March To The Stars

the foremast) carried only a single square topsail, but compensated by setting a triangular 'leg of mutton' fore- and-aft sail above the mainsail. There were also staysails set between the masts, not to mention a flying jib, outer jib, and inner jib, all set between the foremast and the bowsprit.

The seventh schooner was different—a much bigger, less agile, somehow unfinished-looking vessel with a far deeper hull and no less than five masts—and, at the insistence of Captain Armand Pahner, Imperial Marines, rejoiced in the name of Snarleyow. The smaller, more nimble ships seemed to regard their larger sister with mixed emotions. No one would ever have called Snarleyow anything so gauche as clumsy, perhaps, but she was clearly less fleet of foot, and her heavier, more deliberate motion almost seemed to hold the others back.

All of the ships carried short-barreled cannon along their sides. Snarleyow mounted fifteen of them to a side, which gave her a quarter again the broadside armament of any of her consorts, but all of them carried a single, much larger cannon on a pivot mount towards the bow, as well. And every single one of them had ropes everywhere. Which was the problem.

'Okay.' Julian drew a deep breath, then continued in a tone of massive calm. 'There's a line and a pu— block. So why isn't it a halyard?'

'Halyard hauls up t'e sail. T'e stay, it hold t'e pocking mast up.'

The Pinopan had grown up around the arcane terminology of the sea. In fact, he was the only human member of the expedition (with the exception of Roger, who had spent summers in Old Earth's blue-water recreational sailing community) who actually understood it at all. But despite the impression of landsmen—that the arcana existed purely to cause them confusion—there was a real necessity for the distinct terminology. Ships constantly encounter situations where clear and unambiguous orders may mean the difference between life and death. Thus the importance of being able to tell hands to pull upon a certain 'rope' in a certain way. Or, alternatively, to let it out slowly, all the while maintaining tension.

Thus such unambiguous and unintelligible orders as 'Douse the mainsail and make fast!' Which does not mean throw water on it to increase speed.

'So which one's the halyard?' Julian asked plaintively.

'Which halyard? Countin' t'e stays'ils, t'ere's seventeen pocking halyards on t'is ship... .'

Hooker's design had been agreed upon as the best possible for the local conditions. She and her consorts had been created, through human design and local engineering, to carry Prince Roger and his bodyguards—now augmented by various local forces—across a previously unexplored ocean. Not that there hadn't, as always, been the odd, unanticipated circumstance requiring last-minute improvisation. The fact that a rather larger number of Mardukan allies than originally anticipated had been added to Roger's force had created the need for more sealift capacity. Especially given the sheer size of the Mardukan cavalry's mounts. Civan were fast, tough, capable of eating almost anything, and relatively intelligent. One thing they were not, however, was petite. Hardly surprising, since the cavalrymen who rode into battle on their backs averaged between three and three and a half meters tall.

Carrying enough of them to sea aboard the six original schooners had turned out to be impossible once the revised numbers of local troopers had been totaled up. So just when everyone had thought they were done building, they—and somewhere around a quarter of the total shipbuilding force of K'Vaern's Cove—had turned to to build the Snarleyow. Fortunately, the local labor force had learned a lot about the new building techniques working on the smaller ships, but it had still been a backbreaking, exhausting task no one had expected to face. Nor had Poertena been able to spend as much time refining her basic design, which was one reason she was ugly, slabsided, and slow, compared to her smaller sisters. She was also built of green timber, which had never been seasoned properly and could be expected to rot with dismaying speed in a climate like Marduk's. But that was all right with Prince Roger and his companions. All they really cared about was that she last long enough for a single voyage.

Although she was scarcely in the same class for speed or handiness as Poertena's original, twin-masted design, Snarleyow was still enormously more efficient than any native Mardukan design. She had to be. The nature of the local weather was such that there was an almost unvarying wind from the northeast, yet that was the very direction in which the ships had to sail. That was the reason for their triangular sails. Their fore-and-aft rig—a technology the humans had introduced—made it possible for them to sail much more sharply into the wind than any local vessel, with its clumsy and inefficient, primitive square-rigged design, had ever been able to do. Similar ships had sailed the seas of Earth all the way up to the beginning of the Information Age, and they remained the mainstay for water worlds like Pinopa.

'Now I'm really confused,' Julian moaned. 'All right. Tying something down is 'making fast.' A rope attached to a sail is a 'sheet.' A rope tied to the mast is a 'stay.' And a bail is the iron thingamajig on the mast.'

'T'e boom,' Poertena corrected, wiping away a drop of sweat. The day, as always, was like a steambath, even with the light wind that filled the sails. 'T'e bail is on t'e boom. Unless you're taking on water. T'en you bail it out.'

'I give up!'

'Don' worry about it,' the Pinopan said with a chuckle. 'You only been at t'is a few weeks. Besides, you got me an' all t'ose four-armed monstrosities to do t'e sailing. You jus' pull when we say 'heave,' and stop when we say 'avast.' '

'And hold on when you say 'belay.' '

'And hold on tight when we say belay.'

'I blame Roger for this,' Julian said with another shake of his head.

'You blame Roger for what?' a cool female voice asked from behind him.

Julian looked over his shoulder and grinned at Nimashet Despreaux. The female sergeant was frowning at him, but it slid off the irrepressible NCO like water off a duck.

'It's all Roger's fault that we're in this predicament,' he replied. 'If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have to learn this junk!'

Despreaux opened her mouth, but Julian held up a hand before she could retort.

'Calmly, Nimashet. I know it's not Roger's fault. It was a joke, okay?'

Despreaux's frown only underscored the classical beauty of her face, but it was dark with worry.

'Roger's ... still not taking Kostas' death very well, Adib. I just don't ... I don't want anybody even joking about this being his fault,' she said, and Poertena nodded in agreement.

'T'e prince didn't maroon us here, Julian. T'e Saints an' whoever set t'at pocking toombie on us marooned us.' The diminutive armorer shrugged. 'I guess it wasn't very pocking punny.'

'Okay,' a chagrined Julian said. 'You've got a point. Roger has been sort of dragging around, hasn't he?'

'He's been in a funk, is what you mean,' Despreaux said.

'Well, I'm sure there's some way you could cheer him up,' Julian suggested with an evil grin.

'Oh, pock,' Poertena muttered, and backed up quickly. After a crack like that the fecal matter was about to hit the impeller.

'Now this is a mutinous crew, if ever I've seen one.' Sergeant Major Eva Kosutic said, joining them. She looked from Despreaux's furious face to Julian's 'butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth' expression and frowned. 'All right, Julian. What did you say this time?'

'Me?' Julian asked with enormous innocence but little real hope of evading the consequences. The sergeant major had an almost miraculous sense of timing; she always turned up just as the action was hottest. Which come to think of it, described her in bed as well. 'What would I have said?'

Now he looked from the sergeant major to the fulminating Despreaux, decided that coming clean offered his best chance of survival, and shrugged with a repentant expression.

'I just suggested that there might be a way to cheer Roger up,' he admitted, then, unable to help himself, grinned again. 'I guarantee I'm right. God knows I've been more cheerful lately.'

The sergeant major rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

'Well if that's your attitude, you'll damned well be less cheerful for a while!' She looked at the three noncoms and shook her head. 'This is a clear case of His Evilness' finding work for idle hands. Poertena, I thought