They made an interesting pair, I had always thought – Rorcester the officer, quietly efficient with a good eye for detail, and Borheil the veteran with more fights to his name than most of the crew put together. They were an ideal pairing for watch, though, and I couldn’t fault Firus for putting them together -save for a little stubbornly persistent feeling that there was something not quite right about Borheil.

I exchanged salutes with Rorcester, handed him the duty log, and wearily headed back. Bertram said his goodbye and headed for his hammock, but I unclipped a half-cycle pen from my apron and headed down to the Sideline.

Pressure gauges, oil indicators and valve interlocks all went down on the clipboard, each giving me a tiny part of the overall health of the ship. I could see that charged steam pressure was up nearly five points, so the engineers had not been idle all this time.

I tucked everything back into my apron, gave the clipboard a once-over, and stepped out onto the bridge.