Then number two monitor showed a faint haze of detail. Chamber wall and a pod directly in Meg’s suit spot, he’d bet his life on it.
“She’s all right,” he said, feeling the shakes himself. “Sir, she knows her business.”
Porey wasn’t saying a thing about the transmission difficulties, wasn’t giving any orders now, he just muttered, “Kady’s on notice with me, you make that clear, Mr. Graff.”
“Yes, sir,” Graff said.
Word came from another channel that the Pod Rescue Unit was being deployed. At least some of the rescue squad had gotten there, and was launching the track-guided equipment that could tow the pod.
Meanwhile an engineer was giving instructions and Meg started identifying and freeing up the bolts that released it from its track.
“Shit...” came over the com; and froze his heart.
“What’s the matter?” the chief asked; but he could see it for himself, the pod’s number decal—number three. The pod they’d been scheduled for.
“That’s Jamil,” he said, to whoever cared, and looked for a chair free. But there wasn’t one. “Jamil and his guys took our slot—said they could use the time...”
Didn’t take much calc to find a lighted, open hatch, and Meg beelined for it, braked and took a shaky bent-kneed impact, another showout miner-trick, with a hand-up catch at the rim of the lock to stop the rebound. She cycled the lock on battery power, breath hissing with shivers—it wasn’t cold coming through the suit, not this fast, it was shock starting to work, in the loneliness of the airlock. Let the rescue crew do the maneuvering with the PRU, the chief had said, they wanted her out of there and that lock shut before they powered up the mags and she agreed, she didn’t know shit about the tow system: it was on now, it was moving, bound for a pod access lock where meds were waiting, and they weren’t going to need her unless the mags were definitively crashed.
Moment of intense claustrophobia then, just the ghostly emergency light, then a door opened into a brightly lit ready-room full of guys willing to help with the suit.
She got the helmet off, drew a breath of icy clean air and got a first welcome bit of news—power-up was proceeding, pods were answering; they for sure weren’t going to need her again out there, and she could unsuit and take the lift out to gravitied levels and the lockers. Good job, they told her, good job, but they were busy and she got herself out of the way, let them tend the suit, unaccustomed luxury for a miner-jock, and boarded the lift out of there.
Slow, slow business in the recovery of the pod, and they could only watch, in 1-dcck Security ops. Dekker hung at draffs back and Percy’s, listened to the output from the rescue team on the open speaker.
They were working into dock now, at access 3. “That’s copy,” he heard a voice say, and flashed on cold, on dark, on inertia gone wild—
Enjoy the ride, Dekker....
“That’s him,” he said of a sudden—had everyone’s attention, and he looked to Graff, who understood what he meant, Graff surely understood.
“ID that man,” Graff snapped, “isolate mat voice. —Mr. Dekker—“ as he headed for the door. “Hold it.”
“Dekker!” Porey said atop Graff’s order, but he’d already stopped and faced them.
“I want you to listen,” Graff said. “I want you to pick out that voice, all the voices that might be involved.”
“Is he meaning the attack on him?” Porey wanted to know, and Graff nodded, leaning over the master com in ops. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what he means. —Play it back, ensign.”
“That’s copy,” the recording said, among others, and Dekker said with absolute conviction, “Yes. That one.”
“Who’s carded to that area right now?” Porey asked. “Nobody’s leaving that area without carding out, hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” the com tech said; and relayed to Fleet Security.
“Not everybody’s carded in,” Graff said. “They probably let medics and techs in wholesale—anybody with a security badge...”
“Sir,” the tech said, “I think I’ve got it pinned. That output’s on e-com, I’ve got the serial number on the unit.”
“Track it.”
Time to indulge the shakes and the unsteady breathing, alone in the lift. “They’re getting telemetry,” Meg heard, on the com track that was probably going out to every speaker in the mast. “Four heartbeats.” Best news yet. Thank God, she thought, queasy in the steady increase of g against the deep fast dive the car was taking. She clenched her teeth and collected herself, watched the level indicator light plummet until the car came to rest and the door opened on warm air and bright light.
She expected Mitch and a handful of guys; but the room was packed, everybody who could cram themselves hi, all wanting news. “Four heartbeats,” she told them, which they might have heard, she couldn’t tell if the com was feeding through, there was so much racket. She wasn’t prepared to be laid hold of, wasn’t expecting Mitch of all guys to pat her heavily on the shoulder and say how miner-jocks had their use—other guys did the same, and all she could get out was a breathless, desperate: “Jamil. Janul took our sim slot... anybody seen Dek?”
Nobody had. She was shaking, embarrassing herself with that fact, but she couldn’t stop the chill now. A big guy whose name she didn’t even know threw his arm around her shoulders, hugged her against his side, and yelled out to get a blanket, she was soaked with sweat.
I’m all right, she tried to say, but her teeth kept chattering. Seeing that number out there had put a shock reaction into her—she wasn’t used to shaking; wasn’t used to time to think when she was scared, or, worst, to knowing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do personally to help those guys or Dek... .
The blanket came around her. “Tried to kill us,” she said between shivers. “Wasn’t any fucking accident, Dek was supposed to be in that pod. . . That was our slot Jamil took...”
“Sims tech Eldon A. Kent,” Graff said, reading the monitor, “out of Munich, trained in Bonn ...”
“I want a piece of him,” Dekker said. God, he wanted it, wanted to pound the son of a bitch so fine the law wouldn’t have pieces left to work with. “Just let me find him.”
“Certainly answers the questions about access,” Graff murmured, reading over the data on the monitor. “Free access to the pods, a lot of the techs let each other through, never mind the rules. He’s Lendler Corp, he comes and goes—what were you doing up there suited, Dekker? What were you doing with the mission tape?”
Piece suddenly clicked into place. Bad memory. Whole chunk of memory. “Wanted to look at the tape, just wanted to look at it—“ The disaster sequence. The maneuver Wilhelmsen had failed to make. “Damned set piece. They wanted it to work, they kept training us for specifics. I told them that, I...”
“They.”
“The UDC. Villy.”
“So you went to the ready room, or up to the access?”
“The ready room. To run it on the machine there. They wouldn’t let me in the labs, I was off-duty. I just wanted to look at the sequence—“
“Where did this Kent come in?” Porey asked.
“While I was running the tape.”
“Alone?”
He shook his head. “Guy was with him. I know the face, I can’t remember the name—“
“And they came in while you were reading the tape. What did they say?”
“They said they were checking out the pods, they were looking for some possible problem in the sims. They wanted me to go up to the chamber and answer some questions...”
Graff asked: “Did you suit to fly? Was that your intention?”
“I—I hadn’t—no. I just had the coveralls. I hadn’t brought a coat.”
“You suited because of the cold, you mean.”
“Yes, sir.”