Old argument. Graff said softly, delicately, “That’s why we’re getting them where we’re getting them.” But he didn’t say, And we’ll fill out the primary pilot list outside Sol System. You didn’t say that. On the captain’s orders you didn’t. Earth didn’t want to know that.

No.

“Listen,” Villy said, “you know and I know we’re reaching the bottom of the barrel. People don’t go out to be miners and Shepherds because they’re upstanding citizens. They’re ex-rab, they’re asocials ... These two girls you got in—-both of them have records...”

The rab was some kind of Emigration movement. Pro-space. Anti-Company. It had turned violent, ten years ago, big blow-up, company police had panicked, opened fire on a crowd...

“Dekker has a record,” he reminded Villy. “He’s also popular in the Belt. The Company system out there was crooked. He beat it. You know what the UDC’s setting up, making his life difficult? It’s certainly not the best PR move the UDC could make. And Kady and Aboujib were part of Dekker’s crew out there, such as survived—another pilot and a numbers man, as the Belters call it: good ones, for what the record shows.”

Villy made a wry expression, took a sip of coffee. “May be. We’ll see—once the boy’s back in the sims. Personally, I hope he makes it. He’s a son of a bitch, but Chad didn’t dislike him.”

“Wasn’t any animosity on either side, that I know. Dekker got along with Wilhelmsen.”

A pause. “J-G, off the record—between you and me: do you really buy it that Chad’s crew dumped him in that pod?”

“I don’t buy it that Dekker went crazy when he saw the ship blow. Not till the MPs tried to make him leave mission control, get him away from the senators and the VIPs. After that, no, he wasn’t highly reasonable. Would you be? So he said something that wasn’t politic—people do that. Other people don’t necessarily try to kill them in cold blood. No, I’m not accusing the crew. I find it almost as unlikely as Dekker doing it to himself. You’ve got to understand, Villy: this kid spent a couple of months in the dark, in a tumble, in the Belt—bad accident. He couldn’t get the ship back under control. This isn’t a guy who’s going to suicide that way, of all the ways he could pick. And no Belter’s going to do that to him. Not the way they did it. So you tell me what happened.”

Villy thought about that one, thought about it very seriously, by all he could tell. Then; “Let me tell you about Chad’s crew. They’re professionals, Rob’s got a father he’s supporting, guy got caught in a tractor accident, insurance won’t pay anything but basics; Kesslan and Deke are real close with Rob—they’re not going to risk it, for one thing, even if they were that mad, which I don’t think they were. I think they understood Dekker’s outburst. Might not have liked it, but understood it. Murder just doesn’t add.”

Made some sense—granted the father had no means of support; which he personally didn’t know—nor understand, inside Earth’s maze of cultures and governments, any more than he understood the motives and the angers that bred in the motherwell.

“Won’t say,” Villy added, “that there aren’t some others Dekker could’ve touched off. But don’t try to tell me it was Chad’s crew.”

“I respect your judgment.” Mostly, that was the truth. “But what do we do? Dekker doesn’t deserve what’s happened. His crew didn’t deserve what happened. Wilhelmsen—didn’t deserve what happened. Let me tell you, in that hearing, I never tried to suggest that Wilhelmsen was primarily at fault, because I never believed it. He was good. It was exactly what I said: that substitution killed him and it killed the rest of them.”

Villy was listening, at least. Maybe it was something in the coffee. Reason seemed possible of a sudden and he hammered it home. “It’s not possible, it’s not the way things work at light speed, Villy, it can’t be, you can’t treat people like that. An ops team is a living organism. You don’t split it and expect it to perform with anything like efficiency.”

Long silence. A sip of coffee. “We’ve changed the damn specs so often it’s a wonder anything mates with anything. The mechanics are overworked, they can’t do the maintenance in the manufacturers’ specs, on the schedule they’re being handed, with the staff they’ve got. That’s the next disaster waiting to happen and nobody wants to listen to them. We’ve got a program in trouble.”

“We’ve got a human race in trouble, Villy. I’ve been there, I’ve seen what we’re fighting—I don’t want that future for the species, I don’t happen to think that social designers can remake the model we’ve got—”

But when you thought about it, just trying to talk to Villy—you began asking yourself—however we, haven’t we, already? Hasn’t distance, and hasn’t time?

Like to take you outside the well, like to open your eyes, Captain Villy, and let you feel it when you drop out and in. They’d never get you back here again....

Because the part of Villanueva there was to like, came alive when he was talking about his job. You saw that sometimes in his face.

“You have no attachment,” Villanueva said, “no feeling for being from this planet.”

“I’ve met what isn’t,” Graff said.

Interest from Villy. Quirk of a brow. “What are they like?”

“They’re them. We’re us. Sociable fellows. They don’t fight wars.”

“So why are you in this one?” Villanueva asked. “Earth didn’t ask for this—not our business, a plane clear to hell and gone away from us. Earth Company brought us this thing. The old bottom line. They rooked us into it. Rooked you in too? Or what made you enlist?”

Good question. Complicated question. “Our ship’s routes. The ship I was born to. Polly d’Or. Didn’t ask for trouble, but they tried to cut us out, wanted to regulate where we came and went—retaliation for the Earth Company’s visas. Economics on one scale. Our ship on the other.”

Villy still looked confused, still didn’t get it.

“We’d lose everything. The Fleet’s what keeps those routes open. Only thing that does. They can’t enforce their embargo.”

“Hell and away from us.”

“Now. Not forever. Lucky you have us. It’ll come here— eventually it’ll come here.”

“Not everybody believes that.”

“Nobody outside this system doubts it. You’ll deal with Cyteen—on your terms. Or on theirs. Their technology. You want your personality type changed? They can do it. You want your planet re-engineered? They can do that. They are doing it—but we can’t get close enough to find out what. We don’t get into that system anymore.”

“We.”

“The merchanters they don’t own.”

“You ever been down to a planet?”

He shook his head.

“Ever thought about it?”

“No.”

“What are you afraid of?”

The question bothered him. He was in a mood right now. Maybe it was Tanzer. Maybe it was because he’d never really thought about it.

“Maybe all those people. Maybe being at the bottom of the well, knowing I can’t get myself out of it.”

Villanueva frowned, said, finally, “I grew up under blue sky. But if they get me down there I can’t get out either. Trying to retire me to the damn HQ. I want this ship to fly. It’ll be the last one I work on. I want this one to fly. That’s my reason.”

“We got a few slots, Captain Villy.”

A glance, a laugh. “Old guy like me?”

“Time’s slower out there. Remember I’m in my forties.”

Villanueva pushed back from the table, leaned back in the chair. “Damn you, you’re trying to seduce me.”

He felt a tight smile stretch his mouth. “We’re the only game there is. You don’t want to the in the well. Take you out. Captain Villy. Don’t let them send you down....”

“Damn you.”

“Think on it.”

Villy set his elbows on the table. “About the Dekker business—”

He was merchanter—before he was militia, before he was Fleet. And you did try to get it screwed down tight, whenever you talked deal.