Arriving Frenzel

In which Bechimo acquires an Executive Officer.

The bit about the Compressed Info Package containing all the ship information that port needs to facilitate docking makes me think back to Pat Rin and Cheever arriving at McGee, and Cheever reminding Pat Rin to tell the port that the ship used an old-style protocol. I can’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t be sending a CIP themselves, since it’s implied here to be standard procedure, and I’d think that kind of information would be in the CIP. On the other hand, Cheever says it’s worth mentioning because otherwise the port personnel might make an incorrect assumption, and I can believe he was figuring that, having made the assumption, they might skim over the relevant bit of the CIP and see what they expected to see unless it was backed up by a verbal reminder.

It occurred to me to wonder, while Bechimo‘s crew were dealing with Frenzel traffic control, whether they’re making much use of Bechimo‘s special method of space travel. Then I remembered that the last two chapters have been headed some variation on “Between Jumps”, which suggests not. Several reasons for that come to mind; one is that Theo probably still doesn’t know enough about the method to trust it, and another is that they’ve been specifically hired to test out a route that will presumably be followed in future by ships that don’t have Bechimo‘s advantages, so they need to follow it in appropriate fashion to get good data. And, of course, arriving by mysterious means would run the risk of annoying and puzzling traffic control.