Truth and Beauty 10-3

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The woman, hearing his approach or perhaps sensing his eye upon her, looked up from her tablet. She had light brown hair and hazel eyes, and on closer inspection was probably in her late 30s. “Come in,” she said, leading Stephen into the berth and seating him on a stool. She pointed the thermometer into his mouth for a reading while taking his wrist in her other hand and folding it up to his chest. An embroidered caduceus sat above her left breast, and a strip above her right breast read Collins. “The doctor will be in in just a moment,” she said, “he just stepped down to the lav.”

“The doctor?” asked Doctor Russ.

“Doctor Russ will be in in a moment,” the woman repeated, “just be patient.”

“I am Doctor Russ.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the woman, dropping his wrist and stepping back. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“You didn’t ask,” said Stephen, standing up. “May I ask who you are?”

“Katya Collins, medical corpsman, second class, MC-3JVE589. I’ve been appointed your loblolly boy, sir.”

Stephen returned Katya Collins’s salute and considered. “Have any patients come in?”

“No, sir.”

Stephen nodded. “I suppose that loblolly boy - boy?”

“Loblolly boy, yes, sir,” said Katya.

“- that loblolly boy indicates that you are my assistant?”

Katya blinked. “Yes, sir,” she said slowly. “You are the Roth’s surgeon, yes?”

“So they tell me. I am new to the service, however, and I confess that some of the niceties still elude me.”

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End Table Build Thread 1

Some months long ago I finally dismantled an old futon frame I had at home, for which I had not had a mattress for perhaps a year. This left me with a pile of lumber, likely pine or Douglas Fir, which was a step above construction grade, if not absolutely furniture grade, and it seemed a waste to throw this wood away. So, I'm building an end table out of it, plus a few pieces of furniture grade Philippine Mahogany I found at a M.L. Condon's White Plains location. Last month I borrowed a biscuit joiner from a friend and glued up the top - two wedge-shaped pieces of fir (former legs on the futon) with a wide strip of mahogany between them. Making use of a barter agreement (labor for access) at a local machine shop, I trimmed the lumber to size, and M.L. Condon was kind enough to run the table top through their thickness planer, since the top was a glue-up with no metal hardware. I sanded the top by hand, starting at 60 grit and working down to 220. Here you see the top, with the lumber for the legs and skirting cut to size:

For the table top, I made use of the wedge-shaped nature of the futon's legs to lay the mahogany at an angle, for aesthetic reasons. Once I had glued the table top together it occurred to me that not only might the fir and the mahogany expand and contract at different rates, but by laying the mahogany at an angle to the fir I had further complicated the variation of the wood movement. Hopefully, I'll be okay, but with the glue dry, there's no turning back.

Visible but not obvious in this image are the grooves cut into the skirting and legs. These are for the biscuit joints that will connect the mahogany legs to the fir skirting. Not visible are an additional series of grooves along the top of the skirting - these will accept the hardware which will connect the table top to the table base. I'll add a photo of the grooves and the hardware once I complete the final assembly.

Last week, I returned to the machine shop to put a taper on the table legs, for a more finished look. My rough-and-tumble jig, made of a scrap of 1 x 4 salvaged from the futon, a 3" length of scrap 2 x 2 stud, and a drywall screw, did a surprisingly good job - I'll have to shoot a photo of it. The original jig was designed with a casement stay, hinge, and 2 knobs - all brass hardware with kiln dried fir, but I ran out of time and it never got built.

This morning I finished sanding down the tapers on the legs, at 220 grit, and finally began to assemble the base:

Here you can see two of the legs and the skirting between them, clamped in place as they dry by a 3' bar clamp I purchased for the purpose. (The wood beneath the protective plastic sheeting is an unrelated piece of birch ply.). I use a single #20 biscuit for each joint, and of course wood glue, taping the ends of the skirting against drips. I had wanted to tape the legs as well, but couldn't figure out how to line up the tape properly; in the end I used a lot of damp paper towels to clean up the excess glue (I'm a glue hound, and always seem to have excess glue squeezing from my work).

