CHAPTER 3
CAME a thump from the shower, and Ben thought to himself: He’s been in there a long time. He slipped his seatbelt off, shoved off in that direction and snatched a handhold at the shower corner, catching a hazy image of Dekker upside down and crosswise in the stall.
What in hell? he wondered. He flung the door back—could make no sense at first of what Dekker was doing. Then he saw the bloody fingerprints on the locker door, the whole angle of Dekker’s neck and arm forcing the soap dispenser panel shut on the clip. Dekker let it go of a sudden, the panel banged, and Dekker came off the wall at him, grappling for a hold, trying, he realized in panic, to get the cable looped around his throat.
He yelled, flailed out and caught the cable, their tumble winding them both into the cable Dekker was trying to get around his neck, and in sheer panic he hit him, hauled up on the cable and kept hitting him, hard as he could.
“Ben!” Bird yelled. He half-heard it: he just kept pounding away, his fist gone numb, his breath so choked he had no idea whether he was snagged in the cable or not. Bird grabbed his arm, yelling, “You’re going to kill him!—Ben, dammit, stop!”
He realized then that Dekker was no longer fighting. Bird pried him out of his grip, Dekker floating loose and limp. Bird shook at him again, said, “God, have you lost your mind?”
Sympathy for a damned lunatic—no thanks for stopping Dekker from killing them. He was shaking from the scare Dekker had given him, he hurt from Dekker’s hitting him, and Bird took Dekker’s part.
“That sonuvabitch tried to pry the clip loose!” he said, and shook free of Bird’s grip, grabbed Dekker, hauled him up again where the pipes and conduits were, and fumbled the roll of tape out of his hip pocket. Dekker was still limp as he started wrapping his wrist to a cold-water pipe, but he hurried, afraid he would come to.
“Stop it!” Bird cried, and came up and shoved him away.
His hand hurt. Bird was taking the lunatic’s part. So he went down and got into stores and dispensed himself a beer: he didn’t speak to Bird, he didn’t trust himself to say anything at the moment. His jaw was sore. A tooth felt loose. His lip was cut. He had never had a fight in school and it had not been his idea to have one this late in his life, except a guy wanted to kill him. He yelled up at Bird, “Don’t you let that sonuvabitch loose! Don’t you do it, Bird!”
He took a gulp of beer, still shaking, his legs and arms jerking spasmodically, his breath so erratic he had trouble drinking. Not scared, mad, that was all. Damned mad. The guy tried to kill him and Bird shoved him off and started making sympathetic noises at the guy that had meant to do them both in. Bird owned the ship. Bird gave the orders. And Bird thought they could trust this sonuvabitch…
“Toss me up a cold pack,” Bird yelled down.
He did that: he opened up medical and sent it up to Bird and Bird didn’t even look at him.
Bird cut the penlight. At least Dekker’s pupils were the same size and they both reacted, which was about all he knew to look for. Dekker was bleeding from the nose in little droplets. He mopped the air with his handkerchief, to keep it out of the filters, wiped Dekker’s chin, then caught the cold pack and applied it to Dekker’s face and the back of his neck.
Dekker began to show signs of life, confused, struggling with the tape for a moment before he reached over with his free hand and started tearing at it. Bird grabbed that hand, restrained it, saying, so only Dekker could hear, “Easy, easy, just stay quiet, it’s all right. Just take it easy—you’re not doing any good that way. Cut it out, hear?”
Dekker was breathing hard, staring at him or through him, he had no idea. Dekker wanted loose, couldn’t fault him for that—couldn’t be sure he was sane, either; and God only knew what was going on with Ben. Dekker gave a jerk at the wrist he was holding.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Just stay still. You leave that tape alone for a while. Hear? Just let it be.”
Dekker said, “Liar.”
“Yeah, right.” You went to sleep and things were halfway under control and you woke up with two guys trying to kill each other and it wasn’t highly likely to make sense. “You’re bleeding into our filters. Just stay still—damn!” as Dekker choked and sneezed beads of blood. He snagged them with the handkerchief, one-handed, pressed it against Dekker’s face. “I don’t know what you did, son. Did you do something to piss Ben off?”
Dekker only shook his head, denial, refusal, he had no idea. Dekker blew blood into the handkerchief, gasped a bubbly breath and mumbled, “Cory. Call Cory.”
“Not likely she’s answering.” He shoved Dekker’s hand at his face. “Hold that.” He snagged the ice-pack that was coming back after its impact with the wall, and gave Dekker that too. “Just keep the cold on it. If you’re going to bleed, bleed into the handkerchief, all right? Don’t blow at it. Just let it be.”
Dekker looked at him past the bloody handkerchief and the cold pack. Sane for a moment, maybe. Or just too miserable and too short of breath to be crazy for a while.
He collected himself and his headache and the remnant of his patience, shoved off and drifted down to Ben. Ben intended to keep his back to him, it seemed—so he turned, touched a cabinet and changed course. You got used to reading faces upside down or sideways. Ben’s was sour, upset, and Ben was trying not to notice being stared at—only drinking his beer and trying to be somewhere else.
“I got a problem,” he said. “Ben?”
“We both got a problem,” Ben said shortly, as if he was not going to say much else. But Ben said then: “The guy was trying to kill us. He damn near had that clip undone, with a panel edge for a pliers. What was he going to do then, huh, Bird? You reckon that?”
“God only. Just go easy. We got a long way back.”
“Go easy,” Ben scowled. “Listen, I saved and did without all my life to get that 20 k, you understand? Nobody ever handed me a break, nobody ever gave me a damn thing, and here we have the best break anybody could look for—”
“It doesn’t say we own that ship. It doesn’t.”
“God, Bird,—”
“We’ll be all right.” He could understand Ben’s panic, on that leveclass="underline" the 20 k was hard come by, all right, so was everything. “We won’t go under.”
“Go under! You’re old enough to know better, Bird. I put my whole life savings into this operation!”
“So have I,” he said shortly, and hauled himself down and turned so he could see Ben’s face rightwise up. “Thirty plus years’ worth. And listen to me: you don’t go hitting the guy again. He’s had enough knocks to the head.”
“So who is he? Who is he that you owe him a damn thing, Bird? Is there something about this guy I don’t know? Somewhere you’ve met this guy before?”
He looked at Ben with this feeling they were not communicating again: he listened to Ben’s single-minded craziness with the uncomfortable feeling he might yet have to take a wrench to his partner.
But just about the time he thought Ben might really blow, Ben gave this little wave of his hand and a shake of his head. “All right, all right, we’re going in, abort our run—forget it, forget I said anything.”
“What day is it?” Dekker asked from across the cabin. “Cory? Cory?”
“The 21st,” he told him. “May 21st.”
Ben raked his hand through his hair, rolled an anguished glance toward Bird. “I want rid of him. God only knows what happened to his partner. Or if there ever was a partner.”