Heavy Time

CHAPTER 1

IT was a lonely place, this remote deep of the Belt, a place where, if things went wrong, they went seriously wrong. And the loneliest sound of all was that thin, slow beep that meant a ship in distress.

It showed up sometimes, sometimes missed its beat, “She’s rolling,” Ben said when he first heard it, but Morrie Bird thought: Tumbling; and when Ben had plugged in the likely config of the object and asked the computer, that was what it said. It said it in numbers. Bird saw it in his mind. You spent thirty years tagging rocks and listening to the thin numerical voices of tags and beacons and faint, far ships, and you knew things like that. You could just about figure the pattern before the computer built it.

“Got to be dead,” Ben Pollard said. Ben’s face had that sharp, eager look it got when Ben was calculating something he especially wanted.

Nervous man, Ben Pollard. Twenty-four and hungry, a Belter kid only two years out of ASTEX Institute when he’d come to Bird with a 20 k check in hand—no easy trick, give or take his mother’s insurance must have paid his keep and his schooling. Ben had bought in on Trinidad’s outfitting and signed on as his numbers man; and in a day when a lot of the new help had a bad case of the Attitudes and expected something for nothing, damned if Ben didn’t wear an old man out with his One More Try and his: Bird, I Got an Angle—

Regarding this distress signal it wasn’t hard at all to figure Ben’s personal numbers. Ben was asking himself the same questions an old man was asking at the bottom of his mortgaged soul: How far is it? Who’s in trouble out there? Are they alive? And… What’s the law on salvage?

So they called Base and told Mama they had a Mayday, had she heard?

Base hadn’t heard it. That was moderately odd. Geosyncs over the Well hadn’t heard it and ECSAA insystem hadn’t picked it out of all the beeps and echoes of tags and ships in the Belt. Base took a while to think, approved a course and dumped them new sector charts, with which Mama was exceedingly stingy: Mama said Cleared for radio use, and: Proceed With Caution. Good luck, Two Twenty-nine Tango.

Spooky, that Base hadn’t heard that signal—that she claimed that was a vacant sector. So somebody was way off course. You lay awake and thought of all the names you knew, people who could be out here right now—good friends among them; and you asked yourself what could have happened and when. Rocks could echo a signal. Lost ships could get very lost. That transmitter should be the standard 5 watts, but a dying one could trick you—and, committed, boosted up to a truly scary v, about which you could also have second thoughts, you had a lot of things on your mind.

The rule was that Base kept track of everything that moved out here. If your radio died you Maydayed on your emergency beeper and you waited til Mama gave you clear instructions how she was going to get you out of it—you didn’t expect anybody to come in after you. Nowadays nobody went any damn where out of his assigned sector without Mama confirming course and nobody used a radio for long-distance chatter with friends. You get lost in the dark, spacer-kids, you go strictly by the regulations and you yell for Mama’s attention.

That ghosty signal was doing that, all right, but Mama hadn’t heard… and by all rights she should have. Mama said it could be a real weak signal—they were running calculations on the dopplering to try to figure it… Mama claimed she didn’t hear it except with their relay, and that argued for close.

Or, Mama said, her reception could have a technical problem, which at a wild guess meant some glitch in the software on the big dishes, but Mama didn’t talk about things like that with miners.

Mama didn’t talk about a lot else with poor sod miners.

“You remember those jackers?” Ben asked, waking up in the middle of Bird’s watch.

“Yep,” Bird said, working maintenance on a servo motor; he tightened a screw and added, then: “I knew Karl Nouri.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Only twenty years back. Hell, I drank with him. Nice guy. Him and his partner.”

That got Ben, for sure. Ben slid back into his g-1 spinner and started it up again. But after a while Ben stopped, got out, hauled on his stimsuit and his coveralls and had breakfast, unshaven and shadow-eyed.

A man felt ashamed of himself, disturbing the young fellow’s rest.

But the remembrance of Nouri went on to upset Bird’s sleep too.

No one was currently hijacking in the Belt—the company had wiped out Nouri and his partners, blown two of them to the hell they’d deserved, luring help in with a fake distress signal, killing crews, stripping logs for valuable finds and ships for usable parts—

Nouri’s operation had worked, for a while—until people got suspicious and started asking how Nouri and his friends were so lucky, always coming in with a find, their equipment never breaking down, their ships real light on the fuel use.

Careful maintenance, Nouri had insisted. They did their own. They were good at their work.

But a suspicious company cop had checked part numbers on Nouri’s ship and found a condenser, Bird recollected, a damn 50-dollar condenser, with a serial number that traced it to poor Wally Leavitt’s ship.

They’d shipped Nouri and five of his alleged partners back to trial on Earth, was what they said, company rules, though there’d been a good many would have seen Nouri himself take a walk above the Well.

