Rael joined Jellico at the hatch, and they descended together. Both had business in the city. The Captain intended to get the flier back to the rental agency before he had to pay a second day’s charges for it, and she had asked to accompany him since he would be passing close to the Caledonia plant. She wanted to give Macgregory her answer face-to-face or at least deliver a personal letter to his office if he should not be there this early rather than merely calling in her refusal over the Queen’s transceiver as they prepared her for space. He deserved the courtesy of the greater effort on her part.
She smiled as she took her place in the passenger seat.
The vehicle had done them good service the previous evening ferrying them all to the restaurant the crew had chosen for their last-night dinner. It had been a fine affair all around. If their eatery had not been another Twenty-Two. the food had been good, and they had enjoyed it and themselves, Ali Kamil as thoroughly as any of his comrades. He had seemed more at ease than she had hitherto seen him, certainly more so than he had been since they had planeted on Canuche of Halio. The confirmation of the industrial planet’s apparently dark history and the reality of the peril still hanging over her had affirmed and the reality of his gift. That was a relief in itself, and it was a relief that they would soon be leaving the dangerous world behind.
“We’ll cut around by the Cup,” Miceal told her as they started out. “It’s a bit longer that way, but I want to get a good look, at the ships.”
“You’re the skipper. Besides, I’d like to see them close up myself.” She stifled a yawn. “After crawling out of my bunk so soon in order to see Mr. Macgregory, I hope he is an early riser.”
“That one? You can put credits down oh it. He won’t squander valuable daylight hours in bed.”
“You needn’t squander any time, either,” she told him, “at least not waiting for me. Once you drop me off, just turn the flier in and go on back to the Queen. I’ll find my way home.”
“Not a chance. Van’d be asking what happened to my wits if I failed to make so obvious a courtesy call on our illustrious client.”
They soon came within sight of the ocean. Only two large vessels were at dock in the Cup, the low, squat Regina Maris and another slightly larger craft with the name Sally Sue displayed on her prow and sides. A number of small boats attended to the freighters’ needs or to their own.
Both of the big ships were the center of considerable activity. Miceal slowed the flier down to hover to better observe the scene. “Look at that, Rael,” he said softly. “It’s like a moment frozen in time. A few centuries back, that’s what we’d have been doing.”
She nodded. If that was all there was, they would be part of it. Trade was in their souls, and neither of them would have been content with the role of sedentary shopkeeper.
She frowned somewhat disapprovingly as she continued to study the on-worlders working around the Regina Maris.
A bit of concentrated study stripped some of the perfection from the picture for one who was familiar with the management of bulk cargo. “They go in for a lot of fuss, don’t they?” she remarked. There was not half this ado when a starship was being loaded.
Jellico started to agree, but then he frowned. Commotion was one thing; idleness was another. There were a lot of dock laborers just standing about, leaving the cargo lying where it was. Those people were paid by the hour.
Whether he traversed a single planet’s seas or the starlanes, no ship’s master would tolerate a pack of idlers leeching away his always tight port expense funds. “She’s in trouble,” he announced sharply even as he sent the flier surging forward.
In another moment, they came to a stop beside a group of longshoremen. “What’s the problem?” he asked.
“What’s it to you, space hound?” one countered. There was no real hostility in the question, just a petty enjoyment in momentary superiority over the off-worlder with his supposedly more interesting lifeway.
“Most Captains sympathize with a ship in trouble,” he responded more mildly than he would have done with one of his own kind.
“A bit of a fire on the Man’s,” the speaker told him. Miceal’s expression registered his concern, and the longshoreman continued quickly. “It’s not the same thing as you chaps have to face in space,” he assured them, “at least not here in port where the crew can get off quickly. This is nothing, anyway. They’ll probably have it out in a few minutes.”
“Maybe,” interjected the older man standing beside him.
Jellico eyed him curiously. “You have your doubts?”
“I was the one who smelled the smoke and alerted her Captain. To my mind, he should forget about saving the. cargo and really pour in water and foam. Masters have lost ships before by playing around with steam for too long.”
“Steam?” Rael asked.
He nodded. “Live steam. It replaces the oxygen in the air, smothering a blaze while being reasonably kind to the goods stored around it. It’s most useful in the early stages of a tightly confined fire, though. Give the flames any chance to spread, to escape into the hull between the holds, and you’ve got big trouble.”
“You think that’s happened here?”
“Well, it’s not for me to say, but a fire large enough for me to sniff out just by walking near an open hatch is a deal more than a spark, and I’m willing to put down a few credits that they haven’t gotten it licked even yet.”
“How long have they been at it?”
“Full blast? Only about ten minutes. — Uh-oh, there goes the alarm. They want the Fire Department. That means they’re kissing the cargo good-bye. — See, the crew’re being sent ashore.”
“There shouldn’t be all that much to be damaged, should there?” the Medic asked, trying to recall what Macgregory had told them about the kinds of goods the Regina Man’s was taking on. “Just the rope. Her insurance should cover that.”
“Sure, and the rest, too, but exporters don’t like to ship with vessels that sacrifice their cargoes too willingly. Also, the season’s rush on nitrate’ll be over soon …”
Rael Cofort’s face went white. “What?”
“Ammonium nitrate. A fertilizer. My lads loaded fourteen hundred tons of it in her number two hold and another eight hundred and twenty tons in number four yesterday evening. The fire’s between them in number three where the rope’s stowed. Both’re likely to be drenched and ruined . . .”
“Spirit of Space . . . ,” she whispered.
“It’s a common substance,” he told her in surprise.
“Until you bring a flame or too much heat near it,” Jellico said tersely. “Then it’s a bomb.”
“Bomb! What in . . .”
“Recently we saw an experiment to illustrate that. If that ship goes up, it’ll be like a low-grade planetbuster. You people would be smart to take off, pick up your families, and keep going until this is all over.”
“Right,” one of the women standing near them cut in. “We’d find something left out of our paychecks if we tried that.”
“Better lose a few hours’ pay to panic than not be able to collect it at all because you’re dead.”
“I’ll take responsibility,” their chief informant declared, confirming the spacers’ impression that he was the group’s foreman. “I’ve got a kid up the slope in the Cup school. I’m taking him, my wife, and her mother and heading for the hardpan. The rest of you do the same.” He glanced at the pair in the flier. “What about you two?”
“We like living,” the Captain replied.
The Canucheans wasted no time in clearing after that.
Rael did not watch them go. Her eyes were fixed on Jellico. “Miceal, we can’t . . .”
He gave an impatient shake of his head. “These eateries should all have public surplanetary transceivers, and they’ll be empty with everyone out watching the fire. I’ll warn the Queen and spaceport. You tell Macgregory and the Stellar Patrol.”
As Jellico predicted, they found available booths in the first eating place they entered and both hastened to sound the alarm before the dreaded explosion rendered it worthless.
Tang Ya was on duty at the Solar Queen’s transceiver.
He, like the rest of the crew, had heard his comrades’ report of the Caledonia experiment and required no detailed explanation. “We’re ready to go now,” he told him. “All the rest of us are on board, praise the Spirit of Space. How long do we give you?” He hated to ask that, but for the sake of the ship and the bulk of her company, there had to be a limit on the time they could afford to wait.