Free Glory by Alfred Coppel Page A

holocube in which a tiny Damon approached the masthead complex of blocks and halyards aswarm with monkeys. Who were probably setting things to rights, Duncan thought sardonically; the halyards were beyond Damon’s merely human efforts. Through the rig one could see the distant shape of Smuts, another of the gas giants, making a transit of the Luyten sun. Glory ’s speed was still affecting the apparent celerity with which things were happening in downtime. As the great planet moved across the face of its primary in uptime seconds, downtime hours were passing. Earlier, in deep space, the time dilation would have been greater.
    “Any word from below?” Jean Marq asked, taking the Master’s drogue and preparing to connect.
    “I sent Colonist Kloster the latest ephemeris,” Anya said, twisting in air and heading for the transit tunnel.
    Marq settled the drogue into his socket with practiced movements. His awareness did not encompass all, as Duncan’s had. Some men were less sensitive than others. But he was sufficiently aware of Glory to be left safely with the conn.
    “I relieve you, Master and Commander” he said formally. Tradition, ritual, and the Master’s privileges were vital aboard a Goldenwing. They were the elements of the Wired Ones’ law, without which life in deep space was impossible.
    Duncan waited until the Frenchman had settled into the warm glyceroid before closing the hatch on the pod.
    He spoke to a wall microphone and said, “An Amber Watch should be sufficient, unless you think differently.” A vessel’s condition of readiness was described by the hue of the Watch. Green for sailing an interstellar sound. Amber for a state of wary alertness, required in locations such as the Oort Cloud. And Red for those rare times when the Coriolis force exploded into the violence of tachyon storms, far rarer in deep space than the hurricanes and typhoons on old Earth.
    “We won’t make another midcourse correction until we are well inside the orbit of Thor. There is some debris in Drache’s trojan point, but nothing massive.”
    The words “Marq aye” whispered from the speakers. Duncan patted the covered pod and left the bridge.
    Anya was waiting for him in the transit tube. “Are you tired, Duncan?”
    “No.”
    “Good. The dorsal?”
    “I want to check on Han Soo first.”
    “I’ll come along,” Anya said. She had been fond of the old Celestial. He had been teaching her calligraphy at the moment of his death.
    Duncan led the way down the transit tube into the ventral sections of the ship, past the banks where the Donkeys, the EVA tractors, were kept. The tubes were lighted by a single fiber-optic thread spun through the fabric in a spiraling design. As one flew through the tube the peculiar lighting made it appear that the tube, rather than the observer, was in motion. It could be unnerving to the unwary. Duncan paused at the valve to hold 1009, where Han Soo’s frozen body was tethered in a vast emptiness.
    The air in the hold stood near the absolute zero of space. Duncan opened a compartment and handed Anya a coldsuit and took one for himself. It was a plastic body coverall with hood and faceplate that could protect one for a few minutes. Long enough, the theory went, to allow one to contrive other measures for survival. The theory was absurd, but the coldsuits were useful.
    Duncan opened the transparent valve and floated into the dark hold. The suit had a small light fixed to the helmet. In its glow Duncan and Anya Amaya could see that Han Soo was exactly as they had left him after preparing his body for a cold hold.
    “I keep expecting him to open his eyes and speak to me,” Anya said.
    “Han Soo has said all he will ever say,” Duncan said.
    It was a deep trauma for all when a Goldenwing lost a crewman in space. Terrible if by accident, almost as bad if, as in the case of Han Soo, the cause was natural. There was something about the vast isolation of a ship between the stars that made