Promised Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

all. This does not mean that any fairminded man (or woman) would automatically name me as male-chauvinist-pig-of-the-year. I am myself a fairminded man, and I assess captains on their ability to captain. Personally, I am a good captain. Eve Lapthorn as a captain was a joke. A poor joke.
    If he hadn’t been angry, I think Titus Charlot would have enjoyed the jump from New Alexandria to Chao Phrya. As it was, nobody was happy in the control room, and Johnny was only happy because he wasn’t in the control room. I have rarely seen anyone look quite so uncomfortable as Eve did as she passed out routine orders for the lift. To make the best of the situation for both of us she should have gripped it hard in both hands and maintained a poker-face, but she wasn’t up to it. She let her uneasiness and her reluctance show. It helped me to stay irritated. Eve always had a tendency to get on my nerves by virtue of her having been related to the late and much-lamented Lapthorn who had been my friend and partner when I had been a captain.
    Failing the stone-faced approach, I reckoned that the best thing she could do was to turn down the job. She wasn’t tied to Charlot by a slave-chain, and she sure as hell didn’t need the money. But I think she regarded it as some kind of challenge, issued not only by Charlot but also by me. Personally, I don’t think people should accept challenges which they aren’t up to answering, but other people just don’t have my keen sense of probability and responsibility in these matters.
    The atmosphere aboard the Hooded Swan was, as usual, very strained. Perhaps even more so than usual.
    In all honesty, I can’t say that I remember the Hooded Swan as ever having been a happy ship. I enjoyed flying her. I loved sitting inside the hood. But you can never quite forget what’s going on behind the control cradle when trouble is just as likely to start there as outside. Every time I grooved her, no matter when or where, I always had to come back to that same air of simmering mistrust and hostility. It didn’t even matter whether or not Charlot was there in person. He was always there in spirit.
    While I was lifting the Swan from Corinth port, I was thinking seriously that the best trip I’d ever taken in the bird was the lunatic drive back through the Halcyon Drift after plundering (or failing to plunder) the Lost Star . It had been deadly dangerous and extremely painful, but at least it had been the bird and the wind and myself united against the forces of nature, instead of the wind and myself separately suspended in a sea of negative feeling, which was what I would inevitably find when I had set her in a groove for Chao Phrya. I inspected the charts with all my usual care and precision, and plotted a perfect minimum groove. I almost wished that I had a couple of clouds to nurse her through or a close passage where she might get sucked out of the groove or fluttered within it. But there was nothing but nothing in between New Alexandria and Chao Phrya. There was a lot of it, because Chao Phrya was a long way from the core, but we didn’t have to go anywhere near the galactic heart or the frayed fringes of starspace. It was all very nice and safe and boring.
    Eve had a cup of coffee ready for me when I peeled off the hood and left the Swan to make her own way at a furious, but quite safe, fifty thou. Charlot wanted all possible speed, but at fifty thou we could outrun anything in the galaxy and still have hours in hand when we got to Chao Phrya, thirty hours’ start or no thirty hours’ start. I thanked her kindly, and didn’t make any sarcastic remarks about captains doubling as tea-girls.
    â€˜What’s the ETA?’ demanded Titus.
    â€˜Nineteen hours and a bit, I guess,’ I told him. ‘I can give you the nearest half-second if you like.’
    â€˜What about the White Fire ?’ asked Johnny, his voice emanating from the open