Free Passage at Arms by Glen Cook

plant. Con-traterrene hydrogen, mixing with terrene in controlled amounts, can bang out one hell of a lot of energy in any reality state.
    Demand produced a CT technology almost overnight. The first combat Climber went on patrol thirteen months after the discovery of the Climb phenomenon.
    End of PR statement. Thank you very much for your kind interest. Now will you please go away?
    We're very busy down here.
    Varese doesn't use those exact words but makes his meaning perfectly clear. I don't think I'm going to like him much, either.
    My second hour aboard. I've learned a valuable lesson about serving in the Climbers. Don't try to meet everybody and see everything right away. I've made myself odd man out in the hammock race.
    I returned to Ops figuring I'd take whatever was left over, once everything was settled down.
    There isn't anything. The enlisted men are eyeing me. I don't know if it's apprehension they feel, or if my response will give them some measure of me as a man.
    This ship has no Officers' Country. No Petty Officers' Quarters. No Chiefs' Quarters. The wardroom is a meter-long drop table in Ship's Services. It doubles as a cook's bench and ironing board.
    Everything has its round-the-clock use.
    I work my way through Weapons without finding a home. Feeling foolish, I'm working my way through Ship's Services, to continuous polite negatives, when I notice Bradley watching. "Charlie, this scow is too damned egalitarian."
    "I saw your problem coming, Lieutenant. Made you a place. Ship's laundry."
    The ship's laundry is a sink-and-drainboard arrangement that doubles as a wash basin and sick bay operating table. Bradley has stretched an extra hammock in the clear space overhead. I up my estimate of the man. This is his first mission. He knows little more about the ship than I, yet he has identified a problem and taken corrective action.
    "I won't get much sleep here." Under ship's gravity the nadir of the hammock should dip into the sink.
    "Maybe not. It's the only basin aboard. But consider the bright side. You won't have to share with anyone else."
    "I'm tempted to throw a tantrum. Only I think I'd get damned unpopular damned fast, throwing my commission around." A couple of Bradley's men are watching me with stony faces, waiting for my reaction.
    "True." He's begun whispering. "The Old Man says seeing how much the new officers will take is their favorite sport."
    "You and me against the universe, then. Thanks. If there's a next time, I'll know better than to play tourist."
    "It's your time outside the Service, I guess. Dulled your instincts. I caught on right away."
    He's skirting the edge of a painful subject. I beat the wolf down and reply, "The instincts better come back fast. I don't want to be the poor relation at the feast forever."
    The watchers are gone. I've passed the first test.
    "The Old Man says first impressions are critical. Half of us are outsiders."
    "We'll all know each other better than we want before this's over."
    "Hey, Lieutenant," someone shouts through the hatch to Weapons. "The Old Man wants you on the Ohone."
    O-l. That's Operations. O-2 is Weapons. And so forth.
    I dump my gear into my hammock and hand-over-hand up hooks welded to the keel. When we shift to operational mode, they will become hangers for slinging hammocks and stowing duffel bags.
    Getting through the hatches is miserable in parasite mode, even under minimal gravity. The hatches are against the hull, not near the keel. You have to monkey over on bars welded to the overhead.
    They'll become a ladder to the keel when the vessel goes operational.
    Once at the hatch I have to hoist myself through, then repeat the process getting to Operations.
    "The man who designed this monster ought to be impaled."
    "An oft-heard suggestion," Yanevich says. "But the son of a bitch has gone over to the other firm."
    "What?"
    He smiles at my expression. "That's why we're all so gung ho. Didn't you know? We can't lay hands on the bastard till we