And they hadn’t ever had to use them. Their in-ship stand-down from arms had lasted and the Old Man had been right.

Maybe this stand-down from arms would last, too, and maybe he needed to bear down harder on the study of Viking fish farms.

Laundry wasn’t anybody’s favorite assignment. After-jump meant a load of sweaty clothes. But it was better, Jeremy had said, than drawing the duty after liberty, because there was no limit to how many outfits somebody could get dirty on a two-week liberty, and there was a limit to how many clothes anybody totally tranked out could get dirty during jump. So they had the light end of things, and consequently they’d washed everything they had in the bins inside four hours. The better and worse of such assignments was a detail of spacer life Fletcher had never quite, somehow, imagined as potentially an item of curiosity and least of all his problem.

But he’d learned how to manage his personal property, on this particular detail. He’d learned, for instance, that by rules and regulations you left your last work clothes for cleaning in the laundry on your way out to liberty, like at Pell, and whoever got next laundry duty (it couldn’t be them, because the computer never doubled you on the same assignment) did all of it as they’d done, on the run out from dock.

So there were rhythms to the jobs they did. The laundry didn’t always operate at the mad pace it had the last time. It was a burst of activity in this particular period, and then last-minute special cleaning for officers’ uniforms.

He learned, for instance, that a crew member on Finity had an issue of clothing of which at least one dress and one work outfit stayed in the locker ready for board-call and undock schedules or a senior officer talked seriously to you about your wardrobe. A regular crew member took only flash stuff and civvies ashore on a liberty, and wasn’t allowed to wear work stuff on dock unless he was working, which junior-juniors didn’t have to do.

“So what if you wear work clothes?” he asked Jeremy as Jeremy worked beside him, having given him this piece of information. “Another talk with an officer?”

“Why don’t you try it?” Vince asked from behind his back.

That was at least the third snide and uninvited remark. Vince was still on him about the drink from the bar last main-dark, from what he could figure; somehow that really bothered Vince.

“After all,” Vince said, “you don’t have to follow the rules. Not you.”

“Cut it out,” Jeremy said

“Vince,” Linda said

“Well, he didn’t, did he?”

“Vince,” Jeremy said

“I want to talk to you,” Vince said to Jeremy, and those two went out in the corridor and stayed gone awhile.

“Is Jeremy all right?” Fletcher asked Linda, and Linda didn’t look at him, quite. “Yeah. Fine,” Linda said.

He was worried. Vince and Linda both were a little senior to Jeremy and he had the idea they were both leaning on the kid. His agemate. Him.

He’d personally had enough of Vince’s notion of subtlety. Adrenaline was up, vibrating through him so he’d like to put Vince through the nearest wall if Vince crossed him one more time about the drink issue. But Vince was too small. At best he’d have to settle for bouncing Vince off the wall, which wasn’t satisfying at all, or holding him a few inches off the deck, which had possibilities. But either would likely get him confined to the ship for a long, boring couple of weeks and he found he was looking forward to liberty. He really was. He figured he’d write home. He’d promised Bianca he’d write. Yes, she’d caved in, she’d saved her neck, her career. He couldn’t blame her, now that he’d had time to think about it. He had a lot to tell her.

He’d write his foster-family, too. The Wilsons. Tell them he was all right. He owed them that. He’d heard that junior crew had an allowance and he’d asked Jeremy how much a letter cost: the answer was simply that letters didn’t mass at all, in a ship’s black box, and if you didn’t want physical copy to go, it was ten c per link for handling.

That was a little more than he’d hoped, but a lot less than he’d feared, and Mariner was a single-hop from Pell as you counted postage: jump-points, Jeremy said, didn’t count, only station hookups did; and for that ten c, they let you have a fair amount of storage per letter.

He’d see Mariner and he’d write Bianca about it like a diary. He was a little doubtful about the Wilsons, even shy about writing to them, in the thought maybe they didn’t want a letter from him after the trouble he’d caused at the end, but he’d eaten enough of their holiday dinners: he could afford the cash at least to tell them he was all right, even if none of them had come to see him off—for one thing because he didn’t depend on Quen to have even told them. She’d have known they were a legal convenience—she’d set it up. But she probably didn’t know, because he’d not mentioned it even to the psychs, that they were the one batch he’d really liked, and really called some kind of home.

He could write to Quen. One of those picture messages, the really neon, garish ones, the sort spacers bought, if he were going to send one to Quen. If it wouldn’t cut seriously into his spending money he’d be downright tempted just for the hell of it. But something nice and sentimental for the two really he was going to send, maybe the picture sort that you could print out in holo. He didn’t know whether Bianca or the Wilsons had ever gotten a message from outside Pell, and he figured they’d keep it and maybe like a picture they could repro and look at

Jeremy and Vince came back. He looked at Jeremy for bruises or signs of ruffling, but Jeremy didn’t look to have been disturbed, just a little hot around the edges and not looking at anybody.

He couldn’t ask Jeremy then and there what Vince had wanted, or whether Vince had given him a hard time. Things seemed peaceful. Vince and Jeremy settled to playing cards. Business was so slow there wasn’t an alterday crew into the laundry once they closed up shop for the shift: their instructions were to leave the laundry door open and the light on, however, and put a check-sheet and a pen in the holder for people that took soap and other things, so they could keep the reorder records straight and know who’d picked up their clothes.

Doesn’t anybody ever steal? he wondered, and then he asked himself, Steal shower soap? And decided it was silly. It was free. Their own job as guardians of the laundry was largely superfluous once the washing and folding was all done: they had to clean up, latch down, be sure cabinet doors were shut tight and otherwise safed. Mostly they played cards. He figured at a certain point it was just a place for them to be, out of the way and bothering no one essential to the ship. Or maybe, at this stage of things, heading in, maybe everyone aboard was taking a breather. Traffic in the corridor was the lowest and slowest it had been.

As it happened, they didn’t go straight to the mess hall this end of shift. Jeremy and he were supposed to check in with medical… again. It was a few minutes standing in line, but the staff didn’t do anything but prick your finger, weigh you, and ask you a few questions, like: How are you sleeping? How are you feeling? With him it was, Glad to see you, Fletcher. Had any problems? How are the lungs?

In case he’d inhaled something on Downbelow. But he could say, for the second time, he hadn’t. They stuck his finger, looked at his lungs, listened to him breathe…

“All fourteen million credits are safe,” he said to the Family medics, and the medic looked at him as if it was a bad joke. Probably it was pretty low and surly humor.

“Do I get a liberty?” he asked.

“See no reason not,” the medic in charge said

“Thanks.” He’d no desire to offend the medics, or get on somebody’s report to JR. Clean record was his ambition right now, just get through it. Stay out of run-ins with JR, who alone of the officers seemed to be in charge of his existence. Get back to Pell. He had to produce a calm pulse for the medics and he’d done that, forgetful of Vince: he thought of green leaves and sun through the clouds, and when they dismissed him, he supposed they called him healthy.