“You know we bloody have!” Woetjans roared and the whole crew took up the shout.
“You’ll be paid an honest spacer’s wage and a little more,” said Daniel, “because you’re working for the Learys of Bantry now! But there’ll be long watches and no loot. I’ll be conning us according to my Uncle Stacey’s logs, and I’ll tell you God’s truth that there’ll be hard runs. I wouldn’t trust any other ship and crew than the Princess Cecile and her Sissies to make them.”
“If anybody else could do it, then you can do it blindfolded, sir!” Dorst cried.
For a half-heartbeat Adele wondered if Daniel had instructed a claque before he spoke . . . but he surely hadn’t. The corvette’s crew was speaking its collective mind, and it was with its former captain, body and soul.
“Let me give you a warning,” Daniel continued, as though he weren’t noticing the chorus of cheers. “Some of you men’ll ‘ve heard that dancing girls in the Commonwealth have their cunts crosswise so they get tighter when they spread their legs. I don’t believe it!”
He paused again, then thundered through the laughter, “Though I feel it’s my duty to science and the Republic to investigate the matter fully!”
And what do the Klimovs think of that? Adele thought, smiling faintly again. She didn’t recall hearing that the culture of Novy Sverdlovsk was notably prudish, however. Even if it were the Klimovs could realize from the delighted hilarity that most of the assembled spacers would follow Daniel Leary into the jaws of Hell, let alone to the Galactic North.
Daniel would doubtless be investigating dancing girls and an assortment of other women. So long as they were young enough and pretty enough and bubble-headed enough to meet his standards.
Adele had started to pull out her data unit again, to check on the sexual mores of Novy Sverdlovsk. She slipped it back into its pocket and crossed her hands firmly in her lap . . . though she doubted that at this moment she could draw the attention of the Sissie’s crew away from Daniel even if she took off her clothes and danced on the barrel.
“I expect we’ll lift from Cinnabar in seven days time,” Daniel said. “For the next forty-eight hours, any spacer who served under me on the Princess Cecile in the past has a guaranteed berth on her. After that I may start filling places with folk I don’t know and trust so well.”
“By God, I’ll sign the articles right now!” Barnes said. “Dasi and me both! Where’s the book, captain?”
The formation started to break up as spacers edged forward. Adele stepped from the barrel; in a moment, there was likely to be a rush that shoved Daniel off the quay into the filthy water of the pool on which the Princess Cecile floated.
“Fellow spacers!” he shouted, holding his arms straight up in the air for attention. The crowd quieted.
“In a moment,” Daniel continued, “I’ll go back onto the Sissie’s bridge. There I’ll sign aboard every soul of you who wants to join me. But before I do that—”
He raised his arms again. “No, wait!” he said. “Hear me out!”
The crowd quieted again. “Fellow spacers,” Daniel said. “I’ve joked with you this morning, but I say this in all truth, the truth I owe you as my shipmates in hard places. The voyage I intend will be a hard one and dangerous. When we return, if we return, we’ll have nothing to show for it but the memory of a job well done. That is all I promise you.”
“They’ll have the right to say to the whole world,” Adele shouted, surprising no one more than herself, “that they were with Captain Leary in the North. Every real spacer who hears that will envy us—and they’ll envy the money we come back with!”
This time Daniel couldn’t have silenced the cheers if he’d wanted to. Instead he turned grinning and walked up the catwalk into the Princess Cecile. The crew, all but a handful, jostled to follow him to the bridge and the muster book.
CHAPTER 7
Adele had expected to reinstall the special equipment in the Signals console; she’d removed it herself, after all, when she left the Princess Cecile in dock on Tanais and returned to Cinnabar aboard a Strymonian cutter. It’d been unlikely that anybody would even notice the non-standard modules, let alone be able to use their sorting and cryptographic capabilities, but a librarian who isn’t obsessive probably isn’t a good librarian, and Adele Mundy was a very good librarian indeed.