But worse than the fear in the deep Belt in those days, was the way everybody had looked at everybody else back at Base, thinking: Are you one of Them? or… Do you think Z could be?

One thing Belters still argued about was whether Jidda Pratt and Dave Marks had been guilty with the rest.

But the company had said they were. The company claimed they had solid evidence, and wrote down personable young Pratt and Marks in the same book as Nouri.

After that, hell, freerunning miners and tenders hadn’t any rights. The company had never liked dealing with the independents in the first place: the company had made things increasingly difficult for independent operators once it had gotten its use from them, and the Nouri affair had been the turning point. No more wildcatting. Nowadays you documented every sneeze, you told Big Mama exactly what you’d found with your assay, they metal-scanned you when you went through customs, and you kept meticulous log records in case you got accused of Misconduct, let alone, God help you, Illicit Operations or Illicit Trading. If you helped out a buddy, if you traded a battery or a tag or a transponder back at Base, you logged the date and the time and you filled out the forms, damn right you did: you asked your buddy to sign for a 50-cent clip, if it had a serial number on it, and the running unfunny joke was that the company was trying to think up a special form for exchange of toilet paper.

Nowadays it was illegal to keep your sector charts once you’d docked: Mama’s agents came aboard and wiped your mag storage, customs could strip-search you for contraband datacards if it took the notion, and you didn’t get any choice about the sector you drew when you went out again, either—’drivers moved, by the nature of what they were, you had mandated heavy time, no exceptions, and Mama didn’t send you to anything near the same area. It was illegal to hail a neighbor on a run. You spent three months breathing each other’s sweat, two guys in a crew space five meters long and three meters at the widest, so tight and so lonely you could hear each other’s thoughts echo off the walls, but if one freerunner tried to call another a sector away from him, he and his partner went up on Illegal Trading charges faster than he could think about it, it being illegal now to trade tips even with no money or equipment changing hands: the company reserved the right to that information, claiming miners had sold it that data and it had a proprietary right to assign it to interests of its own—meaning the company-owned miners: to no one’s great surprise the courts had sided with the company. So it was also, by the company’s interpretation of that ruling, illegal to hail another ship and share a bottle or trade foodstuffs or any of the other friendly deals the Nouri crackdown had put a stop to.

So when they’d advised Base they wanted to move out of their assigned sector on a possible ship in distress, Mama had taken a nervous long time about giving them that permission. BM—Belt Management—was a sullen bitch at best, and you never tried to tell Mama you were doing something purely Al-truistic. Mama didn’t, in principle, believe that, no’m. Mama was suspicious and Mama took time to check the records of one Morris Bird and Benjamin Pollard and the miner ship Trinidad to find out if Trinidad or either of her present crew had demonstrated any odd behaviors or made any odd investments in the recent past.

They could use their radio meanwhile to talk to the beep. Mama would permit that.

And evidently Mama finally believed what they heard—a ’driver ship fire-path crossed the charts she sent, which might well explain an accident out there, and that could make a body a little less anxious to go chasing that signal, but it seemed a little late now to beg off: they had the charts, they’d seen the situation, they couldn’t back down with lives at stake, and Mama had set all the machinery in motion to have them check It out.

Right.

Mama couldn’t do a thing for them if it did turn out to be some kind of trouble. Mama had indicated she had no information to give them on anybody overdue or off course, and that was damned odd. The natural next thought was the military—they asked Mama about that, but Mama just said Negative from Fleet Command.

Meanwhile that beep went on.

So Mama redirected a beam off the R2-8 relay, boosted them up along what Mama’s charts assured them was a good safe course, and they chased the signal with the new charts Mama fed them, using the ’scope on all sides for rocks or non-rocks along the way—there was a good reward if you could prove a flaw in Mama’s charts; if you had the charts legally, then you could work on them: that was the Rule.

At this speed you just prayed God the flaw didn’t turn up directly in your path.

But as sectors went it was the Big Empty out here, nothing but a couple of company tags and one freerunner’s for a long, long trip. Mama’s charts were stultifyingly accurate… except the source of the beep, which seemed to be a weak signal. That was Mama’s considered current opinion.

Meaning it was close.

Fourteen nervous days of this, all the while knowing you could make a big, bright fireball with depressingly little warning.

Naturally in the middle of supper/breakfast and shift change, the radar finally went blip! on something not on its chart, and Bird scalded himself with coffee.

The blip, when they saw it on the scope, did match the signal source.

“Advise Mama?” Ben said.

Bird bit his lip, thinking about lives, Mama’s notoriously slow decisions, and mulling over the regulations that might apply. “Let’s just get the optics fined down. No, we got no real news yet. We’re doing what Mama told us to do. Looks like we can brake without her help. No great differential. And I seriously don’t want Mama’s advice while we’re working that mother. That’s going to be a bitch as is.”

