Truth and Beauty 3-8

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At the jetway’s end a red-coated marine snapped to attention as Jack approached. Jack touched his ID to the reader, and when the door rumbled open he had his first up-close look at the Roth.

His first impression was of age, age and obselescence. The airlock was cramped, with fading paint through which several sores of rust spread, giving the space an unhealthy look. Extra piping had been welded along one of the bulkheads - the piping was stainless, but even this had begin to rust. Richmond style locks were fitted to the doors, a device that had been growing obsolete when Jack was no older than Barus and Holley. He kept his eye on the amber light on the bulkhead and when the airlock’s inner door swung open he took a deep breath and stepped through the hatchway to his new command.

As soon as he crossed the threshold the bosun’s whistle began, piping Lieutenant O’Brian aboard. “Welcome aboard, sir,” said a tall, thin man, wearing the uniform of a sub-lieutenant. “I am Mister Greenstreet, subLieutenant of the Roth.” He stood bareheaded and saluting in a sort of crooked way. After a moment, Jack realized that this was due to his unnatural height, which forced him to stoop, even here on the main deck gangway. Even the sub-lieutenant’s face was tall and thin. At present, it wore a respectful but otherwise blank expression; Jack was an unknown quantity as far as discipline was concerned, and the sub-lieutenant had no desire to antagonize a man who might be commanding him for the next several years, perhaps in very trying circumstances indeed. Behind Mr Greenstreet stood the rest of the Roth’s officers, including Midshipman Holley.

Lieutenant O’Brian returned the salute. “Thank you, Mister Greensteet. If you could introduce the officers.”

This began a ritual ceremony in which each officer was named and stepped forward in order of precedence. They each saluted their new commander and he in turn saluted each of them. He caught the names of the master’s mate (Henreid) and the gunner (Veidt), but then the names began to mix and blur, and he quickly lost track of whether the carpenter was named Leigh or Lorre, and whether the engineer or the electrician was named Humphries. Thankfully, there is the muster book, he thought, noting with some relief that Mister Greenstreet had now introduced almost everyone; Jack’s arm was growing sore from the many salutes. “Very good, Mister Greenstreet,” he said. “If you will assemble the men I will read myself in.”

The bosun’s mate blew his call and the weird piping blew over the Roth’s PA system, now playing cadence to assemble the men. Mister Greenstreet led Lieutenant O’Brian along the gangway to a typically steep, narrow flight of stairs that led directly into the men’s berthing, recreation, and dining area.

Most of the men were already here. Jack’s, or rather Lieutenant O’Brian’s arrival was no secret, nor was the fact that he would have to read himself in to assume legal authority over the Roth and her crew. The men assembled in their places, toeing scuffed lines taped on the floor, each standing where his designated number was handwritten on the linoleum tiling. Gaps showed where men were missing, either on duty at stations they should not leave, on their way from the more distant parts of the Roth, off-ship on leave, or perhaps on the sick list. Many of the men looked jaded and groggy, with tousled hair; and at least one sported a mis-buttoned shirt: the watch below had clearly been asleep.

Midshipman Holley pulled a chair over to a microphone hanging from the ceiling, climbed up to switch the microphone on, then moved the chair back out of the way. Sub-lieutenant Greenstreet stepped forward to the mike: “off hats,” he ordered.

The order was superfluous; none of the men wore head coverings of any kind, but it was necessary, too, as the time-honored preamble to the reading-in of a new captain. The men straightened their backs and fell silent, watching the Lieutenant O’Brian as he stepped in front of the microphone, unfolded his commission, and began.

“By the right honorable Lord X_____, Knight of the Bath, Vice Admiral of the White, and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Vessels employed and to be employed in the Home Sector,” Jack read, continuing through to the end, marrying himself to the Roth and her crew and making his orders to them death to disobey.

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