Next post: completing the frame, and the taper jig.

Truth and Beauty 10-2

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Stephen had not joined the other officers in evaluating the repairs. Partly this was for the pragmatic reason that he knew nothing of spacecraft design, maintenance, or service; partly this was due to a lingering guilt over Roth’s catastrophic jump to hyperspace, which was the reason the repais had been needed; but mostly it was because he was dog tired, having spent the night lending a hand in the ER. The hospital floors were tile laid over concrete, and after eight hours of standing on them he was used up. He had boarded the Roth with the other officers and gone directly to his cabin, where he had dropped his bundle of clothes on the floor and fallen directly into his cot, still clothed.

He was therefore unavailable for Jack to make amends, and unaware of Jack’s invitation to the wardroom. When he awoke, he found the wardroom empty. In the prep room he printed off some coffee, eggs and french toast, smiling to himself at the absurd suggestion, made some years back by an idiot politician, that the dish be renamed freedom toast.

With food and coffee inside him, humanity returned, and he began to take stock of his situation. Three bells rang, but he had no idea what watch this was for, and in any case his internal clock still ran on hours and minutes, so he pulled out his watch. Half past one in the afternoon.

It was later than he had supposed. He bussed his dishes back to the prep room, where he cupped his hands under the tap for a drink of water, then he made his way down and forward to the sick berth.

There, he met a young woman in a white jumpsuit. By now he was familiar with the faces of the almost 80 officers and men of the Roth (their names he was less sure of), and he did not recognize the woman, though he had seen similar white jumpsuits among the hospital staff. He paused in the doorway, uncertain.

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Truth and Beauty 10-1

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Jack’s first stop was the quarterdeck, where he quickly looked over the displays for a general sense of Roth’s status. He had dealt with too many of His Majesty’s shipyards in the past to take Lieutenant Seiler’s words at face value, and he was pleasantly surprised to see that Roth’s power plant was not cold. He stepped down to his quarters to drop off his valise and resynch his sextant, and when he returned to the bridge he found most of his line officers present, along with his carpenter and engineer.

As a group they walked down the starboard boat deck gangway and looked over the repairs: fresh steel, primed but not painted, by the forward hatch. The hatch itself was new, too, still wearing most of the protective white film it had left the factory with. “They just doubled our book value,” said the master, opening and closing the hatch noiselessly.

The hangar had seen similar repairs, and a late model, lightly used shuttle craft hung among the older craft, looking like a hawk trying to hide in a cluster of pigeons. “Well,” said Mister Lorre, “they left us the Richmond locks, but I don’t suppose we can complain. In all other respects they did us proud.”

“Yes indeed, Mister Lorre,” said Jack, feeling something like happiness wash over him. “Mister Greenstreet, I hope you and the rest of the wardroom will join me for supper this evening?”

“Yes, sir,” said the sublieutenant.

“Excellent. Signal for a pilot and tugs, please. By the time they respond the crew should have reported aboard. There is not a moment to lose.”

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Truth and Beauty 9-11

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The corridor was irregular, widening out into large storage rooms, then narrowing to squeeze past the slipways, with all of the engineering in plain view. Massive fire doors, held open magnetically, stood every few hundred feet. Forklifts, pallet jacks, and people movers wound and zipped through the many pedestrians.

At slip fourteen two workers were spotting a fuel truck into place, blocking off the corridor in order to do so. Jack joined the gathering crowd, standing between to a trio of space suited welders on an electric cart and two hard-hatted engineers holding clip computers.

The truck driver set his brakes and wheels chocks, and his spotters released the crowd, which surged forward with Jack at its center. As they approached slip 16, he saw a group of officers gathered in front of it. One of them, a rotund man, suddenly bent over in laughter and Jack recognized him as the Roth’s purser.

Jack’s approach had been masked by the crowd, and he was no more than six feet from his officers when he was noticed. “It’s the skipper,” someone shouted, and they immediately fell mute, sober, prim, and correct.

“Mister Greenstreet,” said Jack, returning their salutes, “ladies, gentlemen. have we been given clearance to board?”

