Free The Race for God by Brian Herbert Page B

puzzle-lock having been released. The men boarded.
    Inside it smelted pungently of urine and feces, and McMurtrey began breathing through his mouth. When the flashlight played against the walls he noted graffiti that hadn’t been there several weeks before.
    Orbust and Tully let go of him. The arm on Tully’s side throbbed.
    “Yeesh what a stench,” the priest said. He flipped on a powerful little incandescent lamp that McMurtrey hadn’t noticed he had, kicked several beer cans aside and set the lamp down in the middle of the cabin. This was the principal compartment of the ship, a tubular-shaped room, and overhead were a dozen or more mezzanines, stacked atop one another in circling, doughnut-shaped tiers. Hundreds of compact fold-down beds lined the walls of the mezzanines, some open and some concealed inside the walls.
    “Kids have been partying in here,” Orbust said. “This fleet has no management, no guards, and it’s deteriorating.” He turned off his flashlight, set it on the deck beside the lamp.
    “Don’t blame me,” McMurtrey said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
    “Hocus-pocus,” the disheveled man said. “Do a little magic.”
    “We Krassians have to get to God first,” Tully said. “So get with it.”
    “Get with what?”
    “I don’t know,” said Tully. “Talk to the ship, plead with it, whatever it takes. It don’t listen to us. Hell, bless it. Try everything. You’re the mover and shaker here, and nothing’s been happening with you hiding at your place.”
    “I think a blessing would be a capital idea,” the priest said, stroking the front of his red collar. The way light was hitting him, he looked like a man whose throat had been slashed. His nose hooked downward. “I’m Kundo Smith, Mr. McMurtrey. I live in this shire, so you might have heard of me.”
    McMurtrey shook his head.
    Smith appeared displeased at this.
    I’d rather refer to you as Redneck, McMurtrey thought.
    Someone nudged McMurtrey from behind, hissed: “The blessing!”
    “I know one that seems appropriate,” McMurtrey said. “A cousin taught it to me when I was young.”
    “Is it Krassian?” Orbust asked.
    “I’m not sure, but it isn’t offensive.”
    “Go ahead,” Orbust said hesitantly.
    McMurtrey cleared his throat, and his voice echoed through the high mezzanines:

    “‘When we hoist the silver goblets
    To toast the men who’ve dared
    May the goblets all be filled
    And the good times they be shared.

    For the empty cup it’s known
    Is the one who ne’er came back
    From a far off distant land
    Where he’s a lyin’ on his back.

    To avert that from occurrin’,
    In the lives of those we love
    A blessing do we offer
    With some guidance from above:

    ‘May the men who go to space
    Toward a far-off distant land.
    Be a circlin’ in the palm
    Of the Lord’s magnif’cent hand.’”

    McMurtrey paused, and the ship was silent, without a creak or a whir. His nostrils were more comfortable, and the odor was either diminishing or he had become accustomed to it.
    “Nothing,” Orbust said presently. He didn’t seem to notice what McMurtrey’s nose had detected.
    Then McMurtrey saw the graffiti fade from the walls, so that they were again creamy white, and the beer cans disappeared into the deck, all soundlessly.
    “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Smith said. “You only know one, Rooster?”
    McMurtrey grunted. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he said.
    “Whatever you say, Big Mac,” came the response.
    The Krassians guffawed.
    McMurtrey showed no reaction.
    “You expected maybe a takeoff?” a voice said in an odd, clipped accent. It came from no particular direction.
    The incandescent lamp flicked off with a little pop, leaving them in blackness. The men cursed and stumbled around. Smith fumbled with the lamp, couldn’t get it to work. He said the flashlight wouldn’t go on either.
    A hand slapped into something, and against the open hatchway McMurtrey saw Orbust