And now the crazy dragon-man was back. Well, whoopee. Be careful what you wish for, he warned himself.
The man landed near to Carver, braking his flight against the surface of the rock with one hand. He waited patiently, clinging to the rock like a white bat, staring at the side of Carver’s head.
With a sigh, Carver released the trigger turned towards the crazy dragon-man, his pinkish face contorted with barely-restrained anger. ‘What?’ he asked coldly.
‘You should eat something,’ said the man. ‘And sleep. I can dig for a bit.’
Carver wanted to bite him, maybe headbutt him in his smug, happily insane face, but of course he didn’t. ‘Okay,’ he said, holding out the cutter to the man.
The man shook his head. ‘Bring it with you,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you into the shuttle, with the restraining device. We’ll find you some food, then I’ll leave the device by the co-pilot’s seat and you can get some sleep there.’
Carver was instinctively reluctant to agree to anything this man had to say, but he had to admit that food and sleep sounded better than more interminable hours of cutting through rock in this icy hole. He nodded, not dignifying the man with a verbal response.
The man pushed off from the rock-face towards the tube that led back into the service deck of the shuttle, fishlike and surprisingly agile in the micro-gee. He unclipped the restraining device from the tube and checked its little screen as he went. Carver followed a little more clumsily, encumbered by the cutter, which he had made sure was in safe mode. He missed the tube and had to grope, one-handed, across the rock, dragging himself into it while holding the cutter in the other hand. He spilled through in a disorderly landslide of limbs.
The man was already at the other end of the tube, silhouetted against the light from the shuttle, his breath pluming in the cold, waiting for Carver to catch up. They made their way into the machine rooms, where ribbed tanks of compressed gases lined the walls. The man led the way down a long ladder to the bridge, dragging himself along on handlines attached to the walls for that purpose. It was almost unbearably hot in here, especially after the the freezing cold of the asteroid.
Although the man was quiet for the moment, Carver could sense that irritating contentedness exuding from him in waves. He was humming gently under his breath, like a man happy in his work, content that he was doing his best in a tough job.
They entered the shuttle’s bridge, squeezing themselves through the narrow doorway, and the man bade Carver magnet the cutter onto an equipment rack that held an assortment of battered hand-tools.
Carver looked around the bridge: it was dark and stark and oddly-angled; the surfaces and equipment well-worn; the pilot’s couch stained with what looked like coffee or chocolate. A second chair sat beside the pilot’s, clearly a subordinate position from the relative simplicity of the control desk in front of it — the co-pilot’s chair. Carver was pretty sure these shuttles usually flew with only a single pilot, though. A third seat was positioned on the other side of the room, this one turned away from them. The large cockpit windows, actually screens arrayed across the banded expanse of the shuttle’s deuterium-shielded hull, showed a grey and uninviting vista of endless, suspended rock. Soros looked impossibly distant and unreal — a dispassionate eye watching them from another dimension.
The man told Carver to sit on the co-pilot’s seat, then went to a locker under the flight console and produced a handful of rustling plastic packets. He clambered back across a tangle of discarded clothing, presumably the pilot’s, that was rising snakelike from the floor in response to some disruption of the air. He became caught-up, briefly, and Carver thought what an excellent moment it would be to rush the bastard. His fingers clenched, as if already seizing on the crazy dragon-man’s throat. But his gaze fell unavoidably on the restraining device and he inwardly sighed, forcing himself to relax. Patience, he told himself. Wait for the moment. Just chill.
‘Ship’s rations, I’m afraid,’ said the man, floating in front of Carver, as if the poor menu choice was the worst injustice he was inflicting on his prisoner. ‘There’s water here somewhere, too.’
‘Whatever,’ Carver answered, trying to sound as disinterested as possible, even though his stomach betrayed him with a treacherously loud growl.
The man threw Carver the packets, which felt like they were filled with sand and were stamped with such uninspiring legends as CHICKEN-STYLE DINNER and SWEET DESSERT, then dragged himself off to retrieve the water he had spoken of. He stuck the restraining device onto the console opposite Carver, where he had no choice but to look at the bloody thing. The legend ONE PRISONER — IN RANGE glowed on its little screen. When the man came back he was grinning sheepishly and holding a metal water bottle.
‘It’s a bit warm,’ he said apologetically, offering it to Carver.
The bottle was, indeed, almost too hot to touch when Carver unscrewed it clumsily with his gloved hand and raised it to his mouth. ‘Shit!’ he cried, whipping it away from his face and rubbing at his lips. ‘Where’ve you been keeping this thing?’
‘See?’ said the man brightly, pushing over to the pilot’s chair, where he strapped himself down and sat watching Carver eat, the asteroid belt an eerie backdrop behind him.
Carver was initially disturbed by that piercing, relentless stare, but he was so hungry that he soon forgot the man was even there. He ate CHICKEN-STYLE DINNER, followed it with MEAT AND POTATOES, then sat gulping warm water, trying to wash the lumps down his gullet and into his stomach. The contents were actually not as hot as the bottle itself, which was good because he was seriously thirsty. He drank deeply and sighed with satisfaction, leaning back against the head-rest of the co-pilot’s seat, eyes closed. He ached all over now that he had stopped moving. He arched his back and stretched, as far as the chair would allow him to. When he looked up, the crazy dragon-man was still staring at him, looking particularly pleased with himself.
‘Needed that, eh?’ he asked Carver with a grin.
Carver thought he could actually see the madness, capering behind the man’s eyes like a dancing jester. Despite this, though, he couldn’t help but feel a little happier now that he had eaten. The endless hours of cutting in the asteroid seemed like a distant dream, something he could almost laugh about now. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, trying not to smile himself. ‘Guess so.’
The man nodded agreeably, then turned to look out into the belt. He sat this way in silence for a while, and then he turned back to Carver and said suddenly, ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
Carver considered this while he opened SWEET DESSERT. It proved awkward, so he took his gloves off, just casting them aside to float dreamily away into a corner of the bridge. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In a way I guess it is.’
This seemed to please the man, who smiled, nodded and turned back to the window.
‘So,’ said Carver, pausing to bite the silver packet open, having failed to tear it along the suggested line, ‘how many other inmates are there on this station of yours?’
The man turned back to him slowly, looking distant, his eyes unfocused. ‘Hmm?’ he asked.
‘How many others are there on the station?’ asked Carver again. He tried the substance from the packet. It seemed to be basically just textured sugar, but that was fine with him.
‘Well,’ said the man, ‘there’s a hundred and eleven — no, a hundred and ten–’ he corrected himself, ‘and then there are fifteen prisoners at the moment. Why?’