Starman's Quest Part 3

The job now was to hew the frozen meat out of the receptacles and get it packed in manageable crates for s.h.i.+pping. The job was a difficult one.

It called for more muscle than brain.

As soon as all members of the cargo crew were in the airlock, Kelleher swung the hatch closed and threw the lever that opened the other door into the freezer section. Photonic relays clicked; the metal door swung lightly out and they headed through it after Kelleher gave the go-ahead.

Alan and the others set grimly about their work, chopping away at the ice. They fell to vigorously. After a while, they started to get somewhere. Alan grappled with a huge leg of meat while two fellow starmen helped him ease it into a crate. Their hammers pounded down as they nailed the crate together, but not a sound could be heard in the airless vault.

After what seemed to be three or four centuries to Alan, but which was actually only two hours, the job was done. Somehow Alan got himself to the recreation room; he sank down gratefully on a webfoam pneumochair.

He snapped on a spool of light music and stretched back, completely exhausted. I don't ever want to see or taste a dinosaur steak again, he thought. Not ever.

He watched the figures of his crewmates das.h.i.+ng through the s.h.i.+p, each going about some last-minute job that had to be handled before the s.h.i.+p touched down. In a way he was glad he had drawn the a.s.signment he had: it was difficult, gruelingly heavy labor, carried out under nasty circ.u.mstances--it was never fun to spend any length of time doing manual labor inside a s.p.a.cesuit, because the sweat-swabbers and the air-conditioners in the suit were generally always one step behind on the job--but at least the work came to a definite end. Once all the meat was packed, the job was done.

The same couldn't be said for the unfortunates who swabbed the floors, sc.r.a.ped out the jets, realigned the drive mechanism, or did any other tidying work. Their jobs were _never_ done; they always suffered from the nagging thought that just a little more work might bring the inspection rating up a decimal or two.

Every stars.h.i.+p had to undergo a rigorous inspection whenever it touched down on Earth. The _Valhalla_ probably wouldn't have any difficulties, since it had been gone only nine years Earthtime. But s.h.i.+ps making longer voyages often had troubles with the inspectors. Procedure which pa.s.sed inspection on a s.h.i.+p bound out for Rigel or one of the other far stars might have become a violation in the hundreds of years that would have pa.s.sed before its return.

Alan wondered if the _Valhalla_ would run into any inspection problems.

The schedule called for departure for Procyon in six days, and the s.h.i.+p would as usual be carrying a party of colonists.

The schedule was pretty much of a sacred thing. But Alan had not forgotten his brother Steve. If he only had a few days to get out there and maybe find him----

Well, I'll see, he thought. He relaxed.

But relaxation was brief. A familiar high-pitched voice cut suddenly into his consciousness. _Oh, oh_, he thought. _Here comes trouble._

"How come you've cut jets, s.p.a.ceman?"

Alan opened one eye and stared balefully at the skinny figure of Judy Collier. "I've finished my job, that's how come. And I've been trying to get a little rest. Any objections?"

She held up her hands and looked around the big recreation room nervously. "Okay, don't shoot. Where's that animal of yours?"

"Rat? Don't worry about him. He's in my cabin, chewing his nibbling-stick. I can a.s.sure you it tastes a lot better to him than your bony ankles." Alan yawned deliberately. "Now how about letting me rest?"

She looked wounded. "If you _want_ it that way. I just thought I'd tell you about the doings in the Enclave when we land. There's been a change in the regulations since the last time we were here. But you wouldn't be interested, of course." She started to mince away.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Judy's father was the _Valhalla's_ Chief Signal Officer, and she generally had news from a planet they were landing on a lot quicker than anyone else. "What's this all about?"

"A new quarantine regulation. They pa.s.sed it two years ago when a s.h.i.+p back from Altair landed and the crew turned out to be loaded with some sort of weird disease. We have to stay isolated even from the other starmen in the Enclave until we've all had medical checkups."

