The Problem With Captains

     It was the problems with the data-loggers on the old Billy How that clued me in that the ship's new owners were going to be difficult to work for.  Cincinnati Group was something well beyond frugal and had installed a Captain and XO who came aboard determined to show us a thing or two about how starships should be run.

     See -- or maybe you don't; it's been decades and all of the technology has changed -- back then just as now, everything having to do with maneuvering the starship was recorded.  Intercom chatter, control inputs, telemetry, inertial navs, all of it was saved and at that time, that meant magnetic tape.  Some tracks were digital, some analog; one track was nothing but a clock.  The idea was that if anything went wrong, you'd have a record of it and with any luck, enough information to put things right.

     They were fiddly beasts.  Billy How had six of them in two groups of three, one set in the rack room* just off the Command deck and another down in Engineering/Power, the combined space for the Jump exciter, reactor controls, and suchlike. The two-inch wide tapes spooled slowly, each one holding twenty-four hours of recording on one big reel, and we "bicycled" ten reels of tape through each set of recorders.

     They were supposed to spool slowly, that is.  The set up on Command had gotten squirrely, racing through a tape in a few hours during the Jump in the Kansas II system.  Once we were back in normal space, I dug into them,  running the setup procedure from the manual, and they weren't behaving as they should; the speed control, a lovely complex setup with tachometers on the drive and reel motors and a triple phase-locked servo, wouldn't stay locked.  The signals from the tachs were ragged, and when I went to look for replacements, all I found were a few empty boxes with a note from three years before: "Order more ASAP."  Before my time as Chief but I should've checked already.

     By the time I'd got that far, we were close enough to get a reply back from Kansas II in a few hours, so I messaged the chandler Cincinnati Group preferred to deal with and had a price back on replacement parts by the start of my next watch.  They weren't cheap.  Between all six units, we needed eighteen of them; not all the tachs were bad, but at least half had failed the rest probably weren't far behind.

     The new Captain was in his quarters just off the Command bridge.  "Cap'n Wheat?  About the loggers, I'm going to need some parts."

     Gregory Wheat was a young man as starship captains go, only a few years older than I was at the time.  He looked up from the papers on his desk and frowned, "And what parts would those be, young lady?"

     I kept smiling.  Captains get a lot of leeway.  "Tachs for the speed control.  About half ours are worn out and I'd like to stock replacements for the remainder.  So eighteen, at just over seven hundred dollars per deck."

     His eyebrows went up.  "You want...over four thousand dollars worth of parts?"

     "Didn't have any replacements in stock, sir.  That's on me; I missed the empties on the shelf."

     "Why don't you have another look at those recorders, see what you can do.  I'll get back to you."

     I kept on smiling.  "Yessir."

     I took the old tachs apart and cleaned them up again -- they're optical, and any grime on the moving disc will mess them up -- but it didn't do much good.

     Shortly after chow, the Captain called me up to the bridge.  "I'm going to get you some help.  The Kessler is at Kansas II.  It's a Cincy-Group freighter a bit larger than us.  I was XO there and they've got a real sharp Chief.  He'll come aboard after we reach K-two and help you with those loggers."

     I was thinking he wasn't going to be much help if he didn't bring any tachs with him, but you don't say that kind of thing to the guy in the worry seat, so I nodded and replied, "I'll look forward to that."

*  *  *

     The trip in was uneventful.  Once we were parked in orbit around Kansas II, Kessler sent a squirt-booster over and I met their Chief at the airlock -- a dapper young man, who was not, in fact, carrying any replacement tachs.  We shook hands and exchanged names -- Jim MacAlheny, he was and I asked if he had any luggage.

     He laughed.  "No, just me and a green tweaker."  The ubiquitous pocket screwdriver -- we all carried one back then; it was practically a badge of office.  "I'd better check in with the Old Man."

     I told him, "Okay; then we can see about the tachs on those loggers."

     The Captain was in his quarters; I waved the Kessler's Chief in ahead of me, and Capain Wheat stood up, his hand out.  "Jim!  It's been too long.  How're you doing?"

     "Greg, you've come up in the world!"

     "Yes, well -- close the door.  We've got some catching up to do."

     With that, he shut the hatch in my face.  I went back to Engineering; there was plenty to do.

*  *  *

     Jim didn't  show up again for several hours.   I kept myself busy checking the replacement parts stock; finding one set of empty boxes had me worried there were others.  I didn't realize the next watch had come on until my number two stuck his head in the storage compartment.

     "Chief Bobbi?  Cap'n Wheat's on the 'com for you.  Says he wants you up on Command."

     I gave him a smile.  "Always good to be wanted, right?"  I wiped my hands and got moving.

     The Captain was at his desk and Jim was in the visitor's chair.  I squeezed in and Captain Wheat told me to close the door.  He gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "Jim tells me the tachs on the loggers in Command are shot."