“You got it,” Ben said with a nervous little exhalation. Ben set his fingers on the keys and started figuring.

“Looks like it caught a rock,” Bird said, pointing out that deep shadow in the middle of what ought to be the number one external tank.

“Looks.” Ben had been cheerful ever since optics had confirmed the shape as a miner craft. “Sure doesn’t look healthy.”

“It sure doesn’t look good. Let’s try for another still, see if we can process up a serial number on that poor sod.”

“You got it,” Ben said.

They crept up on it. They put a steady hail on ship-to-ship—having that permission—and kept getting nothing but that tumble-modulated beep.

It was no pretty picture when they finally had it lit up in their spots.

“One hell of an impact,” Ben muttered. “Maybe a high-v rock.”

“Could be. God, both tanks are blown, right there, see? That one’s got it right along the side.”

“Those guys had no luck.”

“Sudden. Bad angle. Lot of g’s.”

“Bash on one side. Explosion on the other. Maybe it threw them into a rock.”

“Dunno. Either one alone—God help ’em—maybe 10 real sudden g’s.”

“Real sudden acquaintance with the bulkhead. Rearrange your face real good.”

“Wouldn’t know what hit ’em.”

“Suppose that ’driver did bump a pebble out?”

“Could be. Cosmic bad luck, in all this empty. Talk about having your name on it. What do they say the odds are?”

“Hundred percent for these guys.”

Another image capture. White glared across the cameras, a blur of reflected light, painted serial designation.

“Shit, that’s a One’er number! One’er Eighty-four Zebra…”

Not from their Base. Outside their zone. Strangers from across the line.

The tumble carried the lock access toward their lights. Bird said, “Hatch looks all right.”

“You got no notion to be going in there.”

“Yep.”

“Bird, love of God, there’s no answer.”

“Maybe their receiver’s out. Maybe they lost their radio altogether. Maybe they’re too banged up to answer.”

“Maybe they’re dead. You don’t need to go in there!”

“Yep. But I’m going to.”

“I’m not.”

“Salvage rights, Ben-me-lad. I thought we were partners.”

“Shit.”

It was a routine operation for a miner to stop a spin: and most rocks did tumble—but the tumble of a spindle-shaped object their own size and, except the ruptured tanks, their own mass, was one real touchy bitch.

It was out with the arm and the brusher, and just keep contacting the thing til you got one and the other motion off it, while the gyros handled the yaw and the pitch—bleeding money with every burst of the jets. But you did this uncounted times for thirty-odd years, and you learned a certain touch. A trailing cable whacked them and scared Ben to hell, and it was a long sweaty time later before they had the motion off the thing, a longer time yet til they had the white bullseye beside the stranger’s hatch centered in their docking sight.

But after all the difficulty before, it was a gentle touch.

Grapples clicked and banged.

“That’s it,” Bird said. “That’s got it.”

A long breath. Ben said reverently: “She’s ours.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Hell, she’s salvage!”

“Right behind the bank.”

“Uh-uh. Even if it’s pure company we got a 50/50 split.”

“Unless somebody’s still in control over there.”

“Well, hell, somebody sure doesn’t look it.”

“Won’t know til we check it out, will we?”

“Come on, Bird,—shit, we don’t have to go in there, do we? This is damn stupid.”

“Yep. And yep.” Bird unbelted, shoved himself gently out of his station, touched a toe on the turn-pad and sailed back to the locker. “Coming?”

Ben sullenly undipped and drifted over, while Bird hauled the suits out and started dressing.

Ben kept bitching under his breath. Bird concentrated on his equipment. Bird always concentrated on his equipment, not where he was going, not the unpleasant thing he was likely to find the other side of that airlock.

And most of all he didn’t let himself think what the salvage would bring on the market.

“Five on ten she’s a dead ship,” Ben said. “Bets?”

“Could’ve knocked their transmission out. Could be a whole lot of things, Ben, just put a small hold on that enthusiasm. Don’t go spending any money before it’s ours.”

“It’s going to be a damn mess in there. God knows how old it is. It could even be one of the Nouri wrecks.”

“The transmitter’s still going.”

“Transmitters can go that long.”

“Not if the lifesupport’s drawing. Six months tops. Besides, power cells and fuel were what Nouri stripped for sure.”

Ben’s helmet drifted between them. Ben snagged it. “I’m taking the pry-bar. We’re going to need it getting in. Lay you bets?”

Bird picked his helmet out of the air beside him and put it on: smell of old plastics and disinfectant. Smell of a lot of hours and a lot of nasty cold moments.

This might be the start of one, the two of them squeezing into the wider than deep airlock, which was claustrophobic enough for the one occupant it was designed for.

