with you the next time we dock.”
There had been no end of the wail over the forgotten doll at the start of their
liberty. Middle zones of the ship went inaccessible during dock; and young Will
III had offered to eel through the emergency accesses after it, but no, it was a
lark for Will, but a good way to take a fall, and Tish learned to keep track of
things. Everyone learned. Early.
“Go,” Tish crowed, anxious. Prolonged dock was no fun for the littlest, in
cramped spaces and adult noise.
“Bye,” Allison said, and Tish slid down and worked her way through adult legs to
bedevil some of her other several hundred cousins, while Allison shut her eyes
and wished the noise would stop. Her wishes were narrow at the moment, centered
on her own comfortable, clean-smelling bed.
Then the bell rang, the Cinderella stroke that ended liberty and liberties, and
the children were shushed and taken in arms. Conversations died. People
remembered hangovers and feet and knees that ached from walking unaccustomed
distances on the docks, recalled debts run up that would have to be worked off
oddjobbing. “I lied,” someone said louder than other voices, the old joke,
admitting that after-the-bell accounts were always less colorful. There was
laughter, not at the old joke, but because it was old and comfortable and
everyone knew it. They drifted for the cushions, and there was a general
snapping and clicking of belts, a gentle murmur, a last fretting of children.
Allison bestirred herself to pull her belt out of the housings and to clip it as
Eilis settled into the seat next to hers and did the same.
Bacchanale was done. The Old Man was back in the chair again, and the posted
crew, having put down their authority for the stay on station, took it up again.
Dublin prepared to get underway.
Chapter III
Lucy was never silent in her operation. She had her fan noises and her pings and
her pops and crashes as some compressor cycled in or a pump went on or off. Her
seating creaked and her rotation rumbled and grumbled around the core… a
rotating ring with a long null G center and belly that was her holds, a stubby
set of generation vanes stretched out on top and ventral sides: that was the
shape of her. She moved along under insystem propulsion, doing her no-cargo
best, toward the Viking jump range, outbound, on the assigned lane a small ship
had to use.
Sandor reached and put the interior lights on, and Lucy’s surroundings acquired
some cheer and new dimensions. Rightward, the corridor to the cabins glared with
what had once been white tiles—bare conduits painted white like the walls; and
to the left another corridor horizoned up the curve, lined with cabinets and
parts storage. Aft of the bridge and beyond the shallowest of arches, another
space showed, reflected in the idle screens of vacant stations, bunks in brown,
worn plastic, twelve of them, that could be set manually for the pitch at dock.
Their commonroom, that had been. Their indock sleeping area, living quarters,
wardroom—whatever the need of the moment. He set Lucy’s autopilot, unbelted and
eased himself out of the cushion: that was enough to get himself a stiff fine if
station caught him at it, moving through the vicinity of a station with no one
at controls.
He found the pulser unit in under the counter storage, taped it to his wrist and
handed himself across the bridge, fighting the spiral drift along to the
right-hand corridor, a controlled stagger with right foot on the tiled footing
curve and left on the deck. He got the Pharmaceuticals he wanted and brought
them back to his place on the bridge, another stagger down the footings and
swing along the hand grips. Then he knelt down in the pit and used tape and
braces to rig her as she had been rigged before, taped the drugs he would need
for jump to the side of the armrest where he could get at them; taped down some
of the safety controls—also illegal; he set up the rig for the sanitation kit,