XI.

The crew seemed to enjoy the rest of their shore leave, but eventually the station’s limited attractions began to lose their novelty, even the park, Skapstoti’s lovely green gem.

In addition to visiting various clubs, Alberts had been taking Havisham to the park nearly every day since they arrived, where they had run into Oliphant and Maybelline a few times—and also Dr. Burnstyle. Rather than strolling about the place, Burnstyle seemed to limit himself to the park’s small menagerie, where various small birds and animals could be viewed in little enclosures. 

“It’s a pity they don’t have any larger animals in a place like this,” Burnstyle  told them. “It would be nice to see something like a lion or a bear—rather than these little tweety birds and hedgehogs—useless animals. I’d like to see something with teeth, big muscles.”

Alberts and Havisham looked into the small grassy enclosure Burnstyle was examining. It included an artificial stream, part of a tree, and a miniature carving of Saint Francis. There were a few small birds perched  on his head, a chipmunk in his lap, and a family of hedgehogs at his feet, nibbling at some vegetables left for them by their caretakers.

Havisham cooed. “Oh! That’s so lovely! Must really improve the energy of this place!”

Burnstyle half-turned toward her. “What? Oh, I suppose. A lion, though…” He drifted off. 

Alberts spoke up. “Chipmunks ’re a lot less expensive than a lion.”

Burnstyle grunted noncommittally. “What can you do with a bird?” he said, mockingly. “Tweet tweet!”

Alberts led Havisham back out into the park. He did not ask about the “energy” idea she had just alluded to. He assumed it had something to do with yoga or the “mindfulness” he sometimes heard the crew women talking about. He did not know anything about that sort of thing, but later he bought Havisham a couple of posters from a gift shop he thought she would like, portraying humanoid figures glowing with energy. He was a little embarrassed when he gave them to her, however, because when she unrolled them to take a look, she started laughing and showed him that they were actually crude joke posters with disguised, suggestive imagery meant to imitate chakra diagrams. He had to squint at them for a few moments before he realized what they were actually portraying, but once he figured it out, he chuckled and said, “Well, I guess these are a bit more… aspirational than spiritual, I suppose.” This set Havisham laughing uncontrollably.

Despite the enjoyable company, Alberts and Havisham eventually grew tired of the Park and the clubs and went back to the ship. Alberts found that most of his guys, also having grown tired of the station, had already begun moving cargo into the hold, assisted by some more Anderson automatons. The robots’ eyes occasionally flickered with the distinctive blue light that was the hallmark of the high-quality optical equipment Anderson used in many of their products. Marala, now wearing regular work clothes, was controlling the robots with a box that hung around her neck on a strap. Nothing was in its final place, though. Everyone was waiting for Alberts to give final directions.

“Looks like we got here just in time,” Alberts commented, striding up next to the Captain. Dale had always been very lax in recalling people from shore leave. Deep space long hauls were taxing on everybody, and shore leave was important for preserving morale.

Looking over the manifest that the Captain handed him, Alberts quickly sized up the situation, made some internal calculations, then looked up at the ship’s derrick, which was currently idle. Turning to Havisham, he pointed up at the crane and said, “Havisham, can you…”

She nodded, not requiring him to finish the sentence, and began climbing the stairs to the derrick control booth.

Alberts took a deep breath and looked around. “Smells funny,” he said.

Dale nodded. “I had the ship fumigated… and irradiated.

“Irradiated!” Alberts exclaimed. “That’s expensive!”

The Captain sighed. “Yes. This is going to be a decidedly unprofitable quarter for me. I just wanted to make sure that there was absolutely nothing alive on my ship that shouldn’t be.”

Alberts glanced at the Captain’s face. His expression was an odd combination of relief and concern. “You still worried about what happened to Constantini?” Alberts asked.

“Yeah. Everyone’s so worried about flesh-eating disease and all its varieties, but it never occurs to anyone that there could be things astronomically worse out there.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Captain. The Doc says he’s not even sure what happened to Constantini was infectious.”

Dale shook his head. “Constantini obviously thought it was.” Suddenly he swore, something very uncharacteristic of him. “Why didn’t he leave a note, Alberts? Why?”

The foreman did not reply. He hoped the Captain got back to normal soon. He had seemed a bit off even before Constantini’s death.

XII.

Before too long, the Pater Noster was fully laden, all the crew had returned, and they embarked out into space again. Their ultimate destination, of course, was Earth, but they had a handful of stops before then, the first of which was a delivery run for a small landsided colony called Shropshire.

