Ben muttered. “I got everything customs can ask on that ship. Got all the charges figured, too.”
“Just leave it, Ben.”
“I want that ship, Bird. I want that ship. God, we got the proof—I got all the proof they need—”
“Ben,—”
“Look, they do their official investigation. But this guy’s incompetent, he was incompetent when we boarded. What’s he going to do, ask ’em the time? The law’s on our side.” Ben was cheerful again. “We got it, Bird, we got it.”
“Let the guy alone,” he said. “Forget about that ship, dammit!”
“I’m not forgetting it. Hell if I’ll forget it. We’re filing on it. Or I am. You can take your pick, partner.”
“There’s such a thing as wanting things too much. You can’t ever afford to want things that much. It’s not healthy.”
“Healthy, hell. I’ll take care of us. All you have to do is sit back and watch me go, partner, I know the law.”
“There’s things other than law, Ben.—Just stow the charts, hear me?”
“I’m not stowing the charts.”
“We’re going to get searched, dammit, just put the damn things in the hole or friggin’ dump ’em, we can’t get ’em off this time—”
“Guys run ’em in all the time, customs doesn’t give a damn—just say they’re vidgames. They don’t even boot to check.”
“Ben, dammit!”
“I haven’t spent all this work to give up those charts. They’re going to go over us with a microscope, Bird,—”
“Thirty years nobody’s found that hideyhole, not customs and not the lease crews. Just drop ’em in. You think they’re going to go at us plate by plate over a rescue?”
“Two Twenty-nine Tango Trinidad, this is ASTEX Approach Controclass="underline" tugs are 20 minutes 14 seconds, mark.”
“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy: 20 minutes 14 seconds. No problem, tow is clear. Proceeding on that instruction.”
Ben said, “You got an Attitude this trip. I don’t understand it, Bird, I swear I don’t understand it.”
“You know Shakespeare, Ben?”
“Haven’t met him.”
They were still speaking as they made dock. Barely.
“We got ’er,” Ben said.
Several significant breaths later Ben said, “I’m sorry, Bird.”
“Shakespeare’s a writer,” Bird said.
“One of those,” Ben said.
“Yeah.”
“You got him on tape?”
“There’s a tape. Hard going, though.”
“Physics?” Ben asked.
“Two Twenty-nine Tango Trinidad, this is ASTEX Dock Authority, check your pressure. Will you need a line?”
“We copy 800 mb, B dock. No line, we’re 796.”
“Trinidad, we copy 796. Medical units standing by on dockside. Stand by life systems sample.”
“Shit,” Ben groaned, “they’re going to stall us on a medical. They damn well better not find some bug aboard, I’ll skin him.”
“Won’t find any bug. Get our data up, will you?”
They were nose to the docking mast. Trinidad shuddered and resounded as the cradle locked. She hissed a little of her air at the sampler.
ASTEX said: “Welcome in, Trinidad. Good job. Stand by results on that sample.”
The dockside air went straight to the back of the throat and stung the sinuses, icy cold and smelling of volatiles. It tasted like ice water and oil and it cut through coats and gloves the way the clean and the cold finally cut through the stink Bird smelled in his sleep and imagined in the taste of his food. Time and again you got in from a run and the chronic sight of just one other human face, and when you looked at all the space around you and saw real live people and faces that weren’t that face—you got the sudden disconnected notion you were watching it all on vid, drifting there with only a tether and a hand-jet between you and a dizzy perspective down the mast—worse than EVAs in the deep belt, a lot dizzier. Dock monkeys kited about at all angles, checking readouts, taking samples, talking to empty air. Bird’s earpiece kept him informed about the meds inside the ship, the receipt of the manifest and customs forms at the appropriate offices—
“Morris Bird,” the earpiece said, thin voice riding over the banging and hammering of sound in the core. “This is officer Wills, Security. Understand you found a drifter.”
He hated being sneaked up on, hated the office-sitters that would blindside a man and made him look around to see where they were—or whether they were there and not a phonecall. He turned and saw three of them in ASTEX Security green, sailing his way down the hand-line.
“Yessir,” he said, before they got there. “Details have already gone to BM. Any problem?”
“Just a few questions,” Wills said. Before he got there.
CHAPTER 5
YOU have any theories to explain what happened?” Wills asked. The cops hung face to face with him, all of them maintaining position with holds on the safety-lines, and you about needed the earpiece to hear at the moment over the thundering racket from a series of loads going down the spinning core. Bird, mindful of the Optex Wills was wearing, shrugged, shook his head and said, mostly honestly: “Could’ve caught a rock. Helluva bash on one side. On the other hand, the bash could’ve been secondary. Maybe he was working real close in and just didn’t see another one coming, dunno, really, dunno if it’s going to be easy to tell. We didn’t go outside, just got a look on vid. We did make a tape.”
“We’ll want that. Also your log. Did you remove anything from the wreck?”
“We took out the rescuee and the clothes he was wearing. Nothing else. We washed ’em and he’s still wearing ’em. He had his watch, and nothing in his pockets. He’s still wearing the watch. Anything else we left aboard, even his clothes and his Personals. You wouldn’t want to open up without a decon squad. It’s a real mess in that ship.”
“Any idea where the partner is?”
“Evidently she was outside when the accident happened. He kept trying to call her, kept trying when he was off his head, I guess he tried til he couldn’t think of anything else. They’re from Rl. Her name was Cory. That’s all we ever figured out. His life systems were near gone, ship was tumbling pretty bad. He’d taken a lot of knocks.” He hoped to hell that would cover Ben’s ass about the bruises. He felt dirty doing it, but he would have felt dirtier not to. “Kid was pretty sick from breathing that stuff, kept hallucinating about having to call his partner—evidently did everything he could to find her, sick as he was.” He tried to put Dekker in the best light he could, too, fair being fair. “When we got to him, I guess he just finally realized she was gone. Fever set in—he’s been off his head a lot, just keeps asking over and over for his partner, that’s all.”
“What would he say?”
“Just her name. Sometimes he’d yell Look out, like he was warning someone. Kid’s exhausted. Like when you give up and then the adrenaline runs out.”
“Yeah,” Wills said. “Didn’t happen to say why they were out of their zone?”
“He didn’t know they were out of their zone.”
“So he did say something else.”
“We had to explain we were taking him to R2. It upset him. He was lost, disoriented. The accident must’ve happened the other side of the line.”