Chapter 46

"All personnel, resume cruising stations"

The Leading Hands dealt with the bags, many with contents even if only gastric juices.

"These are the only non body thing you are permitted to flush into the waste lines; the bag is a degradable fabric. Everything and that is everything that has not passed through your body goes into the waste containers.

Welcome to the joyous sensation of translation into hyper.

For information, "Sundowner" is in hyperspace heading for the Kingdom of Mountserrat, a six week journey. Two weeks at Settlement where you can do the tourist thing and do rotations through the Club. Into the Junction and the wormhole to Phoenix and the galactic southwest with repeats of the same.

Day to day programme is available on the 'puter notices and your private space has a study table with screen, board and pointer.

Every one takes their turn as duty student — alphabetically — beginning tomorrow; you do the fetching and carrying for the team and clean the trash twice a day.

Meals. Catering staff prepare them with assistance of any of you lot who attract the ire of your betters and that starts with me and works up. You muck up, you muck out in the galleys - in addition to your other tasks.

Punishment. You got this lecture at your schools, but the Captain wants it repeated.

Things involving the ship go up to the Bosun as Regulating Petty Officer and if she can't deal with it, she passes it up to the Officer of the Watch. If he sees fit, he deals with it. If it is a criminal case as you normally understand that, or the OW passes it up, you go "Before the Mast" — Captain's table. If it is criminal and the ship is in territorial n space, you are handed over to the local authorities and that could be a long way from home. If in what is referred to as interplanetary space, then Captain Gillard deals with the matter. If "cells" longer than four weeks, you are handed over to the authorities at the next port of call to serve your time and you make your own way home from there. (deep breath) If it is a capital crime, you go out an airlock.

Welcome to the adult world.

One last thing. Don't touch anybody else's belonging. Don't go into their locker. Under no circumstances. Not even if they ask you and don't ask anyone to touch your belonging. Let there be no misunderstandings — there will be no misunderstandings about touching another's property — don't! - not even your laundry, you put it in the bags yourself and the duty student handles the bag only.

Your things of value go into the small locker in your stowage.

Let's go eat (evil laugh) or look at it."

"How did things go?" Clare asked Cedric who was the OW

"All reports green; they should be finishing up in the messes shortly."

"I'll be in my cabin — or wherever — for eight o'clock reports. Com if you need me."

"Aye, aye Ma'am. Captain leaving the bridge."

At four morning, the tannoys erupted with the trumpet blast of the wake up and stand to call. Startled students, screamed, yelled, or pulled the pillow over their head as the full glare of daytime lighting burned its way into semi stuperose minds. The LHs, already in work dress, moved from the board and began gently persuading reluctant students to leave the comfort of their bunks and face the coming day; mostly by screaming into the reluctant one's nearest earhole, occasionally by exposing a burrowing body to the elements by removing, with despatch, the coverings, or, rarely, by precipitously placing bedding with student enclosed onto the deck. There was only one instance where an annoyed (male) student took umbrage at this action by a petite LH but he courteously accepted the invitation to perform extra duties in the kitchens for the next five days when he found himself upside down against the central table and the LH glaring at him.

At five morning, a still bemused student joining the meal queue, was heard complaining his guide dog was needed as his eyes didn't function at this hour. The deck Sundowner Mentor heard that and ordered

"Give me ten to get your blood flowing; and KP today — see the Senior Tutor over there."

The student had ten minutes to inhale the food and was asked to scrape plates, insert them in the cleaner and stack them at the other end. He was fortunate the mess was only fifty or so students (including LHs) and five Tutors. He was unable to enjoy the half hour break to change into exercise kit and his LH was very inconsiderate in ordering another "ten" because he was the last into the Gym for the body building exercises of the next hour.

Ablutions and police the cabin.

Class rooms for introduction to the term; academic, engineering, catering or factory.

Lectures and demonstrations.

Meal.

Lectures.

Abandon ship drill (and later other ship emergencies).

Make and mend for an hour.

Meal.

Lectures.

Make and mend (anticipated 'homework')

Lights out.

The routine was not established until second day, when body building was first item on the agenda and then ablutions followed by the first meal and then the remainder of the programme. The second dog lecture was for the whole school and held in the club introducing them to New Harriers and what they would be expected to do in the Club as the 'hired help'.

In harbour, local models would be hired to display the garments (the comment "meat market" drifted across from the line of Mentors). The term undertaking Catering and Organisation would be excused 'front' duties as they would be busy behind the scenes in New Harriers. Similarly those undertaking Fabric Utilisation who would be occupied on House of Tulip duties.

In space, a six day working week was planned with make and mend on seven day; in harbour continuous day work was planned around the House of Tulip. There being far too many to all work at once, a roster would be established for A, B and C deck students allowing visits to local attractions. Lesser free time would be available for D and E decks. Tough. You wanted the training...

Six day, in space, was to be given to instruction, demonstration and practicals on things naval (things navel were the domain of the ship's nurse). This was so that the students would all be on the same page of this training and the first of the subjects was to be Celestial Navigation by First Officer Hobson and the venue was the Club.

On a regular basis, the Daughters, with the assistance of the Mentors, would instruct in Unarmed Combat — in lieu of callisthenics on rotation through the terms. The E gym was the combined messes' gym for use during make and mend. First and Second Officers would give demonstrations periodically.