Marala settled into her role as ship’s tech and engineer fairly quickly. She was, of course, an instantaneous hit with the men, though she did not reciprocate any of their approaches. The women, however, had a much more difficult time accepting her—possibly because of the special status the Captain appeared to have afforded her. None of the other women on board had private cabins. They were all doubled or tripled up with each other. It took a while, but eventually a few of them began to warm up to her. If any other members of the crew (besides Franklyn and Marlowe) became aware of what she was, they kept it to themselves and it did  not become a matter of gossip. Earth-people, of whom the crew mostly consisted, still had some deep-rooted hang-ups about certain social institutions that were commonplace throughout the rest of the galaxy.

The first few jobs that Marala had to deal with involved a number of subsystems that started to act up shortly after their departure from Skapstoti, including the security system. Dale was alerted to most of these problems right away and assigned the new girl to investigate. A short while later, she came to him in the CIC to make a report. She was wearing overalls that seemed a bit too large for her—Dale had had difficulty finding any in her size at Skapstoti. Her little brown book was still visible, protruding slightly from her breast pocket.

“It looks like the irradiation process may have fried some hardware,” she told him. “This is an old ship. Some of the subsystems are probably not as well shielded as they should be.”

Dale grimaced at the news. He had been very careful to make sure that some delicate electronics, such as the InstaCom system, were removed from the ship during the irradiation process, but it had not occurred to him that some of the more regular systems could be affected. “Can you fix it?” he asked.

“I think so, Captain. It’ll take some time, though. Which system should I start with?”

Dale looked at the list Marala had compiled for him. She had actually identified a handful of glitches in subsystems of which he had not been aware. “Er… security system, I guess. The rest of these aren’t too high-priority. Don’t forget about them, though.”

“Yes, sir.”

XIII.

A few days after departing from Skapstoti, Alberts was heading down to the galley to have coffee with Havisham when he came across Dr. Burnstyle standing very close to a small porthole and staring out into the void. He was rocking gently back and forth and seemed to be chanting something with an unremarkable tune.

I give birth to myself

As I walk upon the Earth

I give birth to myself

In love…

There were some more lines to the chant, but Alberts did not catch them. It reminded him of something he’d seen some of the crew women doing, only with candles and mats. It was a surprise to find the Doctor engaged in that sort of thing, however. He was usually quite reserved and stoic.

The foreman made an amused sound as he passed. “Getting in touch with your feminine side, Doctor?” he asked.

Burnstyle looked at him. “What?”

Alberts paused mid-step. “Isn’t it usually women who go in for that kama-namah-sutah crap?”

Burnstyle gave him an incredulous look. “What?” he repeated.

“Isn’t that what that’s called?” Alberts asked.

“No.” Burnstyle shook his head and turned back toward the porthole, making a dismissive gesture with his hand.

Alberts continued on his way and did not give the interaction much further consideration.  It was not really that unusual to see people develop atypical behaviours during long monotonous space journeys. Alberts had seen much worse in his time.

In the galley, Havisham wasted no time when Alberts sat down with his coffee to complain about a horrendous smell emanating from the vents in her cabin. Her roommates claimed not to notice it, but according to Havisham it was quite pungent.

“It smells like something died!” she insisted.

Alberts thought about it for a moment. If it was a rat that had died during the fumigation process, the body would probably desiccate pretty quickly and the smell would go away. Or at least he thought so. He refrained from explaining this to Havisham, however. “Well, hopefully it will go away soon. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Havisham seemed to be reassured and went on to start telling him about other things while sipping her coffee. Alberts smiled and made every appearance of  listening, but inwardly he was actually distracted, remembering how she had looked when they had gone dancing together at the clubs on Skapstoti. He sat, nodding and smiling until his coffee was all gone, then had to excuse himself to get back to work.

When he got back to the CIC, Alberts found the Captain in the middle of a sound-only call with the mayor of Shropshire, where they were scheduled to arrive within the next few days. Alberts slipped his headphones on to listen in.

It seemed the mayor was extremely happy about their impending arrival, as the colony was running short on a number of necessities they were not equipped to provide or fabricate for themselves yet.

“Well, don’t worry,” Dale said. “We’ll be there soon with all the fresh underwear, t-shirts, and ammo you’ll ever need.”

Alberts caught the Captain’s attention and mouthed, “Ammo?”

Dale covered his microphone and replied, “Pest problem.”

The mayor’s voice came back, a bit distorted, and staticky. Despite the fact that the call was going through the “InstaCom” system—which was supposed to be instantaneous—there was also a bit of delay, probably due to the call being routed through a veritable spider-web of switchboards. “You’ll have a lot of grateful people waiting for you here,  Pater Noster. I don’t want to take up any more of your time, Captain, but I do have to warn you about something, though.”

“What’s that?” Dale asked.

