Voyage Across the Stars (89 page)

The
Ajax
was a mixed passenger/freight vessel displacing some four kilotonnes. She was configured for operations on less-developed worlds, where the port facilities might be limited to human stevedores and animal transport. On full-function ports like that serving Landfall City, the
Ajax
docked at outlying quays and still loaded as quickly as the port’s own systems could manage at the more expensive berths.

The load that had just gone aboard the
Ajax
was small arms and ammunition.

Whistling “You Wonder Why I’m a Trooper” under his breath, Ned walked to the berth office, an extruded-plastic building set into the fence. Three sides were bleached white, but there were still traces of the original pink dye around the north-facing window- and door-jambs. A balding man in his mid-thirties stretched at the desk within. He covered his yawn when he saw Ned.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked, politely but with a slight wariness. “I’m Wilson, the purser.”

“I was wondering where the
Ajax
was loading for,” Ned said.

The walls of the small office were covered with holovision pinups of both men and women. The images ranged in tone from cheesecake to pornography that would be extreme on nine worlds out of ten. Apparently it was a tradition that the purser or supercargo of every ship using Berth 41 tacked up his or her taste.

“Looking for a job?” Wilson asked, eyeing Ned carefully.

Ned wore a casual tunic and slacks, brought from Tethys and stored on Telaria. The garments were pastel green and yellow respectively, with no military connotations.

Wilson gestured to the rickety chair before his desk. “Go on, have a seat.”

“I’m not certificated,” Ned said, sitting down. “I was just noticing your cargo.”

Wilson frowned. “Look,” he said defensively, “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. This isn’t anything to do with that business yesterday. And we’re not gunrunning; we’ve got all our licenses.”

Ned laughed. “In broad daylight, out of Landfall City?” he said. “I know you’re straight. I just want to know straight
what?”

Wilson relaxed again. It was a hot day. His jacket and saucer hat hung on a peg behind the open door. “Well, it’s like this,” he explained. “A pharmaceuticals firm from Magellan, they tried to set up a base on an unidentified planet they’d found. It doesn’t have a name and I don’t have the coordinates—that’s a trade secret. All I know is it’s a jungle.”

Ned nodded. When his head moved, the image of one of the pinups—a woman with Oriental features—performed an act that Ned would have thought was impossible for a human to achieve.

“Well,” Wilson continued, “the folks from Magellan went in, and they got handed their heads. Literally. There weren’t enough of them left alive to lift ship, and half the rescue force got killed besides. After that, they knew the size of the operation it was going to take.”

The pinups were tacked one over another in multiple layers. The image that had caught Ned’s attention was stuck directly against the wall, but later-comers had carefully avoided covering the woman’s amazing abilities.

“Magellan couldn’t fund anything like that alone,” Wilson said, “so they did a deal with Doormann Trading. Doormann supplies hardware and the capital to hire a support force. Magellan provides the science staff. And the coordinates, that’s the big one.”

He tapped his electronic desk. “We’re carrying the Doormann Trading share to Magellan. I don’t know if they’ll hire us to take part of the expedition from Magellan to the new site or not.”

“They’ll be hiring on Magellan, then?” Ned said. “Guards, I mean.”

Wilson shrugged. “I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be,” he said. “Curst good rates, too, I shouldn’t be surprised. But if you’re thinking we might give you passage on tick against your hiring bonus . . .”

The purser’s voice trailed off. Ned noticed that Wilson didn’t flatly bar the possibility.

“No, nothing like that,” Ned said as he fished from his pocket the credit chip Tadziki had paid him a few hours earlier. He put the chip on the desk before Wilson. “If you’ve got a cabin open, you’ve got a passenger.”

Wilson’s eyebrows rose when he saw the amount printed on the chip’s exterior. “We’ve got cabins,” he said, poising the chip at the edge of his desk’s processing slot. “Only thing is—”

He looked up. “We’re going to lift as soon as we’ve got the cargo loaded. Midnight, I’d guess, maybe an hour or two later. Is that a problem?”

Ned shook his head. “Suits me fine,” he said. “I’ll have my baggage sent over immediately.”

Wilson pushed the chip in far enough for the transport mechanism to take over. He entered the class and destination codes onto his keyboard. “We’re getting a bonus for fast delivery,” he explained as he typed. “That’s why we’re in a hurry to lift. With all that brouhaha yesterday, I thought it was going to hold us up. But the new bosses, they say the deal’s still on.”

The desk chuckled to itself as it processed the data. Wilson smiled and stretched again. “Hey, wasn’t that something yesterday? I’ve been talking to a couple of the port police. Via, what a hell of a business!”

Ned nodded. “That’s the word, all right,” he said. “Hell.”

A new chip, imprinted with the lower amount of the first chip less cost of passage, sprang from the output slot.

Wilson slid it over. “Here you go,” he said. “Just show up an hour before liftoff or take your chances. We’ve got your identification from the credit transfer.”

