Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (9 page)

“I’m sorry,” Ben said stiffly.

Maybe because they were closer to civilization now. And sanity.

“Where are we?” Dekker asked.

“God!” Ben cried, and leaned far back in his seat. He yelled up at Dekker: “It’s June 26th and we’re coming into Mars Base, don’t you remember? The president of the company’s going to be at the party!”

“Don’t do that,” Bird said. “Just leave the poor guy alone.”

“He’s alone, all right, he’s damn well alone. Another week and we’d be as schitz as he is.”

Another call from Base: “
Two Twenty-nine Tango
Trinidad,
this is ASTEX Approach Control: tugs are on intercept. Stand by the secondary decel
.”

“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy that decel. We’re go.” He shut down his mike, yelled: “Dekker! Stand by the decel, hear me?”

“Break his damn neck,” Ben muttered.

There was no time for debate. They had a beam taking aim. Approach Control advised them and fired; pressure hit the sail and bodies hit the restraints—they weren’t in optimum attitude thanks to that ship coupled to them, and it was a hard shove. Dekker yelled aloud—hurt, maybe: they had him padded in and tied down with everything soft they could find, but it was no substitute.

It went on and on. Eventually Dekker got quiet. Hope to hell that persistent nosebleed didn’t break loose again.

“
Two Twenty-nine Tango
Trinidad,
this is ASTEX Approach Control: do a simple uncouple with that tow
.”

“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy that uncouple. Fix at 29240 k to final at 1015 mps closing. O-mega.”

Bird uncapped the button, pushed it, the clamps released with a shock through the frame, and One’er Eighty-four Zebra went free—still right up against them, 29240 k to their rendezvous with the oncoming Refinery and they were going to ride with the tow awhile, until the outlying tugs could move in and pick it off their tail.

Ben muttered. “I got everything customs can ask on that ship. Got all the charges figured, too.”

“Just leave it, Ben.”

“I want that ship, Bird. I want that ship. God, we got the proof—I got all the proof they need—”

“Ben,—”

“Look, they do their official investigation. But this guy’s
incompetent
, he was
incompetent
when we boarded. What’s he going to do, ask ‘em the time? The law’s on our side.” Ben was cheerful again. “We got it, Bird, we got it.”

“Let the guy alone,” he said. “Forget about that ship, dammit!”

“I’m not forgetting it. Hell if I’ll forget it. We’re filing on it. Or I am. You can take your pick, partner.”

“There’s such a thing as wanting things too much. You can’t ever afford to want things that much. It’s not healthy.”

“Healthy, hell.
I’ll
take care of us. All you have to do is sit back and watch me go, partner, I know the law.”

“There’s things other than law, Ben.—Just stow the charts, hear me?”

“I’m not stowing the charts.”

“We’re going to get searched, dammit, just put the damn things in the hole or friggin’ dump ‘em, we can’t get ‘em off this time—”

“Guys run ‘em in all the time, customs doesn’t give a damn—just say they’re vidgames. They don’t even boot to check.”

“Ben, dammit!”

“I haven’t spent all this work to give up those charts. They’re going to go over us with a microscope, Bird,—”

“Thirty years nobody’s found that hideyhole, not customs and not the lease crews. Just drop ‘em in. You think they’re going to go at us plate by plate over a rescue?”

“
Two Twenty-nine Tango
Trinidad,
this is ASTEX Approach Control: tugs are 20 minutes 14 seconds, mark
.”

“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy: 20 minutes 14 seconds. No problem, tow is clear. Proceeding on that instruction.”

Ben said, “You got an Attitude this trip. I don’t understand it, Bird, I swear I don’t understand it.”

“You know Shakespeare, Ben?”

“Haven’t met him.”

They were still speaking as they made dock. Barely.

“We got ‘er,” Ben said.

Several significant breaths later Ben said, “I’m sorry, Bird.”

“Shakespeare’s a writer,” Bird said.

“One of those,” Ben said.

“Yeah.”

“You got him on tape?”

“There’s a tape. Hard going, though.”

“Physics?” Ben asked.

“
Two Twenty-nine Tango
Trinidad,
this is ASTEX Dock Authority, check your pressure. Will you need a line
?”

“We copy 800 mb, B dock. No line, we’re 796.”

