The oxygen felt short. He tried not to panic. He didn’t want them to tell him he was confused. “Bird,” he said, before Bird could get away. “There’s a’driver right where I came from. Isn’t there?”

“I wouldn’t know that, son. I don’t know for sure where you came from.”

“79, 709, 12.”

Bird nodded slowly. “All right. Yes. There is a’driver near there.”

He found his breath shorter and shorter. He said, calmly, sanely, because he finally found one solid thing they both agreed on. “All right. I want you to call it. Ask about my partner.”

“You sure you hada partner, son?”

Reality kept getting away from him. Time and space and what had happened did. He fixed on Bird’s gray-stubbled face as the only reference he had. “Just call the’driver. Just ask them if they picked up my partner. That’s all I ask.”

“Son… I honestly don’t know what you might have been doing out there in a’driver’s assigned territory. You understand me?”

He didn’t. He shook his head.

“How long have you been in the Belt, son?”

“Couple years.” He wasn’t sure of that number any longer either. He was sure of nothing in regard to time. He thought again—look at my watch—got to know—which direction to reckon.

“Free runner?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever make any money at mining?”

Ben asked those kinds of questions. “Maybe.”

“Haven’t ever done any skimming, have you?”

His heart jumped. He shook his head emphatically, wanting Bird to believe him. “No.” He couldn’t remember what conversation they were in, what they had just said, why Bird was asking him a thing like that.

Bird said, “We’re just damn close to that’driver’s fire-path, understand, and if we got one accident, we sure don’t need another, you read me?”

Things were dark awhile. Bird gave him more of the soup, told him it was breakfast and they were all right. He wanted to think so, but he didn’t believe it any longer. He heard voices near him. He thought he remembered Bird asking him questions after that. He wasn’t sure. He dreamed he answered, and that Bird let him loose awhile to get to the toilet. But maybe that was the other time.

From time to time he remembered the collision. His muscles jumped, and then he would realize that was long past and he was still alive. “What time is it?” he asked, and Bird caught him by the side of the jaw, made him focus eye to eye.

“Son, don’tcross Ben again. Don’t ask him the time. Don’t ask me. Your friend’s dead. She’s dead, you understand me?”

Bird’s grip hurt. Bird was angry and he didn’t know why.

“We got the confirm from Base,” Ben shouted up.

“Yeah,” Bird called back, and patted Dekker’s face. “Got a draft coming from that vent. I’ll get you a blanket, tuck you in—we’re about to catch the beam.”

“Yeah,” he said. He was confused again. He thought that Bird had said that would be some time yet. But he’d given up knowing where they were. He hung there, nowhere for a while, listening to Bird move around. He heard hydraulics working, heard that series of sounds that meant a sail deploying. He thought, So we’re going in. He didn’t really believe it. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t possible any longer. He couldn’t come back from this. He just kept seeing the shower wall, the watch on his arm, perpetual loop, maybe because he was dead…

Bird came back with an armful of blankets and jammed one between his head and the pipes, one at the small of his back. “Don’t lose that,” Bird said, and took a bit of webbing and tied it around him and the blankets and the conduits, telling him he had to, it was for his safety, but he had stopped believing Bird. He thought about Sol Station. Mama coming home from work. Cory meeting him at Refinery One dock. Hi, there, she’d say. I’m Cory. And a person who’d been a lot of letters and a lot of postage would be flesh and blood…

If he could get to dockside, if they brought him that far, she’d be there… if he could get to the 12th he could get there again…

He’d run out on his mother, Cory had run away from hers. His mother just let him go. Cory’d sent those letters that would always be stacked up in her mail-file and waiting for her… He’d say, Don’t read them, but Cory would. Then she’d be down with a guilt attack for days, and go off by herself and spend hours at a rented comp writing some damn letter home—but he wouldn’t. There was a lot he should have said when he’d had the chance. But it was Cory that didn’t get any more chances, and that wasn’t fair.

“Stand by,” Bird yelled up at him. “Dekker? Hear me? We’re about to catch the beam. You all right up there?”

He thought he answered. He was thinking: We’re not going home. We’re not ever going home again. There’s going to be all these letters stacked up and waiting for Cory, and Cory won’t ever read them. They’ll just tell her mother… and she’ll kill me…

“Dekker! Dammit, pay attention!” Ben’s voice. “Answer!”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Dekker!”

He said it louder. The acceleration pressed his body against the blankets Bird had tucked between him and the pipes. The tape cut off circulation and his fingers on that hand went numb. He began to be dizzy: the ship was going unstable—all of it came back, the explosion and the ship tumbling, things flying loose—

“Cory!” he yelled; or maybe that was then. He had no more idea. Someone told him to shut up and he remembered that he had been rescued, but he had no idea where they were going or whether he was going to live.

Finally the pressure let up and he hung there with his head throbbing and the feeling slowly returning to his hands. Pressure in his sinuses and behind his eyes built to a blinding headache when he tried to wonder what was happening or where he was.

“What time is it?” he asked, but no one paid attention to him. He asked again, his voice cracking: “What time is it?” and Ben sailed up into his vision, grabbed him by the knee, grabbed him by his collar and hit him across the face.

“Shut up!” Ben yelled at him. He tried to use his knee and turn his face to protect himself. Ben hit him again and again, until Bird came in from below and pulled Ben off him, yelling at Ben to stop it. Bird said, “Go back to sleep, Ben.” And Ben yelled back: “How can I sleep with What time is it? What time is it, God, I’m going to strangle him before the hour’s out—I’m going to fuckin’ kill him!”

“Ben,” Bird said quietly, taking Ben by the shoulder. “Ben. Easy. All right.—Dekker… shut the hell up!”

After that, it could have been next day, next week, a few hours, he wasn’t sure. Ben came floating up to him, carefully took him by the collar and gathered it tight, and calmly said, right in his face, “It’s my watch now, hear me? We’re all alone. Do you hear me, Dekker?”

He nodded. He looked Ben in his close-set eyes and said yes again, in case Ben hadn’t understood him.

“You want to know what time it is, Dekker?”

He shook his head. He remembered that made Ben crazy. Ben wound his grip tighter, cutting off the blood to his head.

“If you ask the time just one damn more time I’m going to break your neck. You understand me, Dekker?”

He nodded. The edges of his vision were going. Ben went on looking at him with murder in his eyes.

He remembered—he was not sure—Ben taking pictures of him while he was unconscious. He thought, while Ben was shutting the blood away from his brain, This man is crazy. He’s crazy and I’m not that sure about Bird…

“Hear me?” Ben said.

He tried to say yes. Things got grayer. The ship was spinning. Ben let him go and went away. Then he gulped several lungfuls of air and started shivering. He wished Bird would wake up, he wished he knew where he was going now, and whether Cory would be waiting on the dock. They said Refinery Two, but that was like saying Mars or the Moon: places were different, and you didn’t know where you were going even if you knew the name.