“No, sir, not yet,” said Mister Greenstreet. “I believe they are waiting for you.”

Jack stepped over to the gangway and touched his ID to the reader. The door did not open at once, but the reader’s light turned yellow.

After a minute, the door slid open to reveal one of the dockyard officers, a lieutenant, who traded a salute with Jack before speaking. “Lieutenant O’Brian? I am Seiler, of the dockyard.”

“I relieve you, Lieutenant Seiler.”

“I am relieved, Lieutenant O’Brian. You should find everything ship shape and ready for departure.”

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Truth and Beauty 9-10

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A few minutes shy of three bells in the forenoon watch Jack stepped off the shuttle at the dry dock. He was dressed in his number one uniform, and walked smartly through the lobby to the main office, but an unfamiliar lieutenant was already at the counter, talked heatedly with the bored receptionist. Not wanting to intrude, Jack stepped over to a window on the far side of the room and gazed out of it.

He saw parts of three slips, one of them open to space, and Neva IV itself, miles below. Dockyard craft glid between the slips and other parts of the base out of view from where Jack stood.

A door slammed and Jack turned around at the noise. The unknown lieutenant had left. Jack approached the window.

“Yes, lieutenant,” said the woman behind the counter. She was still flushed and flustered from her previous encounter and Jack privately crossed his fingers.

“Good morning,” he said. “I am O’Brian, of the Roth. I received a message that she was ready for pickup.”

“Yes, lieutenant,” said the woman, less coldly this time. She tapped at a tablet then slid it across the counter for Jack’s signature. “Roth was pressure tested at 0300 and is ready to go.”

Jack signed the tablet and touched his ID to its reader, then slid the computer back across the counter to the woman, who continued. “Follow the blue line on the floor two thirds of a mile to slip 16, or catch the blue shuttle in the lobby.”

Jack’s exercise in the preceding days had been limited to a single, leisurely walk across the base grounds, plus his trysts with Candy, and although he had certainly worked up a sweat with her he felt somewhat out of shape. He therefore elected to walk, following the blue line out of the office and down one of the several corridors that opened off of the lobby.

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Truth and Beauty 9-9

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She borrowed Jack’s shower when they were done, not bothering to close the door. He watched her dry herself off afterwords, then toss her towel in the laundry chute and blow-dry her hair.

“Are you here tomorrow?” she asked, catching his eye in the mirror as she arranged her hair into a knot.

“No,” Jack replied. “They released my brig from dry dock and I need to return to her.”

Candy fit a decorative comb in her hair and turned from side to side to consider her reflection. Seeing Jack considering her, she smiled. “You don’t seem like one of those stick-in-the-mud, by-the-book lieutenants,” she said. “I’d be wiling to make the trip out to see you.”

“And charge for it, too, I’m sure.”

“I do have to pay my rent.” She turned around and gave him an apologetic smile. “The time I spend travelling to you is time I can’t sell to somone else.” She thought for a moment. “I suppose that if you kept me for the night I could waive that, providing the travel time wasn’t too much. Or if your officers wanted to entertain me as well that might be an option. Now where did I leave my dress? Ah,” she said, walking into the main room and seeing it on a chair. She stepped neatly into it and pulled it up to her shoulders, working the hidden clasps efficiently into place. Then she slipped on her shoes, collected her bag and stood before him, red satin and pale skin. “Let me know what you decide.”

A soft chime sounded in her bag. “Time to go,” she said. “Until next time.” She took the envelope he offered and let herself out.

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Truth and Beauty 9-8

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She wore red this time, long, low-cut, and open on the sides. “I can only give you a half hour,” she said as she came in. “Your fat lieutenant Olson has me at seven-thirty.”

“Fuck Olson.”

“I thought you wanted to fuck me,” Candy said.

“Yes, and with only half an hour we should get started. I’m not paying for talk.”

“But that’s what girlfriends do,” Candy said, moving toward him and slowly unbuttoning his shirt. “We talk.” She pulled his shirt tail free on one side and slowly circled around him, working his shirt free and tossing it on the floor. “And I have a new perfume, too,” she said, waving a scented wrist in front of his nose. “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” said Jack, “but-”

“And do you like this?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And this?”

