Engineman - Eric Brown [21]
He stepped out onto the observation platform.
Jaeger was leaning against the rail, admiring the view. "Magnificent, is it not, Mr Mirren?"
Mirren glanced from the off-worlder to the vista of superannuated starships spread before him. "Jaeger?"
The off-worlder turned to Mirren and held out his hand. Warily, Mirren shook it. "Jaeger is my little conceit, Mr Mirren. My nom de plume. The name is Hunter, Hirst Hunter. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance."
Hunter was a head taller and half as broad again as Mirren. Despite his impressive size, he emanated an aura of casual amiability. He could have passed on Earth for a well-preserved sixty, though living conditions and life expectancy varied so widely on the many planets of the Expansion that he might have been anything from fifty to a hundred standard years old.
The crimson disfigurement covered the left half of his face. On the photograph Mirren had thought it a birthmark, but now he saw that the pustulant mass, raised perhaps a centimetre from the skin, resembled more closely an outgrowth of mould or lichen. His left eye was closed and crusted over, and the side of his mouth was drawn shut and pulled down in a permanent scowl. The remainder of his face was bronzed and smiling, as if bequeathed the humanity so lacking in the ravaged hemisphere.
He was gazing out over the starships, a sad smile on his halved face. He gestured at the graveyard. "I find the sight achingly beautiful. Don't you agree, Mr Mirren?"
"Despite what it represents... yes, I do."
Hunter pointed over the domes, spires and pinnacles of the gathered starships. "Do you see the Boeing cruiser; the 'ship with its navigation bay removed? It was an exploration vessel for the Valkyrie Line, oh... ninety years ago. It surveyed the habitable planets of Kernan's Drift. I was thrilled to come across it today. My homeplanet is Fairweather, the first world it made landfall on in the Drift."
Mirren smiled. Oddly, he felt comfortable in the company of the stranger.
"And now," Hunter said, "they explore new worlds by sending unmanned drones through portals. No romance, no adventure..."
"But cheaper," Mirren said. "More profit for the organisations."
Hunter was sadly shaking his head. "I could weep when I consider the advent of the interfaces, Mr Mirren, and that is no exaggeration."
Mirren glanced at the off-worlder. He was not augmented, but he could have had his console removed.
"Did you push?" he ventured.
Hunter turned to regard Mirren. The crazed, cracked surface of his facial growth was suppurating in the sunlight. "Me? Unfortunately not, Mr Mirren. When I was young I studied to be an Engineman, I wanted nothing more than to push a starship, but I never made the grade. Of course, I could have worked in space, but the thought of working alongside bona fide Enginemen would only have served to remind me of my failure."
"You should consider yourself lucky," Mirren said, then stopped himself before he became too self-piteous.
Hunter smiled. "I have something to show you which I think you will find of interest. Please, this way."
Hunter ducked through the hatch and tapped quickly down the spiral stairway. Mirren followed, not for the first time wondering what the off-worlder wanted with him.
They emerged into the fierce sunlight of the new day and walked down the lane side by side. Hunter gestured and they turned right, down an avenue flanked by nothing else but dismembered observation domes and astro-nacelles. Here, the alien plant-life had run riot, shoots and spores finding their way into the accidental glasshouses of the nacelles and domes and blooming in colourful abundance.
Hunter touched Mirren's elbow and indicated to the left. They passed down a wide avenue, then halted before the carcass of a bigship sliced lengthwise, its gaping cross-section cavernous. They climbed a staircase and Hunter