The personal data from Ned’s credit chip appeared on a small screen inset at an angle into the desktop. The purser glanced down as he referred to it, then blinked in astonishment. “Slade?” he said.
“Edward Slade of
Tethys?”

Ned dropped the credit chip into his pocket again and stood up. “That’s me,” he said.

“But blood and martyrs, Master Slade!” Wilson cried. “You’re the guy? You’re the one who took out two tanks with a submachine gun yesterday?”

“Me?” said Ned as he walked out the door. “No, but that sounds like something my uncle Don might have done.”

The Berth 41 office was closed when Ned returned. Wilson lounged at the wicket of the fence with an armed crewman. Beyond, the
Ajax
gleamed in the beams of the positioning lights set in pits in the concrete.

The purser waved cheerfully at Ned’s approach and called, “You’re in plenty of time, Master Slade. We’ve stowed your baggage—four pieces, that was?”

“Four,” Ned agreed, stepping through the wicket. Much of Ned’s own gear was dress clothing, which he couldn’t imagine needing on Magellan or thereafter. He was keeping the clothes, though. They were a link to . . . to home, to civilization; to life.

The lowboys had discharged their cargo, but the vessel’s three holds were still open. A pair of service vehicles in Doormann Trading blue were parked before the hatches, and several figures there gestured conversationally.

The sailor with Wilson stared at Ned. Ned wondered what the purser had been telling the man.

“Also,” Wilson said with a smirk, “your friend just came aboard. She’ll be waiting in your cabin.”

“Partner?” Ned said.

Wilson and the sailor exchanged quick glances. “Ah, yessir,” Wilson said carefully. “A Mistress Schmidt from Dell. She said she was going to give you a sendoff to Magellan. Ah—is there a problem, sir?”

Ned grinned. He felt light enough to float into the starry sky. “No problem at all,” he said as he walked down the light-taped path to the
Ajax,
to the future—

And to Lissea Doormann.

The earliest form of the legend of Jason and the Argonauts can be reconstructed only from literary fragments and vase paintings. In this version, Jason appears to have sailed west, into the Adriatic, rather than east to the ends of the Black Sea. Readers with an interest in Greek myth will notice that I’ve adapted portions of this
Urmythus
in the plot of
The Voyage.
Most significantly, the original Jason doesn’t sow the dragon’s teeth. Rather, he yokes the bronze bulls to battle the water monster which guards the Golden Fleece.

I don’t mean to imply that I ignored the
Argonautica
of the third century B.C. poet Apollonius Rhodius. On the contrary, Apollonius was my inspiration and main source.

The problem facing Apollonius is similar to that of a modern writer who intends to rework ancient myths. Apollonius was a cultured man working in a period of high civilization. His material, however, was that of the Heroic Age and would inevitably be compared to the use made of the Heroic Age by Dark Age writers like Homer (the two Homers, in my opinion).

The result is oddly disquieting. Apollonius was a very skillful writer. His characters are well drawn and their motivations are perfectly understandable to a modern reader. The problem is that the events and activities Apollonius describes are generally those of a much harsher period; a period that
wasn’t
civilized, by his standards or by ours. The result reads like a saga about sensitive Vikings or the autobiography of a self-effacing quattrocentro duke.

The partial failure of an excellent craftsman like Apollonius was a warning to me. To achieve what I believe is a more suitable tone for my adaptation, I reread the
Iliad.
Frankly, Homer’s stark vision of reality is closer to that of my own mind anyway.

Apollonius wasn’t merely a negative model for me, either. Many of the classical authors had a remarkable talent for sketching minor characters with a line or two. Apollonius was near the forefront of that group.

The members of the
Swift’
s
crew are generally the characters whom capsule descriptions in the
Argonautica
evoked in my mind. Thus Apollonius’ Idas became my Herne Lordling; Teiamon and Peleus became the Warson brothers; Calais and Zetes became the Boxalls (though here I mined Propertius as well); the young Meleager became Josie Paetz, while his two uncles were combined into the character of Yazov; Periclymenus became Raff—and so on.

Most (though not all) of the
Swift’
s
layovers are from points Apollonius describes in the course of the
Argo,
though I’ve significantly reduced the number as well as changing their sequence. I’ve tried to maintain Apollonius’ rough balance of events on the outward voyage, in Colchis, and on the return.

Because some readers will want to know the originals from which I built my fictions, and because (based on my past experience) most reviewers commenting on the sources will get them wrong, the equivalents are as follows:

Apollonius ends his poem just as the
Argo
comes back home to harbor. There’s reason for his decision—the same reason that Eisenstein halts the action of the
The Battleship Potemkin
where he does: what comes next is pretty horrifying. I went on and described the return as well; partly because it is a major part of the myth, but primarily because I find it morally necessary—for me—to show precisely where certain courses of conduct and tricks of thought lead.

The use of force is
always
an answer to problems. Whether or not it’s a satisfactory answer depends on a number of things, not least the personality of the person making the determination.

Force isn’t an attractive answer, though. I would not be true to myself or to the people I served with in 1970 if I did not make that realization clear.

Dave Drake

Chatham County, NC