She got her shower, she ate her breakfast, a few quick gulps of synth orange and some salt to get her blood back in balance, piece of cracker, enough to cushion her stomach and buffer a couple of pills for a sick hangover.
But she showed up in Engineering, first to sign in this time, clean sweater, clean pants, never mind the red in her eyes and the pounding in her skull.
There was check to do, she grabbed the checklist off the wall-clip, and got right to it, all enthusiastic efficiency, exactly the way Bernstein had said first-in was expected to do.
NG showed up, walked over and took the board out of her hand.
"Good morning," she said.
"I'd better check it over," he said, and then started re running all the checks, everything she'd just done, from the top.
"I'm right," she said indignantly, at his elbow, trying to keep it all quiet from the mainday crew members that were still finishing up. "Dammit, I can write down a damn number, Ramey!"
He nodded, and didn't even look at her, just walked on his rounds.
She couldn't do anything about him just then. The mainday chief was still there, within earshot, and then Bernstein walked in with Musa. So she choked it down and waited for Bernstein to put her on something.
Bernstein put her on a core-crawl with Musa, thatwas how the rest of the day went—
suited up and still freezing her ass off, a long, long misery of checking joints and looking for leaks and all the while knowing, as Musa put it—
"I like to move a little fast on this. Different from any merchanter—if Lokihad to move right now, matec we'd be in for one hell of a ride."
"How are we so lucky?" she asked, meaning alterday shift. They drifted, zero-G, in the dark dizzy perspective of pipes a quarter kilometer long, half swing up and over the pipes, half swing down under, like lacing, helmet-lamps and hand-held spots throwing close pipe into light, losing itself down the long, long fall Musa was talking about.
"Bernstein lost a bet," Musa said.
"You serious?"
"Crazier stuff goes on." A moment of silence, while the sniffer-lights ticked away, blink-blink, blink-blink.
You had a tether you kept moving and clipping on as you moved. You hoped to hell you never had to trust it. You never let yourself think up or down in a place like this, or they might have to pry you loose from the girders.
Anybody in the Fleet knew all about long corridors and sudden moves. A carrier's ring wasn't a ring, it was a cylinder with a few long, long corridors fore to aft, and corridors zigged, precisely to break falls like that, but even those could be a long, long drop if the engines cut in. You ran like hell when the take-hold sounded, you set yourself into a nook, hoped you had a ringbolt close you could clip your safety-belt to, you held onto the handholds as long as your hands could stand and sometimes the push was too hard for that, you just hoped it quit soon and concentrated on breathing. One time there'd been only a three-second split between the take-hold siren and a push that became a whole lot too much, a hundred twenty dead, that time, just couldn't get the clips on—God, she remembered that, she dreamed about it sometimes, remembered bodies falling right past her—and herself just lucky enough to have her back to a solid wall.
You didn't look at a perspective like the core as down, no way, or you could heave everything in your stomach.
Especially with a hangover.
Damn him.
"Musa."
"Yeah."
"You mind to tell me something?—Is anybody going to monitor us?"
"Not real likely. Can. What d'you want?"
"What's the story on NG?"
"Who you been talking to?"
"Muller."
Long silence, just the hiss of the airflow and the ping of the sniffer-readout. Then:
"What'd Muller say?"
"Just he was on the outs. That he had some bad shit with the crew, didn't say what."
Another long silence. "He give you trouble?"
"No. What's his problem?"
"At-ti-tude, mate. I told him.—I tell him that now and again. What he did, he killed a man."
"Law didn't get him?"
"Wasn't like that. Just wasn't where he was supposed to be, wasn't watching what he was supposed to be watching. Damn pipe blew, killed a man, name of Cassel. Good man.
NG—just had that habit of ducking out when he wanted to, Cassel tried to cover for him.
That's how he paid Cassel."
"Hell of a tag."
"Not only the one thing that won it for him. I'm fair with him, I don't pick any fights, I don't make trouble, and Bernstein's his last chance. Fitch had him up on charges, last time he ducked out. Fitch was going to space him, no shit. Those rules and rights in quarters?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't you believe 'emc And NG, he was done, but Bernstein got him off, Bernstein threw a fit with the captain and said put him on alterday crew, and move this other chap, he'dtake him. Or NG'd have gone the walk, damn sure."
Lotto think about in that, she thought.
"He thank Bernstein?"
"I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not.—I tell you, I tell you something. That man's not altogether here. But he never run out on duty again. Never gives Bernstein any trouble, never gives me any. You just don't cross him." Another long silence, Musa rising above the level of the pipe, arcing over toward her. Musa grabbed her hand and pulled her close until their helmets touched. He cut his com off. She understood that game and cut hers. "I tell you something else, Yeager." Musa's voice came strange and distant. She could see his face inside the helmet, underlit in the readout-glows. "I think one time this ship went jump and NG was in the brig—I'm not real sure Fitch saw he got his trank. I'm not sure, understand, but that time Bernstein got him off—maybe it was just one time too often in the brig, maybe it was just that jump and looking that spacewalk in the face—but I'm not real sure that didn't happen, just the way I said: Fitch hates his guts, we had an emergency, we had to go for jump, NG was dead, the way Fitch had to figure. But once Bernstein got him reprieved, the other side of jump—no way was Fitch going to tell the captain what he'd done. Can't prove it. NG don't talk. I'm not real sure all of him came back from that trip."
"Godc"
"Not saying it's so, understand. No way to prove it. Don't even think about it. We're legitimatenow. We're Alliance. There's rightsand there's laws, and the captain's signed to 'em. But they aren't on this ship, woman, and you don't get off this ship, no way you ever get a discharge from this crew, I hope you figured that when you signed your name.
You skip on a dockside, Fitch'll find you, you go complain to station law, Fitch'll lie and get you back, and you'll go a cold walk, that's sure. Fitch tell you that?"
"No. But I'm not real surprised."
"You got the right of it, then."
"NG a volunteer?"
"Dunno. Fitch gets 'em. NG never has said. Unless he told Cassel. Doesn't matter. He's on this ship, he'll die on this ship, and so will all of us." Musa pushed her adrift and turned his com back on. She flipped the switch on hers.
"Let's make a little time," Musa said, motioning along the ship spine with a shine of his lamp. "I hate this effin' core-crawl, damn if I don't."