His mind's eye looked back into the past, down across Lansing's fields from the limits of the sky, where he had worked suspended cloudlike fifty meters up, spinning the sticky patches to mend the plastic membrane of the world-shroud. Somewhere below him through the fragile canopy of trees. Bird Alyn had worked in the gardens.… Like a vision of Old Earth, he remembered her crossing the yellowed fields at dusk to meet him, her footsteps lifting her like a bird. When they brought back that ship everything would be made right … everything.
He looked over at Bird Alyn, at her hand—three crooked, nerveless fingers and a thumb; felt her catch him looking. Not everything. He frowned with helpless self-disgust; she turned her face away as though the frown were meant for her. He looked out at the night, cracking his knuckles as he remembered why it would never be all right. He remembered the broken sound of his father's reassurance, a third of a lifetime before—as he left his only son sitting in the grass, abandoned to the fatal light, and went back into the sheltering depths of rock alone.…
Ranger (Lansing space)
+195 kiloseconds
Betha heard the intruders banging faintly against the Ranger's hull as they moved toward the main lock. “At least they didn't actually decide to cut their way in through the dayroom.”
“Their manners don't impress me. You're just going to let them come aboard?” Clewell rebounded lightly from the wall as he pushed a covered cup into a cubby beneath the panel.
She nodded. “Pappy, we've been tracking that tin can of theirs for nearly two hours; it's hardly a warship. They must be in trouble—their drive is leaking radiation. Besides, we need information, and we haven't gotten much trying to monitor Lansing's radio traffic. Letting them come aboard is the safest, fastest way I can think of for getting some facts.” She rubbed her eyes, until brightness drove back the vision of all her loves and one love, and the vision of a pursuing ship consumed by invisible fire. Besides, there's been enough death.
“And what happens if they happen to be crazy, like the others?”
“You said yourself they can't all be like that.” Her hand closed over the bowl of her pipe. “But even if they are, they won't take the ship.” She let the pipe drift as she rechecked the override program, a mosaic of lighted buttons on the control board. “Just keep your feet near the floor.”
Someone had entered the lock. She felt more than heard them through the wall, felt her body tense as the lights changed above the lock entrance. The door hissed open. Two tall figures, amorphous in suits with shielded helmets, drifted into the room. And stopped short, catching at the handrail set into the wall. A muffled, accusing voice said, “What are you doin' here?”
Betha's mouth quivered; helpless with disbelief, she began to laugh. “W-what are we doing here?”
Clewell grunted. “We could ask you the same question; and it wouldn't be nearly as funny. You're lucky you're here at all.”
“We thought the ship was dead; we didn't even know you had power till your lock cycled.” The taller suit shrugged. “You've got a hole in you, and—you mean, you run this thing, you already claimed it?”
“We didn't ‘claim’ it, we own it.” Betha caught her shoe under a restraining bar and twisted to face them. “I'm Captain Torgussen. This is my navigator. We let you come aboard because I thought you were in trouble. Your craft's power unit is leaking radiation; you're barely mobile. Is that why you intercepted us?”
The silvered faceplates showed her nothing, only her own tiny, distorted face. The voice was tinnily indignant. “What do you mean, leaking? There's nothin' wrong with our drive. We been out a megasec this trip, already.”
Nothing wrong? Betha glanced at Clewell, saw his eyes widen. A megasecond—a million seconds—nearly two weeks. Whoever faced her, whatever insanity moved them, their lives were going to be short and sick spent in a ship like that.
The blind face went on, “We intercepted because we thought this ship was salvage, and we wanted it. I guess it's not.” A gloved hand rose from his side, threatening, holding something that glinted. “But we have to have it. So we're taking it anyhow. Get away from those controls.” The hand twitched.
“You'll regret it. The two of you can't possibly handle this ship.” Betha carefully let go of the bar, her feet centimeters above the rug, her eyes on the panel. When she touched one button this room would be under an abrupt one-gravity acceleration: one stranger would fall onto his head, the other one onto his back.… And break their necks? She hesitated. “If you think—”
A blob of mottled fur squeezed out of a plastic port in the wall; Rusty mrred pleasantly, circling the knees of the two strangers. Betha herd one of them gasp. He pulled back, bouncing off his companion. “Look out!” Rusty darted sideways eagerly, enjoying the game. “What is it?” Their voices rose. “Shadow Jack, get it off me!”
Betha jerked the computer remote from her belt and threw it. It struck the stranger's arm and his weapon flew out into the room. Clewell moved past her to pick it from the air; the hijackers pressed back against the wall, waiting.
“Rusty. Come here. Rusty,” Betha put out her hand, and brindle ears twitched. Slowly Rusty crossed the room to sidle along her waist, purring in satisfaction. Betha scratched under the ivory chin, stroked the brindle back, shaking her head. “Rusty, you make fools of us all.”
“Well, I'll be damned!” Clewell began to pry at the weapon; strange shapes bristled along its length. “This is a can opener! Corkscrew, fork … I don't know what this one is.…” He pulled himself down. “I've heard of ailurophobes, but I've never seen the likes of those.”
Betha caught hold of a chair back, unsmiling. “You two. Get out of the suits.” They stripped obediently, rising like moths from the cocoons of their spacesuits: a man and a woman … a boy and a girl, incredibly tall and thin, neither of them more than seventeen; barefoot, in drab, stained coveralls. She blinked as the smell of them reached her. “You've just committed an act of piracy. Now tell me why I shouldn't send you out the airlock for it, without your suits.” She wondered if the threat sounded as credible or as terrible as she wanted it to.
The boy glared back at her, across a muffled fit of coughing. The girl moved away from the wall. “It was a matter of life and death.” Her voice was strained in a dry throat.
“We offered you help. That's not good enough.”
“Not our lives.” She shook her head. “We need the ship for … for …” She broke off, her eyes darted away, searching the room.
“Bird Alyn, they know why we need the ship.” Betha saw a terrible, impersonal hatred settle on the boy's face as he turned back. “You know what we are. We're just junkers, we haven't done anything to you. Let us go.”
Betha laughed again in disbelief. “You ‘just’ tried to commandeer my ship. I ‘just’ asked you why I shouldn't space you for it. But you expect me to let you go? Is everyone in Heaven system crazy?” Her voice almost slipped out of control.
“It doesn't matter.” He let go of the handhold, shrinking in on himself. “We'll die anyway. Everybody's dying. You've still got it good, you Demarchists. It's nothing to you to let us go, or let us die.”
Betha found her pipe drifting, fumbled in a pocket of her jacket for matches. “We're not ‘Demarchists,’ whatever they are. We've come from another system to establish contact with the Heaven Belt; and since we've been here we've been attacked twice, with no provocation, near the rings of Discus and by you. Now, maybe you believe you had some sort of ‘right’ to do it, and maybe you can even make me believe it. Or maybe I'll take you to Lansing to be tried for piracy.” She saw surprise on their faces. “But first you're going to answer some questions …. To begin with: who are you, and where do you come from?”