     "Yessir.  Along with several in Engineering."

     "Well, why is that?"

     "Age, sir?  Those loggers run all the time.  It's a wear part."

     That got a frown.  Beside me, Jim said nothing, his expression neutral.  "Well, why didn't you say so?"

     "Sir?"

     "That we needed tachs."

     "But sir--"

     "I had to fly Jim over here at great expense to the company, because you didn't know how to fix those loggers!"

     "Sir, I said--"

     "I really hope this does not set a pattern, Roberta.  It does not bode well."

     Jim still said nothing.  I gave him a quick glance, silent appeal.  Nothing.

     "Yes, sir.  It will not set a pattern."

     "Indeed.  Jim has ordered the parts we need.  I trust you will be up to installing them?"

     I was boiling mad.  But you don't get mad at starship captains.  You can't.  "I believe so, sir."

     "You believe?"

     This was well past tolerable.  Nevertheless, it's a long walk home and there's not much to breathe along the way.  "I can and I will.  Sir."

     "See that you do.  Thank you."  Captain Wheat waved a hand in dismissal.

     "Sir."  I opened the hatch and got out, shaking mad.

     And that was when I realized working for Cincinnati Group might not be a long-term career for me.
_________________________________
* Yes, "rack room," or occasionally "rack compartment," looking not very much different from a modern-day server farm.  I was Chief on the freighter Billy How before things were quite so digital, though even then, the early '90s, it was well begun and any fool could see the trend was only going to grow.  Still, the end is the same; then it was mostly screwdriver adjustments with oscilloscopes and meters to see the result; now it's all keyboards and screens for the same job. 

     "Rack" is an overused word.  Small to medium sized equipment gets installed in racks nineteen inches wide and standardized to a pattern that goes back to late 19th-Century telephone equipment; when we had computer and audio tapes aboard starships, they got "racked" on the machines instead of "mounted" and "re-racked" instead of rewound.  You even sleep in a rack -- well, you do if you're a regular grew member; as Chief Engineer I rated a compartment of my own, much too handy to Engineering and nearly large enough to turn around in.  Somehow the meaning is clear in context -- and the galley never serves rack of lamb. 
       

One Evening On Kansas II

    I was living on Kansas II at the time, having parted company with my previous starship under less than auspicious circumstances.  Don said he had a surprise for me, but we needed to be on the road an hour before the sun was down.   Occasionally brilliant and often-annoying Don, who was then my fiancé and now, damn him, is nobody to me, our timelines torn apart by his choice and my travels.  He’s much older now.  I’m not.

     But at the time, our life together was as rosy as the Eastern sky, Kansas II having a very nice magnetic field but the temerity to spin the wrong way.  We were driving more or less south, where wheatfields give way to unimproved Nature at a wide, meandering river.

     The road ends at long bridge across the river.  The bridge ends in a lift section, a nice, ugly Chicago-style bascule drawbridge that normally stays up. There’s a warning sign.  To lower the bridge, you’ve got to put at least hundred kilograms (plus or minus – KS2 runs to 0.98 G) on a sidewalk slab in front of the bridge for ten minutes. 

     They can’t make you read the sign but aside from muddy water below, sky overhead, a long bridge ending in wheatfields behind and raw, rolling, red and green pseudo-veldt on the other side, there’s nothing else to see:

WARNING!

LIMIT OF SETTLEMENT!

LOCAL FAUNA PRESENT!

Beyond this bridge, the land remains as it was before humans settled Kansas II. Cross at your own risk.  Persons who are allergic to whirlweed or who have not yet had and recovered from planetary fever should not cross.  Emergency services are not available.  Buffalion, trap-door weasels and all other native animals are not to be molested.  The larger species can injure or kill an unprotected person. BUFFALION TRAILS AND HERDS ARE PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS.  AN AUTOMOBILE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.  If you encounter a buffalion herd, move away immediately at ninety degrees to their direction of travel.

BUFFALION DEATHS SINCE SETTLEMENT: 491  THIS YEAR TO DATE: 17

CROSS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

     It took both of us to start the bridge-lowering process.  I stood next to Don, reading the sign and wondering if he’d decided to take me out here and leave me.

     “Not exactly a friendly place you’ve got here,” I told him.

     “What, the sign?  It’s an idiot-filter.  They don’t even keep the numbers updated; those are from two years ago.”  He grinned at me.

     I didn’t find it reassuring.

    My doubts must have showed, since he frowned and continued, “Really, it’s okay.  People come here all the time.  I’m surprised we haven’t seen anyone yet.”

     “And it’s a surprise,” I reminded him.  Can’t you at least hint?”

     His grin returned, impish, charming.  “Nope.  But you’ll like it.”

     I never could resist that grin.

