Finity's End

That meant Bucklin wouldn’t be at his ear with commentary, or the usual jokes, or sympathy, even when Bucklin found free time enough to be up here shadowing command. Bucklin wouldn’t observe him for instruction, not generally. Bucklin would concentrate his observation on Madison, ideally, and learn from the best.

It was a lonely feeling he had, in Bucklin’s assignment elsewhere. It always would be, until Bucklin found his own way to A deck. And the price of that, Madison’s retirement, neither of them would want

He sat, useless, once he’d given Helm the go-ahead. He sat through the advisement of takehold, when crew would be making their way to the assembly area, to stand together, wait together.

He had one critical bit of business, and that was turning up computer-handled and optimum: the passenger ring started its spin-down as the takehold sounded, preparing to lock down just before the touch at the docking cone. It was another chance to rearrange the galley pans if that went short; and to break bones and damage the mag-lev interface if it went long. He saw it, felt it, as for a moment they were null-g in the ring.

Gliding in under Vickie’s steady hand and lightning reflexes. From 10mps to 5, down to .5, .2, .02.

Touch. Bang. Clang.

Machinery the size of a sleepover suite engaged and drew them into synch with the station.

Docking crews would scramble to move in the gantry and match up the lines, to a set of co

He sent a Commend to Helm. Vickie wouldn’t talk for a few minutes. Helm did that to a human being. She wasn’t in phase with the universe right now, and Helm 4 would literally walk her and Helm 2 off the ship after Helm 3 shut down the boards.

“Thank you, one and all,” he said to the bridge crew, and got up, hearing Com making the routine a

“First shift captain,” he intercommed Madison. “Legal Affairs will meet you at the airlock with appropriate papers.” That was reasonably routine, but the papers in question were a countersuit, responding to papers they’d already received electronically. He punched another personal page. “Blue, this is JR. Are we going to have any customs troubles?”

“ None yet ,” the reply came back to him.

Meanwhile the Purser flashed the advisement of a bloc of rooms engaged at the luxury Xanadu, which, the Purser advised him, put them in with Boreale and with Santo Domingo .

He keyed accept and trusted the Purser to advise Com to advise the crew.

Meanwhile the docking crew was engaging lines and Engineering was watching the co

The most of the crew would be getting ready to move, right below them. When he finished here, which would be perhaps another hour if there were no glitches, he would take the lift down to A deck. He would live with his pocket-com, sleep aboard, fill out endless reports. He’d have no chance to hobnob with the juniors in the bar, and he’d ride no more vid-rides in the amusement shops on any station, ever. Chase young spacer-femmes in some bar? Not a captain of Finity’s End .

He looked forward to the negotiations as the only chance he’d have this so-called liberty to have a little time with Bucklin, maybe coffee and doughnuts in some side conference room, an interlude to meetings the importance of which far outweighed any regrets on the fourth captain’s part that he wouldn’t sit and talk for hours to his age-mates.

Paul, who’d gone to senior crew before him, was in third shift. Paul had taken two ports and six jumps to quit turning up among the juniors down on A deck, as if he were still forlornly hoping for something to span the gap from where he was to where he’d been. But it had felt awkward, an undermining of his authority as new officer over the juniors. He remembered how uncomfortable Paul had made him. He wouldn’t do that to Bucklin.

He had access to every message in the ship, if he wanted a sample, ranging from Jeff’s query of the schedule for first meal after undock, two weeks from now, to the intercom exchange between Madison and Alan regarding the negotiations meeting schedule.

Customs didn’t hold them up, as they had feared might happen for days if Esperance administration wanted to delay the meetings. Crew was exiting on schedule. The lawsuit came in, the lawsuit went out. They’d arrived at 1040h mainday, right near midday, and before judges had gone to lunch. That had proved useful.

They sold their cargo. The voyage was profitable. They’d move the crates out of the cabins next watch. They’d need two cargo shifts, counting that the crates had to be moved by hand on floors that were, by now, stairs, as the pop-up treads enabled industrious A and B deck crew to access areas of the ship that otherwise would go inaccessible when the ring locked.

They’d handle that offloading with regular crew, no extras needed, and the cargo hands would still get their five-day total liberty before they had to load again for Pell.

All such things crossed his attention, as something he had to remember if plans changed without notice. As they well could here.

He received notifications of systems status. No senior captain came to advise him of procedures. Shut-down of systems saved energy and protected equipment, and there was a sequence to the shut-downs. He was a little slower than the more senior captains, because he was looking to the operations list. But he knew that, of the hundred-odd systems that had to go to bed for the next few weeks, they were safed, set, and ready for their wake-up when Finity next powered up.

Then he dismissed all but the ops watch, which would rotate by three-day sets. They never left Finity without onboard monitoring.

No one said good job. No one frowned. He was relieved no one came ru

He walked to the small lift that gave bridge access and took it down to ops, where it let out.

He saw that ops was up and functioning, gave over the ship to the senior cousin in charge—it happened to be Molly—and walked out to the cold, metallic air of Esperance dockside and the expected row of neon lights the other side of the customs checkpoint, among the very last to pick up his baggage—intending to do it himself, though he had regularly done that duty for the Old Man, when they weren’t as short of biddable juniors as they were.

“No,” Bucklin said, being in charge, now, of the senior-juniors handling crew baggage. “Wayne’s already taken it and checked you into your room.”

“Understood,” he said. Bucklin had handled it. Commenting on it would admit he’d thought about it and not relied on Bucklin’s finding a way to double-up someone’s duty. So there was no thank-you. What he longed to do was arrange a meeting of the old gang in the sleepover bar in the off-shift, so they could talk over things and get signals straight the way they’d always done. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even attend what Bucklin might have set up. “First meeting with the stationmaster,” he said, “is in three hours. You’ll be there.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucklin said—as happy, JR said to himself, to have gotten his new job done as he was to have gotten through the shut-down checklist unscathed. “Want a personal escort to the sleepover?”