Islands in the Sky

  less volatile but more insidious, since it was often difficult to detect

  until it was too late.

  They left the walkway and entered the freighter's engine room.

  Turning a corner, they came upon Captain Apollo, who was concentrating on

  an electronic measuring device as his crew pointed solium detecting wands

  in various directions.

  "What have we here?" Starbuck said.

  "I don't think I wanta know," Boomer replied.

  Apollo looked up from the measuring device and glanced angrily at

  the two new arrivals. Starbuck's body tensed. Apollo's emotions were

  unpredictable these days, since his father had begun assembling the

  ragtag fleet.

  "Would you two knock it off?" Apollo said. "I'm trying to listen for

  solium leaks."

  Starbuck and Boomer looked quickly toward each other, then turned in

  unison, intending to retreat to the walkway.

  "'Bye," Starbuck said.

  "Halt!" Apollo bellowed.

  The two men stopped in their tracks.

  "Apollo," Starbuck said. "That stuff is dangerous. I don't want any

  part of it. I mean, these old ships shouldn't even be flying."

  "There wasn't really any choice, was there? How many people did we

  have to leave behind for lack of ships, do you imagine?"

  "Nobody knows."

  "But you can be sure there were a lot, all left to be exterminated

  by the gallmonging Cylons. So---unless you want to volunteer permanent

  assignment on this tub, which incidentally shows every sign of

  adaptability to hyperspace conversion, you'll help survey each and every

  ship in the fleet for damage. And that means look for solium leaks. Or

  I'll be tempted to loan you out to Beta Company."

  Without waiting for any response from Starbuck or Boomer, Apollo

  abruptly turned, picked up the measuring device, gestured toward his

  crew, and walked toward the ship's bulkhead.

  When he was out of hearing range, Boomer whispered to Starbuck:

  "Keep talking, old buddy, and you're going to get us in real

  trouble."

  Ah, he's got a fly up his exhaust tube. I don't know what's going

  on with everybody. They'll all sniffing plant vapors, if you ask me.

  Ten thousand light yahrens from nowhere, our planet's shot to hell, we're

  running around looking for leaks in old buckets, our people are starving,

  and you're worried about me getting us in trouble. What's the matter

  with you? What's the matter with everybody? I say we might as well live

  for the day. We haven't got many of them left!"

  They followed Apollo through a bulkhead hatch into a passenger

  compartment. At last it was a passenger compartment now, whatever its

  original function might have been. Starbuck was at first struck by the

  thick feeling of the air, which seemed to resist inhalation. Small

  wonder, for the room was packed with people---old, young, crippled, babes

  in arms. Some of them lay on the floor, clearly exhausted and spent.

  Others pressed up against packing crates. Still others had transformed

  the crates into their own private shelters. As the crowd took note of

  Apollo's presence, many of them reached toward him, their smudged fingers

  clutching and clawing at the young officer.

  "Back," Apollo said. "Please stay back."

  The crowd looked as if they might jump onto Apollo, but were

  apparently checked by the move of Boomer and Starbuck to the captain's

  side.

  "Where's the food?" a bedraggled and obviously desperate woman

  shouted. "What's happening? We haven't had water in two days! Two

  days!"

  "Please!" Apollo shouted. Starbuck had never heard Apollo's voice

  become so strident. "I'll be glad to help each and every one of you.

  But stay back, Starbuck, Boomer..."

  Starbuck drew his sidearm. He raised it toward the ceiling to

  display it for the threatening crowd.

  "Put it away, Starbuck," Apollo said. "These people are already in

  battle shock."

  "Yeah? Well, in another couple microns they'da been using you for a

  doormat, Captain!"

  "Where's the food?" an emaciated old man screamed. The phrase was

  quickly becoming a ritual to these suffering people, Starbuck noticed.

  "Why haven't we seen or heard from anyone in two days?"

  "What in Hades is going on?" another man said. "Have we been left

  behind?"

  Apollo took a deep breath and gestured for silence. The crowd

  quieted down.

  "You haven't been left behind," Apollo said in a level "There must

  be some problems in distribution. But it'll be corrected, I promise you

  that. Just be grateful you're alive and please give us a chance to

  adjust and find out what your needs are."

  "We need food, that's what we need," the emaciated man said in a

  whining voice.

  "And medicine," said one of the women. "There are wounded here,

  with us."

  "That's one of the reasons we're here," Apollo said. "To check these

  things out, find out what your problems are."

  "The problem is," said a professional, middle-aged man with a beard,

  "the problem is we're all going to die!"

  Apollo sighed.

  "No," he said, "no one is going to die. Now, it'll take a while,

  but we're just now finding out how many of us have survived."

  "Hardly the fittest," the professional man said bitterly. Apollo

  chose to ignore the man's sarcasm.

