Larry Niven - The Mote in God's Eye

“Passengers aboard, sir,” Midshipman Whitbread reported.

“Good. Everyone comfortable?”

“Well, Miss Fowler is, sir. Petty Officer Allot showed the Trader to his cabin…”

“Reasonable.” Blaine settled into his command seat. Lady Sandra—no, she preferred Sally, he remembered—hadn’t looked too good in the brief moments he’d seen her in the prison camp. The way Whitbread talked, she’d recovered a bit. Rod had wanted to hide when he first recognized her striding out of a tent in the prison camp. He’d been covered with blood and dirt—and then she’d come closer. She’d walked like a lady of the Court, but she was gaunt, half-starved, and great dark circles showed under her eyes. And those eyes. Blank. Well, she’d had two weeks to come back to life, and she was free of New Chicago forever.

“I presume you’ll demonstrate acceleration stations for Miss Fowler?” Rod asked.

“Yes, sir,” Whitbread replied. And null gee practice too, he thought.

Blaine regarded his midshipman with amusement. He had no trouble reading his thoughts. Well, let him hope, but rank hath its privileges. Besides, he knew the girl; he’d met her when she was ten years old.

“Signal from Government House,” the watch reported.

Cziller’s cheerful, careless voice reached him. “Hello, Blaine! Ready to cast off?” The fleet Captain was slouched bonelessly in a desk chair, puffing on an enormous and disreputable pipe.

“Yes, sir.” Rod started to say something else, but choked it off.

“Passengers settled in all right?” Rod could have sworn his former captain was laughing at him.

“Yes, sir.”

“And your crew? No complaints?”

“You know damned well— We’ll manage, sir.” Blaine choked back his anger. It was difficult to be angry with Cziller; after all he’d given him his ship, but blast the man! “We’re not overcrowded, but she’ll space.”

“Listen, Blaine, I didn’t strip you for fun. We just don’t have the men to govern here, and you’ll get crew before any get to us. I’ve sent you twenty recruits, young locals who think they’ll like it in space. Hell, maybe they will. I did.”

Green men who knew nothing and would have to be shown every job, but the petty officers could take care of that. Twenty men would help. Rod felt a little better.

Cziller fussed with papers. “And I’ll give you back a couple squads of your Marines, though I doubt if you’ll find enemies to fight in New Scotland.”

“Aye aye, sir. Thank you for leaving me Whitbread and Staley.” Except for those two, Cziller and Plekhanov had stripped off every midshipman aboard, and many of the better petty officers as well. But they had left the very best men. There were enough for continuity. The ship lived, although some berths looked as if she’d lost a battle.

“You’re welcome. She’s a good ship, Blaine. Odds are the Admiralty won’t let you keep her, but you may get lucky. I’ve got to govern a planet with my bare hands. There’s not even money! Only Republic scrip! The rebels took all the Imperial crowns and gave out printed paper. How the blazes are we going to get real money in circulation?”

“Yes, sir.” As a full captain, Rod was in theory equal in rank to Cziller. A brevet appointment to admiral was for courtesy only, so that captains senior to Cziller could take orders from him as fleet Captain without embarrassment. But a naval promotion board had yet to pass on Blaine’s admission to post rank, and he was young enough to worry about the coming ordeal. Perhaps in six weeks time he would be a commander again.

“One point,” said Cziller. “I just said there’s no money on the planet, but it’s not quite true. We have some very rich men here. One of them is Jonas Stone, the man who let your Marines into the city. He says he was able to hide his money from the rebels. Well, why not? He was one of them. But we’ve found an ordinary miner dead drunk with a fortune in Imperial crowns. He won’t say where he got the money, but we think it was from Bury.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So watch His Excellency. OK, your dispatches and new crewmen will be aboard within the hour,” Cziller glanced at his computer. “Make that forty-three minutes. You can boost out as soon as they’re aboard.” Cziller pocketed the computer and began tamping his pipe. “Give my regards to MacPherson at the Yards, and keep one thing in mind: if the work on the ship drags, and it will, don’t send memos to the Admiral. It only gets MacPherson mad. Which figures. Instead, bring Jamie aboard and drink scotch with him. You can’t put away as much as he can, but trying to do it’ll get you more work than a memo.”

“Yes, sir,” Rod said hesitantly. He suddenly realized just how unready he was to command MacArthur . He knew the technical stuff, probably better than Cziller, but the dozens of little tricks that you could learn only through experience…

Cziller must have been reading his mind. It was an ability every officer under him had suspected. “Relax, Captain. They won’t replace you before you get to the Capital, and you’ll have had a lot of time aboard Old Mac by then. And don’t spend your time boning the board exams, either. It won’t do you a bit of good.” Cziller puffed at the huge pipe and let a thick stream of smoke pour from his mouth. “You’ve work to do, I won’t keep you. But when you get to New Scotland, make a point of looking at the Coal Sack. There are few sights in the galaxy to equal it. The Face of God, some call it.” Cziller’s image faded, his lopsided smile seeming to remain on the screen like the Cheshire cat’s.

MacArthur accelerated away from New Chicago at one standard gravity. All over the ship crewmen worked to change over from the down-is-outboard orientation of orbit when spin furnished the gravity to the up-is-forward of powered flight. Unlike merchant ships, which often coast long distances from inner planets to the Alderson Jump points, warships usually accelerate continuously.

Two days out from New Chicago, Blaine held a dinner party.

The crew brought out linens and candelabra, heavy silver plate and etched crystal, products of skilled craftsmen on half a dozen worlds; a treasure trove belonging, not to Blaine, but to MacArthur herself. The furniture was all in place, taken from its spin position around the outer bulkheads and remounted on the after bulkheads—except for the big spin table, which was recessed into what was now the cylindrical wardroom wall.

That curved dining table had bothered Sally Fowler. She had seen it two days ago, when MacArthur was still under spin and the outer bulkhead was a deck, likewise curved. Now Blaine noted her moment of relief as she entered via the stairwell.

He remarked its absence in Bury, who was affable, very much at ease, and clearly enjoying himself. He had spent time in space, Blaine decided. Possibly more time than Rod.

It was Blaine’s first opportunity to meet the passengers formally. As he sat in his place at the head of the table, watching the stewards in spotless dress white bring in the first course, Blaine suppressed a smile. MacArthur had everything except food.

“I’m much afraid the dinner’s not up to the furnishings,” he told Sally. “But we’ll see what we find.” Kelley and the stewards had conferred with the chief petty officer cook all afternoon, but Rod didn’t expect much.

There was plenty to eat, of course. Ship’s fodder: bioplast, yeast steaks, New Washington corn plant; but Blaine had had no chance to lay in cabin stores for himself on New Chicago, and his own supplies had been destroyed in the battle with the rebel planetary defenses. Captain Cziller had of course removed his own personal goods. He’d also managed to take the leading cook and the number-three turret gunner who’d served as captain’s cook.