Wildcatter (3 page)

“Acceptable, Captain.” JC rose up on his hind legs. If a grizzly bear could grin, it might look like that. “Hanna, love, it certainly wasn’t your fault that those rascals got here first. Come along, you deserve some sleep.” Without waiting for her, he headed out the door.

For a moment Hanna’s lips and fists clenched. She was currently JC’s roommate, so he had been dropping the sort of hint she detested. Seth’s early efforts to woo her had met with no success at all, and he doubted very much that the commodore’s had. When the party had started to turn kinky last night, Hanna had been the first to leave, just before Seth had draped the captain over his shoulder and carried her off to the cabin to pursue their fun in private. Whatever the other three had indulged in after that was their business.

She rose and started to walk out, then hesitated. She was still on watch and ISLA rules required that one human be awake at all times. Visibly blushing now, she glanced uneasily at Jordan and then Seth, who nodded agreement and laid a hand on the table.

“Prospector taking the con,” he said. That expression always amused him, because it meant steering a ship and no human could steer a starship.

Hanna said, “First Officer going off duty.”

—Confirming Prospector Broderick on watch.

Hanna left. Even the backs of her ears were red. Reese held out a hand to Maria.

Now Seth could head into the mess to clean up the, um, mess.

Jordan said, “Wait, please, all of you.”

The captain came around the table. Seth deposited Whittington on the carpet and rose to accept her outstretched hands. She had trouble meeting his eye.

“He’s a lout,” she said. “And a bully. But in his way he’s also a great man. Nobody knows the Big Nothing better than JC, from the boardroom, all the way down to years of utter boredom. He’s made more money in his career than any of us can dream of; he’s risking every cent of it. He put this thing together, Seth. Without him none of us would be here. We certainly can’t deny him a look at his world.
But
I am not going to let him send you downside to fry in some sort of planetary hell, no matter what he says. Understand?”

Yes, Seth understood, perhaps better than she did, because he knew exactly how JC could make the prospector dance to his tune.

“I don’t go down there unless I want to,” he said. “
GenRegs
003.01
, remember? I can refuse any order I consider too dangerous unless you and First agree that my refusal will imperil the ship, and if JC Lecanard tries to get nasty, I’ll knock his face off.”

Jordan smiled wistfully. “I’d almost like to see that, but it’s my problem, not yours. I’m the one who has to put him in his place, and I can’t do it as well like this. I’ll have to shift, love. You do understand?”

He understood that it felt like a kick in the crotch. Millions of years of evolution said his mate was deserting him. That was his stupid lower brain speaking. They’d only been paired two weeks this time. He had no claim on her, and a herm could never be a mate in the way a real woman could. Jordan was great recreation, nothing more.

“You’re being sexist,” he said. “Stereotypical. There’s no reason why a woman can’t put him in his place. Verbally, I mean. If you’re planning to punch him on the nose, then I advise against it, no matter which gender you happen to be. Let me do it for you.”

She barely smiled. “Not sexist, love. It’s just, well I know me, both me’s, and I know I can handle JC a lot better when I have visible balls. This is too important to risk a screw-up.”

“I understand,” he said, struggling to hide his bitterness. “The mission must come first.”

“I’ll make it up to you later, I promise, on the way home.”

“It can’t be better than it has been, but I’ll take the rain check.”

He turned to the others, who were watching. Ever since the ship left Earth, the herms had tried to maintain the balance among the crew, never being the same gender at the same time. “Maria, take her over and make her over.”

“You’re a brute, Seth Broderick.” Maria shot him a wink as she came to rescue Jordan. Any other time a wink from Maria would raise his heartbeat twenty points.

Maria and Jordan left together. Two blue pills a day and a high protein diet would make Jordan male again in about three days. But the change would be much easier for them if they shared a cabin with a woman during that time—inhaling female pheromones, although it was indelicate to mention that. The captain might be right in thinking she would resist JC’s bullying better as a man, but it would be because JC wouldn’t push a man as hard. Bullying women was an ancient custom, much safer than bullying other men.

Reese came wandering along the room, wearing their usual sardonic half-smile. They were tall for a herm, taller than Seth, although they had a dancer’s athletic slimness, nothing like his fighter bulk. Also like him, they had thick hair, wavy and jet black; Seth fought a constant battle against beard shadow, but herms rarely grew facial hair. Reese’s only razor was a sense of humor that sounded aggressive when they were male and snide when female.

“So you’ve been kicked out of the captain’s cabin,” he said, standing closer to Seth than felt comfortable for two men. “You’ll have to slum with me. What a disaster! Now we’ll have four males and only two females. You expect me to make a change, too? You expect me to satisfy your brute sexual drive?”

His sarcasm wasn’t truly joking. Reese Platte was older, around forty, with a worldwide reputation and an alphabet of letters after their name. They had won prestigious awards in astro­biology. They were rich—not in the same class as JC had been before he founded Mighty Mite, but they were not gambling their fortune on this expedition, as he was. Win or lose, Reese could go home to a life of unworried comfort. They considered Seth Broderick an uneducated young lout, kitchen help, the hand hired to do the heavy lifting. Reese, when female, was not the girl of Seth’s dreams.

Wildcatters were notorious for promiscuity. Sex, after all, was what humans did, the one entertainment that never palled, and they were shut up for years at a stretch with no news of Earth, no outside friends, nowhere to go. Not all of
Hind
’s crew were equally lecherous. Hanna was puritanical and absolutely refused to play. Reese tended to cheat, being predatory when male and picky when female.

“That’s your decision, Doctor,” Seth said. “I do still hope to seduce you at least once before we get home.” He was lying. He had no such ambition. She was twenty years older than he was.

