“And Mon says Klimov plans to pay top wages as well,” Daniel said, keeping his eyes on Woetjans as he passed the retort to the machinist at his side. They all knew what he was talking about, that Mon was a shipmate and an officer he respected. . . .
“Well, he won’t be paying them to me,” Sun said bluntly. “I’ve got a machinist’s rating, besides which there’s plenty merchant skippers sailing routes where they’d feel better to have Lieutenant Leary’s gunner aboard.”
“Wages’re fine, sir,” Woetjans said, apologetic but clearly coming from the same place as Sun. “The thing is, though—”
She gestured with her left hand.
“—there’s never been a spacer yet who lifted ship with anything still in her pocket. Some leave most of their pay with their families, sure—”
Woetjans might mean the plural literally. It wasn’t just a music-hall joke that spacers kept separate households at each planetfall of a regular route.
“—and some of us spend it in bars; but we all spend it. Another florin a week doesn’t mean very much, especially if we don’t come back.”
Well, that was blunt enough; even without Pasternak repeating, “Amen to that!”
“Sir?” said Dasi. He and his mate Barnes were big men and utterly dependable. They weren’t the quickest minds in the RCN, but they were experienced enough that either would make a good bosun’s mate the next time Daniel had an opening to fill.
“Aye?” said Daniel. He’d heard the tram stop outside the gate. He didn’t turn his head, but from the way Vesey brightened as she looked past him, the fellow trotting toward the Princess Cecile was Midshipman Dorst.
“What should we do, sir?” Dasi said, his face screwed up with concern. Timmons offered him a bottle; he was too perturbed to notice it. “Should we sign on with this wog and Mr. Mon? Do you want us to?”
Daniel sighed, waving away the return of Mr. Pasternak’s retort. “Dasi,” he said. He let his eyes trail across the faces crowding the entrance hold; all of them familiar, all of them troubled. “All of you. When we served together aboard the Princess Cecile, I never doubted that you’d obey whatever order I gave.”
He stiffened into a formal Parade Rest, the posture he’d have taken if he were addressing them from a reviewing stand. He continued, “I have neither the right nor the will to give you orders now. You and I both have decisions to make, but we make them as individuals because we’re no longer captain and crew.”
“Too bad about Mon,” said Woetjans, shaking her head in summation. “But I guess he’ll find a berth somewhere.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “I’ll be getting back to my quarters,” he said. “I . . .”
His throat clogged and his eyes began to sting. That damned hydraulic fluid!
“I’ll be at the paying off ceremony tomorrow,” he said, forcing the words out in a rush. “Fellow spacers, there was never a ship luckier in her crew than the Princess Cecile!”
Daniel turned and strode back toward the tram stop, almost colliding with Mr. Dorst whom his blurring vision missed. The cheers of the Sissie’s crew followed him all the way to the gate.
* * *
Adele heard the front door close and the murmur of voices. She opened her study and stepped into the hallway just as Daniel started up the stairs.
“Please join me, Daniel,” she said; which was foolish since obviously he was coming to her quarters on the second floor already. She’d asked the doorman to send him up as soon as he arrived, no matter what time it was. “Some matters have arisen that I’d like your advice on.”
“You’re all right, Adele?” Daniel said. He’d taken off his billed hat when he entered the house; his face, lighted from above the stairwell, had the hard, controlled expression that she’d seen on the bridge of the Princess Cecile in action but very rarely otherwise. “I’m sorry not to have been here when you, ah, returned.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong,” Adele said, frowning in puzzlement. “I just had some questions about my plans that I—oh. Oh, I see what you mean.”