It truly didn’t make sense, maybe, insisting both of them get rigged up. It might even be dangerous, putting shut locks between them both and operable systems; but you chased a ghost signal through the Belt for days on end, you had nightmares about some poor lost sods you’d no idea who, and you remembered all your own close calls—well, then, you had to see it with your own eyes to exorcise your ghosts. If you were going to be telling it to your friends back at Base (and you would), then you wanted the feel of it and you wanted your partner able to swear to it.

Most of all, maybe you got a little nervous when your partner started getting that excited about money and insisting they owned that ship.

Most especially since Nouri and the crackdown, and since the company had gotten so nitpicking touchy—you wanted witnesses able to swear in court what you’d touched and what you’d done aboard somebody else’s ship.

Bird shut the inside hatch and pushed the buttons that started the lock cycling. The red light came on, saying DEPRESSURIZATION, and the readout started spieling down toward zero.

“Sal-vage,” Ben said, tinny-sounding over the suit-com. “Maybe she’ll still pitch, do you think? If those tanks are the most of the damage, hell, they’re cans, is all. Can’t be that expensive. We could put a mortgage on her, fix her up—the bank’ll take a fixable ship for collateral, what do you think?”

“I think we better pay attention to where we are. We got one accident here, let’s not make it two.”

The readout said PRESSURE EQUALIZED. Ben was doing this anxious little bounce with his foot braced, back and forth between the two walls of the lock. But you never rushed opening. Oxygen cost. Water cost. Out here, even with all the working machinery aboard, heat cost. You treated those pumps and those seals like they were made of gold, and while the safety interlocks might take almost-zero for an answer and let you open on override, it was money flowing out when you did. You remembered it when you saw your bills at next servicing, damn right, you did.

The readout ticked down past 5 mb toward hard vacuum, close as the compressor could send it. Ben pushed the OUTER HATCH OPEN button, the lock unsealed and retracted the doors and showed them the scarred, dust-darkened face of the opposing lock. The derelict’s inside pressure gauge was dusted over. Bird cleared it with his glove. “760 mb. She’s up full. At least it didn’t hole her.”

Ben banged soundlessly on the hatch with the steel bar and put his helmet up against the door.

“Nada,” Ben said. “Dead in there, Bird, I’m telling you.”

“We’ll see.” Bird borrowed the bar and pried up the safety cover on the External Access handle.

No action. No power in the ship’s auxiliary systems.

“No luck for them,” Ben said cheerfully. “Pure dead.”

Bird jimmied the derelict’s external leech panel open. “Get ours, will you?”

“Oh, shit, Bird.”

“Nerves?”

Ben didn’t answer. Ben shoved off to their own lock wall to haul the leech cord out of its housing. It snaked in the light as he drifted back. Bird caught the collared plug and pushed it into the derelict’s leech socket. The hull bumped and vibrated under his glove. “She’s working,” he said.

“Sal-vage,” Ben said, on hissed breaths.

“Don’t spend it yet.”

Rhythmic hiss of breath over suit-coms, while the metal vibrated with the pump inside. “Hey, Bird. What’s a whole ship worth?”

A man tried to be sane and sensible. A man tried to think about the poor sods inside, an honest man broke off his prospecting and ran long, expensive risky days for a will-of-the-wisp signal, and tried to concentrate on saving lives, not on how much metal was in this ship or whether she was sound, or how a second ship would set him and Ben up for life. The waiting list for leases at Refinery Two meant no ship sat idle longer than its servicing required.

“130 mb. 70. 30. 10.” The pressure gauge ticked down. The vibration under his hand changed. The valves parted.

Ice crystals spun and twinkled in front of them, against the sullen glow of borrowed power. Ice formed and glistened on the inner lock surfaces—moisture where it didn’t belong.

“Doesn’t look prosperous,” Ben said.

Bird pushed with his toe, caught a handhold next to the inner valves. His glove skidded on ice. Ben arrived beside him, said, “Clear,” and Bird hit the HATCH CLOSE toggle.

“Going to be slow.” He looked high in the faceplate for the 360° view, watching the derelict’s outer doors labor shut at their backs.

“You sure about that battery?” Ben asked.

Bird hit CYCLE 2. The pumps vibrated. “Hell of a time to ask.”

“Are you sure?”

“Thirty years at this, damn right I checked.—Whoa, there.”

The HUD in the faceplate suddenly showed a yellow flasher and a dataflow glowing green. The one on the airlock wall glowed a sullen red.

“CONTAMINANTS.” Ben let go a shaky hiss of pent breath. “It’s not going to be pretty in there.—Bird, do we have to go through with this? There’s nothing alive inside.”

“We’re already there. Can you sleep without knowing?”

“Damn right I’ll sleep, I’ll sleep just fine.—I don’t want to see this, Bird. Why in hell do I got to see this?”

