Someone coughed, and then coughed louder. She pushed easily away from Zarco. "What do you want, Van Gar?"
"Sorry to bother you, but I thought you would be interested to know that I have disposed of the corpse now," Van Gar said through clenched teeth.
"Thank you, Van Gar," Drew said.
"I'll just go check on the others," Zarco swept off the bridge, giving Van Gar a heated look as he passed him.
Van Gar walked purposefully over to check a read-out which he then didn't even bother to look at.
"Don't think I'm trying to tell you what to do . . ." Van Gar started.
"I don't know why not, since that sentence is always followed by you doing just exactly that," Drew said.
"I was just going to say that if that was part of your plan to make him hate you, I'm pretty sure that it's not going to work."
"He kissed me," Drew said plainly.
"And a mighty battle you did put up," Van Gar hissed.
"How I choose to conduct business is up to me, Van Gar." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I think I know what I'm doing. I have a plan."
"I didn't know your plan included sleeping with Zarco!"
"Maybe I've changed my plans."
"What changed your mind, Drew? His tongue down your throat?"
"Maybe," Drew turned back to the screen, already tired of this argument, and not quite sure what they were arguing about. She frowned.
"That couldn't be right." She punched some buttons. "Damn!" She started walking off the bridge, and Van Gar followed.
"What is it?"
"According to the read-outs, the ship has sunk three feet since we hit."
They opened the hatch, and walked out.
"At least three feet," Van said.
"Van, look!" Van turned, and looked down the dune at where the Purple Cat had lain. It could no longer be seen.
"That doesn't make any sense. The Garbage Scow is twice as heavy."
"And spread out over ten times as much surface area. Still, at the rate it's sinking, it will be covered by morning."
Drew looked at Van Gar. "Life sucks! My beautiful Garbage Scow, doomed to sink into the sands of this stupid planet. I've only been here a few hours Van, and I already hate this place. It was a stupid plan. I wanted to be Queen of the Salvagers, now we're gonna wind up Hurtella food. Whatever the hell a Hurtella is."
"It's not your fault, Drew."
"Damn right it's not! If you had kept up with me the way you were supposed to none of this would have happened!"
He ignored her outburst, put his arm around her shoulders and pressed her hard against him. "You can fool everyone else, and tell them whatever you like, but I know you didn't decide to do this because of the money. You did it to find out who you are, and no one could blame you for that."
"What utter crap," Drew said in a not-very-convincing tone. "I wasn't lying. He really did kiss me first."
There was a long silence, and then Drew looked up at Van Gar and smiled sadistically.
"Of course, that's not to say I didn't enjoy it."
Van Gar laughed and pushed her down in the sand.
"There's a chance that we may be able to take all the thrusters apart and make one of them work."
"We can't take off with one thruster," Drew said standing up and trying to wipe the sand off of her jump suit.
"No, but we can keep the ship from getting buried in the sand long enough to figure out how to get out of here."
It didn't take them long to rebuild a thruster. Of course, clearing the sand out of the exhaust was another story. They took turns shoveling.
"This damn shit runs in the hole faster than we can shovel it out." Van Gar stopped for a minute leaning on his shovel. He tried to wipe the sand off of his stomach.
Drew smiled. "Why did you rip the Velcro off your jump suit?"
"Rats," he answered, and started digging again.
"I still don't get it." Drew laughed. "Maybe I should go in and get those Royal fucks to help us?"
"While you're at it, why don't you just get some fairies to wave their magic wand and just put the Scow back in orbit?"
"Want me to take over for awhile?" Drew asked.
"Nah. Why don't you do me a favor? I keep hearing something over on the other side of the ship. Maybe it's one of those creatures old what's his face was talking about."
"A Hurtella?"
"How come you can remember that, but you can't remember to clean the garbage chute?"
She ignored the question. "Fitz didn't say that they were hostile."
"Well, he didn't say they weren't. Just take the blaster and go check for me."
Drew got up and carefully dusted herself off. She picked up the blaster, and threw it over her shoulder. "Sissy little mama's boy," she yelled back.
Van Gar kept on shoveling. "Pain in the ass," he grumbled. "Stupid Royal fucks."
"Hey, Van!"
Van raised up so fast he hit his head on the bottom of the ship. He backed up against the wall of his pit and stared at the human in amazement.
"Tim?" Van asked, holding his shovel in front of him as if it would ward off evil spirits.
"Yeah," he coughed and spat out some sand.
"I must have fainted. Guess I don't handle stress well. How'd I wind up in the sand?"
Van hated to tell him he had thrown him away for dead. "Uh . . . Last I knew, you were sacked out on the bridge, guess you sleep-walked, dude."
The human shook his head as if the answer made perfect sense. "I woke up and the only thing sticking out was my nose. I had to dig myself out. It was a very frightening experience."
"I'm sure it was."
He was interrupted by the sound of blaster fire. He quickly climbed out of the hole and ran towards the noise, shovel in hand. About half-way round the ship he almost ran into Drew. She laughed at the sight of him.
"Better bring a shovel—make that ten shovels." She held up an armored creature about twelve inches long from tip to tail. "If you don't, the terrible Hurtella will get you for sure."