"Do they require every s.h.i.+p landing to go through this?"

"Yep. Nuisance, isn't it? So the word has come from your father that since we can't go round visiting until we've been checked, the Crew's going to have a dance tonight when we touch down."

"A dance?"

"You heard me. He thought it might be a nice idea--just to keep our spirits up until the quarantine's lifted. That nasty Roger Bond has invited me," she added, with a raised eyebrow that was supposed to be sophisticated-looking.

"What's wrong with Roger? I just spent a whole afternoon crating dinosaur meat with him."

"Oh, he's--well--he just doesn't _do_ anything to me."

I'd like to do something to you, Alan thought. Something lingering, with boiling oil in it.

"Did you accept?" he asked, just to be polite.

"Of course not! Not _yet_, that is. I just thought I might get some more interesting offers, that's all," she said archly.

_Oh, I see the game_, Alan thought. _She's looking for an invitation._ He stretched way back and slowly let his eyes droop closed. "I wish you luck," he said.

She gaped at him. "Oh--you're _horrible_!"

"I know," he admitted coolly. "I'm actually a Neptunian mudworm, completely devoid of emotions. I'm here in disguise to destroy the Earth, and if you reveal my secret I'll eat you alive."

She ignored his sally and shook her head. "But why do I always have to go to dances with Roger Bond?" she asked plaintively. "Oh, well. Never mind," she said, and turned away.

He watched her as she crossed the recreation room floor and stepped through the exit sphincter. She was just a silly girl, of course, but she had pointed up a very real problem of stars.h.i.+p life when she asked, "_Why do I always have to go to dances with Roger Bond?_"

The _Valhalla_ was practically a self-contained universe. The Crew was permanent; no one ever left, unless it was to jump s.h.i.+p the way Steve had--and Steve was the only Crewman in the _Valhalla's_ history to do that. And no one new ever came aboard, except in the case of the infrequent changes of personnel. Judy Collier herself was one of the newest members of the Crew, and her family had come aboard five s.h.i.+p years ago, because a replacement signal officer had been needed.

Otherwise, things remained the same. Two or three dozen families, a few hundred people, living together year in and year out. No wonder Judy Collier always had to go to dances with Roger Bond. The actual range of eligibles was terribly limited.

That was why Steve had gone over the hill. What was it he had said? _I feel the walls of the s.h.i.+p holding me in like the bars of a cell._ Out there was Earth, population approximately eight billion or so. And up here is the _Valhalla_, current population precisely 176.

He knew all 176 of them like members of his own family--which they were, in a sense. There was nothing mysterious about anyone, nothing new.

And that was what Steve had wanted: something new. So he had jumped s.h.i.+p. Well, Alan thought, development of a hyperdrive would change the whole setup, if--if----

He hardly found the quarantine to his liking either. The starmen had only a brief stay on Earth, with just the shortest opportunity to go down to the Enclave, mingle with starmen from other s.h.i.+ps, see a new face, trade news of the starways. It was almost criminal to deprive them of even a few hours of it.

Well, a dance was the second best thing. But it was a pretty distant second, he thought, as he pushed himself up out of the pneumochair.

He looked across the recreation room. _Speak of the devil_, he thought.

There was Roger Bond now, stretched out and resting too under a radiotherm lamp. Alan walked over to him.

"Heard the sad news, Rog?"

"About the quarantine? Yeah." Roger glanced at his wristchron. "Guess I'd better start getting spruced up for the dance," he said, getting to his feet. He was a short, good-looking, dark-haired boy a year younger than Alan.

"Going with anyone special?"

Roger shook his head. "Who, special? Who, I ask you? I'm going to take skinny Judy Collier, I guess. There's not much choice, is there?"

"No," Alan agreed sadly, "Not much choice at all."

Together they left the recreation room. Alan felt a strange sort of hopeless boredom spreading over him, as if he had entered a gray fog. It worried him.

"See you tonight," Roger said.