“Hey, we all end up the same. Carbon and nitrogen, a lot of H₂O…”

“Cut it out, Bird!”

“Earth to earth. Dust to dust.” The indicators said 740/741 mb. and PRESSURE EQUALIZED. “Lousy compressor,” Bird said, pushed the INNER HATCH OPEN button. Air whistled, rushing past the pressure differential and an uneven seal. The doors ground slowly back. External audio heard it. 10° C, his HUD said about the ambient. Not quite balmy. “Heater’s going down. Heater’s always next to last.—You do know what’s last, don’t you, Ben-me-lad?”

“The damn beeper.” Ben’s teeth were chattering—nothing wrong with Ben’s suit heater, Bird was sure. Ben’s breath hissed raggedly over the suit-com. “So Mama can find the salvage. Only this time we got it, Bird, come on, I don’t like this. What if that leech pulls out?”

“Plug won’t pull out.”

“Hell, Bird!”

Inner doors labored to halfway open. Bird caught the door edge and shoved himself and his backpack through into the faintly lit inside.

A helmetless hardsuit, trailing cables and hose, drifted slowly in front of them, spinning in a loose, cocoon of its attachments. A cable went from its battery pack to the panel, last sad resort: the occupants had had time to know they were in trouble, time to drain the main batteries and the leech unit, and finally resort to this one.

Bits and pieces of gear drifted in the dimmed light, sparked bright in their suit-spots, cords, clips—everything a tumble could knock free. Fluids made small moons and planets.

“Mess,” Ben’s voice said. “Isn’t it?”

Bird caught the hose, tugged gently to pull the suit out of his way, and checked the suit locker. “One suit’s missing.”

“I’m cutting that damn beeper,” Ben said. “All right?”

“Fine by me.”

Stuff everywhere. Cables. A small meteor swarm of utility clips flashed in the light. Globules of fluid shone both oily-dark and amber. A sweater and a single slipper danced and turned in unison like a ghost.

“Lifesupport’s flat gone,” Ben said. A locker banged in the external audio, while Bird was checking the spinner cylinders for occupants. Empty. Likewise the shower.

A power cell floated past. Dead spare, one from the lock, one guessed.

A globule of fluid impacted Bird’s visor, leaving a chain of dark red beads.

“Come on, Bird. Let’s seal up. Let’s get out of here. They’re gone. Dead ship, that’s all. Don’t ask what this slop is that’s floating. The ’cyclers are shot.”

Drifting hose. More clips. A lump of blankets under the number two workstation, spotted in Bird’s chest-light. “Looks like here’s one of them,” Bird said.

“God! Let it be! Bird!”

“Carbon and water. Just carbon and water.” Bird held the counter edge and snagged the blanket.

The body drifted past the chair, rolled free as the blanket floated on to dance with the sweater.

Young man in filthy coveralls. Straight dark hair and loose limbs drifted in the slow spin the turnout gave him.

Not much beard.

Bird caught a sleeve, stopped the spin, saw a dirty face, shut eyes, open mouth. Dehydration shrank the skin, cracked the lips.

“Don’t touch him!” Ben objected. “God, don’t touch him!”

“Beard’s been shaved, maybe three days.”

“God knows how long ago—he’s dead, Bird. That’s a dead body.”

Bird nudged the chin-lever over to sensor array, said, “Left. Hand.”

The hud showed far warmer than the 10° ambient.

Pliable flesh.

“Isn’t a body, Ben. This guy’s alive.”

“Shit,” Ben said. Then: “But he’s not in control of this ship. Is he?”

Long, long door closing, with an unconscious man crowding them three to the lock, and the underpowered motors going slow and threatening breakdown. Then they could Mode 2 Override their own airlock, mixing air supplies and keeping pressure up for their passenger’s sake. “Go ahead and seal it behind us,” Bird said. “Keep it just the way it was, in case Mama asks questions.”

“God, we got a contaminants flashing in our lock now. Why the hell don’t we have a transfer bag? God, this guy’s all over crud.”

“We’ll think of that next time. Come on, come on. Do it.”

Ben swore, made the numbingly slow seal of the wreck’s doors, then pulled their leech free and hit hatch close on their own panel, sending One’er Eighty-four Zebra toward an electronic sleep, still docked with them, her last battery on the edge of failure.

“Man was a total fool,” Ben muttered. “He should’ve hooked the ship in to feed that suit, not the other way around. Should have let her go all the way down.”

“Would’ve made sense,” Bird said.

“So where’s the partner?”

“God only. Push cycle. I can’t reach it.”

Ben got an arm past him and the rescuee and hit the requisite button. Their own compressor started, solid and fast, a healthy vibration under the decking.

Then the whole chamber went red and a blinking white light on the panel said internal contaminant alert.

