Which she was. Comfortable. In spite of everything; comfortable enough to be definitely drowsy. When she yawned, he did, too. "We'll figure something out," he said. "Right now I'm sleepy."
And so, Pat realized, was she. It occurred to her that it would be nice for them to untangle themselves so they could stretch out, but by the time she had got that far in her thinking she was already asleep with her head on Dannerman's shoulder.
What woke Pat up was someone talking. The person was intruding on her dream, and she didn't want to let go of it, especially not because of the green-skinned woman playing a musical instrument who was intruding into it. When she opened her eyes she discovered her head was in Dannerman's lap and Jimmy Lin was grinning down at them. She sat up abruptly. "What did you say?" she demanded fuzzily.
"I was asking Dan what you were doing. Looked like the Jade Woman and Flute bit to me. Of course, Dan claims it didn't happen, but then old Dan's a real gentleman about a lady's honor, isn't he?"
"Damn you," she said. "Can't you turn off your testosterone for a while now and then? What is it, do you get a kick out of making trouble?"
His expression changed to belligerency. "Are you talking about the accident? Well, you know what? I'm not sorry we killed the little son of a bitch, even if it didn't take. Sooner or later I'm going to find some way to make him give us straight answers, and if he won't do it I wouldn't mind killing him all over again."
Dannerman was sitting up straight now, glaring at Lin. Pat was pleased to see that he was getting angry, too, but a little disappointed, too, when she realized that the anger wasn't at Lin's smarmy remarks. "You're an idiot," he said flatly. "If you really wanted to do something like that you're sure making it hard by advertising it ahead of time."
Lin shrugged and stalked away. Dannerman hesitated, then patted Pat on the head, easing it off his lap. "I've got an idea," he said, and got up without saying what the idea was. What he did was only to head for the stack of miscellaneous supplies Dopey's golems had brought.
Pat gazed after him, her back propped against the wall, knees hugged to her body. She was thinking about the connotations of being patted on the head. "Pat on the head" was a metaphor for tolerant dismissal and there had been a time, in her rad-fem undergraduate days, when any male who ventured such an act did so at his own peril. But she didn't feel tolerated, and certainly she didn't feel dismissed. What that casual touch had felt like was affection. Maybe even sexual affection. Tentative, yes, but under the circumstances about as forthright as was feasible. Under other circumstances…
Under other circumstances, Pat told herself wistfully, something nice might come of that; but not under these.
She shook herself and stood up, curious about what Dan-nerman was doing. He had borrowed Rosaleen's multicolor pen and was busily printing something out on a scrap of wrapping paper from the Starlab booty, shading what he was writing with his other hand. Rosaleen Artzybachova was sitting cross-legged nearby, watching him curiously. When Dannerman saw Pat standing over him he complained, "The damn ink smears on this stuff."
"That's what wrapping paper is like," she agreed. "What are you writing?"
He paused to add a word, then covered the sheet with his hand. "You could call it a diary," he said. "We don't have much privacy here, and there are some things I'd just as soon not advertise to the world."
She frowned. There was something odd about his tone. "So we can't see it?"
"Oh," he said. "I didn't say that. I guess a few friends could take a look."
"Like me?" Rosaleen offered. "It's my pen."
"Why not?" Dannerman said. "Only do it like this, please." He cupped the scrap in two hands and lifted it to his eyes, opening the hands at the thumbs just enough to peer inside. "Can you do that?"
Rosaleen gave him a baffled look, but did as instructed. "Thank God for radial keratomy," she muttered. And then, "Oh."
She closed her hands again over the scrap, looking at Dannerman with interest before she passed it to Pat. "You know the drill," she said. "I hope your near vision's in good shape."
It wasn't, particularly, but when Pat had done as ordered, opening narrow slits between fingers for light, she managed to make out the blurry scrawclass="underline"
If anybody has any useful ideas for escape etc let's share them like this.
"Oh," Pat said, too. "I see what you mean." By then Martin and Jimmy Lin were clamoring for their own turns, and Dannerman was already writing something else. When he passed it to Pat it said:
Concealed weapons? I have flex, glass knife in belt. Martin, what's in lapel? Anybody else?
By then they were all industriously writing little messages of their own, squabbling over their turns at Rosaleen's pen. "Hold it," Rosaleen ordered. "Let's make sure everybody sees everything. How about if we pass them around in alphabetical order-Adcock, Artzybachova, Dannerman, Delasquez, Lin. Then you can dispose of the messages when you're finished with them, Jimmy."
"How?"
"I don't know, swallow them, maybe?"
Lin looked rebellious, but Dannerman said, "Maybe we can burn them up in the cooker?" And when they had all seen the first message he gave it a try; it worked. The crumpled scrap of paper became ash, and he teased it out and ground it into powder with his heel for the floor to remove.
By the time they had finished taking inventory they had discovered they possessed a remarkable little armory: Dannerman's glass blade, Martin's plastic stiletto, a garroting cord from Jimmy Lin. Even Rosaleen had a pair of knitting-sized needles in her boots; apologetically Pat admitted to being the only one who had entered the Clipper without fallback arms.
But when they had exchanged all the information they had to offer, secure from the prying outside eyes, the temporary euphoria subsided and she felt let down. It was nice to know that they had some weapons. But what was the good of weapons when they had no plan to use them?
Passing secret messages around was a kind of pleasure Pat hadn't experienced since high school, but it palled. There was really nothing for them to say, and besides they were all getting hungry again.
While they were cooking their individual meals Rosaleen was investigating the cooker. "There must be a power source for this thing somewhere," she said puzzledly. "I can't find it. Maybe it's in the base? The rest of it's nothing much but sheet metal."
"Funny sheet metal," Martin rumbled. "It isn't even warm on the outside."
"Like a microwave," Pat offered.
Rosaleen shook her head. "It's not a microwave. Those vegetables Jimmy put in were foil-wrapped, and it didn't spark. I don't exactly know what-oh, hell!" Tardily they all smelled the scorching as the container of beef stew inside began to burn.
"Damn," Dannerman said. "I had my mouth all set for that stew." But it was powdery ashes before they could lever it out, and in the long run Martin simply picked the cooker up and shook them out of it for the floor to dispose of.
It was Martin, then, who noticed another curiosity. "Look here," he said, pushing at the device. "The wheels don't roll anymore."
Pat looked and discovered that they weren't actual wheels, anyway; they were just metal balls. When she pushed at the gadget hard enough it slid sluggishly over the rubbery floor, but the wheels weren't turning. "But it rolled easily enough when Dopey pushed it in," she said, perplexed.
"Maybe," Rosaleen said thoughtfully. "Or maybe they never did turn. I think we've got another piece of that far-out technology we were looking for here."
"For all the good it will do us," Martin said grumpily.
Dannerman and Pat took their food over to sit against the wall. Dannerman was deep in thought-probably, Pat supposed, about ways of getting them out of their prison cell. She hoped so, anyway. She was just getting used to the fact that her own cousin was a gumshoe; the annoyance was fading, curiosity was beginning to assert itself. She said, "Feeling talkative, Dan?"