a wear survey done on several job components. I want the woven roving checked in sections nine, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, and… twenty. And twenty-two. Lube points I want serviced are the tilt-lock levers, clamp screws, throttle bearings, starboard side relief valves… winch transmissions… auto-gimbals… and check the turning quadrant on davit Charlie-Alpha. It’s shimmying. And I want to replace all the Cobb-coils during their three-hundred hour checks. I’m also not happy with the flow along the inboard strongback in the starboard flank bay. It’s causing hull vibrations.”

  Ned’s brain almost went into a seizure as he tried to collect the data running past. These terms were unfamiliar, and since they meant little to him, he had trouble logging them away in order. Nine, twelve, thirteen… and what after that?

  He glanced helplessly at the other cadets, who sat with eyes wide at his predicament. Perhaps some of them would help him remember. Leigh gave him a little covert thumbs-up. Was she encouraging him or promising to recall some of this when he reported to Dana?

  Loaded with responsibility which he was sure he couldn’t carry, Ned weighed the pros and cons of admitting right now that he’d forgotten more than half of what he’d just heard. He glanced helplessly at Robin, whose delicate features were screwed in empathy. She was ticking off items silently on her fingers, trying to remember for him.

  And the captain was talking again. “Also tell her the air-cooled dasher blocks are due for replacement.”

  Foolishly, Ned nodded as if he understood. Tell him. Tell him now, before it gets worse!

  “Now, you see how those devil’s claws work?” Mr. Nielsen went back to his narration. “They only come out when they have a protocol to seize one of the containers and take it off the line, to pull it back into a stacking area. After the load is over, a scaffold of walkways and ladders will rise from their storage areas in the deck, and we’ll be able to walk all over the holds and get to any given container. But the chances of having to do anything with them are pretty small…”

  His voice trailed off. No one was listening anymore.

  Everyone was looking now at Pearl, who was on her feet. She took a small step forward, then another. A third brought her to the viewing window where she pressed her long bony fingers in two teepees against the tempered glass. She stared, fixed as a cat, on a battered blue container with giant yellow letters as it floated by, one among many. It appeared from the accordion bay far down the hold, moved smoothly along the strongback toward them, came around a curve, and passed by the window with its broad blue side scuffed and tired.

  Pearl’s eyes never left that one container, until finally it was plucked away by a devil’s claw and disappeared into a valley of other stacked containers, three levels up from the hold’s deck.

  She continued to watch the space where the blue container vanished behind the stacks of others. Though other containers floated by to obscure her view, it was as if they weren’t there at all and she could see right through them to the one.

  Perhaps she liked the colors.

  Ned watched her, fascinated. How did her mind work? What did she see that drew her so boldly out of the crowd?

  Perhaps it was something out of her past, he thought. Something she had done that gave her pleasure or made her feel like one of the group. Everyone deserved a memory like that, to feel belonging and a sense of family. Did she have a family? A sister?

  But the object of her attention was gone now, sunken into the depths of the hundreds of other containers, and it would take nothing short of a professional ship’s loading master to find it again in that maze of colors and emblems.

  Mr. Nielsen watched the girl too, patient enough to let her run through whatever emotions she was experiencing. The others took their cue from him. His patience was exemplary, and Ned hoped that each of them would be the recipient of it, each in turn, as needed.

  As Pearl continued her hopeless vigil at the window, no one spoke. Thus there was only a thick silence as Dana appeared in the companionway and stepped halfway into the observation deck.

  “Captain?”

  Pangborn turned to her. His face bore no expression at all. “Yes?”

  Dana glanced at the cadets, self-conscious and obviously hiding something. “We’ve received a long-range.”

  “From the Virginia?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Then who’s it from?”

  “It’s from a… legal concern.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Dana shifted in a way that revealed her annoyance at his forcing her to be specific. “It’s from a lawyer.”

  11

  “I didn’t want to tell you in front of the cadets. Ultraspace sent a coded communications relay and bounced it off the Boyer Satellite at Outpost 966. It was their last official notification to all their creditors.”

  “Creditors?” Pangborn’s jaw hardened. He didn’t like the sound of that.

  Dana steeled herself to continue. Now that the two of them were alone in the charthouse, she wished she had brought somebody else with her. Dustin or Cathy, or just somebody else to help field the captain’s reaction and to witness whatever he was about to say. Something told her she should’ve protected herself with a witness.

  She felt like a doctor giving news to the family of a loved one’s sudden death. “Ultraspace is out of business. There’s not going to be any remuneration for the cadet experience.”

  Pangborn took the news stoicly, but his mind was working. His eyes abruptly tightened and his lips flattened. He instantly digested the enormous implications
of what she had just said.

  “Like hell there won’t,” he declared. “Those kids’ parents are going to owe me their passage.”

  Dana shook her head. “The parents and sponsors have already paid Ultraspace. You’d have to sue Ultraspace’s shareholders, but you won’t collect. They’ve protected their assets by filing bankruptcy.”

  He turned away from her, pacing the circular nav theatre as the lovely displays put him in silhouette.

  Dana quietly attempted, “You still have income from the cargo transfer.”

  “It’s not enough,” he said. His tone was brutal. “I have debts too. You and the crew talked me into trying this cockamamie angle, bringing children aboard and treating them like little dauphins… ‘Oh, we can teach them, Captain!’ ‘Oh, yes, Captain, they’ll be lots of help!’ ‘It’ll help pass the time!’ ‘An educational program will give us prestige!’” He stopped mocking and coldly announced, “Of all the people who should pay for this, it’s not me. You can all bear this burden with me.”

  A chill went down Dana’s legs. She tried to read his tone, his expression. “Meaning what, specifically?”

  Pangborn rolled an idea around in his head, then spoke his decision. “The crew gets no pay for this voyage.”

  Dana straightened. “Captain, I can’t sanction that!”

  “Who’s asking you to?”

  “You can’t just unilaterally nullify their contracts!”

  “Who says? You?” He made a crude sound with his lips. “I’m not going back to that ghetto life, scraping by, watching every penny, making payouts to scuzbags before I pay myself… I’m tired of being a church mouse.”

  The tension was interrupted by a subtle beep and the flashing of the proximity lights on the beautiful nav theatre. Dana stepped forward and keyed in the response code that would free up the data.

  “It’s the Virginia. The autoload is complete. In another hour the accordion tunnel will be retracted and they’ll bear off. We’ll be on our own again.”