“There aren’t any jackers, Ben. And he isn’t any rebel. What’s he going to spy on? A ship you can see from deep out with any decent optics? You’ve heard too many stories.”

“All right, all right, he’s one of the good guys. You want him tucked in safe and sound, you want a dose of broad-spectrum stuff and maybe some vitamins in him, I’ll take care of it. You set up the burn.”

“You’re already running on it.”

“I said I’ll take care of him!”

Ben kited off toward the med cabinet, and Bird’s first thought was, So maybe I talked some human sense into him. And then, cynically: Maybe at least he figures he’s precarious with me right now, and covering his ass is all he’s doing. You don’t change a man that fast.

Then he saw Ben fill a hypo and thought, God, he wouldn’t!

Bird kicked off from the touch strip and sailed up beside Ben. “I’ll do it.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Bird snatched at the bottle. It floated free. It turned label-side toward him as he caught it and it was antibiotic Ben had been loading.

Ben scowled at him. “You’re acting crazy, Bird. You’re acting seriously crazy, you know that?”

“I’ll handle it,” Bird said. “Just wait on that burn a few minutes.”

Ben scowled at him, shoved off from the cabinet and sailed backward toward the workstation. Offended, Bird thought, with a twinge of irritation and of conscience at once—not sure what Ben really had intended. Ben had no patience or sympathy for Dekker or anyone else—so he’d thought.

Or was it just plain jealousy Ben was showing?

Ben belted back in at his keyboard. Ben was not looking at him, pointedly not looking at him.

Bird kicked off to the side, drifted up to Dekker—Dekker looked to be asleep, Bird hoped that was all. At least he’d given up asking what time it was. Bird popped him on the arm with the back of one hand.

Dekker waked with a start and an outcry.

“Polybact,” Bird said, showing him the needle. “You got any allergies?”

Dekker shook his head muzzily. Bird gave him the shot, snagged the Citrisal pack out of the pipes where air currents had sent it, uncapped the stem and put it in Dekker’s mouth.

Dekker took a sip or two. Turned his head. “That’s all.”

“We’re going to do a test burn. After that we’ll be doing a 140, going to catch a beam home. Has to be our Base, understand, unless we get other instructions. We’re out of R2.”

Dekker looked at him hazily. “No. No hospital. 79, 709, 12. That’s where we were. We had a find—big find. Big find. I’ll sign it to you. Just go there. Pick my partner up.”

“Your partner was outside when the accident happened?”

Dekker nodded.

“What happened? Catch a rock?” It happened. Usually to new crews.

Another nod. Dekker’s eyes were having trouble tracking. “Kilometer wide. Iron content.”

Freerunning miners didn’t findnickel-iron rocks that big. Rocks that big had been mapped by optics: those rocks all had long-standing numbers, they belonged to the company, and if they were rich, they got ‘drivers assigned to them, they got chewed in pieces, and they streamed to the recovery zone at the Well by bucketloads. But Bird didn’t argue that point: Dekker didn’t seem highly reasonable at the moment, and he only said, “A whole k wide. You’re sure of that.”

“It’s the truth,” Dekker said. “We got a tag on it. Uncharted rock. You can have it, if you’ll go back there and find her.”

“Cory’s a her.”

“Cory. Yes.” He was going out again. “God, go back. Go back there, listen to me, anything you want…”

“You want another sip?” Bird asked, but Dekker was out again, gone. Bird shoved off and arrowed down to grab a handhold by Ben’s workstation, but Ben said:

“I’m already ahead of you. Man said 79, 709, 12? No signal in that direction but the ‘driver.”

Nothing but the ‘driver, Bird thought. God. “Hear any tag?”

Ben shook his head.

Bird bit his lip, wondering—

Wondering, dammit, how long that particular ‘driver had been there. A while, damned sure. But Mama only told you what you needed. You could work out the rest from what you could gather with your own ears and your radar, but who wanted to?

Who, in a question about a company tag and a private claim,—wanted to?

Ben said in a low voice, “Do you suppose that fool tried to skim the company on a rock that size?”

Bird thought, I want out of here.

But what he argued to Ben was: “We just don’t ask. We don’t know anything and we sure as hell aren’t getting in their way. Whatever claim’s out there already has a ‘driver attached.”

“Makes other claims kind of moot, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t even ask.”

Company prerogatives, secret company codes and direct accesses—company ships could talk back and forth at will; bet your life they could.

And count that that ‘driver ship was armed—if you counted a kilometer-long mass driver as a lethal weapon, and Bird personally did. You didn’t want to argue right of way or ownership with a ‘driver captain. They were ASTEX to the core and they were a breed—next to God.

Ben said, “Told you we should have left this guy on the other side of the lock. It’s still not too late.”

“Cut the jokes. It wasn’t funny the first time.”

“Bird, there’s a hell of a lot more than he’s telling. Big find, hell. They were skimming a company claim.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Well, that’s all I want to know. Suddenly I’m damn glad we haven’t been talking to that ‘driver. I don’t like this, damn, I don’t.”

“I don’t know anything. You don’t know anything. We didn’t look at that log. Thank God. Let’s just get us out of here.”

“We could offer to give evidence.”

“We don’t know what we’re swearing to. We don’t knowwhat happened.”

“We couldlook in that log.”

“Sure, a skimmer’s going to log his moves. What’s he going to write? ‘1025 and we just blew a chip off a 1 k rock’? If we touch that panel over there we’ll leave a record of that access, and maybe that’s not a good idea. Do I spell it out? Don’t be a fool.”

“I can fix that log. I think I can bypass that access record if you really want to know.”

“Don’t depend on it. ‘Think’ isn’t good enough. No. We don’t run that risk. Best claim we’ve got is that we haven’t seen those records and we don’t know a thing. We don’t have a problem if we just keep clean. No shady stuff. Nothing. Clean, Ben.”

“Knock that guy in the head,” Ben muttered. “Be sure there’s no questions. Then there’s no problem.”

God, he thought. Is that what they teach this generation?

The ship jolted.

Dekker yelled aloud, struggling to get free. Someone—a familiar voice now—shouted at him to shut up.

Another, gentler, said, “That was just getting in position, Dekker. Take it easy.”

He had another blank spot then, woke up with the nightmare feeling of increasing g, not knowing where it was going to stop, or what had started it. Something pressed into his back and he thought, God, we’re spinning—

“Cory!” he yelled.

“Shut up, dammit!”

“Dekker.” This came gently then, with a touch at his shoulder. A smell of something cooked. Freefall. He blinked and looked at the gray-haired man, who let a foil packet of something drift near his face.

“We’ve done our position,” the man said to him, he couldn’t remember the name, and then did. Bird. Bird was the good one. Bird was the one who didn’t want to kill him. “We’re going to catch our beam tomorrow and we’re going home. Seems Mama thinks we’re in no hurry or something, damn her. I’ll let you loose if you can keep awake.” Another pat on the shoulder. “You know you’ve been off your head a little.”

“What time is it?”

“Shush,” Bird said, “don’t go asking that.”

“I want to know—”

Bird put a hand on his mouth. “Don’t do that,” Bird said, looking him in the eyes. “Don’t do that, son. You don’t need to know. You really don’t need to know. Your partner’s just lost, that’s all. A long time ago. There’s nothing anybody can do for her.”