Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

But Susan was Susan; if she wanted to have her gun ready, Amy wasn’t going to try to stop her.

And maybe she was right.

The spaceship’s captain was eyeing his unwanted guests cautiously, very much aware of Lieutenant Drummond’s blaster, but probably with no idea at all that Susan was armed.

For a moment they all stood there, not speaking.

Oddly, what finally broke the silence and settled the situation peacefully was Amy-to be precise, her appearance. When the chief steward finally looked past the tall threatening blond man in the rumpled, worn, and bloodstained Imperial uniform and saw the deep, half-cleaned scratches on Amy’s forehead, the tattered condition of her flowered dress, his protective instincts took over. Here was a female in distress, and one who was to be a passenger aboard his ship, at that.

“Come in, my dear,” he said, beckoning, “and we’ll get you fixed up and find you something to wear!”

Susan made a small, wordless noise, and tugged at the jacket of her suit. Her hand was no longer in her purse, and Amy felt a definite relief upon seeing that.

“You, too,” the steward said.

“If that’s all right,” the captain said, glaring at Drummond.

“Absolutely,” Drummond said, smiling. “Excellent idea. We’re going to be stuck with each other for awhile; I don’t suppose anyone’s going to like it, but there’s no reason we can’t make it as comfortable as possible.”

The captain thawed slightly.

“I’m not going to interfere with the way you run your ship, Captain,” Drummond continued, “and I’m sure Captain Cahn won’t, either, just so long as you get us all to Base One as quickly as possible.”

Captain Gifford nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

* * * *

Pel and most of the others were blithely unaware of any prior conflict as they trickled in through the airlock. It didn’t even occur to Pel to wonder whose ship he was on, or where the crew was, until someone else brought the subject up.

The earlier arrivals, once aboard and with Drummond’s authority accepted, had sorted out the accommodations. Despite the complaints, the refugees posed no serious hardship to anyone. In fact, the ship wasn’t even crowded; all the original complement had to do was double up, so that the unmarried passengers were two to a stateroom instead of one, and that provided enough space to fit the twenty-two refugees in at three or four to a room. Crew quarters, far less luxurious to begin with, were not disturbed at all.

The Browns were given a cabin for the three of them, with a double bed for Pel and Nancy a folding cot for Rachel.

Susan, Amy, Elani, and Prossie, the four unmarried women in the group, took the largest cabin aboard-a suite, actually, with a tiny sitting room and miniscule bedroom, one of two suites aboard the vessel.

Raven, Stoddard, and Drummond were grouped together, as were Godwin, Ted, and Valadrakul. Peabody, Lampert, and Squire Donald were assigned to a single room. The more observant noticed that this put at least one Imperial in each group of men-either one lieutenant or two spacemen-but nobody bothered to comment on the fact.

The other suite, opposite the one the unmarried women shared, went to Captain Cahn, who claimed the bedroom for himself, and left Smith, Soorn, and Mervyn occupying the sitting room.

The little people, Grummetty and Alella, were given an unused storage locker; since the ship’s furnishings weren’t suited to them, nobody saw any point in giving them a stateroom. They made no objection; the locker suited them just fine.

Besides, they were really too sick by then to care very much.

While these assignments were being made up forward, the twenty original passengers divided themselves into pairs for the ten remaining staterooms. Since that happened to work out to a nice even two to a room, there were no serious accusations of added unfairness or injustice.

By the time these arrangements were settled and explained Pel was thoroughly bored with the whole affair. He had begun to tune out the chatter and wonder how much time this group would waste before getting under way.

Nine days to Base One, they said, and there were bound to be delays there, as well-the Galactic Empire seemed to be full of delays. They did some things quickly and well-Prossie had made the original telepathic contact with Town within minutes-but others they seemed to dawdle on. It had taken forever, it seemed, to actually pick everyone up.

He probably wouldn’t be home for another two weeks, at this rate. He worried about Silly Cat. He was pretty sure he had left the lid up on the upstairs toilet, so even if someone had closed the downstairs bathroom the animal could reach water, but the food in his bowl wouldn’t last more than a day or two. The poor beast might well starve before Pel and Nancy and Rachel got home to feed him.

And God only knew what would become of Pel’s business after more than a week of missed appointments. He had a report to write up for that computer dealer in Rockville, explaining why their radio ads weren’t working-that wasn’t getting done while he was here, instead of home.

“Mr. Brown,” a steward said, startling him out of his gloomy thoughts.

“Yes?” Pel turned and found himself facing a young man in a white jacket and dark pants, with his crewcut and bristling mustache looking oddly mismatched.

“This way.” The steward gestured toward a brightly-lit passageway.

“To where?”

“Your cabin, sir.”

“Oh,” Pel replied, feeling foolish. He brushed Nancy’s arm to make sure she was paying attention, then followed the young crewman. Nancy and Rachel came close on his heels.

Their cabin was the fourth door on the left; it was moderate in size, perhaps ten feet square, with its own miniature bathroom and a more generous closet, all of it decorated in shades of blue. A square of royal blue velvet drapery hung above the bed.

The steward bowed and left, closing the door gently.

While Nancy and Rachel were examining the closet, Pel kneeled on the bed and pulled the curtain aside, revealing, as he had expected, a porthole.

At least, it looked like a porthole, but then he reconsidered. Perhaps it was a backlit painting on glass.

He shifted his angle of view slightly, and decided no, it was definitely a real window.

Beyond the porthole the sky was black and full of stars; the ship had taken off.

Pel had felt no jarring, no acceleration, but with anti-gravity that didn’t seem to mean much. He stopped to listen, and could hear a faint, steady, high-pitched hum, but nothing like the roar of jet engines or rockets.

But then, with anti-gravity drive, why would you need rockets?

And there wasn’t any weightlessness, but presumably, if the Empire had anti- gravity, they could also provide artificial gravity.

That took some of the fun out of a trip among the stars.

Then he paused in his chain of thought. Were those stars? Something looked wrong. They looked fake, somehow.

Was this a video screen, rather than a real porthole, perhaps? Or was it a glass painting after all, done with some unfamiliar technique?

If it was video, it was some kind he’d never seen before, something that made the best HDTV stuff he’d seen look primitive. It was not video. And he couldn’t imagine any technique that would give a painting such a flawless illusion of depth. Was it a hologram, perhaps?

No, it had to be a real porthole. But then, what was it that looked wrong? He stared out at the star-spattered darkness for a moment, and finally figured it out.

The stars weren’t twinkling. They burned as sharp and clear as tiny headlights, out there in the emptiness.

No air, he realized. There was no atmosphere blocking his view.