“Trinidad,
we copy 796. Medical units standing by on dockside. Stand by life systems sample
.”

“Shit,” Ben groaned, “they’re going to stall us on a medical. They damn well better not find some bug aboard, I’ll skin him.”

“Won’t find any bug. Get our data up, will you?”

They were nose to the docking mast.
Trinidad
shuddered and resounded as the cradle locked. She hissed a little of her air at the sampler.

ASTEX said: “
Welcome in
, Trinidad.
Good job. Stand by results on that sample
.”

The dockside air went straight to the back of the throat and stung the sinuses, icy cold and smelling of volatiles. It tasted like ice water and oil and it cut through coats and gloves the way the clean and the cold finally cut through the stink Bird smelled in his sleep and imagined in the taste of his food. Time and again you got in from a run and the chronic sight of just one other human face, and when you looked at all the space around you and saw real live people and faces that weren’t that face—you got the sudden disconnected notion you were watching it all on vid, drifting there with only a tether and a hand-jet between you and a dizzy perspective down the mast—worse than EVAs in the deep belt, a lot dizzier. Dock monkeys kited about at all angles, checking readouts, taking samples, talking to empty air. Bird’s earpiece kept him informed about the meds inside the ship, the receipt of the manifest and customs forms at the appropriate offices—

“Morris Bird,” the earpiece said, thin voice riding over the banging and hammering of sound in the core. “This is officer Wills, Security. Understand you found a drifter.”

He hated being sneaked up on, hated the office-sitters that would blindside a man and made him look around to see where they were—or whether they were there and not a phonecall. He turned and saw three of them in ASTEX Security green, sailing his way down the hand-line.

“Yessir,” he said, before they got there. “Details have already gone to BM. Any problem?”

“Just a few questions,” Wills said. Before he got there.

YOU have any theories to explain what happened?” Wills asked. The cops hung face to face with him, all of them maintaining position with holds on the safety-lines, and you about needed the earpiece to hear at the moment over the thundering racket from a series of loads going down the spinning core. Bird, mindful of the Optex Wills was wearing, shrugged, shook his head and said, mostly honestly: “Could’ve caught a rock. Helluva bash on one side. On the other hand, the bash could’ve been secondary. Maybe he was working real close in and just didn’t see another one coming, dunno, really, dunno if it’s going to be easy to tell. We didn’t go outside, just got a look on vid. We did make a tape.”

“We’ll want that. Also your log. Did you remove anything from the wreck?”

“We took out the rescuee and the clothes he was wearing. Nothing else. We washed ‘em and he’s still wearing ‘em. He had his watch, and nothing in his pockets. He’s still wearing the watch. Anything else we left aboard, even his clothes and his Personals. You wouldn’t want to open up without a decon squad. It’s a real mess in that ship.”

“Any idea where the partner is?”

“Evidently she was outside when the accident happened. He kept trying to call her, kept trying when he was off his head, I guess he tried til he couldn’t think of anything else. They’re from Rl. Her name was Cory. That’s all we ever figured out. His life systems were near gone, ship was tumbling pretty bad. He’d taken a lot of knocks.” He hoped to hell that would cover Ben’s ass about the bruises. He felt dirty doing it, but he would have felt dirtier not to. “Kid was pretty sick from breathing that stuff, kept hallucinating about having to call his partner—evidently did everything he could to find her, sick as he was.” He tried to put Dekker in the best light he could, too, fair being fair. “When we got to him, I guess he just finally realized she was gone. Fever set in—he’s been off his head a lot, just keeps asking over and over for his partner, that’s all.”

“What would he say?”

“Just her name. Sometimes he’d yell Look out, like he was warning someone. Kid’s exhausted. Like when you give up and then the adrenaline runs out.”

“Yeah,” Wills said. “Didn’t happen to say why they were out of their zone?”

“He didn’t know they were out of their zone.”

“So he did say something else.”

“We had to explain we were taking him to R2. It upset him. He was lost, disoriented. The accident must’ve happened the other side of the line.”

