Godspeed (27 page)

For one thing—the main thing—we were
alive.
And now we would be operating with the protection of Danny Shaker himself. Not only that, we had kept the girls in the interior of
Paddy's Fortune
out of the hands of the crew of the
Cuchulain.
I understood what that meant, even if Mel did not. It was a major achievement.

As Shaker discussed where to stow Mel safely out of the way in the cargo beetle, in a place where no one was likely to look for her, I felt nothing but relief. And the image of him that I had tried to paint for Mel, as a deadly, heartless killer, was one that I no longer found credible.

Why didn't I question more closely, at least to myself, Shaker's own motives in all of this?

I have no excuses, though I know I was ignoring Tom Toole's comment, that the Chief was a deep one. And I had forgotten, or at least managed to push to the back of my mind, Danny Shaker's own words to his crew, back on board the
Cuchulain, "I'll take the possible value of a live something over the guaranteed zero value of a dead one.
"

Maybe that was it. Maybe I refused to reduce my own self-image to that of a mere live something.

CHAPTER 21

The first job was to find a hiding place for Mel Fury. Shaker stowed her away behind a false bulkhead, tucked away among spare parts for the beetle's drive unit. It was crowded and not too comfortable, but he ordered her not to move or make a sound until he came to get her. By that time, he said, we would be on board the
Cuchulain.

She nodded cheerfully enough, but I wasn't too happy. I was beginning to wonder about Mel. She had met her very first male—me—only a day or so earlier. A few hours after that she had seen Sean Wilgus killed. Then she had been explicitly forbidden by the controller that ran
Paddy's Fortune
to go back to the surface. She had followed me anyway. And now she acted as though everything was part of some big, exciting game. I decided that either young Mel had a few screws loose in her head, or she was at least ten times as tough as me. Maybe both. Would she sit still when she was asked to?

Then Danny Shaker came up with his own surprise. He wanted
me
out of the way, as well as Mel, when the crewmen returned.

"Just listen closely, and you'll find out why," he said, when I asked him. "Nine-tenths of running a ship, or anything else, is psychological advantage. I don't want you
hidden,
exactly, the way Mel Fury is, but I do want you in a place where you won't be noticed first thing. Aye, and you'd better be given a real job to do, preferably something that everybody hates. This should do fine."

He showed me a hatch in the floor of the cargo beetle. It led to a cramped lower level, a ring-shaped region with a ceiling only a couple of feet high. "That runs around the cargo beetle drive," Shaker said. "It's supposed to be checked for dirt and leaks and general condition every time the beetle flies. But you can imagine Pat O'Rourke or Tom Toole trying to squeeze in there."

Or Jay Hara. But Shaker forced me down through the hatch. "Shouldn't be more than a couple of hours," he said cheerfully. "I expect you to do a decent job of it while you're waiting to come up, too. Otherwise I'll be forced to put you back." He slammed the hatch shut.

I sat on a hard metal floor. At least there was light. Mel would be sitting in the dark. I didn't feel particularly sorry for her.

I did nothing for a few minutes, then began to crawl around the inner wall of the ring. I saw no sign of any breaks, but dirt and junk there was, plenty of it, and I collected it in the bag that Danny Shaker had given me.

I was almost back to where I started when the floor vibrated to footsteps above my head, and I heard voices. I stopped working and sat motionless. I could hear—but if only I had been able to see!

Because an argument was starting up, no more than a few feet away.

"Aye, and look at us." That voice belonged to Joseph Munroe, sulky as ever. "Starved and tired out, with nothing to show for it."

"The galley's on, Joe." Danny Shaker sounded conciliatory. "You'll have hot food in a few minutes."

"And soaked, every one of us. No more dry clothes, either."

"Not until you're back on the
Cuchulain.
I'm sorry, but I didn't expect rain here."

"Or much else that's happened, far as I can see." Munroe raised his voice, from sulky to angry. "I'm going to say this, Dan Shaker, if no one else will. This trip's been a disaster, botched from start to finish. And you can't say we didn't try to warn you. You ignored us."

"Never. I listen to everything any crewman wants to tell me. You know that, Joe, if you'll stop and think."

