Chapter 1
The yellow and black liquids swirled slowly in the glass, driven by an increasing turbulence as they ebbed and flowed against each other without mixing. A frost formed on the outside of the glass even as the turbulence within reached a boiling frenzy. The glass started to rattle on the scarred tabletop, threatening to upset and spill its contents.
The first instinct of the drinker was to reach out and steady the glass, but before his hand touched it, the boiling stopped. In one final convulsion the liquids merged, leaving a translucent amber fluid in their place. The foam melted quickly, sliding down the glass to disappear as it touched the surface of the now calm liquid. He impatiently lifted the glass to his lips. The first swallow felt like burning ice as it slid down his throat. In a moment the sensation diffused through his body as a deadening stupor settled on his brain.
Wheeb Hureen slouched in his booth in the back of the dimly lit, smoke-filled bar. Staring blearily over his drink, his eyes took in the few details of the grimy crewman's bar on which they could focus. It was still early in the afternoon and the place was almost empty. The few booths and stools that were occupied held mostly humans, although there were two or three Wemdins - brown, furry types that were native to a world in the next star system.
It was earlier in the day than Wheeb usually started drinking, but going on a binge seemed the only appropriate thing to do. Up until a few short hours ago, he'd been a common spacehand on the tramp freighter Edis - a job he held little affection for, but he'd had worse.
The rough-and-tumble life of a spacer had been irresistibly attractive to the younger man he'd been when he left school for the stars. The occasional bar fights and brawls that sometimes ended up with a short stay in the local constabulary had been fun for awhile. But as he matured, he began to regret the limitations imposed by his incomplete education.
The demand for aging spacehands was never good, and the time between assignments had been getting longer. His position on the Edis was hard and dirty, but it was a job. Then something went wrong with the drive, and the Edis had to make an unscheduled stop at Ringe, the sector repair center.
Wheeb remembered the first feelings of excitement when Ringe appeared on the viewing screen like a fairy orb. The surface of the planet glittered in the light of its sun, and encircling the equator was a ring extending far out into space. As the Edis moved closer, the view of the planet changed. The glitter became the reflection off the innumerable ships, service vehicles, parts depots, industrial and residential complexes, whorehouses and gambling dens that made up a sector repair center, all in orbit around the planet. The wide rings around the equator were made up of junkyards where ships and parts of ships awaited the wrecking crews who would strip out any usable components. With everything salable removed, the gutted hulks were broken up and fed to the orbiting furnaces to be forged into new ships. And that was where the Edis was headed.
Wheeb took a long draw on his drink as he thought of the sudden announcement he'd heard rasping out of the ship's loudspeakers just a few hours earlier. Wheeb and his fellow crewmen had been laying out plans for their expected shore leave during the drive system repairs when the captain made his announcement. "Attention all crew," he began innocently enough, "I regret to inform you that the problems with the ship are worse than first expected." Wheeb and his fellows immediately started calculating extra days of leave into their plans.
The announcement continued, "Because the cost of repairs would exceed the value of the ship, the Edis will be moved to the Gorgule wrecking and salvage yards tomorrow at 0800 to be broken up for scrap. All personnel and belongings must be removed by then. Final paychecks will be available in the purser's office as you exit the ship."
The announcement ended as suddenly as it started, leaving Wheeb and his fellow crewmen staring dumbfounded at each other. That had been only five hours ago, and since then Wheeb had learned the full extent of his predicament.
The first reaction of the crew had been to exchange hasty goodbyes and head for the Spacers' hiring hall. A stern-faced clerk who never once looked up from his data screen manned the registration desk. The clerk, hardened by years of delivering grim reality to stranded spacers, spat out his explanation in a tone that seemed to preclude further inquiries. "The only common space hands that get hired out of here are replacements for deaders - and we don't get many of them. You can hang around here hoping a liner will blow a drive tube and kill half its crew, but I'd advise you to find a job. Most of the industries here in Ringe are staffed by spacers waiting for an outbound berth. If you don't have credits to buy passage, you got a lot of waiting to do. Only about twenty thousand on the list ahead of you."
Wheeb had enough money for one good bender, but he was far short of booking passage on even the cheapest tramp freighter. So he found a bar and that's where he'd been ever since.
Wheeb was well into his second Brevaden Brain Boggler when he saw a form slip nervously through the door. The creature stood upright on overlong legs, its slender arms protruding from a shoulderless trunk. The wide, flat, chinless mouth and protruding eyes had a distinct resemblance to a terrestrial frog as it peered into the depths of the dimly lit back tables.
