“You miss her.”
“Yeah, I … I mean, well, she's the only one who can really use the computer.”
“Oh.”
He glanced back at her, knowing what she hadn't said. “We just work together.”
She nodded. “I thought maybe you—”
“No, we don't. We're not married.”
She felt her mouth curve up in scandalized amusement. “I admire your self-restraint.”
His blue and green eyes widened; she saw darkness settle across them again. “There's no point in wanting what we can't have. It's only keeping alive that matters—everybody keeping alive. If we can't get water for Lansing, then it's the end, and it's stupid to pretend it's not. There's no point in … in …” He looked down at the control panel. “Those daydreamers! Why don't they answer us? What do they need, a miracle?”
A voice broke from the speaker, “Unregistered ship—what the hell are you doing up there, running so dark?”
Shadow Jack turned back to her, speechless; she smiled. “Now try wishing for hydrogen.”
Shadow Jack took them in, cursing in the glare, to a moorage on Mecca's day side. “‘Not registered for main field.’ Those nosy bastards! How come we couldn't land in the dark, like the rest of those damn charmed tankers?” He stretched, leaning back, and cracked his knuckles.
“I suppose they don't want some tourist crashing into the distillery.” Betha relaxed at last, at the reassuring sound of magnetic cables attaching to the hull outside.
He pushed himself away from his seat. “That doesn't help us. If something goes wrong, we'll have a hell of a time gettin' out of here this way.” He moved toward the locker that held their spacesuits.
She sighed and nodded, reaching out to catch Rusty. “We'll just hope nothing goes wrong,” thinking that whoever had named him for shadows had named him well.
Betha clung momentarily to the edge of the open airlock, looking down, and away, to where the world ended too suddenly: the foreshortened horizon, like the edge of a gleaming, pitted knife blade against the blackness. And beyond it the stars, scarcely visible, impossibly distant across the lightless void. She saw five torn bodies, falling away into that void where no hand could stop their fall, where no voice could ever break the silence of an eternity alone …. She swayed, giddy. Shadow Jack touched her back.
“Go on, push off.” His voice crackled, distorted by his feeble speaker.
Behind his voice in her receiver she heard Rusty's fruitless scratching inside the pressurized carrying case; she saw figures coming toward them, moving along a mooring cable fastened amidships. She pushed herself out of the hatchway with too much force, drifted through a graceless arc to the ground. She began to rebound, caught at the mooring line and steadied herself. A mistake … And she couldn't afford to make another one. She was dealing with Belters, and she'd damn well better act like the Belters did. She felt tension burn away the fog of her exhaustion, as she watched Shadow Jack land easily on the bright, pockmarked field of rubble behind her. Above him she saw the sun Heaven, a spiny diamond in the crown of night, frigid and faraway—bizarre against the memory of her sun's bloody face in a dust-faded Morningside sky. As she turned away from the shadowed hull of the Lansing 04 she could see other ships moored; the stark light etched the crude patchwork of misshapen forms on her mind, overlaying her memory of the Ranger's ascetic perfection.
“You staying here long?”
She couldn't see the port man's face through the shielding mask of his helmet; she hoped her own faceplate hid her as well. “No longer than we have to.”
“Good; your exterior radiation level's medium-high. Not good for the plants.”
She looked down at the stained rubble, wondered if he was making a joke. She laughed, tentatively.
“You're the Lansing people?” Eight or ten more figures spilled out from behind him, with bulky instruments she realized were cameras.
“What are you here for?”
“Is it true that—”
“I thought everybody in the Main Belt was dead?”
She shifted Rusty's case, getting a better grip on the cable; their voices dinned inside her helmet. “We want to buy some hydrogen from your distillery.” She looked back at the port man. “I hope we don't have to walk to the other side?”
He laughed this time. “Nope. Not if you're paying customers.”
Betha noticed that he was armed.
“… heard you Main Belters mostly scrounge and steal,” the voices ran on. “Have you really got somethin' there to trade for snow?”
“How is it that a woman's in your position; are you sterile?”
“What's in the box?”
They surrounded her like wolves; she drew back, appalled. “I don't—”
“That's for us to know, junkers,” Shadow Jack said suddenly. “We're not here for handouts. We don't have to take crap from any of you.” He caught the guard's rigid sleeve. “Now, how do we get to the distillery?”
Betha's jaw tightened, but the guard raised his hands. “All right, you media boys, get off their backs. Take a picture of the ship; they didn't come from Lansing to pose for you. And be sure to mention Mecca Moorage Rentals.… No offense, buddy. Just follow the cable back to the shack; they're holdin' the car for you. Welcome to Mecca.”
“Say, is it true that—”
Shadow Jack drifted over the cable and pushed past them to the far side. Betha followed, her motion painfully nonchalant. “Thanks—buddy,” she said.
The guard nodded, or bowed, and so did Shadow Jack.
“Christ, who were those people?” She glanced over her shoulder as they boarded the single canister car of the ground transport; behind them someone sealed the door. She heard Shadow Jack mutter, “Unreal.” There were two others in the cabin, she saw, wishing it was empty, glad there were only two and hoping they didn't have cameras. Ahead through the plastic dome, the filament-fine monorail track stretched away over the barren brightness. Beyond the platform on her right she saw what looked to be a circular hatchway set into the surface of the rock; above it was a sign: HYDROPONICS CO-OP. She realized that the guard hadn't been making a joke; the chunk of naked stone that was Mecca was a self-sufficient world, riddled with tubes and vacuoles that supported life and all its processes. Too much radiation was bad for the plants.…
Her thoughts jarred and re-formed as gentle inertia pressed her against the seatback. Rusty snuffled and scratched in the carrier, making a sound like static inside her helmet; suddenly, painfully, she remembered their destination, and their purpose. And that only Eric could help her now—but Eric was gone. “I wonder if this was built before the war?” She glanced at Shadow Jack's mirrored faceplate, needing an answer.
“Yes, it was.” The voice in her helmet belonged to a stranger.
She started; so did Shadow Jack. They turned to look at the two others in the car; one, long legs stretching casually, reached up to clear his faceplate. “Eric—!” Her hand rose to her own helmet, hung motionless, almost weightless.
Curling dark hair, a lean, pensive face; the sudden smile that was almost a child's. The brown eyes looked surprised … amber eyes … not Eric, not … Eric is dead. She pulled down her trembling hand, leaving her faceplate dark. “I—I'm sorry. I thought … I thought you were someone I knew.”