Sam, being Sam, hovered up by the ceiling, one arm wrapped casually on a rung of the ladder that led up to the cockpit. Zane and Clement strapped themselves against the rows of equipment trays that made up the front wall of the compartment.
Zane still looked unwell, even more bloated in the face than usual, and queasy green. His coveralls showed off his pear-like shape. Clement seemed no different than he’d been in Washington; it was as if his surroundings made no impact on him at all. Even in a flight suit he was a thin, gray old man and nothing more.
Yet he avoided looking at Sam. And I noticed that Sam avoided looking at him. Like two conspirators who didn’t want the rest of us to know that they were working secretly together.
“This is a preliminary hearing,” Zane began, his voice a little shaky. “Its purpose is to make recommendations, not decisions. I will report the results of this meeting directly to the Vice President, in his capacity as chairman of the Space Council.”
Vice President Benford had been a scientist before going into politics. I doubted that he would look on Sam’s free-enterprise salvage job with enthusiasm.
“Before we begin …” There was D’Argent with his finger raised in the air again.
“What’s he doing here, anyway?” Sam snapped. “What’s Rockledge got to do with this hearing?”
Zane had to turn his head and look up to face Sam. The effort made him pale slightly. I saw a bunch of faint rings against the skin of his neck, back behind his ear, where medication patches had been. Looked like he’d been embraced by a vampire octopus.
“Rockledge is one of the two contractors currently engaged in the orbital debris removal feasibility program,” Zane said carefully, as if he was trying hard not to throw up.
Sam frowned down at Zane, then at D’Argent.
Bonnie Jo said, “VCI has no objection to Rockledge’s representation at this hearing.”
“We don’t?” Sam snapped.
She smiled up at him. “No, we don’t.”
Sam muttered something that I couldn’t really hear, but I could imagine what he was saying to himself.
D’Argent resumed, “I realize that this hearing has been called to examine the question of space salvage. I merely want to point out that there is a larger question involved here, also.”
“A larger question?” Zane dutifully gave his straight line.
“Yes. The question of who should operate the debris removal system once the feasibility program is completed.”
“Who should operate …” Sam turned burning red.
“After all,” D’Argent went on smoothly, “the debris removal system should be used for the benefit of its sponsor—the government of the United States. It should not be used as a front for shady fly-by-night schemes to enrich private individuals.”
Sam gave a strangled cry and launched himself at D’Argent like a guided missile. I unhooked my feet from the floor loops just in time to get a shoulder into Sam’s ribs and bounce him away from D’Argent. Otherwise I think he would have torn the guy limb from limb right then and there.
Bonnie Jo yelled, “Sam, don’t!” Clement seemed to faint. My shoulder felt as if something had broken in there.
And Zane threw up over all of us.
That broke, up the meeting pretty effectively.
It took Bonnie Jo and me several hours to calm Sam down. He was absolutely livid. We carried him kicking and screaming out of the shuttle and into the station’s wardroom, by the galley. The station physician, the guy who had to stay aboard longer than the usual ninety days because of Sam and the others commandeering the shuttle seats, came in and threatened to give him a shot of horse tranquilizer.
What really sobered Sam up was Bonnie Jo. “You damned idiot! You’re just proving to those government men that you shouldn’t be allowed to operate anything more sophisticated than a baby’s rattle!”
He blinked at her. I had backed him up against the wall of the wardroom and was holding him by his shoulders to stop him from thrashing around. The station’s doctor was sort of hovering off to one side with a huge hypodermic syringe in his hand and an expectant smile on his face. Bonnie Jo was standing squarely in front of Sam, her eyes snapping like pistols.
“I screwed up, huh?” Sam said, sheepishly.
“You certainly showed Zane and Clement how mature you are,” said Bonnie Jo.
“But that sonofabitch is trying to steal the whole operation right out from under us!”
“And you’re helping him.”
I waved the medic away. He seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t have to stick a needle into Sam’s anatomy. We drifted over to the table. There was only one of them in the cramped little wardroom, rising like a flat-topped toadstool from a single slim pedestal. It was chest-high; nobody used chairs in zero-gee: you stuck your feet in the floor loops and let your arms drift to their natural level.
Sam hung onto the table, letting his feet dangle a few inches off the floor. He looked miserable and contrite.
Before I could say anything, the skipper poked her brunette head into the wardroom.
“Can I see you a minute, Spence?” she asked. From the look on her face I guessed it was business, and urgent.
I pushed over to her. She motioned me through the hatch and we both headed for the command module, like a pair of swimmers coasting side by side.
“Got a problem,” she said. “Mission control just got the word from the tracking center that Rockledge’s damned Nerf ball is on a collision course with us.”
I got that sudden lurch in the gut that comes when your engine quits or you hear a hiss in your space suit.
“How the hell could it be on a collision course?” I didn’t want to believe it.
She pulled herself through the hatch and swam up to her command station. Pointing to the trio of display screens mounted below the station’s only observation window, she said, “Here’s the data; see for yourself.”
I still couldn’t believe it, even though the numbers made it abundantly clear that in less than one hour the shredded remains of one of the Nerf balls was going to come barreling into the station at a closing velocity of more than ten miles per second.
“It could tear a solar panel off,” the commander said tightly. “It could even puncture these modules if it hits dead center.”
“How the hell…”
“It banged into the spent final stage of the Ariane 4 that was launched last week. Got enough energy from the collision to push it up into an orbit that will intersect with ours in …” She glanced at the digital clock on her panel.”… fifty-three minutes.”
“The magnetic field won’t deflect it,” I said. “It hasn’t been in space long enough to build up a static electrical charge on its skin.”
“Then we’ll have to abandon the station. Good thing the shuttle’s still docked to us.”
She moved her hand toward the communications keyboard. I grabbed it away.
“Give me five minutes. Maybe there’s something we can do.”
I called Sam to the command module. Bonnie Jo was right behind him. Swiftly I outlined the problem. He called Larry, back in Florida, who immediately agreed that the magnetic bumper would have no effect on the Nerf ball. He didn’t look terribly upset; to him this was a theoretical problem. I could see Melinda standing behind him, smiling into the screen like a chubby Mona Lisa.
“There’s no way we could deflect it?” Sam asked, a little desperation in his voice.
“Not unless you could charge it up,” Larry said.
“Charge it?”
“Spray it with an electron beam,” he said. “That’d give it enough of a surface charge for the magnetic field to deflect it.”