lost calcium, you dehydrated, your mouth tasted of copper and you wanted to throw up, especially when the nutrient liquid hit your stomach and about a quarter hour later when the iron hit your bloodstream. But you got used to it and you learned to hold it down, or you didn’t, and you didn’t last as a deep-spacer.
“You all right?” she heard Fala ask of Meras, below, heard him answer, brightly, “I’m fine.”
Like hell, she thought. It wasn’t fair if he was. The stsho would be coming out from under ... stsho and humans had to sedate themselves for the trip, whatever those completely different brains had in common— though Tully could survive without; had had to prove it... once, at least; and was still sane...
Woolgathering, Pyanfar called it, and damned the habit. She didn’t have her hands on controls. She’d been ship’s com tech, protocol officer, and that didn’t have a thing to do with running the ship. But she followed the moves, she knew in her gut when it was time for Tiar to kick in the third v dump, and Up-synched the order, tense until Tiar gave it, and then satisfied.
She could do it herself. She was tolerably sure of it. But she never bet the ship on it. And certainly not on this jump.
“Fine job,” she said to Tiar.
“We’re in a little closer than I wanted.”
“Still,” she said. First class equipment, first class navigator in Chihin and first-class pilot in Tiar. It wasn’t any run of the lot ship could single-jump as they’d done. The older pilots, the navigators of Chihin’s age ... they’d done it in the war years, they’d the kind of reflexes and system-awareness that could come out of it with a critical sense where they were.
So, most clearly, did Ha’domaren’s crew. That told you something. That told you, at least, the quality of that crew and equipment, that it carried no cargo, and that whoever was at the helm had done this before.
That they were overjumped, that somebody had actually overhauled and passed them in hyperspace, that said that was one bastard who didn’t mind the navigation rules or care about the dust hazard in Urtur system.
Chapter Five
Urtur was a smaller port than Meetpoint—heavily industrial. Its star was veiled in murk and dust, a ringed star, with gas giant planets sweeping the veil into bands of crepe and gas and ice; with miner-craft both crewed and otherwise running the dusty lanes in the ecliptic; with refineries and mills and shipyards operating at the collection points—
And the main station, under mahendo’sat governance, devoted itself to manufacture, shipping, and entertainment for the miners and makers of goods. You wanted culture? Go to Idunspol. You wanted religion? Go to forbidden, god-crazed Iji. You wanted iron and heavy metals, you wanted sheet and plate and hydrogen, you wanted a raucous good time and a headache in the morning? Urtur was the place for it.
You said Chanur here, and certain authorities’ ears pricked up and twitched—by an irony of things as they were, there were outstanding warrants here that could not quite be forgotten, by mahen law: every situation was subject to change and every administration could be succeeded by some new power diametrically opposed to the last. So charges stayed on the books, something like reckless endangerment, public hazard, speeding, unlawful dumping, and damage to public property. The Pride of Chanur had had its less popular moments.
And supposedly the charges included the name of Hilfy Chanur, crewwoman. But she paid no more attention to them than aunt Py did, coming and going as she pleased these days in regal empowerment.
So she ordered the Legacy shut down and the hatch opened to Urtur; and she completed the formalities with station control, signing this and signing that—advised station control of the existence of their full-scale dataload and its date of provenance from Meetpoint; and got a bid of 3000, which wouldn’t go higher-counting that rag-eared son of a
“You all right?” she heard Fala ask of Meras, below, heard him answer, brightly, “I’m fine.”
Like hell, she thought. It wasn’t fair if he was. The stsho would be coming out from under ... stsho and humans had to sedate themselves for the trip, whatever those completely different brains had in common— though Tully could survive without; had had to prove it... once, at least; and was still sane...
Woolgathering, Pyanfar called it, and damned the habit. She didn’t have her hands on controls. She’d been ship’s com tech, protocol officer, and that didn’t have a thing to do with running the ship. But she followed the moves, she knew in her gut when it was time for Tiar to kick in the third v dump, and Up-synched the order, tense until Tiar gave it, and then satisfied.
She could do it herself. She was tolerably sure of it. But she never bet the ship on it. And certainly not on this jump.
“Fine job,” she said to Tiar.
“We’re in a little closer than I wanted.”
“Still,” she said. First class equipment, first class navigator in Chihin and first-class pilot in Tiar. It wasn’t any run of the lot ship could single-jump as they’d done. The older pilots, the navigators of Chihin’s age ... they’d done it in the war years, they’d the kind of reflexes and system-awareness that could come out of it with a critical sense where they were.
So, most clearly, did Ha’domaren’s crew. That told you something. That told you, at least, the quality of that crew and equipment, that it carried no cargo, and that whoever was at the helm had done this before.
That they were overjumped, that somebody had actually overhauled and passed them in hyperspace, that said that was one bastard who didn’t mind the navigation rules or care about the dust hazard in Urtur system.
Chapter Five
Urtur was a smaller port than Meetpoint—heavily industrial. Its star was veiled in murk and dust, a ringed star, with gas giant planets sweeping the veil into bands of crepe and gas and ice; with miner-craft both crewed and otherwise running the dusty lanes in the ecliptic; with refineries and mills and shipyards operating at the collection points—
And the main station, under mahendo’sat governance, devoted itself to manufacture, shipping, and entertainment for the miners and makers of goods. You wanted culture? Go to Idunspol. You wanted religion? Go to forbidden, god-crazed Iji. You wanted iron and heavy metals, you wanted sheet and plate and hydrogen, you wanted a raucous good time and a headache in the morning? Urtur was the place for it.
You said Chanur here, and certain authorities’ ears pricked up and twitched—by an irony of things as they were, there were outstanding warrants here that could not quite be forgotten, by mahen law: every situation was subject to change and every administration could be succeeded by some new power diametrically opposed to the last. So charges stayed on the books, something like reckless endangerment, public hazard, speeding, unlawful dumping, and damage to public property. The Pride of Chanur had had its less popular moments.
And supposedly the charges included the name of Hilfy Chanur, crewwoman. But she paid no more attention to them than aunt Py did, coming and going as she pleased these days in regal empowerment.
So she ordered the Legacy shut down and the hatch opened to Urtur; and she completed the formalities with station control, signing this and signing that—advised station control of the existence of their full-scale dataload and its date of provenance from Meetpoint; and got a bid of 3000, which wouldn’t go higher-counting that rag-eared son of a
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