The crew accommodation was out of bounds to other than crew except for authorised rapid passage from Engineering through the space off the crew gym direct to the Club. The second dog lecture was such an authorised passage — persons delaying would result in further delays spent in body building exercises.

...

At oh dark thirty, six day — actually one morning, while the decks were still resounding to the assorted whistles, snores, grunts and wheezes of the slumbering students, TJ, Cedric and Mary had anchored the original 'puter from the captured prize against the Club's forward bulkhead (it had been languishing in a corner of the starboard boat bay — no one had wanted to throw the thing out as it might be of use one day and that day was nigh). Power connected and the wireless link activated. TJ had spent the previous day checking the thing and found a). it worked and b). the nav records were up to date and covered the 'known galaxy' plus several segments he couldn't place. Being an avowed believer in the Saint Murphy, TJ further refined his checking and ran his proposed programme through the workings of the thing to dust off the innards. He spent an hour or so fiddling with the information and used Mary as a sounding board which was a bit unfair on Mary as her original interest was things that went clumpety clump and made other bigger things move from point "a" to point "b" and really only crosstrained to regarding things outside the ship as she had been bored witless on "Tulip" once the seats were positioned (She had worked hard to obtain her Watchkeeping ticket and really hadn't expected it.). TJ rattled on, making aspersions about the speed of calculations — he blithely disregarded the fact that the calculation speed was far in excess of his own but it was adequate for his needs, the 'puter, that is. They sauntered off for a leisurely snack, work out and fresher.

. Cedric was throwing stars at the stump as the students passed. His mind was actually on how to make the antimissiles more agile until it got distracted by students passing like Brown's cows (he didn't have a clue who Brown had ever been but it was the slang which fitted the students' progress).

"Day's greetings to you. Be seated, in your teams at a table please, facing me (TJ was standing on the raised walkway against the forward accommodation bulkhead which was the base of the "tee" for the House models). While I am nattering to you, would the Leading Hands move over to the side boards that are used for the Club's smorgasboards and retrieve their PDAs; also obtain a satchel. That's for team gear and you don't need to open it just yet.

A mere millennium and a half ago, mankind was confined to Old Earth and travellers were restricted to mainly land transport as wet navy mariners knew the world was flat and a ship venturing too far out would fall off the edge. The lack of means of knowing just where you were also hindered progress and mariners kept within sight of shore and at night anchored at a shore.

But by hugging a shore, exploration was undertaken, mariners began noticing the stars in the heavens and began to appreciate that earthly position could be approximated using the stars.

Technological advances using satellite navigation beacons now allow mariners, aviators and spacers to blithely wander about the solar system.

Navigational beacons and the like are somewhat sparse out in the galaxy. In fact, except for relatively shortish range homing beacons on planets, they are nonexistent. I'm told USW Senate is working on it.

It was found that the stars became less effective as navigational aids the further you moved from Old Sol. The constellations weren't the same shape anymore or at least the near ones weren't. But, the stars were still in the heavens and they were predictable in their courses.

All we had to do was to identify them. We did that and use the spectrogram of the star's emitted light and its surrounds. There are so many stars that spectrographic analysis does throw up stars with the same spectra. Then we go to what other stars are in the vicinity.

Of course, the navigation 'puter does all that for you. Always? Well, there is the rub. Occasionally — extremely rarely really — the 'puter sulks and just plain don't work and in absolutely extreme cases your outside vid equipment has gone down and bad luck, your PDA has run out of power.

But never fear, the navigator has the solution. He does an EVA, sits on the hull, selects a couple of likely stars, runs their light through a spectrometer, analyses the lines, identifies the star and takes a bearing — in two dimensions. The Pilot — an old wet navy term for the navigator — repeats the procedure and repairs to his plotting table; thankfully within the hull. The stars and their bearings are plotted and Pilot can inform the Captain where they are in the galaxy and then offer a solution on how to get to there from here. He cheats of course, he refers to the accumulated knowledge of a star's position recorded by space farers prior to him which is available to him from the data all navigators must keep.

I am going to throw a holo of this local galactic space and will lead you through the steps. And then after mid meal, you will put that knowledge to the test."

TJ threw the holo of the local galaxy. He indicated several of the brighter stars, demonstrated the use of the spectrometer and demonstrated a simpler method of capturing the light in his PDA and then examining it through a prism while drawing the lines on graph paper — he hoped they never got that desparate. He then took the bearings again using his PDA to obtain accurate readings — doing it by Eyeball Mk 1 did lead to a considerable margin of error. He inserted the chip into the nav 'puter cheerfully admitting to cheating yet again as knowing roughly where the ship was allowed him to use the chip covering the local space and entered the spectrogram electronically — just to save time on the demonstration; you will have to identify the elements and enter those manually onto the Leading Hands' PDAs - and if the link is working, the stars identity and position at this time date will appear. TJ then entered the bearings from his PDA into the 'puter and 'there is the ship's position'. To make it interesting for the students, they could do the calculations by hand. The muttering was reaching a crescendo as TJ's grin was spreading until he announced that graph paper was in the front part of the satchel with the spectrometers — and be careful of them.