  "We need to know what your skill levels are," Apollo continued, "so

  that we can utilize them in helping each other. Boomer, get on the

  communicator and let Core Command know these people haven't had any food

  or water in two days."

  Boomer nodded and moved to a clear space, where he flipped open his

  communicator.

  "Now," Apollo said, "do any of you need immediate life-station aid?"

  An old woman raised her hand. Apollo nodded in her direction and

  she began speaking in an unfamiliar tongue.

  "What's she saying?" Apollo asked Starbuck.

  "I think it's some kind of Gemonese dialect. I'm not up on it,

  maybe Boomer can translate."

  "Boomer's too busy right now. Does anyone here understand this

  woman's dialect?"

  A tall woman, almost the height of Starbuck or Apollo, moved to the

  front of the crowd. Her clothes were in shreds, and Starbuck noted that

  a trim, small-breasted and slim-hipped figure was suggested in those

  parts of the woman's body that were on public dispay. Although her face

  was dirty and smudged, and her blonde hair disheveled, he suspected that,

  cleaned up and groomed, this lady would be quite a looker. Most likely,

  she would be a great beauty, he thought.

  "She says that her husband is feverish," the woman said laconically,

  in a deep voice that was almost sultry in spite of her messy appearance.

  She held her left arm at her side at what seemed to Starbuck a peculiar

  angle.

  "There's something wrong with your arm?" Starbuck asked
.

  She turned toward him. Her eyes were blue and it seemed to him that

  they glowed with emotional strength as she stared directly at him.

  "There are others in greater need than I," she said.

  "Get her out of here!" growled a plump woman who had stationed

  herself to the right of Apollo. "She should be jettisoned with the dead!"

  A number of muttering voices assented to the woman's opinion.

  Starbuck could sense a danger in their nastiness, an anger that could

  easily rise to open hostility.

  "You're right, Starbuck," Apollo said. "Her arms looks broken. Get

  her and the old man to the shuttle."

  Starbuck helped the old man and his wife to their feet, then took

  the injured woman by her good arm. He was conscious of the many

  obscenities and insults being released around him. Their jeering seemed

  to be escalating to a danger point. He might have to draw his weapon

  again, despite what Apollo had ordered.

  "Make daggit meat out of her," one woman shoted, and several voices

  assented. Starbuck didn't look in their direction, although he kept a

  wary eye for suspicious movements in his immediate vicinity.

  "Dirty," another woman said.

  "Socialator," said a man.

  "No place for refuse," muttered a voice that clearly belonged to the

  professional bearded man.

  A muscular man stepped up to Apollo as if he were spoiling for a

  fight.

  "It's a sin to starve us," the man said, "while the buriticians

  luxuriate in their private sanctuaries."

  "Nobody's in luxury," Apollo said. "I promise you that."

  "I've seen it," said the slighter man, who joined the muscular one

  in his confrontation with Apollo. "I saw it with my own eyes aboard the

  Rising Star, before I was cast out and reassigned here."

  Boomer saved Apollo from answering by stepping to his side and

  announcing loudly, "Core Command is aware of the problem."

  "Then I can tell these people that food and water is on the way?"

  Apollo said.

  "They're aware of the problem!"

  "What is it?" said the professorial man. "You're keeping something

  from us, aren't you?"

  "Relief is on the way, I'm sure," Apollo said. "You've got my word

  as a warrior."

  Starbuck had finally made his way to the bulkhead hatchway, but

  hesitated there in case Apollo needed his help. The woman and the old

  couple waited with him, their bodies clearly tense with apprehension that

  violence could erupt at any moment.

  "Your word as a warrior," said a plump woman. "You were the ones

  that brought us this death watch, warrior!"

  Apollo looked back at Starbuck, motioned for him to get the woman

  and the old couple through the hatchway. He and Boomer began edging back

  to the opening as the space between them and the crowd narrowed.

  "Corrupt," the professorial man hollered. "The entire Quorum was

  corrupt. We were betrayed. Betrayed---by all of you!"

  From the other side of the hatchway, Starbuck watched Apollo and

  Boomer get through the opening. Apparently just in time to save

  themselves from being trampled on by the angry but frightened crowd.

  Boomer quickly shut the hatch and spun its wheels rapidly to seal off the

  compartment. Sound of agony and anger could still be heard on the other

  side of the round portal.

  "My Lord..." Boomer muttered.

  "You said it," Starbuck said.

  Apollo's crew, who had remained in the engine room checking out

  solium leaks, gathered around, while Boomer told them what had happened

  in the makeshift passenger compartment. Apollo shook visibly. Starbuck

  moved to him.

  "What happened? Why aren't these vehicles being supplied? I know

  we're low and Adama's cut rations, but we're not this..."

  "I don't know!" Apollo hollered, his voice again a bit more strident

  than Starbuck was accustomed to. "But something's gone wrong, and I've

  got to find out what."