“Shit,” Ben groaned.

“You got that right.”

“Bad joke, Bird. That stuff got past the filters!”

“Just override. Tell it we’re sorry, we can’t help it.”

Ben was already punching at the button. Ben said, “We don’t need any damn corpse fouling up our air, howsoever long he takes to get that way.—God, Bird, we own that ship!”

“Just let’s not worry about it here.” Bird felt the slight movement in his arms. Hugged the man tight, thinking, Poor sod. Hold on. Hold on awhile. We got you. You’re all right. He said to Ben, “He’s moving.”

Ben drew an audible breath. “You know, we could put him back in there. Who’s to know?”

“Bad joke, Ben.” The pressure equalized lit up. “Hatch button. Come on, give me a hand, huh? I can’t turn around.”

“We can’t damn well afford this!” Ben said. “We’re into the bank as far as—”

“Ben, for God’s sake, just punch the damn button!”

Ben punched it. The hatch opened, relieved the pressure at Bird’s back, gave him room to turn and haul their rescuee inside. He carefully let the man go and let him drift while he sailed back into the lock and secured the leech into its housing. Then he drifted back through and shut the inside hatch.

Ben was lifting his helmet off—Ben was making a disgusted face and swearing. Their air quality alarm had the warning siren going and the overhead lights flashing—it was that bad. Ben grabbed their guest by the collar and started peeling him out of his clothes.

Bird got his own helmet off and let it float, stripped off his gloves and helped Ben peel the unconscious man to the skin, trying not to breathe, bunching the coveralls and stimsuit continually as they peeled them off, trying not to let them touch the air. He hesitated whether to go for a containment bag or shove them in the washer and maybe foul the cleaning fluid for the rest of the trip. The washer was closer. He crammed them in, slippers and all, levered the small door shut and pushed the button. The stench clung to his bare hands. His suit was splotched with yellow and red stains.

He heard a faint voice not Ben’s, protesting incoherently, turned and saw Ben pulling the shower door open, the young man trying to resist Ben’s pulling him around. Ben pushed the man inside and pulled the door to—a knee was in the way and Ben shoved it, while their uninvited passenger, drifting behind clear plastic, slammed a weak fist against the clear plex door.

“Be a little damn careful, Ben.”

Ben pulled the outside seal lever down, flung up the service panel beside the door, pushed the Test Cycle button, holding the shower door shut the while. The shower started. Their guest slammed the door with his fist again, drifted back against the wall as the water hit him.

“What’s the water temp?”

“Whatever you left it.”

“I don’t remember what I left it.—Cut it, Ben, he’s passed out.”

“He’s all right, dammit! We’ve spent enough on this fool, I’m not living with that stink! It’s my money too, Bird, in case you forget! It’s my money right along with yours we spent running after this guy, it’s my money pays for those filters, and that smell makes me sick to my stomach, Bird!”

“All right, all right. Take it easy.”

“It’s all over us!”

“Ben,—shut up. Just shut up. Hear me?”

The air quality siren was still going. It was enough to drive a man crazy. They were having a zero run, hardly anything in the sling. They’d spent nerve-wracking hours getting the ship linked and now Ben had gotten so close to money he could taste it. Ben got a little breath, looked as if control was still coming hard for him, as if he was somewhere between breaking down and breaking something.

Bird shoved over to the lifesupport control panel and cut the siren. The silence after was deafening. Just the shower going and their own hard breathing.

Ben was a hard worker, sometimes too hard. Bird told himself that, told himself Ben was a damned fine partner, and the Belt was lonely and tempers got raw. Two men jammed into a five by three can for months on end had to give each other room—had to, that was all.

Ben said, thin-lipped, but sanely, “Bird, we got to wipe down these suits. We have to get this stink off. It’s going to break down our filters, dammit.”

“It won’t break down our filters,” Bird assured him quietly, but he went and got the case of towel wipes out of the locker. The shower entered its drying cycle. The guy was floating there, eyes shut, maybe resting, maybe unconscious. Bird reached for the door.

Ben held the latch down and pushed the Test Cycle a second time.

“Ben,” Bird protested, “Ben, for God’s sake, the guy’s had enough. Are you trying to drown him?”

“I won’t live with that stink!”

The man—kid, really, he looked younger than Ben was—had drifted against the shower wall and hung there. He was moving again, however feebly—and maybe it was cowardly not to insist Ben listen to reason, but a small ship was nowhere to have a fight start, over what was likely doing the kid no harm, and maybe some good. You could breathe the mist, you could drink the detergent straight and not suffer from it. Dehydrated as he was, he could do with a little clean water; and cold as he’d been, maybe it was a fast way to warm him through.

So he said, “All right, all right, Ben,” and opened the box of disinfectant towels, wiped his hands and chest and arms and worked down.

