He was lost and sick and the drugs still had him hazed. The beeps increased in tempo. He wasn’t sure whether it was his heart or something on com.

“So where did you manufacture this ship, Mr. Dekker?”

“It was out there.”

“Of course it was out there,” the officer said. “You had it on your charts. Your log showed that. How could we doubt that?”

He was totally confused. He put his hands over his ears, he tried to see if the alarm going was his heart or something in his head. “Call the ‘driver, for God’s sake. See if they picked Cory up.”

“Didn’t you call?” the cop asked.

“Yes, dammit, I called, I called and it didn’t answer. Maybe my antenna got hit. I don’t know. I called for help. Did anybody hear it?”

“A ship heard you. A ship picked you up.”

“Different.” He was tired. He didn’t want to explain com systems and emergency locaters to company cops. “Just call the ‘driver out there.”

“If there is a ‘driver out there,” the cop said, “well ask. But if they had picked up your partner, wouldn’t they have notified their Base? Don’t you think they’d have called that in?”

He thought about that answer. He thought about the way that ship had ignored warnings. He thought about it not answering his hails. He thought—It’s not hours, is it? It’s months, it’s been months out there.

The alarm sounded again. He wanted it calm, because when he didn’t do that within a certain time they sedated him, and he was trying to be sane for the police. “I don’t know they heard me. Just call them.”

“We’re going to be calling a lot of people, Mr. Dekker.” The cop got up from his bed. “We’re going to be asking around.”

They walked to the door. The doctor went with them. He lay there just trying to keep the monitor steady and quiet, on the edge of hysteria but a good deal saner than he wanted to be right now. He remembered Bird, he remembered Ben. He was relatively sure he had come here on their ship. But sometimes he even feared Cory might not have existed. That he had always been in this place. That he was irrevocably crazy.

CHAPTER 7

IF 8 was gray and automated, 6 was green paint and a few live-service restaurants and shops, but the time still dragged: you worked out in gyms, you hit the shops til you had the stuff on the counters memorized, you skipped down to 3-deck for a while and maybe clear to 2 for an hour til your knees ached and your heart objected. The first few weeks after a run were idle time, mostly: you didn’t feel like doing much for long stints. You’d think you had the energy and then you’d decide you didn’t; you sat around, you talked, you filled your time with vid and card games and when you found your legs, an occasional grudge match in the ball court or sitting through one of the company team games in the big gym on 3-deck was about it. But mostly you worked out til you were about to drop, if you had to wrap your knees in bandages and pop pills like there was no tomorrow—and that was what Bird did, because the younger set was chafing to get down to heavy time that counted, down in the neon lights and fast life of helldeck—down in the .9 gon 2 that was as heavy as spacers lived—specifically to The Black Hole, that was the accommodation they favored, and the hour Mike Arezzo called and said he had two rooms clear, adjacent, no less, they threw their stuff in the bags and they were gone.

Checking in at The Hole felt like coming home—old acquaintances, a steady traffic of familiar faces. Mike, who owned the place and ran the bar out front, kept the noise level reasonable and didn’t hold with fights, pocket knives, or illegal substances. Quiet place, all told. Helldeck might have shrunk from its glory days: worker barracks and company facilities had gnawed it down to a strip about a k and a half long, give or take the fashionable tail-end the corporates used: that was another ten or fifteen establishments—but you wouldn’t find any corporate decor in The Hole; no clericals having supper, not even factory labor looking for a beer. The Hole was freefaller territory: dock monkeys and loaders, tenders, pushers, freerunners, construction crew from the shipyard and the occasional Shepherd—not that other types didn’t stray in, but they didn’t stay: the ambient went just a bit cooler, heads turned and the noise level fell.

It went the other way when lost sheep turned up.

“Hey, Bird!” Alvarez called out, and heads turned when they walked in. Guys made rude remarks and whistles as Meg sauntered up to the bar and said, “Hello, Mike.”

Mike said, accurately, “Vodka, bourbon, vodka and lime, gin and bubbly…” and had them on the bar just about that fast.

Home again for sure. Close as it came.

“How’s it going?” Mike asked. “Persky says you got a distress call out there. Pulled some guy in.”

“Yeah. Young kid. Partner dead. Real shame.”

Alvarez said, “What’s this with Trinidadhanging off the list? The copsimpounding her?”

God, the other thing helldeck was good for was gossip.

“Nothing we did,” Ben said, fast. “But Mama’s got her procedures. You contact a ship from across the line—”

“Across the line—”

Some parts of a story you saved for effect. They were worth drinks, maybe supper. “Wait, wait,” Alvarez said, “Mamud and Lai are over at The Pacific, I’ll phone ‘em. Wait on that.”

—You got one grounded bird here, Bird had used to joke, when it came to getting about in .9 g; hard as null- gwas on the body, you got so frustrated with walking on helldeck—it took so longto get anywhere, and the Trans was always packed. Food and drink didn’t have to be chased—that was the plus. But when you first got in you always felt as if you’d forgotten your clothes: you got so used to the stimsuit moving with you and fighting every stretch, you kept checking to make sure you were dressed. Air moved over your skin when you walked. And how did you spot a spacer in a fancy restaurant? Easy. He was the fool who kept shaking the liquid in his spoon just to watch it stay put—or who set something in midair and looked stupid when it didn’t stay there.

He was also the poor sod always in line at the bank, checking his balance to see if Assay or Mining Operations had dropped anything into his account—or, in this case, down at the Security office to see if, please God, the technicalities had been cleared up and some damned deskpilot might just kindly sign the orders to get his ship out of port.

No.

And no.

The 28th of July, for God’s sake, and the cops hadn’t finished their search.

And when he decided to stop by the bank and check the balance, to see if the last of the 6-deck bills had come in, dammit, the bank account showed a large deduct.

So… the aforesaid spacer hiked the slow long way to the Claims Office, and stood in line in this scrubby-poor office to find out the state of affairs with Trinidad‘s claims-pending and its tags. Ben had gotten into his nice office-worker suit and gone clear around the rim to say hello to friends in Assay who just might hurry up the analysis—and you’d sincerely hope it wouldn’t run in reverse.

“Two Twenty-nine Tango,” he told the clerk, who said, “ Trinidad, yeah, Bird and Pollard, right?”

“Right.”

The clerk keyed up and shook his head. “I hate to tell you this—”

“Don’t tell me we got a LOS. You don’t want to tell me that.”

“Yeah.—You got a pen? I’ll give you the number.”

“I got my list,” he said, and fished his card out of his pocket and stuck it in the reader on the counter.

“That’s number T-29890.”

“Shit!” he said, and bit his lip. On principle he didn’t cuss with friendly clerks. But it was the second best tag they had, a big rock for these days. Iron. And he had been careful with it. He raked his hand through his hair and said, “Sorry. But that one hurts, on principle.”