"Very funny, Drew. While you're fucking around, our hole, which we have been digging for about forty-five minutes, is filling with sand." He held a hand to his heart."One of these days you're going to give me a heart attack."
Drew smiled, threw the creature down, and followed him. "Do you care about me, Van?"
"Where the hell did that come from?" he asked doubling his pace.
"I've had a shit of a couple of days here Van. I'm feeling a little weird, indulge me."
"That's a stupid question, Drew," he said flatly.
"You know what I mean, Van."
"Would it matter if I did?" he asked, continuing his pace.
She ran to catch up with him and caught at his hand. "Now you're asking stupid questions."
"What's going to happen to us, Drew?"
"We'll be fine."
"I meant us?"
"I don't know, Van. It seems like yesterday our lives were all orderly."
Van shot her a look.
"Well, you know, like a dirty room, but you know where everything is—that kind of orderly."
"But don't you see, Drew? You didn't know where everything was. Now you do, and things are going to change. We don't know exactly how right now, but it's gottah change."
She tripped over the human on her way into the pit. "What the fuck?"
"Damn it, Tim." Van leaned down and slapped the human's face.
"Come on, Tim, snap out of it."
"I thought he was dead," Drew said.
"No. It seems that this really great navigator you got me goes to sleep if he gets scared."
"Oh, you're fucking kidding me!" Drew laughed.
"No, he walked up behind me right after you left, and like to scared the shit out of me. I told him he sleep-walked."
The human started to stir.
"The port's still clear. Let's go start the thruster before we have to dig it out again."
"Ten more minutes, mom," Tim mumbled as they pulled him to his feet.
"Come on, monkey boy," Van Gar pushed him forward. "Time to go home."
Someone screamed. Drew sat straight up in bed. From her cabin she could hear the conversation taking place in the hall outside her door."What's with her?" Tim asked.
"She's never seen such an ugly human before," Van Gar answered lightly.
Drew lay back down. Obviously, seeing a dead guy walking around the ship had startled Stasha.
"I'm surprised they didn't both faint," Drew muttered and buried her head deeper in her pillow. She heard the gentle humming of their one remaining thruster—all was well. She started to go back to sleep, then jerked to a sitting position again.
Well! Things were far from being well! Stuck in the middle of a desert belonging to the very people who had chewed up part of her brain and thrown it away. Yes, she had finally admitted to herself that she was one of them. It was confusing as hell to know who she was and have all these people tell her that she was someone else.
But all that was unimportant; at least for the moment. Their fuel would only last just so long, and then the ship would be buried in the sand. They were stuck in the middle of a desert, which from all the readouts was every bit as harsh as Fitz had indicated. She didn't have time to sleep. She got up and looked at the clock.
"Eight hours. Hell, my body will start to deteriorate with so much sleep."
She walked to the bathroom. A quick look in the mirror, and she decided she looked every bit as bad as she felt.
"Ick, it's the incredible Hurtella-faced woman, and her side-kick, hair of death."
She stuck out her tongue.
"Yuck, there's stuff growing there that remembers when the humans first gouged big holes in the galaxy."
She picked up the electric mouth scraper and spent five minutes cleaning the gross stuff out of her mouth. She stripped and got into the shower. She looked at the sand which gathered by the drain.
"I hate sand."
"So do I." Without further ado, Van Gar got in the shower with her.
"What the fuck are you doing?" She laughed.
"Would you believe conserving water? After all, there is a desert out there, and this is the only water."
"Yeah, and you know just like I do that it has been recycled seventy times, and can keep being recycled till the ship runs out of power. Which will take days."
"I saw you kiss him last night."
"I told you, Van. He kissed me."
"The point is that even if we live, I'm going to lose you to him."
"I'm never staying here with that tight-assed pansy. And since when do you own me?"
"There's a good chance you will stay here."
He held a finger over her lips as she started to speak.
"Let me finish, Drew."
He ran his hand over her wet head.
"We have played a game with each other for years, and now may be the only time we'll have to see how the end of the game will turn out. I won't pretend to know how you feel about me, but I know you are as curious as I am. We have never been as close to death as we are now. Things don't look good, and do you really want to die never knowing?"
"That's one hell of a line, Van," she said with a smile.
"Did it work?" Van Gar asked.
"Rather well, actually."
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Then I'll have to use it again sometime."
Their wet bodies met, and they kissed.
The water kept recycling.
Stasha had watched Van Gar enter Drew's cabin, and she waited to see how long it would take one or the other to emerge. Van Gar was the first to leave. His hair—all of it that could be seen—was wet, and he was whistling a happy alien tune. When Drew emerged a few minutes later, her hair was wet, and she looked around as if checking to see if she had been caught. She smiled broadly when she saw Stasha standing partially concealed behind a metal brace in the wall.
"So, how long were you standing there?" Drew asked.
"How could you?" Stasha asked. "You wouldn't sleep with your own husband."
"I didn't sleep with Van Gar," Drew said with a wicked grin.
"Poor Zarco. All these years he's saved himself for you, and you're nothing but a common whore."