that there were ships with their main crews available on either schedule. But
they were all mainday now, a synchronization they had never undergone, and the
alterday captains did the suffering, jump and reversed hours combined.
“Take over,” she bade Graff, wandered back through the aisle, touched a shoulder
here and there, walked back to her own nook in the corridor… passed it by. She
walked on back instead to crew quarters, looked in on them, alterday crew, most
drugged senseless, to get their rest despite jump. A few, having an aversion to
that procedure, were awake, sat in the crew mainroom looking better than they
probably felt. “All stable.” she told them. “Everyone all right?”
They avowed so. They would drag out now, safe and peacefully. She left them to
do that, took the lift down to the outershell and the troop quarters, walked the
main corridor behind the suiting area, stopped in one barracks after another,
where she interrupted knot after knot of men and women sitting and trading
speculations on their prospects… guilty looks and startled ones, troopers
springing to their feet in dismay to find themselves under her scrutiny, a
frantic groping after bits of clothing, a hiding of this and that which might be
disapproved; she did not, but the crew and troops had some quaint reticences.
Some here too slept drugged, unconscious in their bunks; most did not… gambled,
in many a compartment, while the ship shot her own dice with the Deep, while
flesh and ship seemed to dissolve and the game continued on the other side of a
far-stretched moment.
“Going to be a bit slow down here,” she would say in each case. “We’re in
pattern and we’re all stable; at your ease down here, but keep yourselves within
a minute’s prep for moving. No reason to think there’s a problem, but we take no
chances.”
Di Janz intercepted her in the main corridor after the third such visit, nodded
courtesy, walked with her through this private domain of his, seeming pleased in
her presence among his command. Troops braced when Di walked with her, came to
blank attention. Best, she thought, to pull the pretended inspection, just to
let them know command had not forgotten them down here. What was coming was the
kind of operation the troops dreaded, a multiple-ship strike, which raised the
hazard of getting hit. And the troops had to ride it out blind, useless, jammed
in the small safety the inner structure of the ship could afford them. There
were no braver when it came to walking into possible fire, boarding a stopped
merchanter, landing in some ground raid; and they took in stride the usual
strike, Norway sweeping in alone, hit and run. But they were nervous now… she
had heard it in the muttered comments which filtered over open com—always open:
Norway tradition, that they all knew what was going on, down to the newest
trooper. They obeyed, would obey, but their pride was hurt in this new phase of
the war, in which they had no use. Important to be down here now, to make the
gesture. Queasy as they were with jump and drugs, they were at their lowest, and
she saw eyes brighten at a word, a touch on the shoulder in passing. She knew
them by name, every one, called them by name, one and another of them. There was
Mahler, whom she had taken from Russell’s refugees, looking particularly sober
and no little frightened; Kee, from a merchanter; Di had come years ago, the
same way. Many, many more. Some of them were rejuved, like her, had known her
for years… knew the score as well, too, she reckoned, as well as any of them
knew it. Bitter to them that this critical phase was not theirs, could not be.
She walked the dark limbo of the forward hold, round the cylinder rim, into the
eitherway world of the ridership crews, a place like home, a memory of other
days, when she had had her quarters in such a place, this bizarre section where
the crews of the insystem fighters, their mechanics, prep crews, lived in their
own private world. A whole other command existed here, right way up at the