Zach Hughes - Deep Freeze

"Thank you."

"You're sure you want me to call the captain?"

"What do you think?"

He sighed, stepped to a panel, pushed buttons, said, "This is Barkley; would you please ask the captain to come to the gym?"

Josh was wearing ship's shorts and tunic. His head was bare.

"I found her, Captain," the crewman named Barkley said, "can I keep her?"

"After I run her through the recycler you can have her," Josh said.

"Queenie, what the hell?" He looked at Barkley and said, "Thank you, Barkley."

"Yes, sir," Barkley said. "Anything I can do, sir?"

"Leave," Josh said.

"I was afraid of that," the crewman said, going out the door.

"You run a tight ship, Captain," Sheba said with a giggle.

"Damn it, Sheba."

"Something made me do it," she said, and the lightness was gone from her voice.

"Yes, sheer irresponsibility. Sheba, this is my first command. They gave me the newest and finest light ship in the fleet, and you're doing your best to see to it that not only do they take it away from me but take my captain's suns in the bargain."

"That bad, Josh?"

He shook his head, and a fond smile relaxed his face. "Why?"

She tried for lightness again. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

His face darkened. "I had to, Josh," she said quickly. "I knew that you were going to look for Mom and Dad and there was no way that this ship was going to go into space without me. I had to."

"And I have to make a detour and put you off on a U.P. world."

"No, Josh, please."

The door opened and Angela, slim and lovely in a ship's one-piece, halted, her mouth open. "Barkley told me, but I didn't believe it."

"She had to do it," Josh said. "Something made her do it."

"I know," Angela said seriously.

"What?" Josh demanded.

"Why did we come to the wilderness world, Josh?" Angela asked.

"We had to take the ship on a shakedown cruise along well traveled routes. I used that opportunity to come to visit my little sister. I was foolish enough to want to introduce my new bride to her."

"And that's all?" Angela asked. "There was no other reason for choosing the world where Sheba was working?"

"No," Josh said, but his voice lacked conviction.

"Sheba, why did you stow away on the Erin Kenner?" Angela asked.

"I had no other choice," Sheba said. "I knew that you and Josh were going to look for my family. Our family."

"Did you think that your presence aboard would be an asset, that it would be necessary for us to have you along in order to find your family?"

Sheba was thoughtful. "Something like that," she said.

"Your brother, David, looks somewhat like Josh, but he's more finely drawn, older, more dignified," Angela said.

"Thanks very much," Josh said.

"And he has a small scar over his left eye, high on the forehead."

"You've met David?" Sheba asked.

"Only briefly," Angela said, "and his hair hid the scar completely, yet I'm certain it's there."

"Angela," Josh said, "we've got a small problem on our hands."

"You dream about him," Sheba said.

"And you?"

"Yes, and about Josh, and about Mom and Dad and Ruth. There are times when they seem to be calling out to me, calling for help, and I don't know how to help them."

"How long has this been going on?" Josh asked, suddenly very much interested in what Sheba was saying.

"Off and on for about six months, I'd say."

"Josh?" Angela asked, her lovely eyes wide.

"All right, yes," Josh said, "I dream of them, too."

"You were going to them," Sheba said. "I had to be with you. I had to be aboard this ship regardless of the consequences."

It didn't seem to matter to the crew members of the Erin Kenner that Captain Joshua Webster was breaking more than one ironclad service regulation by failing to take the ship to the nearest U.P. port to offload a civilian stowaway. At first the young men and women of the ship's complement were a bit awed by their passenger. Each of them had seen at least one holofilm starring Sheba Webster. From their teen years Sheba had been the epitome of feminine beauty and sophistication. When they discovered that the Queen was an outgoing person who laughed easily, who was not pretentious, who was genuinely interested in what they had to say they adopted her as one of their own.

Sheba had discovered when she was quite young that the art of her acting was based on her knowledge of people. Even as a child she had made friends easily and had shown an inordinate curiosity about the intimate feelings and reactions of others. She had learned that it is quite difficult for any human being to dislike someone who is genuinely interested in him and what he has to say. When she listened attentively to one of her new friends, asking suitable questions at just the right time to encourage the speaker to bare his innermost convictions and dreams, she was not being manipulative. She was not seeking gain for herself, although gain accrued in the form of knowledge of the inner workings of the human mind. She was genuinely interested in what others thought and felt.

She worked out in the gym with members of the crew, watched holofilms with them, and answered their questions regarding the techniques of the trade. She joined a group of crewwomen in a literary discussion group, although her knowledge of literature was limited to what she had read in university and those books that had been made into films. The navigation officer gave her informal lessons in star identification. A young crewman allowed her to beat him at handball.

Her presence had ceased to be a matter of discussion when the Erin Kenner blinked away from the sparely starred periphery of the Milky Way into the total void of intergalactic space and rested beside a Rimfire beacon to draw charge into the generator from the entire spread of the majestic, tilted spiral of the galaxy. Now the blinks were long, measured in parsecs. The Rimfire route skirted the outer spiral on the plane of thegalactic disc. Each blink put a larger mass of stars and interstellar matter between the Erin Kenner and the U.P. worlds. The communication link with X&A headquarters on Xanthos became more and more attenuated, for the ship's regular reports of position traveled from blink beacon to blink beacon along the Rimfire route and then zigzagged inward through the scattered star fields toward Xanthos.

No space tugs were stationed along the outer circle. The last major incident requiring tug service for an X&A ship had involved Rimfire, herself, and was now nothing more than a part of history. The general attitude was that accidents didn't happen to a ship being operated under X&A procedures, but every spaceman knew deep in his heart that ships had disappeared and would disappear again. Ships were made of mechanical and electronic things. Mechanical and electronic things failed.

On the traveled space lanes help was always near at hand. Private sector space tugs, eager to claim salvage rights or lifting fees from a ship in trouble, were always within a few blinks. But out there on the rim one saw only gleaming, white masses of stars when one looked back toward home and the nearest private Mule or fleet class tug was back there, hidden somewhere behind that mass of stellar fire.

It was a long way home. Since Rimfire's epic voyage only a few explorers and prospectors had seen the scattered stars that lay before the Erin Kenner as she charged after several long blinks. On the control bridge Josh checked the charts, nodded.

"This is it," he said. "Old Folks left the route here. So did David's ship."

Angela studied the viewscreen. "Rather intimidating, isn't it? Just where do we start?"

"There," Sheba said, pointing to a small grouping of stars.

"Are we having another psychic moment?" Josh asked. He made a wry face, for even as he tried to sound sarcastic he had a feeling that he had lived the moment before, that he had looked into space from that particular beacon.