CHAPTER


SIX

On Board the Miomai, En Route to Arsenault

The Miomai was a “happy” starship because she and her crew took after their captain, Hakalau d’Colacs, known throughout the space lanes as Happy Hakalau because he was always in a good mood, all 140 kilos of him. He was an inveterate trencherman who thought everyone else should enjoy their food as much as he did, and his officers and guests dined sumptuously at his table, an ordinary spaceman’s table in one corner of the ship’s galley—not his cabin. Mealtimes were an occasion for socializing, during which he’d hold forth with torrents of commentary interspersed with good-natured gibes at members of the crew who happened to be dining nearby. His highest form of compliment was to refer to someone or something as “monstrous fine.”

Only one other passenger besides Daly felt like eating at the first meal after the Miomai’s jump into Beamspace. He was an older, balding, heavyset government contractor returning to Earth for another assignment. He introduced himself to Daly as Bok—“call me Bokkie”—Merrifield. Besides Captain d’Colacs the only crew member to join them was the first mate, a man named Heming, who did not say much but who laughed often at Happy’s jokes, which he really seemed to enjoy, not just because his captain made them.

Captain d’Colacs returned from the server with a heavily laden tray. “Monstrous fine!” he said of his food as he eased his bulk onto a stool and sorted out his silverware. “Arh, Mr. Daly, Mr. Merrifield, I’m pleased you could join us. The lubbers usually don’t take too well to food after their first jump.”

“We’ve been jumped before,” Merrifield said, laughing, winking at Daly, who grinned at the innuendo.

“Mr. Daly, are you a military man by any chance? I ask because you have a certain military air about you, and”—Captain d’Colacs shrugged as he forked a piece of steak into his mouth—“we’re dropping you off at Arsenault.”

“Yes, sir, I’m a Marine.”

“Marine?” d’Colacs roared, and all the heads in the galley turned toward him. “Well, goddamned monstrous fine to have you on my ship, Mr. Daly.” He extended a huge paw and shook Daly’s hand vigorously. “Say, you feelin’ poorly, lad?” He nodded at Daly’s tray, which contained only a salad, a small portion of meat, and a bottle of water.

“No, I’m just fine, sir. I don’t believe in eating very much when I can’t burn it off.”

“Eat, lad, eat, you’ve got to keep body and soul together.” Captain d’Colacs laughed. “Well, Mr. Heming there and I are old navy men, aren’t we, Heming? How ’bout you, Mr. Merrifield,” he said, nodding at the contractor.

“I was in the army, Third Silvasian War. What do you do in the Marines, Mr. Daly?”

“I’m in Force Reconnaissance, sir.”

Merrifield raised an eyebrow and nodded at the others. “No wonder he looks so lean and mean.”

“Ah, this is monstrous fine,” Captain d’Colacs enthused around a mouthful of potato. “Tonight at my table we’re all old ex-military farts, just like being back in the fleet again! Well, excuse the expression, Mr. Daly, that does not include you, of course.” The captain laughed. “You’re no recruit, Mr. Daly, so are you going to Arsenault as cadre or attending some advanced specialty school?”

“Asshole!” Merrifield exclaimed. “How well I remember that goddamned place!”

“Arh, we’ve all been there! We have that in common!” Captain d’Colacs grinned. The others laughed and nodded in agreement. Arsenault, the Confederation’s military training world, was known throughout the services as Asshole because that’s what it was like there.

“Ah, no, sir, I’m going to Officer Training College. And if you gentlemen will please excuse me, I’d like you to call me Jak. This ‘Mr. Daly’ stuff can wait until after I’m commissioned.”

“Spoken like a true gentleman! Monstrous fine! Gentlemen, raise your glasses to Mr. Daly!” They toasted. “And, Mr. Daly, let me tell you, this ship is carrying more than four thousand metric tons of fresh fruit for the troops on Arsenault. Yes, we stopped at Summerville’s Gardens and loaded up on the stuff.” Summerville’s Gardens was the name given to a world developed by agribusiness and noted for the fine fruits grown there and exported throughout Human Space. “So you won’t get scurvy while you’re on Asshole,” Captain d’Colacs roared.