“I can still smell it,” Ben said in a shaky voice, wiping his own suit off. “Even after you scrub it I can still smell it.”

“That’s just the disinfectant.”

“Hell if it is.”

Ben was not doing well, Bird thought. He had insisted Ben go over there with him and maybe that had been a mistake: Ben wasn’t far into his twenties himself; and Ben might never have been in a truly lonely, scary situation in his whole stationbound life. Ben had spooked himself about this business for days, with all this talk about hijackers.

On the other hand maybe an old dirtsider from Earth and a Belter brat four years out of school weren’t ever going to understand each other on all levels.

They shed the suits. They’d used up three quarters of their supply of wipes. “Just as well our guy stays in the shower,” Bird said, now that he thought calmly about it, “until we have something to put him in. His clothes’ll be dry in a bit.” He cycled the shower again himself, stowed his suit and floated over to the dryer as it finished its cycle. The clothes were a little damp about the seams, and smelled of disinfectant: the dryer’s humidity sensor needed replacing, among a dozen other things at the bottom of his roundtoit list. He read the stenciled tag on the coveralls. “Our guy’s got a name. Tag says Dekker. P.”

“That’s fine. So he’s got a name. What happened to his partner, that’s what I want to know.”

Maybe that was after all what was bothering Ben—too many stories about Nouri and the hijackers.

“He wasn’t doing so well himself, was he?” Dekker, P was drifting in the shower compartment, occasionally moving, not much. Bird opened the door, without interference from Ben this time, and said, quietly, before he took the man’s arm: “Dekker, my name’s Bird, Morrie Bird. My partner’s Ben. You’re all right. We’re going to get you dressed now. Don’t want you to chill.”

Dekker half opened his eyes, maybe at the cold air, maybe at the voice. He jerked his arm when Bird pulled him toward the outside. “Cory?” he asked. And in panic, bracing a knee and a hand against the shower door rim: “Cory?”

“Watch him!” Ben cried; but it was Ben who caught a loose backhand in the face. Dekker jabbed with his elbow on the recoil, made a move to shove past them, but he had nothing left, neither leverage nor strength. Bird blocked his escape and threw an arm around him, after which Dekker seemed to gray out, all but limp, saying, “Cory…”

“Must be the partner,” Bird said.

“God only. I want a shower, Bird.” Ben snatched the half-dry coveralls from him and grabbed Dekker’s arm. “Hell with the stimsuit, let’s just wrap this guy up before he bashes a panel or something.”

“Just hold on to him,” Bird said. Bird caught the stimsuit that was drifting nearby, shook the elastic out, got the legs and sleeves untangled and got hold of Dekker’s arm. “Left leg, come on, son. Clean clothes. Come on, give us some help here. Left leg.”

Dekker tried to help, then, much as a man could who kept passing out on them. His skin had been heated from the shower. It was rapidly cooling in the cabin air and Ben was right: it was hard enough to get a stimsuit on oneself, nearly impossible to put one on a fainting man. He was chilling too fast. They gave that up. By the time they got him into the coveralls and zipped him up he was moving only feebly, half-conscious.

“Not doing real well, is he?” Ben said. “Damn waste of effort. The guy’s going to sign off—”

“He’s all right,” Bird said, “God, Ben, mind your mouth.”

“I just want my bath. Let’s just get this guy to bed, all right? We get a shower, we call Mama and tell her we got ourselves a ship!”

“Shut up about the ship, Ben.”

A long, careful breath. “Look, I’m tired, you’re tired, let’s just forget it til we get squared away, all right?”

“All right.” Bird shoved off in a temper of his own, drifted toward the spinner cylinders overhead, taking Dekker with him—carefully turned and caught a hold, pulling Dekker toward the open end. “Come on, son, we’re putting you to bed, easy does it.”

Dekker said, “Cory,—”

“Cory’s your partner?”

Dekker’s eyes opened, hazed and vague. Dekker grabbed the spinner rim, shaking his head, refusing to be put inside.

“Dekker? What happened to you, son?”

“Cory,—” Dekker said, and shoved. “I don’t want to. No!”

Ben sailed up, grabbed Dekker’s collar on the way and carried him half into the cylinder, Dekker fighting and kicking. Bird rolled and pushed off, got Dekker by a leg, Dekker screaming for Cory all the while and fighting them.

“Hold on to him!” Ben said, and Bird did that, holding Dekker from behind until Ben could unhook a safety tether from the bulkhead, held on while Ben sailed back to grab Dekker’s arm and tie it to a pipe.

“Damn crazy,” Ben said, panting. “Just keep him there. I’ll get another line.”

“That’s rough, Ben.”

“Rougher on all of us if this fool hits the panels. Just hold him, dammit!”

