We finally got to our bunks that night, staggering to our cabins after a scratch meal of coffee and sandwiches in the wardroom. Ralph had driven us hard, and he had driven himself hard. He had insisted on testing everything that could be tested, had made his personal inspection of everything capable of being inspected. Ballast tanks had been flooded and then pumped out. The ingenious machinery that swiveled furniture and fittings through an arc of ninety degrees when transition was made from atmospheric to spatial flight was operated. The motors driving the airscrews were given a thorough trial.
At the finish of it all, Doc and Smethwick were on the verge of mutiny, Sandra was finding it imperative to do things in her galley by herself, and Martha Wayne was looking as though she were already regretting having accepted this assignment. Only Peggy Simmons seemed to be enjoying herself. As well as being obviously in love with her machinery, she appeared to have gotten a crush on Ralph. I overheard Doc mutter to Smethwick, "Following him round like a bitch in heat . . ." Oh, well, I thought to myself, Sandra will soon fix all that once she starts turning out the balanced diet.
Anyhow, with Ralph at last more or less happy about everything, we bolted our sandwiches, gulped our coffee and then retired. I was just about to switch off the light at the head of my bunk when there was a gentle tapping at my door. My first thought was that it was Ralph, that the master had thought of something else that might go wrong and had come to worry his mate about it. But Ralph would have knocked in a firm, authorative manner.
Sandra? I wondered hopefully.
"Come in," I called softly.
It was Peggy Simmons. She was dressed in a bulky, unglamorous robe. She looked like a little girl—and not one of the nymphette variety either. She looked like a fat little girl, although I was prepared to admit that it could have been the shapeless thing that she was wearing that conveyed this impression.
She said, "I hope you weren't asleep, Peter."
"I wasn't," I admitted grudgingly. "Not quite."
She said, "I just had to talk to somebody." She sat on the chair by my bunk, and helped herself to a cigarette from the box on the table. She went on, "This is all so strange. And tomorrow, after we get away, it will be even stranger."
"What isn't strange?" I countered. "Come to think of it, it's the normal that's really strange."
"You're too deep for me," she laughed ruefully. "But I came to talk to you because you're not clever . . ."
"Thank you," I said coldly.
"No. That wasn't quite what I meant, Peter. You are clever—you must be, to be chief officer of a ship like this. And I'm clever too—but with machinery. But the others—Sandra and Martha Wayne and Doc—are so . . . so . . ."
"Sophisticated," I supplied.
"Yes. That's the word. Sophisticated. And poor Claude Smethwick is the reverse. So unworldly. So weird, even . . ."
"And Ralph?" I prodded.
Her face seemed to light up and to cloud simultaneously, although there must have been a slight lag. "Oh, he's . . . exceptional? Yes. Exceptional. But I could hardly expect a man like him to want to talk to a girl like me. Could I?"
And why the hell not? I thought. Put on some makeup, and throw something seductively translucent over the body beautiful instead of that padded tent, and you might get somewhere. But not with me, and not tonight, Josephine . . .
"I haven't known many spacemen," she went on. "Only the commodore, really, and he's so much one of the family that he hardly counts. But there's always been something about you all, those few of you whom I have met. I think I know what it is. You all have pasts . . ."
And how! I thought.
"Like Ralph. Like the captain, I mean. You and he have been shipmates for a long time, Peter, haven't you? But I can't help wondering why such a capable man should come out to the Rim . . ."
And him old enough to be your father, I thought. And then I remembered what we had learned of Peggy Simmons' own story. It all added up. Ralph, by virtue of personality as well as rank, was the ideal Father Image. Sticky, I thought. Definitely sticky.
"Women," I said.
"Women?"
"Yeah. That's the usual reason why we all come out to the Rim."
"Men," she said, "even the most brilliant men, are such fools where women of a certain class are concerned."
Like your father, I thought.
"With the right woman," she went on, "they could go a long way . . ."
Too right, I thought. Too damn right. All the way to the next galaxy but three, under full sail, and with the right woman manning the pumps or whatever it is that the donkeyman does . . .
She said wistfully, "I wish . . ."
"You wish what, Peggy?"
"Oh, I . . . I don't know, Peter . . ."
I wish that you'd get the hell out of here, I thought. I wish that I could get some sleep.
"Have you a drink?" she asked. "A nightcap, to make me sleep . . ."
"In that locker," I told her, "there's a bottle of brandy. Medicinal. Get out two glasses and I'll have a drink with you. I could use some sleep myself."
She splashed brandy generously into the glasses and handed one to me.
"Down the hatch," I said.
"Down the hatch," she repeated. Then she demanded suddenly, "What haven't I got, Peter?"
I knew what she meant. "As far as I can see," I told her, "you have all the standard equipment. As far as I can see."
She said abruptly, "She's with him. In his cabin."
I felt a stab of jealousy. "Who?" I asked.
"Sandra."
So they managed to keep it a secret in Rim Dragon, I thought. Not that there was any need to. There's nothing in the regulations that says that officers shall not sleep with each other, provided that it doesn't get in the way of their duties . . .
I said, "But they've known each other for years."
"And I'm just the small girl around the ship. The newcomer. The outsider."
"Miss Simmons," I said severely, "people who affix their autographs to the articles of agreement are engaged for one reason only: to take the ship from point A to point B as required by the lawful commands of the master. Who sleeps with whom—or who doesn't sleep with whom—is entirely outside the scope of the Merchant Shipping Act."
Her robe had somehow become unfastened, and I could see that she did, in fact, possess the usual equipment and that it was in no way substandard. She knew that I was looking at her, but she made no attempt to cover herself. Instead she got to her feet and stood there for a moment or so, posing rather self-consciously and awkwardly, before going to the locker for the brandy bottle. She refilled our glasses, the rosy nipple of her right breast almost brushing my face as she stooped. I restrained myself from pulling her down to me.
"One for the road," I said firmly.
"For the road?" she echoed.
"For the road, Peggy. We're both of us tired, and we have another heavy day ahead of us tomorrow."
"But . . ." She might just as well not have been wearing the robe.
"Damn it all, girl," I exploded, "I may be only the mate, and an ex-purser at that, but I have my pride. You've been making it bloody obvious all day that you were just dying to serve yourself up to Ralph on a silver tray and trimmed with parsley. Sandra beat you to Ralph's bed, so I'm second choice. Or do you think that you're hurting him in some obscure way by giving me what he didn't take? Either way, I'm not playing. So finish your drink like a good girl and go and turn in. By yourself."
"If that's the way you want it," she said coldly.
"That's the way that I want it," I said coldly.
"Goodnight," she said.
"Goodnight," I said.
She set her empty glass down gently on the table. Her face was pale and a tiny muscle was twitching in her left cheek. With her robe again belted securely around her she looked once more like a small girl—like a small girl who is convinced she has been unjustly spanked.
She said, "I'm sorry to have troubled you."
I said, "And I'm sorry that . . . oh, never mind."
"Goodnight," she said again.
"Goodnight," I replied again.
She left then, closing the door quietly behind her. I finished my drink and switched out the light. But I didn't get to sleep for a long time. And I should have slept well, I knew, had I taken the opportunity for the loosening of nervous tension in the most effective way there is. My absurdly puritanical attitude (a hangover from that sordid affair on Duchess of Atholl?) had done no good to anybody at all, including myself.
And it was—although this was unforeseeable—to have far-reaching consequences.