A middle-aged man stepped in front of the old woman and snarled an order to the steersman. The boy adjusted the tiller, pointing the bow toward the Aglaia after all.
The old woman screamed at the man; the man slapped her, knocking her against the stern transom. She picked up her embroidery hoop and resumed work, muttering to herself.
A sphere was the best shape for a vessel operating in the Matrix, but spherical ships were dangerously unstable on water unless they had long outriggers. Besides, though a sphere was the most efficient volume to enclose, it presented severe problems for loading and unloading on the surface of a planet. The only spherical ships were small ones and vessels purpose-built for exploration.
All the ships in the Floating Harbor today were shaped like fat cigars. They floated a little above midpoint, and the hull proper was paralleled by an outrigger on either side. The antennae that drove the vessels through sponge space were either folded along the hull or extended for maintenance like the legs of a crushed insect.
The Aglaia looked very similar to most of the transports docked nearby. She was 613 feet long with a 65-foot beam. The nominal weight of her hull and fittings was 10,000 tons, though the in-service weight including crew, consumables, and reaction mass was a good 4,000 tons more.
She was built of steel. There were stronger metals and lighter metals, but none that really matched the corrosion and fatigue resistance of steel and its relative ease of machining and welding during repair. Weight was of no significance in sponge space and not very important even when the ship was using High Drive or her plasma motors.
The harbor was formed of multicelled concrete pontoons, individually several hundred feet long. The pontoons were anchored to the sea bottom on cables that adjusted to the height of the tide, and tethered to one another by underwater cables. Pedestrian catwalks dangled just above the waves. Surface lighters were tied to the sides of pontoons opposite most of the docked starships, but the bumboats clung anywhere: to pontoons, to the starships themselves, or to one another. They clumped like duckweed on a pond. Easily moved shelters of multicolored fabric on light frames sprouted on many pontoons for a degree of privacy.
The Aglaia was linked to a pontoon by three pivoting steel arms which allowed ship and float to ride the swells without rubbing. Many of the transports used fenders, but an RCN vessel—particularly one that carried the high and mighty of the Republic—had to be careful of its finish.
Ports were open all over the Aglaia’s hull for ventilation and easy access to the bumboats. A docking platform extended from the center of the hull to the outrigger. Guards waited there, but only formal traffic passed by that route.
Daniel ducked as his boat passed under the catwalk between two pontoons. The concrete was stained with three horizontal bands of algae—red, blue, and yellow closest to the water, stratified by the plants’ relative need to be kept damp. Visible as blisters on the yellow band were fixed invertebrates; filtering gills streamed like smoke whenever a wave dipped the animal’s shell back in the water.
The steersman was heading for the power room port, big enough to allow the Tokamak to be removed. “No, no,” Daniel shouted, waving toward the landing stage on which three ratings under a petty officer watched his progress. “Put me there! Put me there!”
The boy shrugged and nosed up to the stage. The old woman glared at Daniel and spit into the water.
The boy threw the motor into reverse, killing their forward motion within an inch of the platform. Daniel hopped onto the steel deck without risk or need for the hand a rating was ready to offer. The boy handled his craft with the skill of someone born on the water. He was likely to live all his life there, too, as surely as the fish under the surface.
“Lieutenant Daniel Leary,” Daniel said. “Requesting to see the duty officer.”
“Welcome aboard, sir,” the armed petty officer said. He raised his belt radio. “I’ll tell Ms. Weisshampl you’re coming.”