The Countess Krak's main purpose in this chapter, besides reinforcing Jettero Heller's heterosexuality, is going "Oooooooo!" at various wonders. She manages about one per page, so seven or eight total. Just in case anyone was wondering if Hubbard has improved at writing female characters since Chrissie.
Anyway, Krak and Heller are happy to see each other - Gris watches as they "hugged and rehugged" before making with the kissyface, and neither Heller or the Countess has any reaction to Gris' presence, so it looks like they're about to go at it right then and there. For his part, Gris is just standing there with no reaction. But Heller manages to pull himself away and clamps down on his excitement so he can show off his wonderful spaceship, and leads the Countess on a tour of Tug One.
From the control deck Heller takes her - and Gris - to the "eating salon," just big enough to handle eight people, which is still more than the five-crew vessel strictly needs. There's a captain's cabin, tiny but serviceable, as well as a small library, a "food-making area" stocked with the "essential machines," a laundry room, and three crewman's cabins each with a "three hundred and sixty degree swivel gravity bed," to say nothing of various storage closets and lockers.
So, uh... why is a tugboat outfitted with all this? In most cases they're used to maneuver larger vessels into harbors, yes? Yeah, there's oceangoing variants, but they're icebreakers or designed to pull barges. So why is this short-ranged little spaceship wasting space for a library and kitchen? Can the crew not be bothered to go back to the spacedock for supper or reading materials?
It gets better - all this was just the officer and crew area, which the Countess was mostly bored by but feigning interest for Heller's sake. Then the book's hero covers her eyes before opening another corridor to reveal a positively pimped-out section of spaceship. Solid silver covers most surfaces, except the floors, which are done with "Astobol tile, the famous imperishable woven rock like in the Emperor's palace," making them nigh-indestructible and soundproof, which helps with the engine noise.
Tile floors, made of rare stone. On a spaceship. This here's a luxury tugboat, biatches. The admiral who refitted this glorified dingy spent two million spacebux on it, and Hubbard's gonna show us every last cent.
This eye-searingly ostentatious section of the ship, secreted away from the vulgar quarters of common people, has its own "food makers" and "uniform makers" and "reprocessors," so there's no reason to mingle with the lower class. Everything's voice activated, from doors to lights to mood music, as seen when Heller shows off the spacious and luxurious dining room complete with couches and bookshelves and solid gold crockery and cutlery, and mirrors on the walls to create the illusion that the room goes on forever, and an automated light and music show, and everything is, above all else, "done in fantastic taste."
There's more. A huge bedroom with a large "gravity bed" and wood paneled walls carved with scenes of nymphs, which is almost enough to convince Heller and Krak to stop for some hot monkey lovin', but they press on. There's a gymnasium. A gym. On a tugboat. The ceiling is a little low, but it still has exercise machines that pop out of the walls, and a massage machine, and a dueling robot with a variety of murderous implements and holograms to complete the illusion that someone is trying to kill you. There's a bathroom that has simulated fish swimming across the walls and ceiling to give you something to look at while suffering the results of weeks of travel food.
Heller also mentions some "gravity simulation coils" under the gym's floors, which would cancel out any "gravity surges" from the tug's engines and prevent "space float." Which raises questions about artificial gravity, and why you'd need 360-degree space beds if you had it. I guess we'll have to see what happens when the damned thing finally takes off.
The last room shown off, up at the top of the tug's stern, is huge (again) and done in black woods and black leather furniture. It looks empty until Heller calls out "autumn forest," and suddenly it looks like they're in a forest during fall, complete with a gentle breeze and the scent of fields. So a holodeck. Heller takes the Countess (and Gris) through other seasons, and Krak tears up because he picked scenes from their homeworld of Manco, which she hasn't seen in years. Then he freaks Gris out by setting the totally-original-yet-identical-to-a-holodeck to a view of space.
"The vast, brutal violence of elemental force, the unimaginable distances, the cruel, lonely black of it," is just too much for Gris, and he quickly commands the computer to go back to the autumn glen. But nothing happens. All the voice-activated parts of the ship are set for Heller and Heller only, though there's room in the databanks for one or two more voices. Heller offers one to Krak, but when Gris demands his own voice key he just gets stared at.
And the chapter still isn't done. The better-than-a-holodeck doesn't just do nature scenes, but musical performances and games and such. This leads to a page or so of a musical number called "Lepertige Lady," and believe me when I say you aren't missing anything as I skip over it. The tour ends in quarters befitting a lady, with a wardrobe filled in silver or golden gowns, full of new clothes for the Countess. She races off to shower and change, while Gris is, of course, misera- hang on, actually he's angry here.
Gris accuses Heller of fooling around all day, to which the combat engineer replies "Well, Soltan, you did say that Spiteos was too uncomfortable." And the studio audience laughs and applauds as Gris slinks away, again foiled by the dashing hero of the story.
So, there you have it: Tug One, the most ridiculously overbuilt, luxurious tugboat ever engineered. A utilitarian vessel designed to help larger ships dock that warrants crew quarters and libraries and a gymnasium. Like putting a hot tub and hibachi grill in an X-Wing.
At any rate, it's nice to know that the book's characters won't be inconvenienced or anything by their trip to Earth. Sometimes astronauts have to deal with hours of boredom in cramped, uncomfortable vessels as they make their journeys into the unknown, but why have that when you could let your protagonists ride in the lap of luxury? The hell was NASA thinking when they left the marble floor and gold filigree off the space shuttle?
I'm sure all these sumptuous chambers will prove vital to Mission Earth's plot and be referenced numerous times in books to come.
Back to Chapter Seven
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