The courier held a document tied with ribbons which had been sealed with wax. Enery reached for it.
“Excuse me,” said the courier with irritation. “I have orders here for Lieutenant Daniel Leary.”
“Good God almighty!” blurted a sailor in the corridor outside.
Enery went pale. She slid aside. Daniel took the document and broke the seal with a sideways flick of his index finger. He looked as though he’d been sandbagged. He read the text, then raised his eyes to meet the gaze of those around him.
“It is the Senate’s pleasure,” Daniel said in a trembling voice, “through the agency of its servants in the Navy Board, to appoint me to the command of the corvette Princess Cecile for the purpose of carrying her to Harbor Three on Cinnabar where she will be surveyed by a committee of naval assessors.”
He lifted the document again. “So help me God,” he said in a wondering voice.
Lieutenant Enery bowed. “Allow me to be the first to congratulate you, Captain Leary,” she said in a choking voice. She had to wait for Daniel to recover enough to take her hand; then with her confused nephew in tow she propelled herself down the corridor to the main hatch.
Enery had behaved with a decency equal to Daniel’s own, Adele thought. It was a pity that the crew couldn’t hold their cheers until the embarrassed officer had left the corvette.
* * ** * *
The crew had its orders; there was no reason for the captain to be on the bridge. One could tell a great deal from the command console about the way a ship was handling as it entered sponge space, but one could tell even more from just below the tip of a fully extended ninety-seven-foot mast.
Daniel very deliberately stretched the fingers of his left hand outward, feeling the crackling pressure of the universe against their tips.
Eighteen of the Princess Cecile’s twenty-four masts were extended in whole or in part. This first entry into sponge space was a test of both the ship and the way the crew handled her. Petty officers stood at the base of mast clumps to relay the bosun’s semaphored orders and to judge the performance of the ratings carrying them out. There shouldn’t be any problems, but better to learn while still in the Kostroma system than when unexpectedly confronted by an Alliance cruiser.
Squadron Logistics had granted the Princess Cecile five missiles for self-defense on the voyage to Cinnabar. Chief Baylor had two full magazines, twenty rounds, instead of the allotment. Several of the squadron’s missileers had expended a few practice rounds on their books rather than by launching them through the tubes, and Daniel had taken an advance from his prize account. If there was a better way for a captain to spend money than in turning his command into an effective fighting unit, Daniel Leary hadn’t heard of it.
Around him shimmered a golden light that only spacers saw: the wobbling glow of Casimir energy, visible only at the margins of reality. What looked like stars beyond the veil were not that nor even galaxies: each separate point was a universe in itself, as complete as the sidereal universe from which the Princess Cecile was even now edging.
A hydraulic semaphore spread its arms. A rating in the bow cluster made a manual adjustment, and the tip of a mast near Daniel cocked forward thirty degrees from the topmost joint.
The Princess Cecile, driven by the greater pressure of Casimir energy on one aspect of the ship than on the other, slid fully into the gap between universes. Her captain, Lieutenant Daniel Leary, reveled in his first command.
The light of all existence flared about him.