“What will you do?”
“Well, I’ll be there, of course, and in principle I can override any decision for the good of the ship. But I’m telling you now, I won’t do a thing. You’ll have to defend yourself, as much as you did against Joe Munroe.”
“You just sit and watch?”
“Unless there’s no agreement. Then I become involved.” He glanced around the cabin. “I have to go. I’ll tell the crew what happened as soon as I get with them. Better make this place look the way you’d like it to look, before they come for you. Hide anything that should be hidden.”
As soon as he was gone I went across to Joe Munroe’s body. Mel’s pink flashlight bulged in his pocket, but I didn’t see any way to dispose of it. Even the thought of touching the bloody, battered flesh and clothing made me feel nauseated all over again. I sat in a chair and stared mindlessly at the pale, floating corpse. After a few minutes the ship’s drive went on and the body slammed to the floor. I went over to it, thinking to straighten the twisted limbs, and found I still couldn’t bring myself to touch him. I was standing by the body when Tom Toole came to take me away. He gave Joe Munroe one curious glance and nodded to me. “Come on.”
The hearing began half an hour later in the main control room, with Pat O’Rourke as a kind of prosecutor and no one assigned to help me out. The other crew sat like a jury in a neat row, with arms folded. Connor Bryan, William Synge, Rory O’Donovan, Dougal Linn, Tom Toole, Robert Doonan—everyone was present except fat Donald Rudden.
Danny Shaker sat at the end, a little apart from the others. Surveying the line, it occurred to me that Shaker’s biggest critics, Sean Wilgus and Joseph Munroe, were both dead. Shaker’s own job might be easier.
But that wasn’t likely to help me. Pat O’Rourke got down to business right away, and there was no doubt how he felt.
“Joe Munroe was an old shipmate of mine,” he began. “He served with me on the Cuchulain for fourteen years, and before that on the Colleen and the Galway. He was a good crewman, one who knew ships and the Forty Worlds like the back of his hand. Now he’s dead and gone, God rest his soul. Jay Hara”—he turned to glower at me—“shot him. Shot him over and over, ’til Joe had more holes in him than Middletown Mere. You all saw his poor body. Do you admit that, Jay Hara? If you do, now’s your chance to tell us why you did it.”
“I do admit it. I had to do it to defend myself. He’d already beaten me and knocked me out and nearly broken my skull against the stairs. He thought I had valuables with me that I’d found on Paddy’s Fortune, and he said if I didn’t give them to him he’d make me breathe vacuum. When he came at me again, I shot him.”
Pat O’Rourke nodded and pointed to Connor Bryan, who stood up and came forward to where I was sitting.
“Don’t move,” Bryan said. He was the Cuchulain’s next best thing to a medic, and according to Doctor Eileen he knew a fair amount in a rough and ready sort of way. Now he felt my head and jaw, then nodded. “A big lump here, right enough, and the skin broken under the hair. He’s had a good bash or two, and it’s recent.”
O’Rourke nodded again. “And Joe thought you had valuable things, from Paddy’s Fortune,” he said to me. “Did you?”
Mel wasn’t a thing. “No, I didn’t,” I said clearly.
“We’ll see about that.” As O’Rourke was speaking, Donald Rudden came ambling into the room, slow-moving and deliberate as always. He set Mel’s pink flashlight down in front of Pat O’Rourke, then went to sit down with the rest of the crew. After a few seconds he lumbered to his feet again. “I looked,” he began.
“Not yet, Don.” O’Rourke cut him off. “You’ll get your turn.” He turned to Robert Doonan. “You first, Robbie. Tell us what Joe Munroe told you and showed you.”
“Aye. He showed me that light. Said he found it on the cargo beetle, after we left that little world back there. I’d never seen anything like it before, nor had Joe. He said it must have been brought aboard by Jay Hara, and where it came from there had to be more stuff.”
“This light here?” O’Rourke held up the pink ring.
“Aye, that’s it.”
Donald Rudden heaved himself to his feet again. “I’ve—” he began.
“In a minute, Don. Bide your time. Jay Hara, what do you have to say?”
I suddenly realized what had been going on during the past half hour. All the crew members were supposed to be present at a hearing. But while we had been getting started, Donald Rudden had been absent—and my bet was that he had been in my quarters, searching. Doing what I should have been doing, when I had the chance. Instead I had sat and stared at Joe Munroe’s dead body.
The question was, had Mel, in her hurry to get out of there, left something behind that didn’t belong on the Cuchulain? Had Donald Rudden found something damning?
If he had, that was the end of me. Unfortunately I had no way of knowing.
“I brought that light aboard the cargo beetle, that’s quite true,” I said carefully. “I found it on Paddy’s Fortune, and I assumed one of you must have dropped it there. I didn’t say anything about it, because I didn’t realize it was anything special. I don’t see why it is special—I mean, it’s just a light. And I didn’t bring anything else with me from Paddy’s Fortune. Not a thing.”
“What about the gun?”
“That was Walter Hamilton’s. I took it after Sean Wilgus killed him.” I realized where they could go with that, if they knew what weapon had shot Wilgus. But Danny Shaker didn’t seem worried, so chances were no one else had seen the gun after Walter Hamilton had it on his belt.
O’Rourke gave a noncommittal grunt. “Why did you shoot Joe so many times?”
“I didn’t mean to.” (True enough!) “I’d never fired an automatic before—never fired any gun. Once it started I couldn’t stop it, not even after Munroe had a lot of shots in him.”
O’Rourke nodded, and Donald Rudden stood up for a third time. I held my breath. This was it. “Well, Don?” rumbled Pat O’Rourke. “Nothing.” “Nothing at all?”
“Not one thing that you wouldn’t expect to find. And I took my time looking.”
I didn’t doubt that. Donald Rudden looked too fat to move, but when he started on a job he was a bit like Duncan West taking apart a clock. He was completely methodical, he lost track of time, and he didn’t move or stop until the task was done.
There was a sort of collective sigh, and everybody sat a little differently in his seat. It was the turning point, and I realized it when Pat O’Rourke said to me, “Jay Hara, what do you mass?”
It was a weird question. “I’m not sure. Back on Erin, last time I weighed myself, I was fifty-one kilos.”
He nodded, and turned to the others. “Joe Munroe, for my guess, was about a hundred and ten. More than twice as much as Jay Hara. Anyone else want to say anything or ask anything?”
Heads shook along the line.
“All right, then.” O’Rourke clumped across and sat down with the others, at the opposite end of the line from Danny Shaker. There was a long, brooding silence, when no one spoke and I was left wondering what came next.
Finally O’Rourke stood up again. “All right, then,” he repeated. “That ought to be enough time. Let’s get to it. In order, as you’re sitting. Connor Bryan?”
“Justified killing, in self-defense,” Bryan said. “No punishment. And I have to say, Joe Munroe was a fool. He told me—”