Read The Mile Long Spaceship for Free Online

Then he'd experiment. The nagging thought that he might not be allowed seven days kept coming back to him as he left the infirmary and returned toward the engine room.
    Windlass confronted him in the corridor before his engine room, standing spread legged, hands on hips, in the center of the hall with an ugly look on his face. "Where's Kara, Royle? No pussyfooting around, just tell me where's she at."
    "Why?"
    "I'm warning you, Royle. I don't play coy with guys eying my wife. You either tell me where she's waiting for you, or I start taking you apart now. And this time we fight my way. You won't trick me again."
    "Windlass, why don't you go frighten old ladies? The girl left you. Face it. She doesn't want to come back to you and aboard this ship she doesn't have to."
    Windlass shifted his weight perceptibly and seemed to gather his large muscles together consciously as he grated, "I picked her up off a dead world and she was willing enough to come with me. I even married her and, believe me, I wouldn't of had to, she was so anxious to get off that stinking, mud-mired dump. So now she decides a fancy pants captain might be a better catch. Where is she? For the last time!"
    "Look, Windlass, you were willing enough to leave her behind when you thought you could steal one of the lifeboats, why the sudden switch?"
    "Just say I got other plans now, Royle. A lot of us got other plans now. We don't like the idea of you blowing the ship with us on it. Maybe if you want to blow the ship, you should be alone when it goes. Maybe we think while we're still alive and healthy, we should leave this tub and cut space back to a place where there's doctors and researchers."
    Royle nodded at him calmly, "I know. You're scared. We're all scared. But acting like an adolescent denied won't get you anywhere. I have a plan I want to try. I might save all of us. Why don't you report that back to your fellow ship jumpers?"
    "Kara?" Windlass asked, but now it seemed more an attempt to save face than a threatening gesture.
    "She's locked in where you can't get to her. If she decides to come back to you, all she has to do is open the door and walk down the hall. I swear to you that I have no interest in the girl." Royle put every bit of the conviction he could muster in his voice and waited, hoping he wouldn't have to use the gun he fingered under his tunic. He knew he'd fire without compunction if the man moved toward him again.
    Windlass cursed him once more and turned away, walking lightly for a man of his great bulk. Royle waited until he turned into one of the rooms before he buzzed the engine room. He faced the scanner and waited for the door to open.
    Giroden held the door peering cautiously behind Royle before he allowed it to swing open fully.
    "He came here!" Kara exclaimed. "Did you see him?"
    "I saw him," Royle admitted shortly and studied the girl curiously. She was young, no more than nineteen, and as yet hadn't acquired the practiced patina of the large worlds' woman.
    "Captain, maybe if I explain some things to you," she said hesitantly, "you won't be so willing to help me."
    "Leave it alone, Kara," Giroden interrupted smoothly, but there was a strain in his voice that outweighed his banter. "The captain isn't interested in ladies, either as such, or as problems."
    "No, let me talk," Kara insisted swiftly. "He should know before he gets into trouble with Harmon over me. Harmon is a dangerous man to have as an enemy." She turned to Royle then and watched his face anxiously as she rushed the words, "Dad is a mining engineer on Trannus. I was born there and Mother died there. He never seemed interested in leaving. But there was nothing but the mud and the work and filth. Dredging day and night with the sound of the sucking mud in my ears. It was all I knew until I was grown. I had to get off—now while I'm young and still attractive—or I'd die there old and ugly and alone. Harmon came. He was inspecting his mines personally and he stayed at