“I admit I’ve been playing hard to get. Next time, I promise I’ll take pity on you. But we may have to descend to this demon planet together, remember, and I don’t think that such a dangerous situation is any place for a
girl
.” He batted his long eyelashes.

It was true that a biologist normally accompanied a prospector downside, although only the prospector went outside. The bio stayed in the sealed, aseptic area of the shuttle. Somehow Reese staying in the comparative safety of
Golden Hind
had always been a more believable scenario. Now it seemed virtually certain, since Galactic had flagged Cacafuego as dangerous.

“It may not be any place for a man, either.”

“But you will be so much more important to the success of the expedition,” Reese said. “We can’t afford to have you driven crazy by unslaked lust.”

Seth leaned both hands on the back of his chair. “The mission is the only thing that matters, Doctor. If you think you will perform better under stress as a man, then keep your dingle dangling by all means. Don’t worry about me. I have often gone months without being laid, I assure you.”

“The Chinese would say that you need to conserve your yang for the difficult days ahead.” Reese stalked away. Two pink pills a day and a high-fat diet would soon turn them female again, but even that medical miracle could never make them desirable.

* * *

Seth went into the mess to clean up. It was longer than the control room and the absence of a central table made the curve of the floor more noticeable. It seemed smaller, though, because it was cluttered with comfortable chairs, fold-away tables, and recreational equipment. The floor and ceiling were currently displaying some arid Asian steppe with a camel train in the distance and snow-capped peaks beyond them. All these decorative routines were familiar by now; soon a troop of riders would start chasing gazelles along the stern wall.

Apart from that, the room was still in the shambles left over from the celebration. This was where Seth spent his days: here, the galley beyond, and on the hydroponics deck. Galley, mess, control room, sleeping cabins, showers, gym; those had been the crew’s world for the last four hundred days. He also spent an hour a day exercising down on the 2-gee level, closer to the rim, where even running might break an ankle. He had been steadily popping pills to increase muscle and bone density until he could risk lifting weights down there now. Cacafuego’s gravity was predicted as 1.2 gee.

Some law of nature decreed that the faster you traveled, the more boring the journey. Flying was less interesting than walking, and light-speed was the dullest transportation of all. For weeks the ship would drift in locator mode, seemingly motionless in infinite space, although in reality moving at huge velocity relative to almost anything else in the galaxy. Hanna had sent out unmanned supra-light-speed probes and scanned with dozens of instruments while everyone aboard fidgeted and fretted. Only when she, as navigator, had been satisfied that she had located another haven had she been willing to proceed. The jumps took no time at all, as far as human senses could measure. In one sense, they lasted negative years, for warping space also warped time.

He began gathering cans, glasses, empty plates, and full plates. What was he supposed to do with champagne bottles out here, hundreds of light years from the nearest recycling depot? His duties aboard
Golden Hind
were basically everything that nobody else wanted to do. JC had warned him of that when he hired him, fifteen months ago. Seth couldn’t remember if he’d mentioned busboy.

Day Minus 47

046.12 Nothing in these Regulations or Ship’s Rules shall be interpreted as requiring any member of the ship’s complement to tolerate sexual harassment, or to engage in any form of sexual activity except voluntarily.

General Regulations 
InterStellar Licensing Authority 
2375 edition 

Seth stepped out of the levitator lobby into Mighty Mite’s offices, a reception area the size of a tennis court, luxuriously paneled with what looked like real wood but certainly wasn’t. Huge, glaring pictures decorated the walls: galaxies a-twirling, bizarre landscapes from exotic worlds. None of them could relate to Mite itself, because the
Golden Hind
expedition was to be its first. Several doors might lead anywhere or nowhere; all were closed. The four young men sitting on couches around the walls were either his rivals for the prospector job or just decoration.

He waded through the carpet to the receptionist, who glanced up with eyes glazed by boredom. Skinny was the latest affect­ation of female young and she looked as if she had not eaten for months. Limp blond hair hung to her waist, and a blood-red Florenian orchid grew on the side of her neck.

“I’m Seth Broderick.”

She corrected him. “You’re Number Twelve. Take a seat until your number is called.”

He headed to an empty couch. The most interesting thing in sight was a sign above the receptionist’s desk reading:
Day -47
. Mighty Mite had still to finish hiring its crew, which was cutting it fine if it hoped to launch in a mere month and a half. The cost of building and outfitting a starship was literally astronomical, but if pressure from the creditors was forcing the pace, that would not reduce the risk any.
Has anyone seen the first aid kit?

Without another glance at the opposition, he folded his hands on his lap, closed his eyes, and leaned back to seem relaxed. He had detected Mighty Mite playing mind games before, so he had no doubts that he was being observed; perhaps his heartbeat was being monitored. He had already noted that three of the four were sitting with eyes closed, lids flickering as they either read or watched some display visible only to them. The fourth was in the lotus position, which was definitely overdoing the icicle imitation.

There had been hundreds of applications, of course, perhaps thousands. He had endured three previous interviews and four medicals, each more thorough than the last, and now Mite had flown him to head office in La Paz to meet the great man himself. If JC Lecanard wasn’t ready to make his decision by now, he was probably too inefficient ever to get his fogging ship off the fogging ground. Still twelve candidates with only forty-seven days left until launch? The presence of the others kept up the pressure on Seth, but some or even all of those four might be local actors brought in to play the part of additional candidates. They would be cheaper than plane tickets to Bolivia.

 
Three of the other candidates, or actors, were wearing formal suits, with calf-length pants, flared coats, and hats with feathers in them, as if they were bankers or lawyers. One of them was almost certainly a herm, although it was always hard to be sure. Lotus was dressed like Seth, in tank top, shorts, and sandals. That was all a guy ever needed these days, as long as he remembered to take a weekly sun block pill. Sun block pills were another exoplanet discovery.