And suddenly, he was more excited than he’d been since he was a boy. H’lim was finally in a mood to reveal the very things Titus had always wanted to know. But more, he might well give away the secrets Titus had been digging for-how both Earth’s peoples would be regarded in the galaxy.
As escort, Titus had the privilege of clinging to H’lim’s elbow, catching every gesture, every prolonged look, and he intended to make the most of it.
Trooping after H’lim, the humans jockeyed for position, vying for attention. Finally one physicist won out, a gruff-voiced barrel of a man with a slight limp even under lunar gravity. “You handle that suit as if you know what you’re doing,” the physicist observed, “but this ship didn’t carry a full complement of vacuum suits. Nor does it have escape pods. Is that the height of arrogance, the depths of depravity, or simply bad design?”
Amused, H’lim answered, “Try flawless workmanship.”
“Ah, but you crashed. Not so flawless.”
“It’s an old ship,” answered H’lim.
“Ah, broken down, then.”
“Oh, no. It was flawlessly designed for conditions other than encountered.”
“And what conditions were encountered?”
“You’ve got me there.” H’lim’s command of idioms Titus seldom used had grown rapidly. He seemed to have mastered English, but that, Titus reminded himself, was an illusion.
H’lim led them to what had been identified as a crew dormitory-until they’d discovered that orl were animals. “You’ve cleaned up in here.”
“I’ve told you,” said Colby, “that we’ve saved every shred of orl tissue we found. Most of it was in here and the adjacent room. You’ve seen what explosive decompression did to the tissues.”
The room had been twisted off-true only a little. H’lim toured the place, touching wall fixtures and the fittings where bed frames had been stapled to the floor, lingering wistfully at the broken lighting panels.
Someone noticed, and prompted, “Perhaps with a little data, we could duplicate those lighting panels.”
H’lim shook his head. “If I knew how to make them, I’d made some by now.” Then he led the way on a whirlwind tour through the rest of the ship, identifying for them the captain’s office, the crew’s quarters, the orl feed lockers, the water recycling plant, the air scrubbers, and the room where he’d been found, which had retained some pressure.
“I was preparing to-dine,” he explained delicately. Titus hung on H’lim’s every word, but his eyes roved down each cross corridor seeking Abbot, worrying about what his father was up/to now. Had he discovered his transmitter missing? If so, how long ago? Was there any way to get word to Inea? He saw the opening where Brink’s had their security checkpost. It had a line into the station. He toyed with the idea of cutting away just for a moment to leave Inea a message that it wasn’t all over yet.
Remembering the look on her face when H’lim had put the purple fluid, the precious booster, away, he took a few steps, but Colby called him back. “This way, Titus!”
Nearby was H’lim’s living quarters. Inside, he opened wall panels nobody had suspected existed, found a dead computer terminal, shook out some liquid containers long since boiled empty, collected a set of grooming tools, a couple of suits of clothes, and the rest of the pieces to his Thizan set, stuffed it all into a small bag and presented it to Colby. “Do I have to beg or fight to keep these?”
“Neither, but I suspect someone will ask to examine them.” She gestured to the open compartments. “Is the whole ship equipped with these?”
“I suppose, though I doubt they’ll open the way the ship’s frame is twisted. And don’t ask me where they are, what they have in them, or how they ought to open. I was just a passenger. I actually didn’t expect these to open.”
She hefted the bag. “You do travel light.”
“One learns.”
“Mass limits?” asked someone eagerly.
“No. Regardless of what has been dragged along, it’s never what’s needed. Much simpler to acquire items appropriate to the local conditions.”
A woman at the rear laughed ruefully.
When asked about the still minimally operational work stations along the central corridor, H’lim said, “They have to do with running the ship, but I don’t know how to operate them.” Having seen how quickly H’lim picked up the station’s programs, Titus thought the luren might figure these out, if he wanted to. Abbot had broken into some of the ship’s systems that Cognitive and Technical didn’t know about.
They came to an intersection where H’lim swung right, and Titus stopped him. “There’s a gap in the hull and the sun’s coming from that direction.”
“Let’s go down this way,” suggested someone, “and we can circle back to Biomed without going outside.” She led the way confidently down into the nearly flattened underside of the ship. Titus recognized her as an engineer who’d been studying the propulsion system, and his interest quickened. Though he hadn’t revealed anything important so far, H’lim was more helpful now than he’d ever been. Or– Titus stopped dead in his tracks, then shuffled forward as people pressed up behind him. No, he couldn’t be creating a diversion for Abbot. On the other hand, Abbot might have arranged the timing of this tour to get Titus out of his way.
Titus squeezed back beside Colby and made small talk while he inspected her for any trace of Abbot’s renewed Influence. “Do you really think,” he asked her, “that our study of this ship will be stopped when the war is over?”
Since the suitphones were all on the same channel, everyone listened to Colby. “Even if the W.S. wins, public support for our work may have dwindled by appropriations time. It’s important that we come up with results very soon.”
“I heard,” said someone else, “that W. S. might just fold up, in order to stop the war. It could easily just scratch the whole program, and then the secessionists’ organization would fall apart leaving W. S. in power as always. After all, with the probe gone, what’s to fight about really?”
“Us,” said a woman with Brink’s markings on her suit and an Australian accent. “The secessionists think we’re a plague station even though there hasn’t been so much as a cold here in Months. Even if we could build duplicates of this ship and fly them, we wouldn’t be accepted again on Earth.”
“We don’t need your gloom-and-doom, Irena. We may never drum up enough support for the probe again, but this station will be operating long after we die of old age.”
“Yeah. Here.”
“Game’s not over ”til it’s over,“ said a Thai accent.
Colby cut in, “That’s the spirit. Watch your heads everyone!” They had to duck low and scramble down a newly cut makeshift ramp.
The lower area was a maze of squashed and buckled corridors propped up by stanchions where the lower hull had been torn away and they’d had to excavate into the lunar rock to create a walkway. As he went, Titus became convinced that Colby had not been Influenced by Abbot recently, except to smooth over some of the memories Abbot wanted to stay buried. Dangerous but not reckless.
Still, Abbot could have controlled the timing of this jaunt simply by delaying completion of H’lim’s suit.
H’lim stopped to examine an area where the broken hull was curled and buckled. The woman who led them had to stop him from touching the torn metal. “It could cut suit fabric.”
H’lim looked at his gloved hand with trepidation and Titus could see his opinion of humans’ vacuum suits plummet. Oblivious of this, the engineer commented, “You know, the pilot of this ship should be decorated, even if posthumously. He almost made a soft landing, dead stick and all. And there was no subsequent explosion.”