“Sal!” he called out. “Meg!” and saw two pairs of eyes fix on him, do a re-take of him and the uniform. Baggage hit the floor. The two best-looking women he’d ever slept with ran up, grabbed him, both, and kissed him breathless, one and the other.

Couldn’t hurt a man’s reputation. Whistles and howls from the gallery. He caught his breath, besieged with questions like what was he doing here, what was this about Dek, and how was he?

Questions without an easy answer. “What are you two doing here?” he asked, and got a stereo account: they’d gotten the word Dekker was in some kind of accident, they’d gotten word they were shipping a carrier out—

“God, that thing moves—” Sal said.

“So we rode it in and transferred over on the shuttle,” Meg said. “And these damn MPs have got to stall us up with questions, shit! of-fi-cers and VIP’s all over the place. —How’s Dek, for God’s sake, he got all his pieces?”

“Everything you’d be interested in. —You enlisted?” That didn’t fit his expectations, didn’t fit what he’d been reading in Dekker’s letter file.

“They hail us down,” Sal said, “in Jupiter’s own lap, a carrier pulls up and says, Have you got Kady? And wants to talk to us. Wants to talk to Meg. And Meg talks to the Man, and we get this news Dek’s in hospital—some kind of crack-up, they’re saying, and they’d kindly give us a ride insystem—”

Shepherds began to ooze over. One said, “Well, well, look what pulled in. Hiya.”

Meg looked. Sal did. Ben didn’t know the face, but Sal struck an attitude and said, “Well, well, look at familiar faces—they let you in, Fly-by?”

Laughter from all about. Not a nickname Fly-by seemed to favor. “God, how’d you get past?” Belter accent, Shepherd flash. “I thought they had criteria.”

“You skuz,” Sal said, but it didn’t have the edge of trouble. Sal put a hand on the skuz’s shoulder, gave his arm a squeeze. “Jamil’s a sumbitch, but he’s an all right sumbitch. This is Ben Pollard.”

“Got the whole team, but Morrie,” another said. “Damn on!”

“Ben, where d’ we sleep?” Meg asked. There were immediately other offers. “Take you up later,” Meg said. “I got a date at the hospital, if I can get the pass they said I had—”

“Get you to the room,” Ben said, and, catching two elbows, hauled them along to 10-A. Good-natured protest followed from the rear, but it died, and a couple of guys, Jamil included, overtook them at the door, set down the baggage and made themselves absent. “Thanks,” he said; discretion was not dead here. “Thanks,” Meg called back, while he was opening the door. He put a hand on Sal’s back, got Meg’s arm and got them inside, into privacy.

“What’ve we got?” Sal said. “Is my radar working, or what?”

“It’s working,” he said. “We got a sumbitch in charge, same damn sumbitch switched Dekker out and some guy in on a test run and cracked up Dekker’s crew, Dek-baby minks he’s in the fuckin’ Belt looking for Cory, and / got a meeting with Fleet Lieutenant J. Graff right on the hour.” He had a sudden idea, fished his temp hospital card out of his uniform pocket, and held it up in front of Meg. “This is a pass. You’re me, just put it in the slot at the main desk, won’t trigger an alarm and in the remote chance they should ask, tell ‘em Graff sent you. Dekker’s hi room 114. They pulled him out of a simulator beat to hell and concussed and there’s some chance he didn’t climb in there on his own, by what I can guess. Tell him straighten up. Tell him where he is, tell him I said so, tell him I’m going to break his neck next time I see him—I’ve got five minutes to make the lieutenant’s office....”

“Somebody did it to him?” Meg asked.

“Hey. You know Dek. There’s got to be a waiting list.” He recalled the atmosphere outside, and said, “We got to talk. Fast. Sit. The lieutenant can wait five.”

The sounds came and went. 2324. 2324. Dekker tried to remember. He said it to himself to remember. And maybe he was losing track of time, but it seemed to him breakfast had come and gone and Ben hadn’t come this morning. That upset him. Ben kept saying he couldn’t stay, and maybe he’d just gone wherever Ben had to go to. He didn’t even want to know where that was. He just wanted to go back into the dark if they’d let him alone, if there wasn’t anybody going to come but doctors with tests and interns and if there was nothing to do but lie here and listen to the halls outside.

“Dek?” Female voice. “Dek?”

Voice he knew. Voice that shouldn’t be here. So he was losing it. But if he was starting to hallucinate again maybe Ben wasn’t gone. He came up out of the dark to see.

She was scarily real, Meg was, leaning over him. “How you doing?” she asked, and he said, “Dunno,” because he didn’t. She smelled real, she looked real, she sounded real. She asked him, “Anything wrong with the jaw?”

“No,” he said, wondering why she asked, and Meg leaned down and kissed him the way she’d kissed him goodbye once, which caught him short of breath and half-smothered and no little dizzy as it went on, but if this was going to turn into one of those dreams, he didn’t mind, he’d go out cold this way.

He got a breath, finally, he had Meg up close to his face, running a finger down his cheek, saying, “You been through some severely bad business, Dek. But it won’t happen again. I’m here. Sal’s here. Ben’s here. We won’t let the bastards get to you.”

Good news. He really wanted to believe it. But he didn’t let himself sink into the fantasy all the way. He only flirted with the idea, asking warily, “How’d you get here?”

She settled her hand on his, gave his fingers a squeeze. “They sent to me in the Belt, said, You got a friend in trouble, you want to come, and I said, Sure. Why not? I could do with a change.”

So she wasn’t leveling with him. That could only mean his subconscious couldn’t think of an answer. Second question: “What about Sal?”

“Sal said she couldn’t trust me on my own, said she’d keep me honest.”

Her fingers on his felt warm and solid. She was in Shepherd civvies, she had this fondness for big earrings and he didn’t remember the ones she was wearing. He wasn’t artistic, he couldn’t make up ones he didn’t know, spiral and gold with some kind of anodized bar down the middle. He couldn’t make up the blue eyeshadow and the pink. He wouldn’t put those colors together with red hair. But it looked good. She did. And her really, truly being here was crazier than his thinking she was.

Third question. “Where’s Ben this morning?”

“Ben’s in the lieutenant’s office. Ben’s real pissed. Something about his security clearance and him supposed to be in Stockholm—didn’t altogether make sense, but he was going to go complain. —What’s this about you arguing with a simulator?”

Panic hit him. But he didn’t know why he should be afraid of Meg. Or Ben. Or why mere was a gap around his recollection of the sim room. Sounds. Mag hum and sudden motion. Ominous. Something had happened under that sound.

“There’s been a hearing,” Meg said, “senators all over the place. They’re leaving. Ben asks if you’d like to tell them anything. Says if you could tell them how you got banged up it might be a good idea.”

Senators. Mission control. Rows of instruments. Instruments on the sim panel, just the same.

“Shit,” he breathed, feeling a cold sweat come on him. But it was all right, the memory was gone again. He willed his heart to slow down, stop fluttering like that: they filled him full of drugs if they caught his pulse up, and if they caught Meg here, Meg could be in trouble—Meg might not come back. People went out the door and you didn’t know if the Company’d let them back.

No. Not the Company. Tanzer. The UDC, that ran this place.... “Ben explained a skosh,” Meg said, rab-speak, long time back, it seemed now. The Inner System had changed so, even in the few years he’d been to the Belt and back. “You don’t got seriously to say: I know about the accident. But you got to get out of here, Dek, you got to get yourself straight. Ben said I should ask you the date.”