Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

That night at dinner I chattered to the Captain about the trips I had picked, asked his opinions on each, and complained again about my name having been left off the list at Outpost and asked him to check on it for me this timeÄas if the Captain of a giant liner had nothing better to do than to run errands for Miss Rich Bitch. So far as I could see, he did not flinch under any of thisÄhe certainly did not tell me that I could not go groundside. But he may

be as steeped in sin as I am; I learned to lie with a straight face long before I left the crŠche.

That evening (ship’s schedule time) I found myself in The Black Hole with my first three swains: Dr. Jerry Madsen, Jaime “Jimmy” Lopez, and Tom Udell. Tom is first assistant supercargo and I had never known quite what that is. All that I really knew was that he wore one more stripe than the other two. That first night aboard Jimmy had told me solemnly that Tom was the head janitor.

Tom had not denied it. He answered, “You forgot `furniture mover.’

This night, less than seventy-two hours out from Botany Bay, I found out part of what Tom did. The starboard landing boat was being loaded with cargo for Botany Bay. “The port boat we loaded at Beanstalk,” he told me. “But we had to load the starboard boat for Outpost. We need both of them to handle Botany Bay, so we have to shift cargo this leg.” He grinned. “Lots of sweaty work.”

“It’s good for you, Tommy; you’re getting fat.”

“Speak for yourself, Jaime.”

I asked how they loaded the boat. “That airlock looks pretty small to me.”

“We don’t move cargo through that. Would you like to see how we handle it?”

So I made a date with him for the next morning. And learned things.

The holds in the Forward are so enormous that they breed agoraphobia rather than claustrophobia. But even the holds in the landing boats are huge. Some of the items shipped are enormous, too, especially machinery. Botany Bay was receiving a Westinghouse turbogeneratorÄbig as a house. I asked Tom how in the world they would move that?

He grinned. “Black magic.” Four of his cargomen placed a metallic net around it and fastened a suitcase-size metal box to it. Tom inspected it, then said, “Okay, fire it up.”

The leaderÄthe “snapper”Ädid so. . . and this metal behemoth quivered and lifted a touch: a portable antigrav unit, not unlike that for an APV, but out in the open instead of built into a shell.

With extreme care, by hand, using lines and poles, they moved this thing through an enormous door and into the hold of the star-

board boat. Tom pointed out that, while this huge monster was floating, free of the ship’s artificial gravity, it was as ponderously massive as ever and could crush a man as easily as a man can crush an insect. “They depend on each other and have to trust each other. I’m responsibleÄbut it’s no use to a dead man for me to take the blame; they must take care of each other.”

What he was really responsible for, he told me, was being certain that each item was placed by plan and was tied down solidly against surges, and also being absolutely certain that the big cargo doors, both sides, were actually vacuum-tight each time they were closed after being opened.

Tom showed me through the landing boat’s migrant-passenger spaces. “We’ve got more new colonists for Botany Bay than for anywhere else. When we leave there, third class will be almost deserted.”

“Are they all Aussies?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Lots of them are but about a third of them are not. But one thing they all do have in common; they are all fluent in English. It’s the only colony with a language requirement. They are trying to ensure that their whole planet will have a single language.”

“I heard something about that. Why?”

“Some notion that they are less likely to have wars. Maybe so.

but the bloodiest wars in history have been fratricidal wars. No language problem.”