Sam Jones - C. J. Cherryh

Am G Am Em Now I met Sam Jones on a dockside night in a rundown Viking bar Am G Am G Am A kid of maybe fifteen years at that purely nowhere star. Am G Am Em He had no ship, he had no skills, no name or family, Am G Am G Am And he looked at me like a thirsty soul at a boundless, salty sea. Chorus (after every verse): C G Am For space is wide and good friends are too few. "Captain, take me with you. Captain, I'll work for free. I was spacer born and stranded here, dockside's not for me." Now that tale sure is an old one, some Stationer unwise Had slept up with some spacer love and got herself this prize. And the kid grows up all restless, and dreams of faring free, And stars and worlds and foreign docks, and things he'll never see. "A spacer's more than born," I said, "he's trained from infancy. And you--you've grown up Station side; boy, you're no use to me." Well, I saw him take that hope of his, and turn his face away. Not give up--no, he'd never quit--just try further down the way. "Hey, kid," I said, "You're stubborn. If you work with half that will Well, our engineer could use a hand; we've got a berth to fill." He stood there with that scowling look, as if he hadn't heard, And then the tears ran down his face, but he didn't say a word. No, he never was much for talking after we took him on board. "Yes, sir," "yes, ma'am," "no, sir," were all the words that he'd afford. Now, the engineer, Kate Meacham, well her eyes were going bad. She knew I knew, and that kid I sent drove old Kate raving mad. "Out!" she'd yell, and he'd lie low until old Kate got cool, Then back he'd go, and he'd do the scut while Kate would call him a fool. In time Kate's eyes got much worse, and every crewman knew. But Kate herself, well, her heart would stop on the day she left the crew. That close-mouthed kid would never talk, he just covered Kate's mistakes. "Kate," he'd say, "Check the number four," or "Kate, that's nine point eight." Now we made our rounds of the ports we used, from Halley's to Almar, And one jump all of our luck ran out at a little K-class star. We hit a rock, a vane went down, the ship went kiting through. No way to stop, and no damn thing that a rescue ship could do. "It's the number three bar," Kate Meacham said, "that's broken on that vane." "I'll send a man up," I said then, first hope I'd entertained. "No way," said Kate, "it's outside work, we can't fix that from here. And to pull that thing with a high-V charge is a job for the engineer." Now we rode in dust at three-quarters C with our shields all down and null. "Kate," I said, "it's hell out there, dust is chewing up our hull. It'll chew a hard suit faster still, ten minutes is all you'll last." "Die now or later," old Kate said, "I'll just work a little fast." Well old Kate put that hard suit on, she went out in the driving hail Of high-V gas that scoured our hull with a shriek like a banshee wail. Her voice came back so thin and weak that we could hardly hear: "I'm on it now, I'm at the vane, I've got the cover clear." And silence then, a long long while all drowned in static hiss. "Damn this thing, my faceplate's fogged, my sight's gone all to mist." "Kate," I said, "get back inside, someone else will go." But then I heard the aft lock work two levels down below. "Steady, Kate," said the kid's low voice, then while the minutes ran, "Easy, Kate, my suit's brand new, keep low as ever you can. I'll find the pins, you tell me how, and I'll get this bastard free." Kate's voice then; we listened hard, caught about one word in three. "Ten minutes gone," we heard Kate say, then we heard the kid's hard breath, "I got her--shove the other in, hold on for life and death." Said the kid, "My arm's gone numb, oh, that's it, now there, Kate, she's in. Get inside now, get out of here." He went to static then. "Boy, hang on," we heard Kate say, then we heard Kate Meacham swear. Quiet then, just the static hiss, and the stillness in the air. Ten minutes more, "Power up," I said, for we heard no sound back there. It_was_my_hand shoved the lever home and the power surged and flared. Our speed ebbed down and ebbed again as we turned for that K-class sun, But Kate and the kid went on together on the trip they'd both begun. Oh, half-blind Kate and young Sam Jones made a hell of an engineer. So turn down a glass for such as they, and thank God we're sitting here. Yes, space is wide, and good friends are too few.