Temporary Duty Read Online Free Page A

many can have individual rooms."
    Peters eyed the scrawl. If those were numbers, it looked awkward, backwards, and too big. "Well, we gotta do it according to our, ah, the word Dreelig used was ‘hierarchy.’ Chiefs and First Class close to the hatch, in individual compartments. The rest of us down the passageway, OK?"
    Dee turned away, her attitude suggesting thought. "Will some, ah, Chiefs and–"
    "First Class," Peters supplied.
    "Ah. Chiefs and First Class. Will some of them want to be at the other end? Beside those stairs?"
    "Yeah, sure. Look, we can’t set it all up now. Just give us a room a little closer to the middle." Peters looked around; being first on the scene had some privileges. "One with a window."
    Dee shrugged, a very humanlike gesture. "Certainly." She led them down the corridor a few meters, selected a door, and pushed it open, revealing a compartment that was a mirror image of the first. "Will this be satisfactory? Would you prefer individual rooms?"
    "Why not?" Todd suggested. When Peters looked at him, he shrugged. "First come, and all that."
    "Does the next room connect to this one?" Peters asked.
    "Yes, it does. Let me show you." Dee went to the interior door, to the right this time, and opened it. "Here are sanitary facilities. The door at the other end leads to the next room." The head was both ordinary and strange, a pair of sinks with mirrors and lockers to the left, a toilet and shower stall to the right, familiar in overall design but different in details to the ones they were used to.
    "This here’s perfect," said Peters. "Todd, how about I take this’un and you get the other?"
    "Sure." Todd went back to get his seabag.
    Dee began showing Peters the details, and Todd joined them a few minutes later. The door to the corridor had a latch, but no lock. Light switches went left for on and right for off. Water valves opened to the right, hot and cold both. Linens were in lockers over the bunks, pale tan sheets of something soft and bulky gray blankets that didn’t scratch. "No pillows," Todd observed, and Dee assumed her "puzzled attention" position, head back and tilted a bit to one side.
    "We need pillows," Peters explained. "Uh, little sacks of somethin’ soft, about so–" he sketched the size in the air with his hands "–for supportin’ the head while sleeping."
    "We don’t use anything like that," Dee declared. Now that they looked, that made sense; her shoulders weren’t as wide as a human’s, and looked flexible somehow. "The, ah, suppliers can make something."
    "It isn’t anything major," Todd put in. When the others looked at him he flushed and continued, "We can bring our own along, as long as we know about it."
    "That is acceptable."
    There was nothing like a phone or com screen, but a grille over the desk was a speaker for the 1MC system, the shipwide PA. "You will need to learn the emergency calls," Dee said seriously. "If something goes wrong, you must know what is happening and take appropriate action." She gestured at the grille. "Unfortunately this has not worked in a long time."
    "Do you have tapes?" Todd asked.
    "Tapes?"
    "You know, recordings. Mechanical examples."
    Dee thought for a moment. "I don’t know what you mean," she said finally. "I can pronounce the warnings and explain what they mean. Anyone on the ship can do that."
    Peters and Todd shared a look. "We need to start makin’ a list," Peters said after a moment. "There’s gonna be a lot of things we need to bring. Hang on a minute." He unzipped the side pocket of his seabag, brought out a handheld. "Let’s see. Pillows. Sound recorders. There’ll be more, we just ain’t got to it yet. Anything else here?"
    "I don’t think so. Perhaps you would like a little time to unpack your things and get comfortable?" Dee made a gesture, a palm-up sweep. "I can return after a short time."
    "That’s a good idea," Todd observed.
    "Very good." Dee consulted an instrument strapped to her right wrist. "It is now