The frigate Phalarope nosed into a docking can below the vast spinning wheel of Ganswindt Beacon. Magnetic grabs snaked out and pulled her in for a full due until the tip of her cone was nudging pneumatically at a check pad and the outer hatch resealed with a definitive click.
Grey coolant streamed past the direct vision ports. She had moved from brilliant starlight into a limbo.
All hands felt the change. It even had a name--The Ganswindt Syndrome. There was something about the middle unit of the Beacon path that communicated right to the gut. Sol Beacon at the beginning of the system was, in a manner of speaking, on the home doorstep and had a human face. Zeta Beacon, out on the Rim, was the gateway to a whole network of planetary cultures. It was an earnest that the incredible journey had been made and living intelligence was near at hand. But pig-in-the-middle Ganswindt was set down in the bleakest prospect of known space, the dead end of nowhere. It played on the minds of the men and women who manned it. A stint of two months was reckoned to be all anybody could take.
Fans sucked the mist clear. Phalarope's main hatch was level with a gantry that had been run out and hooked to external lugs. It was all set up to go ashore.
Rotating slowly on the command island, the co-pilot, Harry Baine, picked up clearances from the desks. Navigation, Power, Communications and Guns answered in turn. He put through a call to the Commander and said formally, "Number One to Commander. All sections cleared to stand down."
He could have done it equally well by thumping the other bulky figure on the twin desk and sticking up a hand signal. For that matter Commander Kurt Foreman, all there was of power in Phalarope, had heard it all for himself on the net. But procedure was a fine thing and they both knew the value of it. Foreman said, "Thank you, Captain. Anchor Watch. All hands ashore for three hours. Stand down."
Telltales on the navigation consoles glowed green. Pressures had been stabilized in the can. They could walk out without space gear and take a break from the confined quarters of a military ship where power and armament came first for the designer and crew comfort was an afterthought.
Foreman went alone to the command area of the beacon leaving Baine to check the manifest. An exact estimate of mass was required before the beacon's engineers could strike the delicate balance of forces needed to blast Phalarope through the lock into rationalized time for the last leg of her journey along the beacon path.
Even small changes in the body weight of her company were critical and any loss or gain in the three hours at the station would have to go on record. It was all in Foreman's head as one strand in the composition, but he knew Baine could be trusted to watch it to the last milligram. Most of his thinking as he worked through speed adjustment bays was in the line of simple curiosity. In three years as a Commander, he had not moved with less information on a mission and he was hoping to find a signal at Ganswindt which would tell him the score and give a few facts and figures.
When he reached journey's end and a small silvery Fingalnan girl ushered him into the Director's pad as though she had been set down at Ganswindt for no other purpose, he knew that he would have to hold out for a time. There was a new man in the top slot. A courtly Bromusian who would flog the gestural dance of welcome to the last aerial turn before he got down to the nitty-gritty. An ID plate on a triangular mount gave the name. Akurgal of Bromius.
Foreman said, "Commander Foreman of the I.G.O. frigate Phalarope," and they were away to an even start.
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