The meal continued in an atmosphere of warm camaraderie, the four of them trading stories about their times in their respective military services. While alcohol consumption was permitted on most commercial vessels and the Miomai’s galley boasted a full cooler, the captain and his first officer drank sparingly. So did Daly, who got a beer after he’d finished his meal. But abstinence did not apply to Mr. Merrifield. The more he drank, the more loquacious and amusing he became until everyone in the galley was doubled over from his ribald stories and jokes. Finally Captain d’Colacs, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, excused himself, which was the sign that the meal was over.

“Jak, ol’ buddy,” Merrifield slurred, draping an arm drunkenly around Daly’s shoulders, “I have a lit-mus test I apply to every new man I meet. You know what that test is, Jak? That test is if he’s ever forn, er, worn a uniform. Far as I’m concerned”—he shook his head gravely—“any man’s been in the service, no matter what kind of an asshole he might be otherwise, he automatically, auto-ma-tick-lee gets ten points in my book. Yessir! Ten, count ’em! But Jak, ol’ buddy, you get twenny!”

Besides Daly, the Miomai’s passengers consisted of a Scientific Pantheist minister, two Catholic nuns, a family of six returning home after a long tour with a mining company on a world far out on the borders of Human Space, and Bokkie Merrifield.

The minister, a tall, spare, middle-aged man named Durand Eastman, claimed to be a member of the Rochester Synod, and although he maintained that the sect did not proselytize, several times he engaged Daly in conversation over beer in the galley. “When you look out the observation ports, Jak, aren’t you awed by the power and beauty and, yes, the mystery of the natural universe? To us this represents ‘divinity,’ but not in the Western, theistic sense. We belong to this universe, Jak, with all its wonders. We are one with all the life in it and with nature, which is all one great unity.”

Daly, raised a Catholic, merely said, “Sounds reasonable to me.”

The two nuns, Sister Bartholomay and Sister Henrietta, were nurses returning from missionary work on a newly established colony on Fitzhugh’s World. They became concerned about Daly, not because he was a lapsed Catholic, of which he made no secret, but because to them he looked too thin and undernourished, and when finally he departed the Miomai, they pressed a basket lunch into his hands. “Jak, you will positively collapse before you finish your training if you don’t eat properly,” Sister Henrietta told him. “Cook prepared this for you under our supervision,” she added proudly. Profoundly touched, Daly politely returned the food, telling the sisters that the Marine Corps absolutely forbade its officer candidates to bring—and here he slipped up—“pogey bait” onto the OTC campus.

The crew of the Miomai was a hardworking coterie of space bums with dirt under their fingernails, but they adopted Daly as if he were one of their own. Most of them, like their captain and first officer, had seen some military service, and they often referred to their starship as “the old sailors’ home.”

But it was the children of Parks and Latta Ontario—Charlotte, ten; Glen, eight; Edith, six; and Josephine, four—who became Daly’s best friends. “I don’t mind kids,” he told their mother. “After all, what are Marines but big kids? Taking care of yours is actually good leadership training for me.” Normally an uncontrollable mob of noise and bedlam, the children became docile in Daly’s presence and listened with quiet fascination to the tales he told them of his adventures in the Corps. And when Josephine found out that Daly was leaving the Miomai, she was so upset she hid in her cabin and wouldn’t come out until Daly went in and talked to her. “I’ll see you in the Corps!” she exclaimed bravely when Daly at last picked her up and gave her a big farewell hug.

Bokkie Merrifield, none the better for the whiskey he’d been drinking all that day, exclaimed, “Zhak, when you get out of the Corps, come see me. I’ll be sheaf—chief executive ossifer of my own company by then, if m’liver holds out, an’ I’ll hire you, m’boy! Remember! There is life after retirement!”

So when the time came at last for Jak Daly to depart the Miomai, it was almost like saying good-bye to his own family. Captain d’Colacs extended his massive paw as Daly prepared to board the shuttle that would take him to the surface of Arsenault.

“Ensign Daly,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure to have you aboard my ship. Let’s do it again someday.”

“To that, Captain, I say a hearty ‘Aye, aye, sir!’” Daly paused for an instant before turning to go. Life aboard the Miomai reminded him poignantly of his own boisterous clan back on New Cobh. “Well, Captain”—he came to attention and delivered a smart salute—“it is time for this Marine to get his arse down on the Arsehole.”