Then they’d want to cut their throats, was what. Bird and Ben were the best operation they had a chance with: no chance for her in the company. Not much for Sal either: with a police record you could work as a freerunner, but you didn’t get any favors and you didn’t fly for the company, and if anything went wrong on the deck you were on, you were first on the cops’ list.

Just about time something went right for a change. There’d been enough bad breaks.

Like the sector they’d just drawn, which got them a nice lot of ice and rock, in which Mama wasn’t keenly interested, no, thank you. That was the kind of allotments lease crews got lately: there were thin spots in the Belt, they were passing through one, and the ship owners took the good ones if they had to break health and safety regs to get out again.

Well, hell, you hung on. You stuck it. You skimmed when you had to and you did your damnedest. Meg Kady swore one thing: she wasn’t going to die broke and she wasn’t going to be spooked by any company cop throwing her stuff around.

Her hands got real steady with the little chains. She felt her mouth take on this little smile. Fa-mil-iar territory. Amen. “Cops on Sol are higher class,” she said to Sal, right cheerfully. “These shiz don’t take any courses in neat, do they?”

“Sloppy,” Sal said. “Severely sloppy.”

Salvatore sank into his chair, shoved a stack of somebody’s problems aside, and took his inhaler from the desk drawer and breathed deeply of the vapors—enough to set himself at some distance. He took a deeper breath. The drug hit his lungs and his bloodstream with an expanding rush, reached his nerves and told him to take it easy. He hated scenes. Hated them. Hated young fools handing Security more problems and doctors who invoked privilege.

Most of all he hated finding out that there was more to a case than Administration had been telling him.

The phone beeped. He took another deep breath, let it go: his secretary would get it; and he hoped to hell—

“Mr. Salvatore,” his secretary said via the intercom. “Mr. Payne.”

Third call from PI that day. This was not one Salvatore wanted, and he knew what Payne had heard. God, he wasn’t ready for this.

He punched in, said, “Mr. Payne, sir.”

“I’m told we have a problem,” the young voice on his phone said: Salvatore’s office didn’t have vidphones—he was glad not to have. Payne was junior, a bright young man in the executive, V. E in charge of Public Information and PR, directly under Crayton, who was directly under Towney himself, and there was absolutely no doubt somebody else had been chewing on his tail—recently, Salvatore decided. So Payne passed the grief down hischain of command, to Security. “That damned fool is going to keep on til we have a corporate liability. This isn’t going to help anyone, Salvatore.”

“I understand that.”

“Look, this is coming from upper levels, you understand that?”

“I do understand that, yes…”

“This is getting to be a damn mess, is what it’s getting to be. The girl’s mother is after that kid and the whole company’s on its ear. We’ve got contracts to meet. We’ve got schedules. We need that release. We need this case settled.”

“I’m advising him to sign it, Mr. Payne.” Salvatore took a deep breath—of unadulterated office air, this time. God, who was Payne talking to? “We’re working on it. There’s a possibility, the way I see it—” He took another head-clearing breath and took a chance with Payne. “There’s an indication the kids might not have been where their log said they were. It could have been a mistake, it could have been deliberate. I think they may have been skimming.”

There was a long silence on the other end. God, he hoped he’d not made a major mistake in saying that.

“What we have,” Payne’s voice said finally, quietly, “is a minor incident taking far too much company time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t be more plain than that. We don’tneed an independent involved in the courts, especially a kid with camera appeal. I’ve got the data on my desk, I’ll send it over to you. There wasno ‘driver. We have the log. There was no such entry. I’ll tell you what happened out there, captain, these two kids were up to no good, very likely skimming, probably scared as hell and taking chances with a rock way too large for their kind of equipment. Dekker either screwed up and had an accident that killed his partner, or there was a mechanical failure—take your pick of the safety violations on that ship. Maybe we should be prosecuting on negligence and probably on skimming, but I can give you the official word from Legal Affairs, we’re not prosecuting. The kid’s been through enough hell, there’s no likelihood that he’s going to be competent to testify, or that he won’t complicate things by raising extraneous issues in a trial, and we’re not going to have this drag on and on in a lawsuit, Salazar’s or his. There’s people on this station would love that, you understand me, captain?”

“I do, sir.”

“So get this damn mess cleared up. You hear me? I want that release. I’m sending you the accident report. You understand me? We have elements here perfectly willing to use somebody like Dekker. I don’t want this blown out of proportion. I want it stopped.”

He thought about the recorder on his desk. His finger hesitated over the button. He thought better of that move. But he wanted to make Payne say it. “Stop the investigation?”

“Put out the fire, Mr. Salvatore. We have a damage control situation here. I want this resolved. I want this problem neutralized. Hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Salvatore said—which was pointless, because Payne had hung up. He punched in a number, the outer office. He said to his aide: “Get me Wills on the phone. Now!”

Dammit, if the kids were slamming—charge them. You skim from the company, you get busted. Period. But the girl’s mother insisted not. The girl’s mother insisted herdaughter wouldn’t involve herself in a shady operation. Beyond a doubt Dekker had murdered her daughter for the bank account.

Good point, except it was one doggedly determined killer, who’d wrecked his ship and sent himself off the mental edge for an alibi. He’d seen miners do crazy things, he’d investigated one case that still gave him nightmares, but nobody had held Corazon Salazar here at gunpoint and nobody had any indication Dekker was after money, By what his investigation had turned up, the girl had quit college, taken money from a trust fund, paid Dekker’sway out here and laid down everything she had for an outdated ship and an outfitting—

A mortal wonder they’d gotten back alive the first time—and if anybody’d been kidnapped out here, it sounded more like Dekker… who was just damned lucky to have been found: physics had been in charge of that ship, the second those tanks ruptured: damned sure the kid hadn’t—and God and the computers knew why it had stayed in the ecliptic, but it didn’t sound like good planning to him.

Hell, Dek didn’t handle money, one of the interviewees had said, in the investigation on Rl. He just flew the ship. Always tinkering around with it…

Social? Yeah, he’d be with Cory, but he’d be doing vid games or something— he used to win bar tabs that way. Real easy-going. Sometimes you’d get a little rise out of him, you know, showing off, that sort of thing, but he always struck me as downright shy. The games were his outlet. He’d be off in the corner in the middle of a crowd, Cory’d be at the table talking physics and rocks, yeah, they were a real odd pair, different, but it was like Cory did the headwork and Dek was all realtime—

Yeah, Dek had a temper. But so did Cory. You never pushed her.

Yeah, they slept together— but they weren’t exclusive. Minded their own business— didn’t get real close to anybody. People tried to take advantage of them, them being kids, they’d stand their ground… Cory more than Dek, actually. She’d draw the line and he’d back her up… not a big guy, older guys used to try to hit on him— he’d stand for about so much, that was all, they’d find it out.