Wheeb's first thought was that there must be something in the drinks because he didn't usually start hallucinating this early into a binge. But no, he knew this creature from somewhere...the Edis. When his eyes finally absorbed enough information to identify the shape, the identity was obvious. The creature was a Gandhrin - a recent addition to the Federation. The Gandhrin home world was on the far side of the Federation and they were still relatively rare in this sector.
While humans and most of the other species in the Federation had developed an aggressive intelligence that led to their becoming the dominant species on their planet of origin, Gandhrin evolution was forced onto a different route. The Gandhrin's planet was inhabited by well adapted and firmly established orders of competitor species similar to the dinosaurs on Wheeb's own planet of origin. Only on the Gandhrin planet, the huge violent eating machines weren't killed off by natural disasters, and the Gandhrins were obliged to evolve in left-over environmental niches lower down on the food chain.
Rather than evolving intelligence as a way to compete with the dominant species for the top of the food chain, the Gandhrin evolved their form of intelligence as a way to not get eaten by the established orders. Most aggressive species ventured out into space only after conquering and mostly despoiling their home worlds. The Gandhrin developed space travel early as a way to escape the dangers of their own planet for the relative safety of space.
Adapting to an environment with limited access to resources and constant external danger produced a far different orientation than the arrogant swagger of most spacefaring species. Gandhrin civilizations and social organizations became strongly oriented toward cooperative effort and mutual aid in response to external threats. Unable to resolve conflicts through physical contests, they were driven to develop ever more advanced technologies in order to create artificial accommodations to the difficulties of their evolving civilization.
Gandhrins were compulsively cautious, efficient, and nonassertive. Faced with a problem, they would build rather than negotiate a solution. Once they'd decided to join the Federation, the Gandhrins quickly became the engineers of choice. Their engineering skills were renowned, achieving a level of reliability, efficiency, and an overall sense of aesthetics unparalleled in the rest of the Federation.
While Wheeb had heard the stories and rumors about Gandhrins that made the rounds of spacer bars, and had been on the same ship for months, he had little personal knowledge. He wouldn't have considered the Gandhrin engineer who'd just entered the bar proper company for a scruffy spacehand like himself under normal circumstances. But the situation was hardly normal anymore. For the moment they were both just unemployed spacers. At least that was the thought that filtered through his inebriation.
"Quoin! Over here!" he shouted as the identity of the creature floated into his consciousness. Motioning for Quoin to join him in his booth, Wheeb nearly knocked over his drink - saving it at the last moment with only a small splash for the autoserve to clean up. Having averted a major disaster, Wheeb was more than a little surprised to see that his hail had been noticed and the Gandhrin was headed his way.
After exchanging greetings, Quoin asked, "what are you drinking?"
"Brevadan Brain Bogglers."
"Do they work?"
"Hardly knew ya when ya came through the door."
Quoin tapped the keys on the autoserve with his long slender fingers, and carefully studied the chemical contents of the Brain Bogglers as they scrolled by on the tiny screen. "No, my body chemistry wouldn't tolerate one of those. Mind if I smoke?"
"Nah, go 'head," replied Wheeb, far from caring about much of anything at this point.
Quoin tapped out his order on the autoserve and inserted the proper credits. A long thin dark green cylinder emerged from the delivery slot. Quoin picked up the spezt, the end igniting to a red glow as it encountered the air.
Wheeb watched the Gandhrin draw deeply on the spezt, faint tendrils of blue smoke drifting out of the twin nostrils above the wide mouth, the finely scaled skin on his neck inflating to hold the smoke in. After a dozen draws on his spezt, Quoin settled into his seat, his constant nervous glances around the bar easing to an involuntary twitch at each loud noise.
After watching in fascination as a Quoin smoked most of his spezt in obvious agitation, fumbling in his pockets for the credits to order another, Wheeb couldn't restrain his curiosity any longer. "Hey, I can see why I'm gettin' drunk - common spacehands like me's in a real bind gettin' off this planet. But a ship's engineer ain't gonna have much problem. You'll find a berth easy. After all, yer a Gandhrin, an' ya guys ain't exactly plentiful 'round here. Ship was all abuzz when ya signed on. To hear the Captain tell it, you was gonna fix up the old Edis so's we could out-haul those flashy new Mark 3 Zerants."