"What about the woman on board, then? Didn't we all tell you that was asking for bad luck, that nothing good could come of a woman on a ship?" There was a mutter of agreement from the other crewmen, Robert Doonan and Patrick O'Rourke. "And hasn't there been bad luck," Munroe went on, "and more than bad? That scientist fellow dead, and Sean as well."

"Sean Wilgus didn't have to die. It was from his own actions. He killed Dr. Hamilton, and he would have killed me, too."

"Maybe. But Sean was a good crewman, you've said so yourself."

"And I'll say it again, Joe. Sean was first-rate."

"So what do you call that, if not bad luck? A good man gone, with the
Cuchulain
ready to fall apart, and every able-bodied crewman needed to hold it together and fly."

"I know that better than anyone." Shaker didn't raise his voice, but his tone became more intense.
"Hold your distance, Joe Munroe, and listen to me."

The floor above my head sounded with a sudden clatter of heavy boots. I was in agony. What was going on up there? If only I could
see.

"Think, before you threaten me." It was Danny Shaker again. "Wasn't I the one who said we needed something more than the usual trip out, something profitable enough for us to afford a complete refit? Didn't we all agree on that, long before we left Erin?—back even when Paddy Enderton was aboard with us. Didn't
you
agree with it, and drink with me to fame and fortune?"

"You had the golden tongue, and you know it. Promising us fortune, more money and women than we knew what to do with—"

"Not women, Joe. I never said one word about women. That came from Paddy, and your own ideas about what he'd found. No, what I promised you was simple: triple wages, guaranteed, and a shot at something more valuable than anything on Erin. I said we'd have a shot at the Godspeed Drive."

"Godspeed Drive!" There was contempt in Joe Munroe's voice, and again Doonan and O'Rourke were muttering in agreement, louder than before. Even without seeing them, I could sense the swing in mood.

"Aye, you heard me, the Godspeed Drive," Shaker said. He lowered his voice, so I could only just hear him. "You don't understand, even now, what that drive would mean to anyone who had it. All of you, I want you to think about it for a minute. Imagine this: Instead of the poor old
Cuchulain,
staggering along through space for months at a time, you'd have a ship that could whip across the whole Maveen system in
seconds.
From Erin to Antrim, like
that.
"I heard him snap his fingers. "And more than the span of the Forty Worlds. If you couldn't find what you wanted here, you'd be able to take a hop to another star, and find it there. With that sort of power, think about what it would bring to you and me and the rest of the crew. We wouldn't just
do well
on Erin. We'd control the supply of every rare material. We'd make every other ship in the system obsolete. We'd
own
the whole Forty Worlds, and everything in them. You talk about wanting women? People would find you women by the hundred—by the thousand—and push them at you, for a sniff at the sort of power we'd have. All of that, and more. It can be ours—it
will
be ours, once we get to the Godspeed Base. That's my goal now, as it has been all along: Find Godspeed Base, and lay our hands on a ship with the Godspeed Drive."

I thought it was a great speech, but it didn't work.

"Which we'll never do." It was a new voice, and so wheezy and throaty it could only be Robert Doonan. "I don't know where it is and what it is, this hellhole you dragged us to, but I know one thing. It's no more your damned 'Godspeed Base' than I'm the Skibbereen Whore. As for that rotten kid, the one who gave us the coordinates to come here and has had us running all over in the rain and mud for the past two days until we're ready to drop . . . if ever I set eyes on him again, I'll slit his skinny throat."

Doonan stopped, but only to start coughing.

"I hate to say this, but Joe and Robbie are right." It was Pat O'Rourke, his deep voice rumbling. "This can't be the Godspeed Base. Couldn't ever have been. We've been talking, the three of us, and we agree you've done us wrong. It's time for a change. A change of leader."

There was a long silence. I strained my ears, and heard no more than air pumps and the background hum of electrical equipment.

Something was going to happen, I just knew it. But what?

"So it's come to that, has it?" said Danny Shaker at last.

"It has," Pat O'Rourke replied, and the other two murmured assent.

