The Service of the Sword

Captain's Mast tomorrow. For now, I'm going to go to my cabin and change my shorts. Make that a general order.'

'Medic to the missile compartment,' the enunciator called. 'Bring your syringe.'

Tyler left the bridge shaking his head.

'He didn't know if it was the reactor alarm or not,' he said, giggling helplessly. 'He's the captain, and he didn't know. Hah-hah. Hah-hah, hee. Uhn hah, Oh My God . . .'

'Tester, spare us this day from your Tests . . .' 

CHAPTER FOUR THE POTATO SACK INCIDENT

By the fourth day on the Francis Mueller, Tyler had taken to carrying a tranquilizer injector with him at all times. He wasn't sure if that was to use it on other crewmen, or himself.

But he had it, and a straitjacket, with him when he was called to the bridge on second Day Watch.

'Taylor, you need to sedate Petty Officer Kyle,' the captain said, pointing to a PO in the tactical section. The petty officer was rocking in his chair, playing with himself.

'Hah, hah! Planet! Missed the planet! Hah, hah,' Petty Officer Kyle was clearly enjoying himself.

'Yes, Sir,' Tyler said, walking over and hitting the PO in the shoulder with the injector. The sedative worked quickly and in a few moments the petty officer slid bonelessly out of his chair and hit the deck with a thump.

'Sir,' the XO said, appearing again behind the captain.

'AAAH! Sweet Merciful Tester, Greene, wear a bell on your boot or something.'

'Yes, sir,' the XO replied, seriously. 'Sir, I think that PO Kyle needs to go before the Mast.'

'I don't,' the captain replied. 'He was clearly driven around the bend by Lieutenant Wilson's announcement that the fault in his calculations was that he forgot to account for Blackbird's mass as well as all of her moons! It turns out that if we hadn't had that forty minute delay when we were trying to get the course adjusted on the way in, we would have hit the planet.'

Tyler unfolded the straitjacket and started to load the tactical PO in as he kept one ear on the conversation behind him.

'Well, at least we know where we are, Sir,' Lieutenant Wilson said. 'And I've got a course laid in for Grayson.'

'Are you sure?' the captain asked. 'And are you sure there's nothing in the way?'

'Yes, Sir,' the communication officer said. 'We sent a ping to them. They replied asking where we've been for the last few days.'

'I think the best response was that we were lying doggo, under communications silence, in case anyone was trying to sneak into the system,' the captain said, rubbing his chin. 'The less mentioned about the last week, the better.'

'Masterful response, sir,' the XO said. 'Com, fire that off right away.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

'We've got two weeks before we're due in the yards,' the captain said. 'We're supposed to be doing workups, but with the crew in the shape it is, I don't think that's a good idea. We're already as worked up as any crew I've ever seen.'

'We can do them, Sir,' the XO protested. 'All the crew needs is a little firm discipline. If you'd just see your way clear to giving me a free hand . . .'

'We don't have any thumbscrews, Greene,' the captain said, shaking his head. 'No, what they need is some down time: a day off. Bosun!'

'Yes, Sir?' The senior enlisted person on the ship was heavyset, with thinning hair and a bulbous, red nose that indicated he probably was in Siberia for the same reason as Doc Kearns.

'Adjust Axial One to a forty-five degree, one gee, gravitational cone,' the captain snapped. He keyed the enunciator and cleared his throat. 'All off duty watch, report to Axial One, and BREAK OUT THE POTATO SACKS!'

Axial One was a large 'tube' running down the spine of the ship. Normally, it was set to low gravity and used for movement of personnel and equipment. Under the low G personnel could move materials quickly and efficiently. Or, alternatively, crewmen who thought they were 'salty' could move like a bat out of hell down the tube, bounding along under the .2 G field at speeds of up to forty kilometers per hour or moving huge loads like missiles or pallets of explosive bolts at only somewhat slower velocities.

Of course, the law of conservation of mass applied, so all those salty crewmen eventually had to decelerate or dodge other crewmen who were moving down the corridor at speeds far in excess of sense. And since the human eye and mind are not designed to calculate automatically what is 'too fast' a closing speed, quite a few of those crewmen ended up impacting on some other sailor, or his large and occasionally deadly load, sometimes at closing speeds that would do for a small air-car wreck.

Axial One produced about fifteen percent of the total 'incidental casualties' on the ship.

Of course, 'speeds in excess of forty kilometers per hour' had never made it into official reports, even in the Manticoran service. It would take a real jerk, like Hard-Ass Harrington or somebody, to report what actually went on in Axial One, but for some strange reason newer ships didn't have anything like it. Of course, BuShips said that was because Axial One was a structural danger. On the other hand, the admirals at BuShips had served on the companion ships of the Francis Mueller. It was a statistical likelihood approaching certainty that some of them had been involved in an 'incidental casualty' report. Which was a much better explanation for removing Axial One, in Sean's medical opinion, than 'structural anomalies.'

Sean considered all this gloomily as he looked 'up' the corridor towards the bow of the ship and wondered if it was one of those idiots who had invented Potato-Sack Tobogganing.

The 'floor' of the circular corridor was normally scratched and scuffed alloy. But one strip of it, a U- shaped section about twenty meters across the chord and the full length of the corridor, had been quickly polished and waxed. At the same time, the gravitational pull in the corridor had been set to a forty-five degree 'cone.' That is, instead of pulling straight 'down' or towards the exterior of the ship, the artificial gravity was pulling 'sideways' at a forty-five degree angle. Combined with the slickness of the waxed portion, the tendency was to cause a person to slip, and keep slipping. Towards the after end of the corridor the gravity had been adjusted in the other direction. It was an artificial hillside with a catchment at the base.

'Down' which a succession of screaming spacers were now sliding at, literally, break-neck speed.

The potato sacks on which they slid were of a strange, rough material that had been identified for Tyler as 'burlap.' They were not, apparently, used for carrying potatoes anymore but were kept for the sole purpose of this highly idiotic sport. They also stank to high heaven. The nature of the 'sport' tended to cause flatulence and storing them between times was best described as 'marinating'; they smelled worse than any latrine Sean had ever encountered. But this was supposedly 'fun.'

At the bow end of the corridor the captain could faintly be seen, holding onto a stanchion and shouting encouragement. He was apparently a big advocate of 'crew quality time' and considered it team-building for everyone in the ship's company to risk their necks in a suicidal game of 'find the nearest stanchion with my