     Once the bridge started down, we got back in his truck – a tiny SUV, a Bonzai or something, I never was very good with the names of cars – and drove on for another couple of miles.  A kind of gray shape started to loom above the rolling grass(like) land, and as we got closer, I could make out some specks or blobs on it.  Eventually the land flattened out more and in the dimming light, I saw it was a huge slab of rock, slightly tilted, rearing up out of the ground, maybe thirty feet high at the highest part.  There were a half-dozen trucks packed close to the steeply-rearing side.  The blobs on top were people, in pairs and one larger group.

     The ride smoothed out.  I looked lower.  We were crossing packed, bare earth – well, Kansas II dirt, anyway.

     “Don, this is a buffalion pathway, isn’t it?”

     “Un-huh.  Don’t worry.  They never get too close to The Slab.”

    We suddenly started getting jostled again, as the ground became rougher.  It stayed bumpy all the way to the very base of the rock, where he parked and turned off the engine.

     “There’s a picnic basket and a blanket in back,” Don said, “Help me carry it up before it gets too dark.”

    “Maybe.  Don, what is this?”

     “This?  It’s a geologic anomaly.”

     “Not what I meant.”

     He gave me that grin again.  “C’mon.  This’ll be fun.”


     We settled down at a relatively level spot, after a tricky scramble up a narrow but well-worn path to the top.  People were scattered across the top with plenty of room between them and for a while, we were busy unpacking dinner and eating.  By the time we were done, it was nearly full dark.  Don checked his watch, a quick flash of light on the dial.  “Almost time.”

     “Time for what, you scoundrel?  Shouldn’t you be telling me at last?”

     “Won’t have to.  Lay back and look up.  See the stars?”  He had laid next to me. Pointing, he said, “There’s the Lion, and just this side of it is the Hexagram.  See how the stars make a pattern of six lines?”

     I did.

     “Okay, watch just to the left of it and up—"

     Already, twinkling stars had started to look odd to me: stars ought to burn steadily.  I kept watching.  Suddenly, a line of light sprang into being almost where I was looking and raced across the sky!

     There was a low murmur from the people around us.

     The first streak was followed by another, and another, and another.  A meteor shower!  It was like popcorn popping; there’d be a few, and then a pause and then more, and then maybe a lot more and then nothing for a time.  With each one, we were oohng and aaahing as if it were fireworks.  In a way it was.

     I was laying there, comfortably snuggled up next to Don, watching the meteors in a kind of dream-like state, when I heard the sounds.  A kind of dull thud, then a bell-like tone and a softer thud. 

    Another set of noises answered, the belling slightly higher in pitch.   Then another, closer and lower: Plop! BONG! Pop.  It was a little worrying, but I didn’t hear anything from the other people around us except the occasional sigh when an especially impressive meteor drew a line of fire on the night sky.

     Overhead, the meteor shower continued, maybe a little more sporadic, while the strange sounds seemed to move around us, each bell in a different pitch, a sonic counterpoint to the light show overhead.

     “Don—“ I whispered.

     He rolled a little, hugged me and whispered back, “It’s okay.”

     I pushed up on my elbows and looked around.  I could barely see the nearest couples and they didn’t seem alarmed.

     Meanwhile, the chorus continued, accompanied by an occasional streak overhead.  I was just relaxing again when a huge, deep BONGGGG! rang out, echoing around the slab, and then the night fell silent.

     I realized I was holding my breath, waiting for the next bell-sound.

     “Bobbi, you can breathe,” Don said, very quietly.  “That’s the last one.”

     “What – was – that?”

     He grinned again. I could hear it in his voice.

     “Trapdoor weasels.  They do that.  Nobody knows why. ‘Bed check,’ I reckon.”

     They’re not weasels at all, but a large, spider-like creature that’s a nasty ambush hunter: they build their burrows across Buffalion runs and open the “trapdoor” after most of the herd has passed, hoping to trip up the young, the old and the weak.   They’re a pest on settled land, sometimes pathetic (their methods don’t work on tractors and trucks) and sometimes not; a new nest of them can do a lot of harm to cattle, horses or even sheep.  They’re about as ugly a thing as you can imagine.  I’d never liked them.

     Until that night.

     Don left me a year later for a younger and, as he by then was devastatingly pleased to tell me, much girlier girl.  Most men don’t like it when you’re better at small home repairs than they are.  It turned out he positively loathed it.  I don’t know if it was rewiring the second-floor bedrooms or replacing the water heater that did it, but somewhere along the way I’d stepped on his mojo too often, too unheedingly, and no amount of my (very good, if you ask me) home cooking and (ahem) native charm could repair it.

     But I’ll always have the memory of the meteor shower and the trap-door weasel belling and your little-boy grin when you shared it with me, Don, you sonuvabitch.