Stations knew it. Stations kept one law on their upper levels, but the docks and the sleepovers were under separate rules; and on the deck of every individual ship was that ship’s own law, at dock or in space.
So the law was the same. Still, it was a new concept to Thomas Hawkins—to go out on station docks with no ship he knew in port—like a first-timer, almost, which he assuredly wasn’t… he’d been cruising the docks on his own since he was ship-wise eighteen, never gotten knifed, never gotten into anything he couldn’t talk his way out of. Most often he scored with some spacer-femme likewise looking…
Particularly with one dark-eyed Polly crew-brat, who he wasn’t certain was using precautions, but, if you said you weren’t and she didn’t, that was entirely her business and Polly’s business. A man just wondered… might he have a kid on some ship… somewhere… and he wouldn’t see her for two years.
Mind was going random. He was sliding down into sleep again. There was a little sedative in his post-jump packet, aspirin, mostly. Didn’t take much to send you under, after jump, and he wasn’t scheduled for duty till next watch.
Busy time coming, then. Lot of equipment to check. Nav and cargo on their necks, meanwhile juniors got all the wonderful routine, the stuff that wasn’t ops-critical, and there was always a pile of it, all the data storage, hard and matrixed…
Load the chain of records, compare and check it off: if some subspace gremlin had bombed one file it wouldn’t get the backup in exactly the same way. The operations computers checked themselves, monitored by Senior technicians. For all those datafiles not regularly loaded there were the junior techs to do the job, on the auxiliary boards, why else did lower lifeforms exist?
Load another record…
Log the check…
Meanwhile test all the systems.
Good reason for a nap.
“Thomas Bowe.”
He blinked. Thought he’d dreamed it. Shut his eyes.
“Thomas Bowe, confirm.”
Eyes opened. He wished they wouldn’t, call him that. He’d complained. That was a by-the-book tight-ass senior cousin on the bridge. He knew the voice: Duran T. Hawkins, senior Com, who didn’t give a damn about his complaints.
But a by-name call, coming hard on system entry, scared him, once his brain cut in—as if—God—had somebody dropped dead on entry? They didn’t call junior officers on the com for social chatter.
He rolled out of his bunk, ignored the pounding in his temples, and braced his arm on the opposite wall to push the button. “This is Tom B., confirming to com.”
“Report to the captain, Thomas B., on the bridge, in good order, ship is stable, confirm.”
“Confirm, “ he said, and heard the com click out without a window to query, and no patience if he called back to ask questions, not with Duran at the board.
Besides, they were legitimately busy up there—it could be they were calling computer techs for some kind of ops emergency, in which case it was a definite hurry. His heart had begun thumping with a stupid panic, the pain in his sinuses had grown acute, the result of going vertical in a rush, but they hadn’t said stat, they’d given an in good order, which meant take time to clean up.
So his mother couldn’t have had an attack or something. Marie was under forty, ship-time,—healthy as the proverbial horse. They’d had breakfast together before they jumped, she’d talked about something he couldn’t remember. But they called you if a relative had taken ill…
Or most of all they called you if you’d screwed something critical and they wanted to know exactly what you’d done to systems before Mischa asked you to take a hike in cold space.
But he hadn’t laid a hand on the main boards since long before they left Mariner. He was absolutely sure of that.
Balance wasn’t steady yet. He bashed an elbow, slid the bathroom door open—the whole end of the 2-meter-wide cabin on a circular track. He met his own confused, haggard face in the mirror, squinting at the automatic glare of white light. He peeled out of his clothes, set the shower on Conserve, for speed, slid through the shower door without losing vital parts and shut his eyes against the 30 second all-around needling of the cleaner-and-water spray. A quick, breath-taking blast sucked the water back again. The vacuum made his ears pop, and didn’t at all help a nervous stomach or a sick headache.