Chapter One THE ENEMY SHIP cut across our port bow, forcing to heel off to starboard, but our captain gripped forward rail and refused to give more than a meter. "Keep her to," he said, the quiet of his vo somehow reaching us over the roar of the ship str~ ing. "Jim, this is crazy." "Don't swing off, no matter what your stoma says." Space overhead was bristol blue, the crashing ,~ even deeper azure and marbled by green swells a white foam. The older officers called it cadet blue. "Stand by to come about. Piper, stand by the bm stay. Bones, you take the foresheet. And watch yc head." "Don't worry. My head's not going anywhere." Below and around us white hull and green de tilted to a sickening forty-five degrees that buried I boom tips in brine and put us straight alongside a s~ gust of wind. The bowsprit bobbed in thirteen-f~ arches. We crashed against the waves, skating alo] side our enemy's beam for a moment of reasonle risk. I freed the backstay on the port side so it would] be in the way when the big main boom swung abol then slid down the inclined deck to the starboa backstay and got ready to pull it up tight once the s swung by. There, shivering, I awaited the order come about. With the ship at this hideous angle, my thigh cut into the rail. I was almost lying on my side. Just over the rail, an arm's-length away, the tree-trunk boom dug furrows into the seawater with every long dip of the schooner. Arching out and rising away from the water, the mainsali's bright white canvas tightened with air and became stiff as cast rhodinium. This was drama of the highest order, and my heart thudded testimony to the pure insanity I'd gotten myself into. Of course, I couldn't exactly decline the honor. This old ship had been bending to the winds for something like a century and a quarter on this planet, revived to splendor by the very fading of her own kind. Originally built as a nostalgic replica of a nine- teenth-century pilot schooner, she was a working ves- sel, not a yacht. That "y" word wasn't allowed on board. And there wasn't a winch to be found. Every line had to be hand drawn, no matter how heavy the load. The acres of canvas, caught to the masts by big wooden hoops and lashed with rope to the gaffs and booms, made a puzzle of stitched white overlapping rectangles and triangles overhead and together formed a great seagoing pyramid of sailcloth and rigging. Pretty. But sitting here in excitement's grip, with abused timber groaning under me and the booms biting the tops off eight-footers, it was hard to see the pretti- ness. Not even in the echo of ourselves as the other ship, a bluff-bowed ancient ketch two meters longer than our schooner, carved away from our starboard stern and came about for another match. "Here he bloody well comes again," uttered Mr. Scott at wheel watch, his Scots rumble getting thicker as tension grew. He was standing at the helm rather than sitting, gripping the spokes of the wooden wheel tightly, and narrowing his gaze forward. His eyes narrowed to dark wedges. His dark hair, matted against his forehead by spray, was laced with the first hints of silver. He wasn't watching the sails, though. 2 He was watching the captain. And the captain was watching the enemy ship. Amidships, Dr. McCoy squinted accusingly at the captain and held on tight to the foresheet. Wind tore at his hair and spray battered his face. Our bow [ifled high out of the water, coming into the air like some flying fish, until half her keel was clear of the sea. Almost immediately she crashed back into the chop like a descending guillotine, burying the fo'c'sle, burying thirteen feet of bowsprit and the whole bottom of the Genoa jib. I winced and drew my shoulders in. Heeled to starboard, the other ship was a mirror image of ours, except that her mast heights were reversed, her fore-tops'l wasn't flying, and her bow was bluff- instead of clipper-curved. When our captain first started talking about the enemy, I'd thought he was saying "catch"; one of many visits to his aft cabin library had set me right. She was the ketch Gavelan. We were out to get her, and she us. My hands cramped as I gripped the backstay line. Awaiting orders, i looked at the captain and wondered what he was waiting for. Fu[t sail in this kind of chop was crazy enough without waiting until the last second to execute a tack. He stood on the forward deck, his eyes hard and pinched at the corners. In a heavy brown sea jacket with the collar up he looked like a hoio on a tour spool from some planet-pushing travel agency~ His hair, sandy and shimmering on top, darkening at the sides, shone nicely but couldn't upstage that glare of his. I could see him trying to put his mind into the head of the other captain before making a decision. He