He thought about writing Alyce Salazar directly, send her his own account of what had happened, never mind Ms. Salazar hated him with a passion. But mail went through a lot of hands before it went out of R2. If anyone’s mail found its way to special attention—his was a hundred percent certainty: he’d gotten that canny by now.

So it looked as if they were really going, and all he had to do was hold on to his nerves and stay out of trouble til launch, hope if the permit was a mistake nobody caught it in time—and try, meanwhile, to believe that Ben had really meant it just now when Ben had slapped him on the shoulder and said, in his subtle way, that in spite of him being an ass, he might actually work out.

Bird pocketed his datacard and remarked that since BM had a hurry-up on, they had a last few things to do in the shop, and they’d better get at it…

Sal said, “All right, all right, Bird. God, we put in fifty hours this week!” and Bird said: “Yeah, plenty all right if the shower doesn’t work. Won’t get any sympathy from me.”

So it was a last-minute rush of things that had waited—no really vital jobs: they hadn’t applied for their run without the big items latched down and Way Outpast the mandatory ECSAA inspection: but Bird wanted some cleanup and the shop offered a refuge where a body could sit, put screws in holes and test circuits without a thought in his head except the job he was on, and he personally had no objections—anything that kept his hands busy.

Ben came and went, handling the legwork. Meg and Sal worked in the shop, raked over old lovers, the quality of hair dye, a vid they couldn’t agree on—chatter, just chatter… human noise. They looked strained. Tired, yes. But he kept having the feeling it was more than that.

He didn’t think. He didn’t want to think.

Day before launch. He was holding on. Sal was frazzled. Bird grew short. “Launch nerves,” Meg said under her breath. “Bird, dammit, just take it easy, we got it covered.”

“It’s a far walk after supplies,” Bird snapped, and went off for another all-day stint on dockside, despite them arguing with him that old bones had as well get all the heavy time they could.

“Can’t argue with him,” Meg sighed. And Bird sent Ben down with a basket full of odd bits of Trinidad‘s works he wanted serviced—36 hours before launch.

“Why in hell,” Sal moaned, “didn’t he see about this eight weeks ago?”

Ben just shook his head. “Does it every damned time. Everything’s a will-pass until he gets to packing the supplies in. Thenthis latch has got too much give and he’s remembered we had a condensation problem last run.”

It kept their hands busy. It took their minds off the passing hours. Dekker understood Bird’s state of nerves.

Eventually, please God, they’d board and start launch routines and, Dekker thought, he might make it off R2 still sane.

“What kind of vids do you like?” Meg asked him, while he was testing a pressure switch.

He shrugged, figuring Meg meant they were going to rent a few for the trip, for all the spare time they weren’t going to have, and he’d used to like the action stuff, but now that he thought about it, that wasn’t what he wanted right now. Cory had made fun of his taste for his bloody-awfuls, that was what she had called them—but now he feared he’d never see an explosion in a vid without feeling that awful slam in the gut. He filed that away, in the odd total of silly, simple things he’d been robbed of in the wreck. Maybe he could handle it someday. But not now. Right now he just wanted to keep all that at arm’s length. One step at a time, Mr. Dekker…

“Dek?”

“Huh?”

“You want to go out tonight?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said sharply—he didn’t mean to be rude, but it was the truth—he didn’t want to go watch things blow up: he didn’t want any dark theater, God knew he didn’t want any suspense—didn’t know what he did want to do 24 hours before launch—but that wasn’t it.

“Oh, come on,” Sal said. “What about dinner? We can talk Bird into spending money. Something trez genteel. Candles and tablecloths. Give ourselves plenty of time to get through, get in and clean up. What d’ you say? Dinner at 1900, cruise the bars, say our au’voirs along the ‘deck.”

“Yeah,” he said, finally. Being with people tonight was probably a good idea. Meg and Sal were trying to include him in their festivities, trying to draw him into their conversation, but now that he d committed himself he felt a kind of panic—as if by joining in he’d somehow stepped over an edge he’d really rather reconsider. He had no friends but these people, no future but what they’d arranged for him. They made their jokes, they talked to him, he answered what they asked, one side and the other of a trip for soft drinks and a package of chips.

But this Attitude kept coming over him—a blow-it-away kind of Attitude, resentment—outright rage at their trying to get at him: they had everything he owned and now they wanted his consent to it; now they wanted the resentment that had kept him alive—stupid way to feel, he thought, but their friendliness and Ben’s made him mad, and he tried to figure out why, and not to be, as Ben called him, an ass.

But, dammit, everything hit nerves. Even their before-launch dinner. He’d done the same with Cory—Cory didn’t make off-color jokes about the men she’d slept with—

Sore spot there. His mind was full of pits he didn’t want to look into, this afternoon, pre-launch jitters triggering memories, God only knew what was going on with him—and that the tumbling, out of control feeling he’d had after the wreck was still there, making it impossible to take his life for granted—all the pieces were out of order. Everything felt new, dislocated.

Rab said do. Act. Move. Be.

But move where? Be what? Meg and Sal had their heads together, talking in low voices, protecting some secrecy they wouldn’t admit him to—but they wanted him to take their lead. They’d dressed him like some damn doll—not a joke at his expense: far too serious for that. They had designs for him he didn’t think had as much to do with sex as with way-of-life… making bitter jokes, flaunting their difference, trying to drag him away from Cory’s way of doing things and back into all the blind outrage he’d used to feel—wake up, kid, join us, kid, be like us, be with, thinklike us and survive.

Maybe it wasfriendship. Be grateful, he told himself. Go out with them, mind your manners—today’s enough. There’s worse. There’s hell and away worse to have fallen in with.

There’s the people that run this place.

He was back on the ship for a moment. And back again sitting in the shop with a small valve switching assembly in his hand and no memory of whether he’d just started or just finished with it.

Panic shot a chill through him. He sat there staring at the piece and trying to figure out what he was doing with it.

“That’s the last.” Sal snatched it from his hand and tossed it into the basket. “God, Dek, come on, give it up. We’re done!”

It wasn’t anything he couldn’t fix with a screwdriver if it stuck later. Nothing vital. Potential malfunction wasn’t what scared him. It was the gap he’d slid into.

Damn nervous wreck, Sal thought, wiping sweat, kicking the null- gcart’s wheels out. This one’s wheels stuck. The rental office swore they didn’t have another.—Get us allout of here—

Bang. You lifted one end and rammed it at the floor. Two times freed it up.

“Aboujib,” someone said.

She turned about with an intake of breath.

Mitch’s friend.

“You’re still launching on the 18th?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t depend on it.”

“Shit!—What’s going on?”

“That’s the word. Keep a line on your problem. A tight line.”

“Why?”

The Shepherd said, “You got that thing I gave you?”