"Well, I'll tell you something, Pat. I'm not a man to stay where he's not wanted. We'll go on back to the
Cuchulain,
and you and the rest can pick your own chief. But while we're doing that, I'm going to give all of you a few things to stew on. First, I never said this had to be Godspeed Base. Think back, and you'll recall what I did say. This was a place that we had to go to, because it could
lead us
to find the Godspeed Drive. It was, and if we just keep going, I say it will. Second, you'd better decide who's going to do the hard thinking for you when it's not my responsibility."

"We'll manage." But Munroe didn't sound too confident.

"You will? Then start with this one, Joe Munroe. You've been looking for a world full of women, a place to make you all rich. How? You'll have your fun with any women you find, that I believe. But women can't make you rich if you leave them out here in the Maze. Are you proposing to ship a load of them away on the
Cuchulain ?
—you, who was the first to say that even
one
woman on board brought nothing but bad luck. No? What, then? Are you proposing to set up some sort of pleasure camp out here in the middle of nowhere, where other ships will come for a bit of bought fun? I could organize that sort of thing, yes, and make it work. But are you sure that
you
could? Just
how
are you going to become rich? I can answer that question, and see a dozen ways to turn women in the Maze into real wealth on Erin. But can you, Joe?"

There was a long silence, until finally Danny Shaker continued: "And even that's not the whole story. You see, there's something else you don't know, something that happened when you were off on this last run around on the surface—a chase, you'll remember, that I told you before you left was going to be a big waste of time and effort. I walked a little way to see what conditions on the ground were like, but I stayed close to the ship. And guess who was waiting here for me when I got back."

I heard Shaker's footsteps approaching. The hatch above my head was suddenly lifted, and Danny Shaker's face appeared in the opening. "Come on out, Jay," he said. "There's a few people who'd like to talk to you."

* * *

The way the crewmen reacted to my appearance, I thought I was going to be murdered on the spot. Only surprise kept them fixed where they stood.

"Jay's been down there cleaning up the lower hold," Shaker said. "Everybody's favorite job." And then to me. "Here. Show the lads this, and tell them what you told me."

He was holding out the navigation aid. I took it with hands that trembled.

"This world," I said.
"Paddy's Fortune
—it isn't Godspeed Base, and there's no Godspeed Drive here. But you have to come here first, because this"—I held out the navaid—"gives directions as to how to get to the real Godspeed Base
from here.
If we hadn't come here first, we wouldn't know where to go next."

What I said was true, and I prayed they would not ask for too many details. Danny Shaker made sure of that.

"And now tell us all why you're here at the beetle, Jay," he said. "Explain why you came to see me."

I turned to face Joe Munroe, Robert Doonan, and Patrick O'Rourke. They towered over me, every one of them. What I was going to say sounded preposterous, but I had no choice. I had to assume that Danny Shaker knew what he was doing.

"I want to join Captain Shaker and the rest of you," I said. "I know I'm young, but every one of you started young. I'm tired of being told what to do every minute of the day by Eileen Xavier, and I'm tired of being treated like a kid. I'm not a kid. I'm sixteen years old. I know how to work this"—I turned on the navaid, set up to show as a sample a shimmering three-dimensional display of the Maze—"and no one else does, in Doctor Xavier's group or in yours. I can be useful, and I'm willing to work hard on anything that Captain Shaker tells me to do."

"Or he would have been," Shaker said softly. He was not talking to me at all. "Except that you lads will have a new chief, as soon as you get back to the
Cuchulain.
I don't know if Jay Hara will feel the same about working for him." He stared around vaguely, then headed for a seat by the control panel. "Well, that's going to be your problem," he said as he settled down. "That, and deciding how any women you do happen to find will give you more profit than an hour's fun. Me, I'll go back to being a simple crewman, and glad to do it. There's nothing takes the heart out of a man more than doing his level best for everybody, and then being spit on by the same people he was trying to help."

I couldn't believe he could be so relaxed, because the anger on the faces of Pat O'Rourke and Robbie Doonan had to be obvious to anyone. Then I saw that they were glaring not at Shaker, but at Joseph Munroe.

"There, Joe Munroe," said Pat O'Rourke. "Now you've done it. Didn't I warn you we might be going off half-cocked? Do you think you're the man that can lead us all to fortune? Because if you do, I'll tell you something: It'll be a cold day on Tyrone before Patrick O'Rourke will follow you."