“Nerves, Mr. Dekker. What are you going to do about it?”

“Get my head straight, sir.”

Second blow of Porey’s hand. “You’re a damned expensive failure, you know that?”

You didn’t argue with Porey. The lieutenant had warned him. But too damned many people had told him that.

“I’m not a failure, sir.”

“Was that a success? Was taking trainees into that sim and screwing them up a success?”

“No, sir.”

“Nothing’s the matter with you physically. The meds found nothing wrong with you. It’s in your head, Dekker. What did you claim after Wilhelmsen cracked up? That you knew better? Do you still know better?”

“Yessir.”

“Can you do the run he did?”

“Yessir.”

“You’re no use to me screwed up, you are no damned use, mister. I’ve got other crews. I’ve got other pilots. And let me tell you, if you don’t straighten yourself out damned fast, we’ve got one more way to salvage you. We’ve got one more tape we can use, which I haven’t, because you said you were better, because the techs said untrained personnel were better on tape, but if you’re no other good to anyone, Dekker, then we might just as well put you right down in that lab and input what might improve your performance. You know what I’m talking about?”

He guessed. He managed to say, “Yessir.”

“I’ll make a promise to you, Dekker. You’ve got one week. I’m not restricting you, you can do any damned thing you want, I don’t give a damn for the regulations, for the schedule, for whatever you want to do. You’ve got carte blanche for one week. But if you don’t pull those sim scores right back where you were before your ‘accident,’ then we put you into lab, input Wilhelmsen’s tape into your head, and see if it improves your performance. You understand that?”

“Yessir.”

“Are you clear on that?”

“Yessir.”

“Then get the hell out of here and do it, Dekker, while the labs try to straighten out the damage you’ve done to your crew. I don’t want to see your face right now. I don’t know if I want to see it again.”

CHAPTER 14

SEQ. 285MII. Dekker, Paul F. Authorized. He waited, clinging to the line, felt like a fool inputting the card and checking the tape serial number on the display for the second time, but the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away, and nothing seemed right, or sure enough.

Couldn’t remember if he’d done it. Things he’d done weren’t registering. He was thinking on things other than here and now and the number didn’t damn matter. There wasn’t a training tape he couldn’t handle.

Come apart on an orientation run, for God’s sake? Their input couldn’t have overridden his displays if he hadn’t let it, and they were apologizing to him for screwing up? If he was glitching on their input, he could have spared a hand to shut them out. He could have let go the damned yoke and recovered it at leisure. The number one sim was a walk down the dock if you didn’t seize up like a fool—

Muscle spasm. Point zero five second bobble—not wide enough to invoke the braces or trigger an abort on a sleeper run like that; and he’d spaced on it—in that five-hundredth second, he’d been in the Belt, he’d been back at Sol, he’d been with Pete and the guys and lost with Cory—God only where his head had been but he hadn’t known his next move. He’d blanked on it, without reason, without warning.

Pod drifted up, opened for him. He grasped the handholds and slid into the dark inside—respiration rate coming up. Sweat starting. He could feel it on his face, feel it crawling under the flightsuit as he prepped the boards. Belts, confirm. Power up, confirm. Single occupant, tape 23b, Dekker, P, all confirm.

He adjusted the helmet. The dark and the glowing lights held a surreal familiarity. It was no time. It was every time.

Some drugs came back on you, wasn’t that the case?

But the guys weren’t with him now. If he screwed it he screwed it by himself. Wasn’t going to let them do to him what they’d done to Meg and Ben and Sal, wasn’t going to take that damned tape—

No.

“Dekker.”

Sim chief again.

“Dekker, you want to stand down for an hour?”

Didn’t like their telemetry. Picking up his heartbeat.

“No. I’m all right.”

“Dekker.”

Series of breaths. “Porey’s orders. Free ticket. I’m all right, let it go.”

Seemed like forever that light stayed red.

They had guys over in hospital that couldn’t walk straight, that never would fly again...

Had guys in the mental ward...

Sim chief was probably checking with Porey’s office.

Calm the breathing down.

Light went from red to green.

Punch it in.

GO!

“Dek,” it was, “how’d the run go?” and “Dek, you all right?”

He winced, shrugged, said, Fine, working on it.

And stopped the lift on three-deck, made it as far as the nearest restroom and threw up non-stop.

From Meg, back in barracks, a shake at his shoulder: “Dek, cher. Wake up. Mess call. You coming? You’d better come.”

He hauled himself out of half-sleep and off the bunk, wobbled into the bathroom to pop an antacid—the meds didn’t restrict those, thank God—-and to scrub normal color into his face. He walked out again to go with Meg, navigated ordinary space, trying not to see the glowing lines and dark, not to hear the mags or feel the destabilizing jolts of thrust.

Familiar walls, posters, game tables, drift of guys out to the hall. Ben and Sal gave them a: Come on, you’re late, and he wondered suddenly where this hall was, or why he should stay in it, when there were so many other like places he could be—spaced, he told himself, sane people didn’t ask themselves questions like that, sane people didn’t see the dark in the light...

“Hey, Dek, you all right?”

Mason. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Hand on his shoulder. Guys passed them in the hall.

“He all right?” Sal asked.

“Yeah,” he said. Somehow he kept walking as far as the messhall, couldn’t face the line. “I’m just after coffee, all right? I’m not hungry.”

They objected, Meg said she was getting him a hamburger and fries, and the sumbitch meds and dieticians would log it to her, the way they did every sneeze in this place, maybe screw up her medical records. He waved the offer off, went over to the coffee machine and carded in.

Nothing made sense to him. Everything was fractured. He was making mistakes. He’d glitched the target calls right and left this morning.

It had been this morning. It had to have been this morning... but he’d run it so many times...

He walked back toward the tables, stood out of the traffic and muttered answers to people who talked to him, not registering it, not caring. People came and went. He remembered the coffee in his hand and drank it. Eventually Meg and Sal came out of the line, so did Ben, and gathered him up.

Meg had the extra hamburger. “You’re eating,” she said. “You want the meds coming after you?”

He didn’t. He took it, unwrapped it, and Ben hit him in the ribs. “Pay attention, Dek-boy.”

“Huh?”

“Huh,” Ben echoed. “Salt. Pass the salt. God. You are a case today.”

“Thinking,” he said.

Ben gave him a look, a shrug in his direction. “He’s thinking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

“Ben,” Meg said.

“Dekker. Pass the damn salt.”

“Shit!” Wasn’t approved com, the sojer-lads got upset, but she was upset, so what?

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” the examiner said. “You’re doing fine, Kady.”

“Tell me fine, I screwed my dock...”

You couldn’t flap the voice. “It gets harder, Kady. That’s the object. Let’s not get overconfident, shall we?”

“Overconfident, my—” She was shaking like a leaf.

Different voice. Deep as bone. “You shoved a screen in over your pilot’s priority. Did your pilot authorize that?”

Hell, she wasn’t in a mood for games. She thought she knew that voice. It wasn’t the examiner.