She got it unwrapped and to his hand this time. Shielding the end from the rain, he shoved it in, then drew fast, quick breaths to get the chemistry started.
Then the slow seep of rational thought into his brain told him first that it was working, and second, that they’d had a close call.
He let her give him the second cylinder, then: they still had one in reserve, hers. You could lend a cylinder back and forth if bad came to worse, but you never let both go out together.
He was all right and he’d cut it damned close.
“Fletcher?” Bianca said. “I’m going with you. We’re down to three. Don’t argue with me!”
“It’s all right, it’s all right.” He pocketed the wrappers: you had to turn them in to get new ones, or you filled out forms forever and they charged you with trashing. Same with the ruined cylinder. He was going to hear about it. It was going on his record.
“Just leave the saw,” she pleaded with him. “Say we were scared of the lightning.”
It was half a bright idea.
“We were late because of the cylinders,” he said, with a better one, “and we can still pick up the saw. Come on.”
She picked up on the idea, willingly. She went with him down the side of one huge frame to where he’d been cutting brush. They couldn’t get wetter. The lightning hadn’t gotten worse.
It was maybe ten minutes along the curve of a hill to where he’d left the saw in the fork of a tree. Safe, Waterproof.
But it wasn’t there.
For a moment, he doubted it was the right tree. He stood a moment in confusion, concluding that someone had gotten it, that it might have been—God help him—a curious downer—a thought that scared him. But it most likely was Sandy Galbraith, who’d been working not in sight of him, but at least knowing where he was.
If it was Sandy checking on him and if she’d found the saw but not him, she’d have been in a bad position of having to turn him in or having to explain why she had his equipment.
If she’d been half smart and not a damn prig, she’d have left the saw where it was and pretended she didn’t see anything unless she needed to remember.
Damn.
“Sandy probably got it,” he said, and that meant they were later and he had to come up with a story for the missing saw, too.
He’d gone to look for Bianca because of the rain coming, that was it.
“Look,” he said, as lightning whitened the brush, and they started slogging back the ten minute walk they’d come out of the way already. “I’m going to catch hell if somebody turned it in. What happened was, I knew you were by the river, and I was worried about the rain, and I ran down there to warn you, and that was why I left the saw.”
She was keeping up with him, walking hard, and didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t like lying to the authorities. Maybe she was mad at him. She had a right to be.
“I know, I know,” he said. “I don’t want to lie, either, but I didn’t plan on the rainstorm, all right?” That she didn’t leap at the chance to defend him made him—not mad. Upset—because of the cascade of stupid things that had gone wrong.
Maybe he’d spent too much time with psychs in his life, but he could say ‘displacement’ with the best psych that was out there: he and the psychs had talked a lot about his ‘displacement.’ And he was having a lot of displacement right now, to the extent that if he really, really had the chance to pound hell out of somebody, he would. He was upset, short of breath, and as they slogged through the mud washing from the sides of the frame, and on to the road, which was a boggy mess, he didn’t know whether Bianca was mad at him or not. They didn’t have any breath left to talk. They just walked, until they were on the approach to the domes.
“Remember what you’ve got to say,” he said on great, ragged breaths. “If we’ve got the same story they’ll have to believe us. I left the saw to go after you and I was running low on the cylinders and we were taking it slow coming back so we’d save the cylinders so as not to run without a spare apiece.” They didn’t let them have any more than a spare set, but they were supposed to come back to the Base immediately if they were out without a spare. You were supposed to stick with your buddy so you could share a set if you had to. And not run. That part was important. That was the core of the excuse. “Got it?”
“Yes,” she said, out of breath.
The domes were close now, veiled in rain as the doors of the admin dome opened and a figure came out toward them.
Deep trouble, he thought. Administration knew. It was his fault.
JR stepped off the slow-moving ped-cab in front of number 5 Blue Dock, where a gantry with skeins of lines and a lighted ship-status sign was the only evidence of Finity’s presence the other side of the station wall. Customs was on duty, a single bored agent at a lonely kiosk who looked up as he came through the gate. Customs manned such a kiosk in front of limp rope lines at every ship at dock—and, at Pell, ignored most everything on a crew activity level.
The flash of a passport at the stand, a quick match of fingerprints on a plate, and he made his way up the ramp, past the stationside airlock and into the yellow ribbed gullet of the short access tube. The airlock inside took a fast assessment of the pressure gradient between ship and station and, as it cycled, flashed numbers and the current sparse gossip at him …I’m moving to the DarkStar—Cynthia D. Someone had met up with someone interesting, gone off and advised the duty staff of the fact she wasn’t where she’d first checked in.
Finity personnel didn’t do much of that.
Hadn’t done much of it. Correction.
It was in a lingering sense of uncertainty that he walked out of the airlock and into the lower corridor of his ship at dock. The Ops office door was open, casting light onto the tiles outside, a handful of seniors maintaining the systems that stayed live during dock, and whatever was under test at the moment. JR put his head in, asked the Old Man’s whereabouts.
The senior captain was aboard, was in his office, was at work, would see him.
He went ahead, down the short corridor past Cargo and by the lift into Administrative. Senior captains’ territory. Offices, and the four captains’ residences in B deck, directly above, all arranged to be useable during dock, when the passenger ring was locked down.
It was a moment for serious second thoughts, even with honest administrative business on his mind. Business he’d gotten by scuttlebutt, not official channels.
He was damned mad. He realized that about the time he reached the point of no retreat. He was just damned mad. He knew James Robert Sr. would have policy as well as personal reasons for what he’d done. He even knew in large part what the policy decisions were.
But the result had landed on his section.
He signaled his presence, walked in at the invitation to do so, stood at easy attention until the Old Man switched off a bank of displays in the dimly lit office and acknowledged him by powering his chair to face him.
“Sir,” JR said. “I’ve just heard that Fletcher’s coming in. Is that official?”
The light came from the side of the Old Man’s face, from displays still lit. The expression time had set on that countenance gave nothing away. The Old Man’s eyes were the reliable giveaway, dark, and alive, and going through at least several thoughts before the sere, thin lips expressed any single opinion.
“Is it on the station news,” James Robert asked, “or how did we reach this conclusion?”
“Sir, it came on two feet and I came over here stat.”
“Sit down.”
JR settled gingerly into a vacant console chair.