“Thanks for the tip.”
The pilot grinned. “Hitched a ride once myself. Nobody told me. Now get the hell off my shuttle.”
I nodded and propelled myself down the short passageway. There were equipment racks, padded corners, and lockers from which most but not all of the uniformly olive drab paint had been worn away, leaving patches of shiny metal.
Sasha had transferred most of our supplies to the shuttle’s lock, and I was surprised at how bulky they were. Our food was concentrated but still took up a lot of space, as did the first aid kit, a cube reader, and our clothes. I was worried about water but Sasha had assured me there was plenty on board.
And so it was that we sealed ourselves into the lock, waited for pressures to equalize, and watched the hatch iris open. It took about fifteen seconds for the airtight door to open all the way. The adjoining lock was larger and padded to protect it from damage. We pushed our duffel bags through and followed with our bodies. My boots had barely cleared the hatch when motors whined and the opening closed. A few moments later we heard a thud and felt the hull vibrate as the shuttle pushed itself away. We were alone. Or supposed to be, anyway.
A duffel bag hit me in the nose. I pushed it away. The suction pulled a piece of paper in front of my nose. I knew what it was before I grabbed it. A Mars Bar wrapper. I held it out for Sasha to examine. “What’s this?”
She looked defensive. “The tug crew ran a check on this tub yesterday. One of them left it.”
Spacers are a tidy bunch-they have to be-so I had doubts about her theory but knew better than to pursue it. Sasha would stick to her point of view until forced to change. That reminded me of someone else I’d known, but I couldn’t remember who.
Joy had agreed to maintain a low profile aboard the shuttle, but the promise had expired. She floated free of my pocket and peppered us with questions.
“Where are we? What’s going on? Why is Sasha holding that wrapper?” It was like dealing with an articulate six-year-old.
I did my best to answer Joy’s questions while trying to capture a duffel bag under each arm and maintain my equilibrium all at the same time. I handled the zero-gee stuff better than I had at the beginning of the trip but was clumsy compared to Sasha. She took pity on me and grabbed the second bag in addition to her own. That left the emergency pressure suits we had liberated from Marscorp. They had been duct taped together and were floating just below the overhead. I was about to reach for them when Joy launched herself off my shoulder. “Don’t worry about the suits! I can handle them.”
And handle them she did, using a combination of zero-gee savvy and some highly skilled gymnastics.
Air hissed as the inner hatch irised open. Joy pushed herself away from a storage locker and drifted through the aperture. I formed words but didn’t get them out in time to do any good. My stomach muscles tightened. She would draw fire if someone was waiting on the other side. Nothing happened. I heaved a sigh of relief and made a note to speak with her later. Yes, she was an android, but with a difference. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been a present, or maybe it was her pseudo-personality, but the result was the same. I liked Joy and would be sorry if she were hurt.
I passed through the hatch next, towing the duffel bag with one hand and holding my weapon with the other. I noticed that Sasha made a point of leaving her gun in its holster. I tried a flip, hoped to land feet first, and hit the bulkhead with my back. Sasha laughed, did what I had tried to do, and hung there with a smirk on her face.
I looked both ways, made sure the corridor was clear, and holstered my weapon. It wouldn’t hurt to have a free hand.
Joy was disgustingly cheerful. “Hey, this is fun! Where do we go? This way or that way?”
Our head swiveled as Sasha and I considered the alternatives. There wasn’t much difference. The passageway was sufficiently wide to accommodate a standard autoloader or a train of power pallets. And, judging from the longitudinal marks that scored the walls, a good deal of cargo had been hauled through this corridor. Though pretty much interchangeable during zero-gee conditions, the distinctions between overhead, bulkheads, and deck were more meaningful when gravity was present.
The deck, or what would be a deck during a normal gravity situation, was covered with heavy-duty mesh. Conduit and cable snaked along below.
The overhead was comparatively smooth, interrupted by little more than rectangular glow panels and a recessed track. Hundreds on hundreds of vertical ridges gave the bulkheads an organic look, as if we were inside a worm, or a giant serpent. The intent was obvious. By grabbing the ridges with our hands, or pushing on them with our feet, zero-gee pedestrians like ourselves could make pretty good time.
The bulkheads had other features as well, including emergency com sets, surveillance cameras, fire-fighting equipment, and slots where one could escape an oncoming cargo train. Arrows pointed in both directions and words announced possible destinations. I tried to read them and was thrilled to find that I could. The first set said, “Holds 1- 12,” and the second set said, “Holds 13- 24.”
It went without saying that someone who had legitimate business aboard the barge would know where they were headed. I didn’t, but Sasha did, or pretended to. “The shipping agent said that holds one through twelve would be crammed with cargo modules. Let’s try thirteen through twenty-four.”
I nodded, motioned for Joy to stay behind me, and was about to launch myself in the proper direction, when something whooshed over my head. It came and went so quickly that it took me a moment to realize that whatever it was had traveled via the recessed channel. A small robot, perhaps? Rushing from one end of the vessel to the other?
I looked at Sasha, she looked at me, and both of us shrugged. The channel and whatever it was that traveled within it seemed harmless enough and could be investigated later. We needed to get where we were going, and get there fast, or we would suffer what could be painful consequences.
I repositioned my feet, pushed off, and coasted for twenty feet. The ridges were spaced about six inches apart, which placed one wherever you needed it, and a sort of rhythm emerged. Push, coast, push. Push, coast, push. Over and over again as we made our way down the corridor. It became kind of hypnotic after a while, so much so that my senses were dulled, and it was Joy who gave the alarm. “Look! Something’s coming!”
I looked, and what I saw scared the hell out of me. It turned from a dot to a blob to an oncoming train in a matter of seconds. The drive unit had diagonal yellow and black stripes across its front end, mounted no less than four flashing red beacons, and filled the passageway from side to side and top to bottom. Rollers kept the vehicle from scraping against the bulkheads and explained the wear marks I’d noticed earlier. The train, if that’s what it should be called, was making a good fifty or sixty miles an hour. And why not? The humans were gone, as far as the barge and its computers knew, so cargo could be redistributed by the fastest and most efficient means possible. Sasha was first to get the words out of her mouth. “The next niche! Move!”
It felt crazy to launch ourselves at the oncoming train, but the distance between us and the niche ahead was less than the distance between us and the niche behind. I put all the strength I had into the push, but the air felt as thick as old-fashioned molasses. The deck and bulkheads moved with maddening slowness, and the stripes hurtled towards me with what seemed like unbelievable speed. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as I willed myself forward. I saw Sasha make her way into the niche, followed by Joy. Good! Someone would live, someone would…