Ben somersaulted off to the supply lockers, while Bird caught his breath and kept Dekker’s free arm pinned, patting his shoulder, saying, “It’s all right, son, it’s all right, we’re trying to get you home. My name’s Bird. That’s Ben. What do you go by?”

Several shallow breaths. Struggles turned to shivers. “Dek.”

“That’s good.” He patted Dekker’s shoulder. Dekker’s eyes were open but Bird was far from sure Dekker knew where he was or what had happened to him. “Just hold on, son.” A locker door banged, forward. Ben came sailing up with a roll of tape.

“I’m not sure we need that,” Bird said. “Guy’s just a little spooked.”

Ben ignored him, grabbed Dekker’s other arm and began wrapping it to the pipe. “Guy’s totally off his head.” Dekker tried to kick him, Dekker kept saying, “My partner—where’s my partner?”

“Afraid there was an accident,” Bird said, holding Dekker’s shoulder. “Suit’s gone. We looked. There wasn’t anybody else on that ship.”

“No!”

“You remember what happened?”

Dekker shook his head, teeth chattering. “Cory.”

“Was Cory your partner?”

“Cory!”

“Shit,” Ben said, and shook Dekker, slapped his face gently. “Your partner’s dead, man. The suit was gone. You got picked up, my partner and I picked you up. Hear?”

It did no good. Dekker kept mumbling about Cory, and Ben said, “I’m going down after a shower. Or you can.”

“I’m scared we left somebody in that ship.”

“You didn’t leave anybody in that ship, dammit, Bird, we’re not opening that lock again!”

“I’m not that sure.”

“You looked, Bird, you looked. If there was a Cory he’s gone, that’s all. Suit and all. We’ve done all we can for this guy. We’ve spent days on this guy. We’ve spent our fuel on this guy, we’ve risked our necks for this guy—”

“His name’s Dekker.”

“His name’s Dekker or Cory or Buddha for all I care. He’s out of his head, we got nowhere safe to put him, we don’t know what happened to his partner, we don’t know why Mama doesn’t know him, and that worries me, Bird, it seriously does!”

It made sense. Everything Ben was saying made sense. The other suit was gone. They had searched the lockers and the spinners. There were no hiding places left. But nothing about this affair was making sense.

“Hear me?” Ben asked.

“All right, all right,” Bird said, “just go get your shower and let’s get our numbers comped. We have to call in. Have to. Regulations. We got to do this all by the book.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for him. You hear me, Bird? Don’t you even think about going back into that ship.”

“I won’t. I don’t. It’s all right.”

Ben looked at him distressedly, then rolled and kicked off for the shower.

Bird floated down to the galley beside it, opened the fridge and got a packet of Citrisal, lime, lemon, what the hell, it was all ghastly awful, but it had the trace elements and salts and simple sugars.

It was the best he knew to do for the man. He drifted over to Dekker, extracted the tube and held it to Dekker’s lips.

“Come on. Drink up. It’s the green stuff.”

Dekker took a sip, made a face, ducked his head aside.

“Come on. Another.”

Dekker shook his head.

Couldn’t blame him for that, Bird thought. And you damn sure didn’t want anybody sick at his stomach in null-g. He tested whether the cord and the tape were too tight, decided Dekker was all right for a while. “Well let you loose when your head clears. You’re all right. Hear me? We’re going to get you back to Base. Get you to the meds. Hear me?”

Dekker nodded slightly, eyes shut.

Exhausted, Bird decided. He gave the man a gentle pat on the shoulder and said, “Get some sleep. Ship’s stable now.”

Dekker muttered something. Agreement, Bird thought. He hoped so. He was shaky, exhausted, and he wished they were a hell of a lot closer to Base than they were.

The guy needed a hospital in the worst way. And that was a month away at least. Bad trip. And there was the investment of time and money this run was going to cost them. Half a year’s income, counting mandatory layouts.

Maybe Ben was right and they did have a legal claim on this wreck—Ben was a college boy, Ben knew the ins and outs of company law and all the loopholes—and maybe legally those were the rules, but Bird didn’t like thinking that way and he didn’t like the situation this run had put them in. If it was a company ship they had in tow and if it was the company itself they were going to be collecting their bills from—that was one thing; but the rig with its cheap equipment wasn’t spiff enough for a company ship. That meant it was a freerunner, and that meant it was some poor sod’s whole life, Dekker’s or somebody’s. Get their expenses back, yes, much as they could, but not rob some poor guy of everything he owned. That wasn’t something Bird wanted to think about.

But Ben could. And Ben scared him of a sudden. You worked with a guy two years in a little can like this and eventually you did think you knew him reasonably well, but God knew and experience had proved it more than once—it was lonely out here, it was a long way from civilization, and you could never realize what all a guy’s kinks were until something pushed the significant button.