“Very much so.”

“Mmm,” she said. “So talking isn’t bad.” She raised one hand to let down her hair and let it dance across him. “Why aren’t you undressing me?”

“Should I?”

“It’s up to you, Sailor John. You don’t know how many Johns I know, tell me your name?”

“J-, John,” said Jack.

“The clasps are on the other side, John,” Candy said. “That’s right.”

“You aren’t wearing-”

“Not on a Saturday, they’re too much trouble. How’s this?”

“Faster.”

“Harder?”

“Harder.”

“Mm,” she said again. “That’s good.”

“Good.”

“Yes.”

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Truth and Beauty 9-7

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Jack watched Stephen walk off, then shifted his gaze to Candy’s drink. After a while he became aware of a presence beside him and he looked up. “Olson,” he said, brightening and sitting up. “How are you?”

“Don’t give me that ‘how are you’ bullcrap,” said Olson, not bothering to keep his voice down. “You stole my girl. I saw you. You grabbed her hand and pulled her out of here with your heads down low.”

“Oh, please,” said Jack, his face hardening. “She isn’t your girl any more than she’s mine. She’s a whore.”

Olson said nothing. After a moment he spun and stalked off.

Jack watched Olson leave. Once the fat lieutenant had disappeared into the crowd, he shifted his gaze back to Candy’s martini. “Whore,” he said again, grabbing it and dashing its contents out onto the floor.


* * *
The next two days passed uneventfully. Stephen participated in a knee reconstruction and a colostomy reversal, and in the evenings met his fellow officers in the lounge. Jack busied himself with plans for the revised fuel rail, skipping some meals and ordering others to his room. Evenings he also spent in his room, so it was there the message that the dry dock had finished with the Roth reached him. “Ha,” he said. He looked at the clock in the top corner of the screen and did some mental arithmetic. The dockyard had only taken eleven and a half hours more than they had said they would, which had to be something of a record.

Depressurizing the dry dock would take place over night, and barring the unforeseen, Roth would be ready to receive her crew at four bells in the forenoon watch. Jack remotely logged into her computer, looked over her systems to the extent possible on the remote viewer, and raised the blue peter with a departure time of two bells in the afternoon watch.

“Ha!” he said again. He closed his computer and pushed it away, revealing Candy’s card on the table.

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Truth and Beauty 9-6

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Back at the barracks, he caught the tail end of dinner, then returned to his room, where he paced for several minutes before giving up and taking the elevator back up to the lounge. He didn’t see her at first, so he took a table to study the crowd more closely. After several minutes of careful searching, he was forced to conclude that Candy wasn’t there.

* * * Two beers and perhaps three-quarters of an hour later she walked in, wearing white this time. A few steps into the room she paused, looking over the crowd, smiling when she saw Jack and walking over. “Up for a good time?” she asked, not troubling to sit.

“Absolutely.”

She leaned over and kissed him, but when he started to rise she held up one finger. “Give me a few minutes, I need to see someone.”

She crossed to a corner booth. The light hanging over it was one of the several in the lounge that were out, leaving the booth in semi darkness, but it seemed to Jack that the only occupant of the booth was male. Candy sat down.

Jack flagged a waitress and ordered Candy a drink, keeping an eye on the distant booth as well as he could. More people were filing into the lounge as the day came to an end, and it the thickening crowd made it difficult to see what as happening.

“Pardon me,” said a voice at his elbow.

Looking up, Jack saw Doctor Russ, whom he hadn’t noticed walking up. “Doctor Russ, how do you do,” he asked, not too coldly.

The waitress returned with Candy’s drink, placing it on the table. From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Candy rise and begin to walk toward him. “I didn’t realize you had a guest,” said Stephen, “I hope I’m not intruding?”

“No, I - er - this drink is mine,” Jack said, picking it up and drinking down half of it, fighting the urge to gag. Martinis, dirty or not, were not his thing. Candy, now halfway across the lounge, had stopped, turned, and started to walk in another direction, toward another client.

