maximum expanse of hull to examine.
«Most of 'em are no problem. I'm putting setpatch in the one nearest your fuel lines,» the coveralled man said, spreading a gray goo over the place. It hardened slowly, acquiring a silver sheen that blended with the rest of the hull plates. «Don't think it'll split in temperature extremes, ma'am, but its thinner there, of course. This'll protect you more.
«Many thanks,» Carialle said. When the patching compound dried, she tested her new skin for resonance and found its density matched well. In no time she'd forget she had a wrinkle under the dressing. Her audit program also found that the fee for materials was comfortingly low, compared to having the plate removed and hammered, or replaced entirely.
Overhead, a spider-armed crane swung its burden over her bow, dropping snakelike hoses toward her open cargo hull. The crates of xeno material had already been taken away in a specially sealed container. A suited and hooded worker had already cleaned the nooks and niches, making sure no stray native spores had hooked a ride to the Central Worlds. The cranes operator directed the various flexible tubes to the appropriate valves. Fuel was first, and Carialle flipped open her fuel toggle as the stout hose reached it. The narrow tube which fed her protein vats had a numbered filter at its spigot end. Carialle recorded that number in her files in case there were any impurities in the final product. Thankfully, the conduit that fed the carbo-protein sludge to Keff's food synthesizer was opaque. The peristaltic pulse of the thick stuff always made Cari think of quicksand, of sand-colored octopi creeping along an ocean floor, of week-old oatmeal. Her attention diverted momentarily to the dock, where a front-end loader was rolling toward her with a couple of containers, one large and one small, with bar-code tags addressed to Keff. She signaled her okay to the driver to load them in her cargo bay.
Another tech, a short, stout woman wearing thick-soled magnetic boots, approached her airlock and held up a small item. «This is for you from the station-master, Carialle. Permission to come aboard?»
Carialle focused on the datahedron in her fingers and felt a twitch of curiosity.
«Permission granted,» she said. The tech clanked her way into the airlock and turned sideways to match the up/down orientation of Carialle's decks, then marched carefully toward the main cabin. «Did he say what it was?»
«No, ma'am. It's a surprise.»
«Oh, Simeon!» Carialle exclaimed over the stationmaster's private channel. «Cats! Thank you!» She scanned the contents of the hedron back and forth. «Almost a realtime week of video footage. Wherever did you get it?»
«From a biologist who breeds domestic felines. He was out here two months ago. The hedron contains compressed videos of his cats and kittens, and he threw in some videos of wild felines he took on a couple of the colony worlds. Thought you'd like it.»
«Simeon, it's wonderful. What can I swap you for it?»
The station-masters voice was sheepish. «You don't need to swap, Cari, but if you happened to have a spare painting? And I'm quite willing to sweeten the swap.»
«Oh, no. I'd be cheating you. It isn't as if they're music. They're nothing.»
«That isn't true, and you know it. You're a brain's artist.»
With little reluctance, Carialle let Simeon tap into her video systems and directed him to the corner of the main cabin where her painting gear was stowed.
To any planetbound home-owner the cabin looked spotless, but to another spacer, it was a magpies nest. Keff's exercise equipment occupied much of one end of the cabin. At the other, Carialle's specially adapted rack of painting equipment took up a largish section of floor space, not to mention wall space where her finished work hung—the ones she didn't give away or throw away. Those few permitted to see Cari's paintings were apt to call them «masterpieces,» but she disclaimed that.
Not having a softshell body with hands to manage the mechanics of the art, she had had customized gear built to achieve the desired effect. The canvases she used were very thin, porous blocks of cells that she could flood individually with paint, like pixels on a computer screen, until it oozed together. The results almost resembled brush strokes. With the advance of technological subtleties, partly thanks to Moto-Prosthetics, Carialle had designed arms that could hold actual fiber brushes and airbrushes, to apply paints to the surface of the canvases over the base work.
What had started as therapy after her narrow escape from death had become a successful and rewarding hobby. An occasional sale of a picture helped to fill the larder or the fuel tank when bonuses were scarce, and the odd gift of an unlooked-for screen-canvas did much to placate occasionally fratchety bureaucrats. The sophisticated servo arms pulled one microfiber canvas after another out of the enameled, cabinet-mounted rack to show Simeon, who appreciated all and made sensible comments about several.
«That ones available,» Carialle said, mechanical hands turning over a night-black spacescape, a full-color sketch of a small nocturnal animal, and a study of a crystalline mineral deposit embedded in a meteor. «This one I gave Keff. This one I'm keeping. This ones not finished. Hmm. These two are available. So's this one.»
Much of what Carialle rendered wouldn't be visible to the unenhanced eyes of a softshell artist, but the sensory apparatus available to a shellperson gave color and light to scenes that would otherwise seem to the naked eye to be only black with white pinpoints of stars.
«That's good.» Simeon directed her camera to a spacescape of a battered scout ship traveling against the distant cloudlike mist of an ion storm that partially overlaid the corona of a star like a veil. The canvas itself wasn't rectangular in shape, but had a gentle irregular outline that complimented the subject.
«Um,» Carialle said. Her eye, on tight microscopic adjustment, picked up flaws in some individual cells of paint. They were red instead of carmine, and the shading wasn't subtle enough. «It's not finished yet.»
«You mean you're not through fiddling with it. Give over, girl. I like it.»
«Its yours, then,» Carialle said with an audible sigh of resignation. The servo picked it out of the rack and headed for the airlock on its small track-treads. Carialle activated a camera on the outside other hull to spot a technician in the landing bay. «Barldey, would you mind taking something for the station-master?» she said, putting her voice on speaker.
«Sure wouldn't, Carialle,» the mech-tech said, with a brilliant smile at the visible camera. The servo met her edge of the dock, and handed the painting to her.
«You've got talent, gal,» Simeon said, still sharing her video system as she watched the tech leave the bay. «Thank you. I'll treasure it.»
«It's nothing,» Carialle said modestly. «Just a hobby.»
«Fardles. Say, I've got a good idea. Why don't you do a gallery showing next time you're in port? We have plenty of traders and bigwigs coming through who would pay good credit for original art. Not to mention the added cachet that it's painted by a brainship.»
«We-ell . . .» Carialle said, considering.
«I'll give you free space near the concessions for the first week, so you're not losing anything on the cost of location. If you feel shy about showing off, you can do it by invitation only, but I warn you, word will spread.»
«You've persuaded me,» Carialle said.
«My intentions are purely honorable,» Simeon replied gallantly. «Frag it!» he exclaimed. The speed of transmission on his frequency increased to a microsquirt. «You're as loaded and ready as you're going to get, Carialle. Put it together and scram off this station. The Inspector General wants a meeting with you in fifteen minutes. He just told me to route a message through to you. I'm delaying it as long as I dare.»
«Oh, no!» Carialle said at the same speed. «I have no intention of letting Dr. Sennet 'I am a psychologist' Maxwell-Corey pick through my brains every single fardling time I make stationfall. I'm cured, damn it! I don't need constant monitoring.»
«You'd better scoot now, Cari. My walls-with-ears have heard rumors that he thinks your 'obsession' with things like Myths and Legends makes your sanity highly suspect. When he hears the latest report—your Beasts Blatisant—you're going to be in for another long psychological profile session, and Keff along with you. Even Maxwell-Corey has to justify his job to someone.»
«Damn him! We haven't finished loading my supplies! I only have half a vat of nutrients, and most of the stuff Keff ordered is still in your stores.»
