He looked back at his desk and I got sore. I had been seesawing between a feeling of consecrated loyalty to the ship and to the Captain as the head thereof, and an equally strong desire to kick Urqhardt in the stomach. One kind word from him and I think I would have been his boy, come what may. As it was, I was sore.
“Captain!”
He looked up. “Yes?”
“I think you owe me an apology.”
“You do? I do not think so. I acted in the interest of the whole ship. However, I harbor no ill feelings, if that is of any interest to you.” He looked back at his work, dismissing me … as if my hard feelings, if any, were of no possible importance.
So I got out and reported to Mr. Eastman. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.
Mei-Ling was in the comm office, sending code groups. She glanced up and I noticed that she looked tired. Mr. Eastman said, “Hello, Tom. I’m glad you’re here; we need you. Will you raise your telepartner, please?”
One good thing about having a telepath run the special watch list is that other people don’t seem to realize that the other end of each pair-the Earthside partner-is not a disembodied spirit. They eat and sleep and work and raise families, and they can’t be on call whenever somebody decides to send a message. “Is it an emergency?” I asked, glancing at the Greenwich and then at the ship’s clock, Vicky wouldn’t check with me for another half hour; she might be at home and free, or she might not be.
“Perhaps not ‘emergency’ but ‘urgent’ certainly.”
So I called Vicky and she said she did not mind. (“Code groups, Freckle Face,”) I told her. (“So set your recorder on ‘play back.’ “)
“It’s quivering, Uncle Tom. Agitate at will.”
For three hours we sent code groups, than which there is nothing more tedious. I assumed that it was probably Captain Urqhardt’s report of what had happened to us on Elysia, or more likely his second report after the LRF had jumped him for more details. There was no reason to code it so far as I was concerned; I had been there-so it must be to keep it from our telepartners until LRF decided to release it. This suited me as I would not have relished passing all that blood and slaughter, in clear language, to little Vicky.
While we were working the Captain came in and sat down with Mr. Eastman; I could see that they were cooking up more code groups; the Captain was dictating and Eastman was working the encoding machine. Mei-Ling had long since gone. Finally Vicky said faintly, “Uncle Tom, how urgent are these anagrams? Mother called me to dinner half an hour ago.
(“Hang on and I’ll find out.”) I turned to the Captain and Mr. Eastman, not sure of which one to ask. But I caught Eastman’s eye and said, “Mr. Eastman, how rush is this stuff? We want to-”
“Don’t interrupt us,” the Captain cut in. “Just keep on transmitting. The priority is not your concern.”
“Captain, you don’t understand; I’m not speaking for myself. I was about to say-”
“Carry on with your work.”
I said to Vicky, (“Hold on a moment, hon.”) Then I sat back and said, “Aye aye, Captain. I’m perfectly willing to keep on spelling eye charts all night. But there is nobody at the other end.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it is dinner time and way past for my partner. If you want special duty at the Earthside end, you’d better coordinate with the LRF comm office. Seems to me that somebody has the watch list all mixed up.”
“I see.” As usual he showed no expression. I was beginning to think he was all robot, with wires instead of veins.
“Very well, Mr. Eastman, get Mr. McNeil and have him relieve Mr. Bartlett.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Excuse me, Captain…”
“Yes, Bartlett?”
“Possibly you don’t know that Unc’s partner lives in Greenwich zone minus-two. It’s the middle of the night there-and she is an old lady, past seventy-five. I thought maybe you would want to know.”