Jack turned to fully face Doctor Russ. “Is there something you need, Doctor, that can’t wait till we’re back aboard?”

“No, sir," said Doctor Russ. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

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Truth and Beauty 9-5

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Upstairs in the lounge, he ate lunch alone, then retreated to his room to finally work through the new orders and notices. All were trivial, but he tediously copied and pasted them into his personal log, even those that didn’t remotely concern him. Several of the notices applied to Roth, and he marked these for copying into her log as well, a task that could only be completed while actually aboard the brig. One notice, about a terrorist attack on the Halsey interlocking station; and another, about the Ajax 2 code being broken, he forwarded to his line officers.

A few of the orders required replies, which took a surprising amount of time. Several new notices from the port admiral’s office came in while he was working, and he addressed these, too, finishing shortly after six bells in the afternoon watch.

More out of boredom than anything else, he caught the shuttle over to the dry dock, to see how Roth was getting along. The dock mates were civil, but Jack was clearly unwelcome, and he left after no more than five minutes.

As he waited at the shuttle stop, he looked up his chief engineer’s phone number, preparatory to phoning him about making use of Roth’s docking to update her fuel rail. He was about to dial the number when it dawned on him that a request, or even a suggestion, from a superior officer, no matter how lightly phrased, was in essence an order. Short of being engaged to a woman, Mister Humphries would have to abandon his plans in favor of Jack’s summons. He put his phone away.

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Truth and Beauty 9-4

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Jack, by this time, had showered, shaved, and put on a clean uniform in which to visit the port admiral’s office and report in person that Roth had been turned over to the dry dock. On the shuttle over to the Navy’s portion of the base he checked his email; a mail courier had arrived during the night, refilling his inbox. The orders and notices were each labeled below C-2 in importance, so he deferred reading them until he was seated before the larger screen of his computer. All of the messages were official, he noted with a pang; no personal emails had come in.

At the port admiral’s office he reported the Roth in dry dock two, giving the secretary his room number at the barracks and asking if the port admiral had given any additional orders. He had not, and Jack returned to the barracks, intending to sort through the new orders.

The first thing he saw on waking his computer, however, was his half-written email to Jevons, still unfinished from last night, and he reread it. The tone was wrong, he decided: too whiny. He deleted it, starting afresh by briefly describing his near-disastrous entry to hyperspace, and the port admiral’s request that he remain on base while the damage was repaired. In a new paragraph he noted that Doctor Russ had been appointed acting surgeon of the Roth.

The tone was still wrong, false now, particularly in avoiding mention of his quarrel with Stephen, but he could not see how to improve it, and after making several inconsequential changes he clicked ‘send’.

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Truth and Beauty 9-3

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“Would you like some more coffee?” Pravin asked.

Stephen looked into his mug again, swirling the dregs of his coffee lazily. “I believe I would,” he said.

They refilled their coffee in the departmental lounge, then Pravin led them into a comfortable office with carved wooded furniture and deep-pile carpets. A high-quality electric fire burned in a grate, softly popping and crackling from time to time.

“Is this your office?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, no,” said Pravin. “This is the consult office, for those times we have to meet with a patient.” He ignored the old-fashioned desk in the corner, instead pulling out two chairs at the circular table and sitting in one. Stephen sat in the other.

They caught up on friends and acquaintances, the latest gossip; who had married, had kids, divorced; who had been injured or sick, even died. Eventually they fell to reminiscing. “Do you remember old Bart?” Pravin asked.

Stephen snorted. “Two packets of honey in his coffee, and milk. If I had a penny for every time I filled that order.”

“But he was the chief resident and so we did it, along with all of his other crazy demands.”

“All capitals for the trade names of drugs when charting, and always leave two lines at the end of a paragraph.” He sat silently for a few moments. “Yes. I see what you mean. And I see his need to know where his people are. You think I should apologize?”

“I don’t know the man from Adam, but I don’t see how it could hurt.” He looked into his mug and saw that it was empty. “Come,” he said, “I’ll buy you lunch.”

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