Enigma by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Read Free Book Online

out should be Commander Glen Harrod. Here he comes now. SC Glen Harrod, 192-year-old commander of the Dove , being greeted by his great-great-greatnephew Tony Harrod.
    —And there’s SC Alizana Neale, the bridge captain. She’ll turn 186 tomorrow, I understand. That’s her 85-year-old fourth cousin Randy Stovik waiting there for her.
    Hduna made a face. “Can you imagine making it with a 186-year-old woman?”
    “Fry out,” Thackery said angrily, his eyes burning into Hduna’s. “You couldn’t have done what they did.”
    “You make it sound like they’re better than we are,” Hduna said, squinting at Thackery.
    Thackery crossed his arms and looked away, saying nothing.
    “If you’re not proud of what you are and where you are, maybe you’d just better retire and wait for Survey to call. Wearing the yellow’s supposed to mean something,” he said, flicking a finger against the yellow ellipse pinned to his collar, the theater insignia for system crews.
    Thackery laughed brittlely, “It’s none of your damn business, but I transmitted my application this morning.”
    Hduna cocked an eyebrow, then let out a grunting laugh. “Huh. Well, now I know why you spend all your spare time studying. When’d they post the Notice of Opportunity?”
    “Last night. Sixty openings over the next three years.”
    “Well, well. So you want to wear the black ellipse.”
    “Everybody who’s honest with himself does.”
    Hduna shook his head. “Not me. Can’t see it. Too much to give up.” Thackery laughed. “What’s to give up? This billet? Where’s the challenge in it? What do we do that couldn’t be done just as well by hundreds of others? You used to do your own assays. Now there’s a whole team of geologists living in the Belt, tagging asteroids faster than we can haul them in. They’re turning the whole Belt into a warehouse, and you into a truck driver. The Council’s busy taking the rough edges off of everything, turning this into a finished world. I know. 1 spent two years being trained to help them.”
    Hduna snorted. “Hell, I don’t know what I’m arguing with you about. You won’t even make first call. You ought to know you’ve got to transfer down a grade to get into Survey.”
    “That’s not in the quals.”
    “That’s the way they do it, all the same. They turn Corns into techs and techs into awks. You’re only a awk with, what, six years’ experience? What are you going to transfer as?”
    “If I don’t make it this time, I’ll get other shots. They’ve got a lot of openings to fill, on the new ships and the old ones. I’ll make it,” Thackery said determinedly.
    Hduna laughed nastily. “They’re going to have a lot more than sixty openings to get down the list to you.”
    There was no room at the inn at the Eddington Yards. All five parallel shipways of the voluminous construction base were filled by hourglass-shaped hulls in various stages of completion. Dove stood off a kilometre away like a jilted suitor.
    Alizana Neale studied the survey ships from the bubble of the jitney. To her right and back a step, Alvarez, the supervisor of ship construction, waited respectfully for her questions.
    “How long before they can get on with refitting Dove? ”
    “We’ll move the Tycho Brake out within the week so Commander Tamm can get on with preparing it for departure.”
    “That’s the Tycho on the far end?”
    “Yes—and left to right from there, the Aristarchus, Kepler , Herschel , and Huygens ,” Alvarez said proudly. “We’re turning them out at ten-year intervals—the last of the astronomers series. Copernicus, Hubble , and Galileo are already on station.”
    “Am I misjudging, or is Tycho smaller than Dove? ”
    “Just slightly. But you’ll find it actually has more interior volume. No weapons on this class, of course, which helps. And the K-series drive is half the size of that monster in Dove , so there’s an additional deck for both Operations and Survey. We’ve