The Bright Black Sea Read Online Free Page B

primarily for service on low volume interplanetary
runs but with its enclosed holds and heavily reinforced bow and
stern, can sail anywhere within the Nine Star Nebula. She's not an
elegant ship – a stubby dagger, 220 meters long with 56 x32 meters
lens-like cross section – carrying 144 standard shipping containers
in three hard vacuum holds. Since the ship's not designed for orbit
to orbit service, cargo is brought up by lighters and stowed by the
ship's two cargo cranes. The hydrogen fuel tanks are packed ahead
and alongside the main cargo hold.
    Below the three main holds is a four box atmospheric
hold, which, in all my years aboard has only been used as the
ship's attic and a playing field. Below that are the five crew
decks housing the ship's accommodations, control, engineering
facilities. Since she was originally fitted with 12 passenger
suites, a passenger deck and quarters for a crew of 20 she's a
roomy ship as a tramp with my present crew of 11 (slightly
understaffed).
    Below the crew section is the engine room – a
mechanical jungle of catwalks, struts, fusion piles, generators,
environmental machinery, and fuel pumps serving one large main
plasma rocket engine and eight smaller ones. The engines, like the
hull, are constructed of D-matter, designed materials, artificially
designed matter capable of withstanding thermal and electromagnetic
energy far beyond the ability of naturally occurring matter.
    Two sheltered boat decks on each side of the crew and
engine room hull house a 17 meter long boat and a 14 meter gig with
room for several more. The ship's two gangplanks are located at the
after end of the boat decks and beyond them are the launch tubes,
our anti-meteor/defense missiles.
    Sensor bars can be extended from both the upper and
lower hulls housing radar, laser radar, radio, cameras and other
sensors and aft of them are the ships's heat exchangers to remove
heat generated within a ship sheathed in a perfectly insulated
hull. Finally, the rocket tubes right aft.
    Enough. It's past time for this narrative and this
ship to get underway.
    I lowered the cargo tower into the hull and stepped
out onto a small platform in No. 4 hold. The deck was 12 meters on
my left, with a bulkhead at my feet. Being in free fall I simply
walked down the bulkhead with my magnetic boots and swung myself
around when I reached the deck. I crossed the hold to the main
access well set between two strongrooms. The access well is an open
shaft to the engine room control platform five decks below
surrounded by a semi-circle of stairs. It's the fastest way to move
between decks in free fall. (It's even faster when under power, but
the landing's unpleasant, hence the stairs.)
    I stepped into space and with a thrust up on a
handhold, dropped down one level to what we refer to as the 'awning
deck' – the former social deck of the passenger section. It
includes a small library and a media theater, the dining saloon and
a small bistro stocked with self-serve boxed meals and beverages.
Both the saloon and bistro open on a spacious commons area lined on
two sides and the ceiling with grid of two meter square holographic
viewpanels that give the illusion that the deck is open to the
black marble sky of the nebula. Chairs, lounges and low tables are
arranged under a thin fabric awning and hanging lanterns. The
fourth bulkhead has a rock garden under a bank of warm lights, home
to lush green foliage and cheerful bachelor birds who flit amongst
the foliage and occasionally fly about the deck. As I entered, half
the crew was sitting or floating about at ease, talking, reading or
playing cards about the twilit commons.
    'Skipper,' said Riv D'Van, our chief engineer,
looking up as I walked over to his group. 'Cargo onboard?'
    'Aye, let's clear this orbit.'
    'Not going to replace Uzi?'
    Uzilane, our second pilot had decided to remain on
Pinelea, his home world. It's easier to find employment on a world
you know well, so I couldn't blame him. Better