David Alexander: Tramp

“I’m standing by. I’ll release the lock when my board tells me that you’ve got a good seal.”

I didn’t bother to reply, just locked the rear camera on the Montclair ’s hatch and selected the “Approach & Dock” menu choice. The boat’s computer plotted the most efficient course, moved the rear of the boat close to the lock, then deployed a flexible, reinforced tube with variable-viscosity gum around the leading edge. The computer positioned the open end of the tube around the hatch like the mouth of a gigantic eel, then applied an electric current through the gel at the end of the tube until the material had softened and made an airtight seal with the Montclair ’s hull. By conduction through the plates I could hear the growing hiss of air filling the tube. Self-consciously, I patted the HKC under my coat, then released my straps.

“Phelps, you’re with me. Sternman, you stay here. If everything’s OK, I’ll tell you that ‘We’re coming over.’ If I say anything else, retract the tube and return to the ship. You got it?”

“Sure, but—”

“Repeat it.”

“We’re coming over. But, Mr. Dondero, what if you’re already in the tube?”

“Then don’t let us in. Look,” I said trying to contain my frustration with the whole peculiar situation, “I’m just being cautious. There’s probably nothing to worry about. Just do your job and we’ll all be fine. Phelps, you ready?”

“Uhh, yes sir,” Phelps said nervously as he sneaked another peek at the HKC’s bulge under my coat.

I led Phelps to the rear of the boat, opened the hatch, and pulled myself into the tube. Knotted lines ran down each side at shoulder height and we quickly traversed the tube’s fifteen-foot length. As we neared the Montclair ’s hull, a rectangular pattern appeared as the hatch was first pulled in, then swung out of the way to our right. The yacht’s lock was tiny but Phelps and I both managed to squeeze in. In a few seconds the outer hatch cycled closed and the inner one opened.

The Montclair was barely more than one large room serving as command cabin, lounge, and galley. Two small sleeping cabins and a head made up the balance of the accommodations, with the deck below dedicated to engines, fuel, provisions, and supplies. Slater Eves was waiting for us in the center of the room with a relieved but not necessarily friendly expression on his flat, pale face.

“Mr. Eves, I’m Harry Dondero. This is Mr. Phelps.” Without the Velcro slippers Eves was wearing, Phelps and I would have floated helplessly around the cabin, so we kept our hands on the rubberized grips built into the wall near the hatch. Eves was slender with bone-white skin and a ruff of red-orange hair which, in this weightless environment, stood straight up perhaps an inch and a half above the crown of his head. Instead of the common disposable ship’s jumpsuit, Eves wore a fanciful outfit of tight red pants and an almost fluorescent lemon-yellow shirt whose full sleeves and a collar, with points at least three inches long, made him seem like a displaced showman or a clown who had removed his make-up but not his costume.

“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Dondero,” Eves said in a melodious, tenor voice. “Thank you for answering my call. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.” You would have starved to death , I thought to myself, but merely nodded to Eves, his unpleasant alternative being all too obvious.

“You said you were alone here?”

“Yes. Yes indeed. Just me.” Now why, I wondered, did Eves find it necessary to answer that question three times?

“Do you have an extra pair of those?” I asked, nodding at his feet.

“What?”

“Ship’s slippers. Phelps and I will need to borrow a pair.”

“What? Oh, slippers. Yes, of course. Let me see…”

Eves rummaged through several drawers and cabinets while Phelps and I watched him with growing disbelief. How could a man traveling alone on his own ship not know where everything was? He should have been able to find the damn things with his eyes closed, but it took him almost two minutes with his eyes wide open before Slater Eves finally turned them up.

“Here you go,” he said with a forced smile as he scratched his way across the rug and handed me two pairs of black elastic slippers with Velcro bands across the soles. I gave one pair to Phelps and we slipped them on over our shoes like old-fashioned rubbers Then Eves opened a hatch in the deck near the rear of the cabin and we descended to the engine room.

While I’m not an engineer, I’ve had the basic courses at the Academy plus over nine years in-service and I’d never seen engines like those. Oh, the basic power plant was standard enough, a GE Hercules 1900, but I didn’t recognize much of anything else. Luckily, I didn’t need to in order to figure out what had gone wrong. Eves had exhausted his main fuel bank and was well down into his reserves. Beyond that I couldn’t see anything else wrong, though his displacers could have been as bad as or worse than those on the Orion, and without a full systems check I wouldn’t have noticed a thing.

“OK, let’s take a look at your hold,” I told Eves when I was done with the engine room.

“Why?” he asked sharply. His face seemed to grow even more pale, if that was possible.

“We can’t allow any craft to approach our hull without knowing what it’s carrying.”

Instead of replying, Eves just stared at me as if I had suddenly begun speaking in a language beyond his understanding. “Mr. Eves?” I finally prompted him. Eves’s eyes locked on mine for a heartbeat longer, then he gave a slight shrug and nodded toward a hatch mounted in the middle of the engine room’s forward bulkhead.

“You’ll need to enter your code,” I said after a quick glance at the panel.

“Of course.” Eves’s voice was tight with an edge of barely suppressed irritation. He approached the panel stiffly, as if someone had shoved a steel pipe up his spine. I watched him type in his code, then open the panel. A bonging tone filled the ship when the hatch slid aside, and Eves had to enter five more digits to cut it off. Once inside, I wondered what all the fuss was about—the hold was essentially empty. All it contained were two small cartons of emergency rations, perhaps a week’s worth for one person, a small crate holding an assortment of gaskets and some sealant and emergency patches, and a cupboard stocked with towels and galley supplies. I didn’t even see the usual reserve drums of water or cylinders of compressed oxygen.

“Satisfied?” Eves asked scornfully as soon as I had completed my circuit of the room.

“Perfectly.” I motioned to Phelps and we all left the hold. I noticed that Eves didn’t bother to double-lock the hatch behind us. Stranger and stranger. As soon as we returned to the main cabin I nodded toward Eves’s sleeping room. “Better put together a bag of whatever you want to take with you.”

“What about my ship? You’re not going to just leave it here, are you?”

“Right now our engineer has his hands full readjusting our displacers so that we can get on with our voyage. When he’s done I expect Captain O’Bannion will ask him to take a look at your engines. If there’s nothing major wrong, he can probably fix them and you can be on your way. If not…” I let the sentence hang but Eves was having none of it.

“If not, what?”

“Our holds are full. We can give you a ride to Coffernam, that’s our next port of call. You’ll have to hire a ship and come back to get the Montclair. We’ll note the coordinates for you.”

“Just leave it here? Out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Who’s going to take her?”