Quoin's finger wandered unsteadily over the order pad as he tried to order another. "That might have been the case," he replied, missing the order pad and thinking maybe he could wait awhile for another. "But our dear captain insured that it will be otherwise. I've already made the rounds, and my reputation has preceded me. Seems that in order to save his own ratings, and protect himself from the unhappy owners, he decided to blame the breakdown on me."
"Can't get away with that," argued Wheeb. "Service report'll say what went wrong. That is ... unless ... well, what did go wrong?"
"Ah, now you've come to the nub of the problem," replied Quoin slowly. "When I joined the Edis, the Captain wanted the engine power boosted. I didn't have much to work with. I was told to ignore the regulations and do whatever I could. I nearly doubled the output, and the engines ran reliably until this trip.
"Technically, the number three ion pump failed. I told the Captain it would need to be replaced before we started this trip. But the Captain wouldn't spend any credits on preventive replacements - only to fix equipment that was already broken. We had to put in here for repairs when the ion pump seized and the number three drive tube shut down.
"Repair yards here have union work rules that prohibit ship crews from doing the repairs ourselves. I tried to explain my modifications, and that they didn't have anything to do with the breakdown in the main drive unit, but they didn't want to understand - they could make more money playing dumb.
"The report will say the local repair crew couldn't determine what was wrong because of my nonstandard modifications to the engines. They added the cost of replacing all my modifications with standard equipment to the repair bill. That's what pushed the cost over the value of the ship. So, according to the official records, it will be my fault. But if they'd just listened to me, almost none of their 'repairs' were needed to make the Edis space-worthy."
"Gandhrins are famous for the quality of their stuff. Seems yer fixes oughta add value to the ship, not get it scrapped."
His tongue loosened by the smoke and a sympathetic listener, Quoin found himself saying things he hardly admitted to himself. "Maybe if my work looked like the work of other Gandhrins that would be so, but I have a problem.
"You're no doubt aware Gandhrins have a reputation of valuing the aesthetics of their work almost as highly as the function. Well, there seems to be something wrong with my sense of aesthetics. You'd expect a Gandhrin creation to be smooth and flowing to the eye - faultless in appearance and in operation. Well, mine mostly work all right, but I've never been able to get the aesthetics right. My work always seems to end up crude-looking with wires and things poking out at odd angles.
"There's nothing wrong with the way my devices work - well, most of the time anyway. It's just their appearance. And appearance was enough for the service crew. The captain, to save his standing with the owners, declared that all my work was unauthorized. And so here I am. I think I have just as much reason as you to seek a state of intoxication!" With that, Quoin drew off the last hit from his spezt, jammed the butt into the disposal with unaccustomed belligerence, and glared misty eyed across the table.
The thought flashed through Wheeb's mind that here was the individual who was responsible for his own sorry state, but he abandoned the thought as soon as he considered it. Quoin was in the same situation as he - possibly even worse. No, this was just another one of those things where the greasy responsibility slipped away like a Varian sea slug.
"Yeah, sounds like ya got shafted just like the rest of us. Too bad we couldn't get a hold'a the Edis before she's scrapped. Probably fix her up lots cheaper than report says, an' get off this sinkhole of the cosmos. Gotta think of somethin' pretty quick or you and me's gonna end up stuck here on Ringe forever, just like the rest of these guys." Wheeb punctuated his statement with a broad sweep of his arm which Quoin only narrowly managed to duck.
"You're right there. Not much chance of buying the Edis though, unless you've got a lot more pocket money than I have." Quoin poked through his handful of credits just to make sure. "They've probably started breaking her up already. Ought to be something we can do to get back into space. Maybe another splezt will help."
Quoin struggled to feed his credits into the slot - which seemed to have become considerably smaller than the last time, as well as developing a remarkable skill at dodging his hand.
"A toast to the Edis," Wheeb agreed. "An' then 'nother to figurin' out how to get us back into space! Even if it don't solve the problem, might wash away the memory of it - at least 'til mornin'. Mornin' can take care of itself. Usually does anyway!"
Wheeb and Quoin continued their libations and combustions, conjuring up hundreds of grandiose plans which only contained one or two fatal flaws. By late evening they had indeed forgotten they had a problem.
Talk eventually turned to adventures, and Wheeb enjoyed spinning a yarn as much as any of them. Best of all, Quoin didn't seem to have heard any of the best ones. Finding himself in the company of an appreciative audience, Wheeb's stories became more outrageous, and his role in them more heroic, as the evening wore on.