Free The Makeshift Rocket by Poul Anderson Page A

returning to his calculations.
    ‘Vat? But hey! Is you leaving me to do dis all alone?’
    Sarmishkidu looked up. ‘Go!’ he said in a ringing croak. ‘Remember the Vikings! Remember Gustavus Adolphus! Remember King Christian standing by the high mast in smoke and steam! The blood of heroes is in your veins. Go, go to glory!’
    Fired, Herr Syrup started for the door. He stopped there and asked wistfully, ‘Don’t you vant a little glory too?’
    Sarmishkidu blew a smoke ring and scribbled an equation. ‘I am more the intellectual type,’ he said.
    ‘Oh.’ Herr Syrup sighed and went down the corridors. His resolution endured till he actually stood in the workshop, by the glow of a dim night light, hefting a pipe wrench. Then he wavered.
    The sound of deep, regular breathing assured him that Major McConnell slept in the adjoining bedchamber. But—‘I don’t vant to hurt him,’ repeated Herr Syrup. ‘I could so easy clop him too hard.’ He shuddered. ‘Or not hard enough. I better make another requisition on de cargo first. … No. Here ve go.’ Puffing out his mustache and mopping the sweat off his pate, the descendant of Vikings tiptoed into the engine room.
    Rory McConnell would scarcely have been visible at all, had his taste in pajamas not run to iridescent synthesilc embroidered with tiny shamrocks. As it was, his body, sprawled on a military bedroll, seemed in the murk to stretch on and on, interminably, besides having more breadth and thickness than was fair in anything but a gorilla. Herr Syrup hunkered shakily down by the massive red head, squinted till he had a spot, just behind one ear identified, and raised his weapon.
    There was a snick of metal. The wan light glimmered along a pistol barrel. It prodded Herr Syrup’s nose. He let out a yelp and broke all Olympic records for the squatting high jump.
    Rory McConnell chuckled. ‘I’m a sound sleeper when no one else comes sneakin’ close to me,’ he said, ‘but I’ve hunted in too many forests not to awaken thin. Goodnight, Mister Syrup.’
    ‘Goodnight,’ said Knud Axel Syrup in a low voice.
    Blushing, he went back to the machine room. He waited there a moment, ashamed to return to his cabin past McConnell and yet angry that he must detour. Oh, the devil with it! He heard the slow breath of slumber resume. Viciously, he slammed his tool back into the rack loudly enough to wake an estivating Venusian. The sleeper did not even stir. And that was the unkindest cut of all.
    Stamping his feet, slamming doors, and kicking panels as he went by – all without so much as breaking the calm rhythm of Rory McConnell’s lungs – Herr Syrup took the roundabout way to his cabin. He switched on the light and pointed a finger at Claus. The crow hopped off the Selected Works of Oehlenschlager and perched on the finger.
    ‘Claus,’ said Herr Syrup, not quite bellowing, ‘repeat after me: McConnell is a louse. McConnell is no good. McConnel eats vorms. On Friday. McConnell—’
    —slept on.
    Herr Syrup decided at last to retire himself. With a finalsentence for Claus to memorize, an opinion in crude language of Major McConnell’s pajamas, he took off his own clothes and slipped a candy-striped nightshirt over his head. Stretched out in his bunk, he counted herrings for a full half hour before realizing that he was more awake than ever.
    ‘Satans ogsaa
,’ he mumbled, and switched on the light and reached at random for a book. It turned out to be a poetry anthology. He opened it and read:
    ‘—
The secret workings of the yeast of life
.’
    ‘Yudas,’ he groaned. ‘Yeast.’
    For a moment Herr Syrup, though ordinarily the gentlest of men, entertained bloodshot fantasies of turning the ship’s atomic-hydrogen torch into a sort of science fiction blaster and burning Major McConnell down. Then he decided that it was impractical and that all he could do was requisition a case of lager and thus get to sleep. Or at least pass the night watch more