wanted more than anything to be inside Gavetan's hold, se- cretly listening to what the other skipper was saying-- more, though, he wanted to know what the other was feeling, thinking, breathing. He thought he could get there if he stared hard enough. "Come about," the captain said. "Now." Dr. McCoy let go of the foresheet a moment too soon, forcing Mr. Scott to haul hard on the wheel to keep from losing the fores'l into the waves. I held on as long as I could, but the ship wheeled and bucked, reversing herself in the water and cutting a pie wedge in the chop as she tacked. The rigging whistled over- head, the timber groaned, and the hoops grated so loudly I thought they were going to shear right through the mast. Barn--the fore boom elunked to port. The sail luffed, then filled and tightened. An instant later--and Mr. Scott ducked just in time to avoid a ringing head- ache--the main. The schooner twisted back in the water with the grace of a shorebird's glinting wing. "Haul in tight," the captain called. "I mean you, Piper. Put support on that main, then bring the sheet in close." I shook myself, skidded across the tilted deck and drew in the main until we were so close upon the wind that we threw up a sickle of spray with every dive of our prow. He was watching me. I could feel it. Oh, he was looking at the other ship, but he was watching me. "Closer," he said. I drew down harder, sacrificing three more finger- nails and one knuckle's skin. Plunging toward each other like two Gloucester packets of a different age, our two schooners glided through walls of spray. The tapered lines of the sails and weaving mastheads conjured images of wave troughs deep enough to hide entire ships. I leaned harder against the teak rail, plain scared. From two sides of an angle, we speared for each other. "Jim, I didn't come out here with you to become a damned South Sea walrus!" Dr. McCoy informed the captain, clinging desperately to the fore hatch and glancing wide-eyed at the oncoming schooner. The captain didn't respond. Even now, there was a distant tranquility on his face. '['his was his blood and beef--another man's peace was this man's boredom. When he wasn't wrestling the irabalances of interstel- lar space and intersystem politics, he was here, tasting death in the same seas our mutual ancestors called their own interstellar void. The captain of the other ship was no Rigellian slugfin either. Silver spume spilled over Gavelan's rail as she held tight into the wind and rocketed through jumping seas toward us. We were both pointed at the same square foot of ocean, and we both wanted to own it. Overhead, rigging whined. Tension buzzed through the halyards. l drew in a breath, held it, and closed my eyes. The captain said I should learn to hear the ship, so I could hear what was wrong when it happened. Sometimes he made me close my eyes and covet' my ears too. Feeling what's wrong, he called it. Even times like this--especially times like this---could teach. Sails moaned. Waves smacked the keel. Gaffs and booms creaked. The wind rushed inward, filling the main tight. On collision course, our two schooners sliced through the seas toward each other. When our ship's prow dug deep into the waves, met a trough that matched its shape, and phmged six feet deeper, the deck dropped out from under my feet. Only catching my elbow around the backstay kept me aboard. t heard Dr. McCoy yell something as my feet left the deck, wobbled on the rail for three hideous seconds, then skated off. Down I went for a ride across twenty slippery feet of green deck, on one knee, until the fisherman's sail-bag stopped me. "All right, lass'?" Mr. Scott bothered to call from the wheel. I took a moment to nod at him while I rubbed my knee. It was the wrong moment. "Get your feet under you, Piper," the captain snapped. "Prepare to come about." "Again?" McCoy complained. "What are you? A blasted porpoise?" "Lay alongside, Scotty," everybody's devil called firmly. 'Tm not going to let him work our windward. Piper, bring in the jib sheet two pulls. You left it too free." Always the cut. Always the barb. Why? Didn't he have enough laurels to sit on? Not ten people in a million had his status. Why pick on me? But as I glared at the captain, ire mixed with a stab of sympathy for him. Most humans could afford to cloak their flaws. A starship captain--the captain of any vessel, I was learning---constantly had his flaws thrown up in his face, with nowhere to deflect them. Not only could he see them, but he must see them displayed before all who wish to Iook--a galaxy ready to criticize. That would beat anyone into humility. Anyone but the strongest. If he could be strong, if he ...
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