Cops never told you a thing. Wills grunted, monkeyed along the lines toward the hatch as if he was going inside. The other officers followed. But one of the blue-suited meds was outbound, towing a stretcher with Dekker aboard, and the other meds were close behind. The cops stopped them at the lines just outside the hatch, delayed to look Dekker over, talk to the meds, evidently asked Dekker something: there was a lot of machinery noise on the dock—they must be loading or offloading—and he couldn’t hear what they said or what Dekker answered. They only let the meds take him away, and that course came past him.

They had wrapped Dekker up in blankets, had him strapped into the stretcher, and Dekker looked wasted and sick as hell. But his eyes were open, looking around. The meds brought the stretcher to a drifting stop and said, “You want to say goodbye?”

It was one of those faces that could haunt a man, Dekker’s lost, distracted expression—but Dekker seemed to track on him then.

“Bird,” he said faintly through the noise and the banging overhead. “Where’re they taking me?”

Dekker looked scared. Bird wanted it over with, wanted to forget Dekker and Dekker’s nightmares and the stink and the cold of that ship, not even caring right now if they got anything for their trouble but their refit paid. He sure didn’t want an ongoing attachment; but that question latched on to him and he found himself reaching out and putting a hand against Dekker’s shoulder. “Hospital. That’s all, son. You’re on R2 dock. You’ll be all right.”

Bird looked at the meds, then gave a shrug, wanting them to go, now, before Dekker got himself worked up to a scene. They started away.

“Bird?” Dekker said as they went. And called out louder, a voice that cut right to the nerves, even over the racket: “
Bird
?”

He exhaled a shaky breath and shook his head, wanting a go at the bar real bad right now.

Ben came out of the hatch with their Personals kits. The police stopped him and insisted on taking the kits one by one and turning them this way and that. They were asking Ben questions when he drifted up, and Ben was saying, in answer to those questions, “The guy was off his head. Didn’t know what he’d do next. Screaming out all the time. Thinking it was his ship he was on. We had to worry he’d go after controls or something.”

He scowled a warning at Ben, but not a plain one: there was the Optex Wills was making of every twitch they made. Ben was looking only at the officers. He said, to explain the scowl, “You’d be off your head too if you’d been banged around like that.”

“In the accident,” Wills said, fishing.

“Ship tumbling like that,” he said. “The wonder is he lived through it.
Couldn’t
have helped his partner. All he looked to have left was his emergency beeper, and when that tank blew, it didn’t go straight—you got this center of mass here, see, and you get this tank back here—”

You got too technical and the docksiders wanted another topic in a hurry.

Wills said, interrupting him, “Go into that with the Court of Inquiry. We’ll want to log those kits. Leave them with us and we’ll send them on to your residence. What’s your ID?”

“On the tag there.” Ben indicated his kit. “1347-283-689 is mine. Bird here’s 688-687-257. Ship’s open. Look all you like.”

“You can go now.”

You never got thanks out of a company cop either. Bird scowled, looked at Ben, and the two of them handed their way up lines toward the hand-line. A beep meant a boom was moving. Red light stained the walls. But the alarm was from the other end of the big conduit- and chute-centered tunnel that was the cargo mast. You could get dizzy if you looked at the core itself, if you let yourself just for a moment think about up and down or where you were. Bird focused on the inbound gripper-handle coming toward him, ignored the moving surface in the backfield of his vision—caught it and felt the first all-over stretch he’d had in months as it hauled him along. Ben had caught the one immediately behind him—he looked back to see.

“Customs,” he remarked to Ben, in a lull in the racket from the chutes. “I hope they’ve talked to the cops.”

“No trouble. We haven’t even got our Personals. Cops’ve got ‘em. Cops have got everything. They gave me this receipt, see?” He used his free hand to tap his pocket. “Hell, we’re just little guys. What are we going to have? We’ll get a wave-through. You watch.”

“They’ll give us hell.”

“So don’t tell ‘em it was out-zone. We reported it where the rules say. We got rights. Meanwhile we’re gone into a public contact area and there’s no use for them to check us, is there?”

“Rights,” he muttered. “We got whatever rights Mama decides to give us, is what we got.—What did you tell that cop about Dekker? Did you tell them he was crazy?”

“Hey, they don’t need my help to figure that. The meds belted him in good and tight when they took him away.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I said he wasn’t too clear where he was. They asked about the bruises, and I said he got loose, all right? I said he was after the controls and he’s crazy, besides which he fought us when we had to get him back and forth to the head.”