  When the pounding began on the passenger side of the hatchway,

  Apollo ordered everyone back to the shuttle. He and Boomer took the

  controls, while Starbuck remained with the young woman and the old

  couple. As soon as they had put some distance between themselves and the

  old freighter, Apollo switched on the shuttle's communicator and spoke

  angrily into the mike.

  "Alpha shuttle to Core Command."

  "Core Command. Go ahead, Captain Apollo."

  "Request clarification on food dispersal."

  There was a crackling silence before the Core Command voice replied.

  "No information is available at this time."

  Apollo exploded with anger.

  "What're you talking about, no information available? God damn it,

  I just left a ship full of starving people. They haven't seen a morsel

  of food in two days, and no water either. What in the name of Kobol's

  going on?"

  Another long pause before the Core Command reply:

  "I'm sorry, shuttle Alpha. Core Command has no information

  available at this time."

  Apollo gave up and flipped off the communicator. Turning to

  Boomer, he said, "What's going on? What'd they tell you when you called

  in the food shortage?"

  "Same thing they told you. A vague acknowledgement of the problem,

  you might say."

  "Boomer, I'm getting a very uneasy feeling."

  *****

  It seemed to Cassiopeia that her broken arm had felt better since

  the Galactica' s officers had removed her from that seething crowd. In

  the cramped spaces of the passenger compartment, the arm had been jostled

  too often, pinche din between shifting bodies. Now it seemed filled with

  a comforting numbness. Her emotional panic had subsided as well.

  Knowing that so many of those poor despairing people were conscious of

  her previous position as a socialator, she had been afraid that some of

  them might have taken out their frustration on her. There were many

  hidden weapons among that crowd. One of them might have been used on

  her. She felt more relaxed now as she helped Starbuck interview the old

  Gemonese couple. When he had finshed with that interview, he turned to

  her and said:

  "Now, I'll need some data from you. That way the Life Station'll be

  ready for you when we dock."

  "Life Station?"

  "Just a fancy name for our sickbay. Don't fret it. Let's see.

  First I'll need your name and occupation."

  "My name is Cassiopeia."

  "Lovely name."

  "I think so."

  "Designation."

  "I'm designated a socialator."

  She saw the usual reaction in his eyes. She was accustomed to it.

  Men from the other worlds, Capricans especially, had a good bit of doubt

  in them when it came to discussing socialiation.

  "It's an honorable profession,' she said testily, "practiced with

  the blessing of the elders for over four thousand yahrens."

 
She wondered if she should explain to him the yahrens of preparation

  to which she had been submitted---the endless courses concerning social

  behavior, human knowledge----before her license was granted. She decided

  that, although there was kindness in this handsome young officer's eyes,

  a warm look that conveyed the potential for understanding, she had better

  not martial the arguments that defended her profession.

  "I didn't mean to imply anything," Starbuck said. "I was just trying

  to figure out what the excitement was about back on that barge."

  She smiled.

  "Those women were from the Otori sect among the Gemonese. They

  don't believe in physical contact between genders except when sanctified

  by the priests during the high worship of the sunstorm, which comes every

  seven yahrens."

  "Wow! No wonder those little buggers are such good card players!"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Nothing."

  He asked her several more routine questions before ending the

  interview.

  "Well," he said, "they'll be waiting for you with this information

  when we dock. Are you in pain now? Can I give you something?"

  "You've already been very kind."

  Starbuck's smile was engaging. She would've hugged him, if she had

  had two good arms to use for it.

  "What can I tell you, Cassiopeia?" he said. "It's my job. Also, I'm

  not one of the Otori sect, right? And I"ve been getting these

  headaches." Obviously, Starbuck knew of a socialator's abilities at

  curing mild illnesses with intricate massage techniques. "The pressure's

  getting to me, I suppose. I just need some kind of release."

  "Make an appointment," she said, using her professional tone of

  voice.

  "I just might do that. I might just---migh---uh..."

  His fumbling with the language made him all the more attractive to

  her. He looked like he might be acting the role of shy young officer.

  He had not seemed the type previoiusly. Well, she though, it would be

  fun exploring that particular line between reality and pretense.

  *****

  In order to collect his thoughts, Starbuck made an excuse to go to

  the command cabin of the shuttle. The woman had intrigued him from the

  first. Discovering she was a socialator excited him even more. He had

  heard about socialators, and often wondered about their arcane---some

  said even metaphysical---abilities. If things settled down, and he could

  shake the weariness that his incessant duties had brought him, it might

  be fun to take the glamorous Cassiopeia out. Athena, of course, would be

  angry. Lately, the commander's daughter had been laying claims of

  ownership on him, and he didn't like that. Let her be angry; it'd be a

  good lesson for her.

  In the command cabin, Starbuck noticed that Apollo seemed unusually