“He’s attached to us and that makes him part army.” She twisted her ring and said, “Directory.” To me: “What about you and Little Miss Harmony?” “That’s not the same thing.” She was whispering a directory code into the ring. “Yes, it is. You just wanted to do it with an officer. Pervert.” The ring bleated twice. Busy. “How was she?” “Adequate.” I was recovering. “Besides, Ensign Singhe is a perfect gentleman. And not the least bit jealous.” “Neither am I,” I said. “If he ever hurts you, tell me and I’ll break his ass.” She looked at me across her cup. “If Lieutenant Harmony ever hurts you, tell me and I’ll break her ass.” “It’s a deal.” We shook on it solemnly. 2 The acceleration shells were something new, installed while we rested and resupplied at Stargate. They enabled us to use the ship at closer to its theoretical efficiency, the tachyon drive boosting it to as much as 25 gravities. Tate was waiting for me in the shell area. The rest of the squad was milling around, talking. I gave him his coffee. “Thanks. Find out anything?” “Afraid not. Except the swabbies don’t seem to be scared, and it’s their show. Probably just another practice run.” He slurped some coffee. “What the hell. It’s all the same to us, anyhow. Just sit there and get squeezed half to death. God, I hate those things.” “Maybe they’ll eventually make us obsolete, and we can go home.” “Sure thing.” The medic came by and gave me my shot. I waited until 1950 and hollered to the squad, “Let’s go. Strip down and zip up.” The shell is like a flexible spacesuit; at least the fittings on the inside are pretty similar. But instead of a life support package, there’s a hose going into the top of the helmet and two coming out of the heels, as well as two relief tubes per suit. They’re crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder on light acceleration couches; getting to your shell is like picking your way through a giant plate of olive drab spaghetti. When the lights in my helmet showed that everybody was suited up, I pushed the button that flooded the room. No way to see, of course, but I could imagine the pale blue solution-ethylene glycol and something else-foaming up around and over us. The suit material, cool and dry, collapsed in to touch my skin at every point. I knew that my internal body pressure was increasing rapidly to match the increasing fluid pressure outside. That’s what the shot was 83 Ji4 Joe ilaicleman for; keep your cells from getting squished between the devil and the deep blue sea. You could still feel it, though. By the time my meter said “2” (external pressure equivalent to a column of water two nautical miles deep), I felt that I was at the same time being crushed and bloated. By 2005 it was at 2.7 and holding steady. When the maneuvers began at 2010, you couldn’t feel the difference. I thought I saw the needle fluctuate a tiny bit, though. The major drawback to the system is that, of course, anybody caught outside of his shell when the Anniversary hit 25 G’S would be just so much strawberry jam. So the guiding and the fighting have to be done by the ship’s tactical computer-which does most of it anyway, but it’s nice to have a human overseer. Another small problem is that if the ship gets damaged and the pressure drops, you’ll explode like a dropped melon. If it’s the internal pressure, you get crushed to death in a microsecond. And it takes ten minutes, more or less, to get depressurized and another two or three to get untangled and dressed. So it’s not exactly something you can hop out of and come up fighting. The accelerating was over at 2038. A green light went on and I chinned the button to depressurize. Marygay and I were getting dressed outside. “How’d that happen?” I pointed to an angry purple welt that ran from the bottom of her right breast to her hipbone. “That’s the second time,” she said, mad. “The first one was on my back-I think that shell doesn’t fit right, gets creases.” “Maybe you’ve lost weight.” “Wise guy.” Our caloric intake had been rigorously monitored ever since we left Stargate the first time. You can’t use a fighting suit unless it fits you like a second skin. A wall speaker drowned out the rest of her comment. “Attention all personnel. Attention. All army personnel echelon six and above and all navy personnel echelon four and above will report to the briefing room at 2130.” It repeated the message twice. I went off to lie down for 1tlL ~UI1J~V1~U WAIt ‘is a few minutes while Marygay showed her bruise to the medic and the armorer. I didn’t feel a bit jealous.