“We’ve had a government inspector here for the past few days, making life difficult for everyone. We had a small outbreak—nothing too serious—a few months back, and he’s using it as an excuse to throw his weight around. He’s got a troop of armoured goons and they’re going around forcing their way into everyone’s homes and shops just to ‘look around’. You’d better have your paperwork all in order when you arrive, or he might make things difficult for you too.”

The Captain groaned. “Thanks for the heads-up, Shropshire. See you soon.”

After ending the call, Dale took his headphones off and threw them down. “Just what I needed!” he exclaimed. “Government inspectors!!”

Alberts took off his own headphones and gently set them down. “Better tell Maybelline to clear out the rear bridge.”

Dale looked at him. “Why?”

“It’s being used for storage right now.”

The Captain threw up his hands in a gesture that somehow communicated both acknowledgment and frustration.

Oliphant called out from the front end of the CIC, “Is our paperwork all in order, sir?”

Dale called back, “Yes, but when did having your papers in order actually stop a Fed from Fedding?”

XIV.

The next day, the Pater Noster arrived at the Shropshire colony and the crew began preparing the landing vehicle. Onobwe was pretty sure he could get everything down in two trips.

Captain Dale was observing Alberts and his loaders when a call came in on his data pad from Marala. 

“Yes, what is it?” he asked.

“Bit of a problem still with the security system, Captain. It’s wired sequentially for some reason, so I’ll have to check every single node until I find the problem.”

Dale frowned. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Apologies, Captain. I was simplifying the problem so it wouldn’t take as long to explain. It involves the data packets the nodes send to each other. They’re bunching up somewhere.”

“OK, but why is our security system wired sequentially? I didn’t know it was set up like that.”

“It’s a proprietary security solution that was popular a few decades ago—hybridized analog-digital. Hard to hack.”

The Captain nodded. “All right, that makes sense, I suppose. I know you’re smart, but don’t feel like you have to dumb things down too much for me, all right?”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, it might take a really long time to find the problem, checking each node one at a time, so I was wondering if it’s alright if I get a few other things from my to-do list done before getting back to the security system.”

Dale scratched his forehead. Some of the other systems that seemed to have been affected by the irradiation process were tertiarily involved with life-support and environmental control. “OK, take a break from the security problem, but don’t forget about it. There’s also a horrendously squeaky hinge somewhere in the ventilation system—sounds like a cackling witch.”

The girl grimaced. “Is that what that is? I think I’ve heard it.”

Dale nodded. “If you can find out where that’s coming from, that would be great. Oh, and run some diagnostics on the anti-piracy protocols, would you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dale ended the call.

XV.

The process of loading up the landing vehicle with deliveries for the Shropshire colony was proceeding well. Alberts looked up at Havisham in the derrick control booth, then over at Captain Dale, who was supervising from one of the gangways above the loading deck. The foreman stepped over to a staircase to climb up to the Captain.

When he reached Dale’s vantage point, Alberts said, “Captain, I would really appreciate it if you could accompany us on this one. I really do not want to have to deal with a government inspector.”

Dale raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you my SOB whisperer?”

Alberts grimaced. “I can handle an SOB. It’s #$$*@!’s I have a problem with.”

The Captain sighed but a resigned look came into his eyes. Then an idea came to him.

XVI.

Literally moments before the doors to the landing vehicles were sealed, Doctor Burnstyle, Marlowe, and three additional crewmen stepped aboard, wheeling an assortment of boxes along with them. Burnstyle had a portable medical cabinet in tow. The three additional crewmen were armed as well, carrying powerful-looking rifles.

Everyone else was already strapped in, and they eyed the latecomers quizzically. They were not on the roster for this trip.

“Lethal rounds?” someone asked, gesturing toward the rifles. The three crewmen with guns nodded.

Eyeing the medicine cabinet, Alberts called out, “Pill-pushing now, Burnstyle? I expect a cut.”

Burnstyle shook his head as he secured the cabinet and strapped himself in. The others who had come with him did the same. “Humanitarian aid, Alberts. I’m going into the mobile clinic business. Captain’s orders.”

Alberts looked over at Dale, who was seated across from him.

Dale pursed his lips. “Nothing attracts a government official better than a queue of people lined up to see someone other than himself. Hopefully he’ll focus on disrupting Burnstyle and leave the rest of us alone.”

Alberts made a bemused sound. “I’ll believe it when I see it. This one of your… intuitive flashes?”

Dale nodded. “I think it’ll work.”

From orbit, the planet was not a particularly attractive-looking place. Most of it looked like it was covered with grey, sterile mountains and plains, but there were a few greenish splotches around the equator, and a handful of large-ish lakes. The Shropshire colony was located right next to one of the largest of these lakes.

