“How long,” I gasped. “How long’s this going to…?”
“As long…as it takes.”
* * * *
Em Talking
By the time the acceleration had cut out and we’d negotiated the zero-g component and then gone into synchronized spin, Ned was looking a bit pale. But, as soon as we’d docked with The Delegate, he managed to make it through the airlock and down the radial elevator without a major regurgitation event. The muster room at the end of the elevator was full of drunken crew regaining their composure.
“Magnets?” Ned said.
“What?” I said.
“There’s gravity in here—do they do it with magnets?”
“No, no. We’re spinning. The whole ship is a giant centrifuge. It’s one big barrel.”
“Of fun?”
“Who knows,” I said.
“Behold,” said a voice beside me, “the fresh-faced innocence of youth.”
I turned. There was a small guy in a large overcoat. He looked like a walking tent.
“I trust,” the tent said, “that you two are new additions to our esteemed crew of psychopaths and alimony evaders—we will have the pleasure of your company in the long drear months ahead?”
“Keep your hands in your pockets,” Ned said to me. “This guy will rob you blind. I’ve seen him at work on Earth.”
“Young man, that was uncalled for,” the little guy said, but he didn’t sound offended. “I am an honest trader, a merchant of the space lanes. My reputation can stand any scrutiny.”
“What do you sell?” Ned said.
“What do you want?” the guy replied.
“Hard to say,” Ned said. “We own nothing.”
“Then I am your man,” the runt said. “Everything the heart desires can be yours.”
“At a price?” Ned said.
“At a very reasonable price,” the guy said. “The name’s John Doe. Delighted to have made your acquaintance. Do not hesitate to seek me out if there is anything you desire. And now, if you’ll excuse me.…”
The guy scuttled off, passing through the only door out of the muster room, announcing himself to the log-in scanner as “Maintenance Leading Hand Doe, John. At your service.” This was a more civilized announcement than other people were making. Most of the drunks, as they left the room, yelled out a funny name or bawled a bit of ribald verse. They also made silly faces at the scanner. It was a standard voice recognition and retina scan barrier: it just checked your voice print and the patterns on the back of your eyeball, it didn’t know or care what you actually said or did. I hadn’t seen one since I left Newharp, but they are common enough at home.
“OK,” I said to Ned, “let’s try to get through the door. It’ll probably knock us back.”
It knocked us back. The repulsion field kicked in with a vengeance despite Ned yelling the first verse of Gert-by-Sea and thumbing his nose at the scanner. The Delegate’s systems had no idea who we were. The last two remaining drunks cheered as Ned dusted himself down.
“Good try,” one of them said. “I’ll have a word with the beast, appeal to its better nature.”
As the guy passed through the door he yelled, “Let them in, you half-witted lump of incharitable space debris, give the poor sods an even break, why don’t you, you moth-eaten.…”
He was still cursing the ship and all its systems as he and his companion disappeared round a corner in the far passage. We were now the only people left in the muster area.
“Well, I’m stuffed if I’m going to spend the whole trip in a waiting room,” Ned said. “Howabout we go back to Earth?”
“Please state your name and crew number,” an automatic voice demanded from a concealed speaker.
“Emceesquared Gonzalles della Harpenden,” I said. “I have no crew number.”
“Please remain where you are, Ms. Harpenden. Will the other access-denied person please identify him or herself.”
“I am the Ambassador for Yoof on Earth, Edward Malley, aka Ned. My number is twenty-two million, six hundred thousand, and thirty-four and a half. And like the guy said, let us in.”
“Your Excellency will please remain where your Excellency currently is. An authorized admissions officer will contact you soon.”
“It seems polite enough,” Ned said to me.
“Don’t get smart,” I said. “The last thing we want is to be sent back to Earth. You know that.” We retreated to a row of chairs against one of the walls. Nothing happened for a while. For the first time in hours we were in complete silence.
“This joint’s a bit light on for windows,” Ned said, waving at the walls.
“It’s a spacecraft, for pete’s sake. Windows would be a design fault. And anyway, even if there were windows, they’d have to be in the floor. We’re in a spinning drum, remember?”
“You make us sound like balls in a lottery.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
A flustered officer walked through the door. She was wearing a crisp uniform and was perfectly sober. She looked at us, looked around the muster room as if she was in search of someone else, and then walked over to us.
“I take it one of you young whippersnappers claims ambassadorial status.”
“We both do,” Ned said. “We are the Special Ambassadors for Yoof.”
“How did you get onto the runabout?”
“Sue-Ellen Harrison drove us there.”
“Oh, her,” said the officer. “Ms. Sue-Ellen Harrison is an official translator provided by the Earth authorities; she is not Crew Recruitment.”
“She’s great mates with Ulrike Lewis,” Ned said.
“It is true that Her Excellency Ulrike Lewis is the most revered and honored member of this ship’s company,” said the officer. “But Her Excellency is not the captain of the ship. And she is no more in charge of crew recruitment than Ms. Harrison is.”
“Lewis wants us to carry messages of youthful peace and good will to the Skyroans and Kovalevs,” Ned said. “We are prepared to shoulder that burden.”
“Who taught you to speak Newharp?” the officer snapped.
“She did,” Ned said, pointing at me with his thumb.
“Well, she hasn’t done a very good job,” the officer said. “It is customary in polite Newharp discourse to use the terms of address and honorifics to which a person is entitled by virtue of his or her rank and social standing. Do I make myself clear, young man?”
“What’s this old goat on about?” Ned said to me in English.
“She wants you to refer to Lewis as Her Excellency,” I said in English.
“Oh,