A Trip To Tuanaki

Chapter 10

Mal lets out a string of curses. Alice is mostly interested in them because she hasn't heard this chain before. "It won't fit," he says angrily, throwing down his tools. "It's too big."

"It will too fit," she says firmly. "I know. I just tried it."

"Then why don't you do it, little Miss Know-it-all?"

"Because I'm not the one who needs to be taught how to pick locks," she says flippantly. "You're the one who asked for my help."

"And I expected help, not 'here's five seconds on how it works now try it'!"

"It's something you gotta learn by doing," Alice says irritatedly. "That's what I was trying to tell you. You need to—"

A knock on the cabin door interrupts them. "You both clothed?" Gunny calls through it.

"Come in, Gunny!" Mal calls out. She pushes the door open, but only gets a step into the cabin before getting caught up in staring blankly at the mess on Mal's desk.

Even Alice can't entirely blame her. They'd gone through a lot of locks before Alice found one that she deemed easy enough to Mal to start with — and even that one is giving him trouble. It's a simple four-pin fixture, one that took her a mere moment to pop, but Mal was having trouble understanding what to do. So Alice had offered to take apart one of the locks that was a bit more complicated, that they maybe wouldn't need to put back in working order, and she'd be able to explain better. So in addition to nearly a dozen locks of varying sizes in different piles, there's also all the bits and pieces that had originally made up the locking mechanism of Mal's sextant's case.

"What's going on here?" Gunny asks.

"I'm teaching Mal to pick locks!" Alice says proudly. "I could teach you, too, if you'd like."

"What're you starting him with?"

"A four pin Chessen. Why, you got something better?"

"Actually — yes. I've still got the two pin my sergeant taught me on. Hang on, let me go get it."

"See?" Alice tells Mal. "I told you we should've let her in on it. It's not like she's going to judge you for learning to pick locks."

"Oh, no, I'm never going to judge him for something like that," Gunny says, returning to the cabin with a small box under her arm. "I'm only going to judge you for not telling me what you were doing, having the door closed, and talking about things that could be easily construed as sexual."

Mal flushes. Alice grins. "I like you," she tells Gunny, who seems rather nonplussed by that development.

"The one flaw is that I can't get the lock out of the box. But it's easy enough to get open despite that."

Mal abandons the lock in his hands in favor of the box that Gunny hands to him. The locking mechanism on this one is much smaller, and Alice fishes around for a fine-enough pick before handing it over. Mal takes it gratefully and then gets to work.

"So, why'd you come in? Hoping to catch us in the act?" he asks.

"Actually, I just wanted to update you — we're at stable altitude, there aren't any clouds around, and Tuanaki is steadily slipping out of sight. You're sure of these coordinates, right?"

"I am," Mal says, still fiddling with the locked box. "I wouldn't follow them if I weren't."

"Yes, well. I'm not entirely convinced."

"And that's why you're not the captain," Mal says simply. He's still concentrating closely on the lock and then — with a soft click! — he gets it open. "Ta-da!" he says proudly, brandishing the unlocked box at Gunny.