The landing vehicle detached from the Pater Noster, rumbled its way down into the planet’s atmosphere, sailed over the central hub of the colony, then headed toward the landing pad outside of town. A cluster of humble-looking ground transports were waiting to receive their deliveries and cart them away. A more pretentious-looking ground car was parked close by as well. All of them were parked a safe distance away from the pad. 

Eyeing the government car, Onobwe called out, “Should I buzz them, Cap?” meaning should he pilot the landing vehicle over their heads and give the Feds a taste of the landing vehicle’s downdraft.

Dale had got out of his chair when the worst of the atmospheric descent had passed, and was now standing behind Onobwe. “No. No need to unnecessarily antagonize them.”

A few hundred meters away, the government inspector’s ship could be seen parked right in the middle of a farmer’s field, most of the crops flattened by the ship’s thrusters. It had touched down dangerously close to town.

“Look at that!” Dale commented. “What an #$$*@!!

Onobwe put the landing vehicle down smack dab in the centre of the pad and the ground vehicles began to approach.

As soon as the loading ramp hit the ground, the first people off the ship were Dr. Burnstyle, Marlowe, and the three men Dale had ordered to accompany them. The three crewmen were carrying a portable isolation tent. It was all packaged up, of course, but it was still quite large and unwieldy. They hurried away from the landing pad, looking like they were in a hurry. 

The government man stepped out of his car and gesticulated to try to get them to stop, but they ignored him and continued trundling along. He looked frustrated, but his attention was soon drawn to the sight of Captain Dale, who also appeared to be paying him no attention. The Captain was standing at the top of the loading ramp and waving cheerfully at the approaching lorries from the colony. Deciding that the Captain’s lack of countenance was more of an affront to his authority than the rapidly departing men, the Inspector hurried toward the landing vehicle, accompanied by a handful of his armed guards.

As he came up the ramp toward the Captain, the government inspector seemed to have a few of his wires crossed. Dale was still ignoring him. “I… uh… Who was that?” he demanded, gesturing in the direction Dr. Burnstyle’s group had headed off into.

“What?” Dale drew the question out. “That’s… the ship’s doctor.” He did not elaborate further, but turned away again. The Inspector was standing below the Captain on the ramp and had to crane his head upward to look in his face. Dale was now looking at the crewmen engaged in offloading the landing vehicle and transferring cargo over to the lorries.

“Wh… What’s he doing?” the inspector demanded.

Dale did not answer right away, but stared at him for a few moments. “ Oh, you know… Uh, mobile clinic. For the colonists.”

The Inspector was just about to make a further inquiry when he was interrupted by some crewmen calling out loudly to each other. He tried to move past Dale to achieve a higher vantage point, but the Captain deftly moved to block his path and redirected his attention somewhere else by calling out to one of Albert’s men with a suggestion. He strolled a few paces away and started shouting out some more instructions.

Eventually the Inspector managed to blurt out that he wanted further information about what Dr. Burnstyle and his people were up to.

Dale replied, but slowly, in a distracted manner, constantly looking away at the activity around them. “Uh… Like I said: mobile clinic. Viral screenings, allergy shots, augmentation tune-ups, that sort of thing.”

The Inspector looked surprised. “Augmentations?” He squinted in the direction the doctor had disappeared off into. Augmentations were heavily regulated.

The government man’s entourage of armed guards stood a bit lower down on the ramp, their hands on the butts of their rifles and looking bored. One of them had begun to blow raspberries.

“Papers!” the Inspector exclaimed, suddenly remembering his routine. “You have your papers, I presume?”

“Oh, yes, right here.” Dale handed him a portfolio he had been carrying. “We were just at Skapstoti. Had a full work-up done. Full manifest’s there. Licenses. Certified inspection report. Uh… Will you excuse me? I have to deal with something.”

Dale hurried off and began shouting at a group of men dealing with a precariously piled stack of goods on a pallet that looked like it was going to topple over onto its side at any moment.

The Inspector stood looking confused for a moment, then he opened the portfolio and skimmed the contents. Nothing stood out to him, and he snapped it shut. He was surrounded by a veritable whirlwind of activity and no one was paying him any attention. He stood indecisively for a moment, then caught sight of Dr. Burnstyle’s people erecting their isolation tent part way between the landing pad and the outskirts of town. Burnstyle was standing on top of a rock, looking very officious, and directing the others’ efforts, pointing from place to place. The Inspector squinted. It looked like there were already a handful of people heading out of town towards the mobile clinic.

“Come on, guys,” the Inspector said to his entourage. “This way.” They proceeded him down the ramp, then he led them in Burnstyle’s direction.

Sidling up to the Captain, Alberts said, “I’m surprised that worked.”

“It’s not over yet,” Dale cautioned.