John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kelly resented Achmed's interference. He thought he could take care of himself.
    Toward the end of the morning shift, Torwald dropped in. "I've just been to the supply room, and it's the most disgusting mess I've ever seen. I'm not going to try to tackle it until Kelly's free to give me a hand." He picked up a disrupter and dropped into the pit next to Kelly. Lafayette had crossed to Achmed's side, to dismantle a coolant valve. "Who was my predecessor, anyway—a Vegan swamp farmer?"
    "A man named Krilencu," Achmed replied. "He had an excessive fondness for the bottle in his later years."
    "It shows." Torwald grimaced. "Why did the skipper keep him on if his veins were full of thruster fuel?"
    "He spaced with her wing during the War. They say he was a good man back then. Her wing saw some heavy combat. A lot of people took to the juice when things got so rough it looked like nobody was going to live through it. Some of them couldn't stop when it was all over. I guess the skipper felt kind of responsible."
    "Well, her loyalty's commendable," Torwald commented. "But, he's left me with the lousiest job of sorting and accounting I've ever contemplated."
    "A man with all your talents should find it easy," Achmed said blandly.
    "Hah! See if I ever come down to help you clean our lousy engines again." He turned to Kelly. "Well, kid, how do you like your first taste of real spacing?"
    "I love it!" Kelly's teeth flashed white in his grimy lace. "But, wouldn't it have been easier to do this job in port?"
    "Easier, sure," Torwald noted, "but not as efficient. A ship on the ground is earning nobody any money, not the owners nor the crew. Any job that can be done on shipboard by crew labor and with ship's equipment should be done en route to pickup or delivery. That's the most efficient use of a ship's time."
    "Coffee break!" Achmed yelled, and all four of them lined up at the engine room coffee urn. After several minutes of friendly banter about Torwald's quartermastering problems, Torwald kidded Achmed about the sweatshop the engineer was running.
    "It'll be cooler when we cut in the Whoopee Drive," Achmed said to Kelly, gesturing toward the drive housing. Intrigued by the strange object, Kelly walked over for a closer look at the drive mechanism, a big spindle suspended in line with the ship's long axis. It was featureless except for the clear glassite tip within which the boy could make out a revolving crystal Mobius band.
    "How does this thing work, Achmed? I heard it won't work within a solar system."
    "Damned if I know." The engineer shrugged. "I know how to run it, but I don't know how it runs. Do you know, Tor?"
    "Kelly," said Torwald, "there are maybe fifty physicists who can claim to understand the Whoopee Drive, but they understand only the principle which is quite a job in itself. It's like Einstein and relativity; you can learn its effects and harness the principle, but the whys of it are beyond the grasp of human brain power."
    "Hah!" Kelly chuckled. "I thought you old spacers were supposed to know everything about ships."
    "About running them, sure," said Torwald. "But as to what makes them go, that's a job for scientists. We're just glorified proletarians. We may be experts, but space drive isn't our realm of expertise. Look, I'll give you an example: There was never a more skilled professional in the world than the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century sailor. His craft was in making a fragile construction of wood and cloth take him just about anywhere there was water, and a bad sailor meant a sunk ship. They had a knowledge of wind and water a hundred times more intimate than any spacer has of space. Yet few men alive in those days knew why the wind blows, or why the ocean has currents."
    Achmed suddenly interrupted. "Speaking of wind, you're pretty long-winded yourself. I never would've expected it."
    "Look, I try to pass on to this kid the valuable lessons of a lifetime spent in space, and what do I get? Ridicule! Where's