“Sir, —that’s six days even if I get a same day turnaround,” He gingerly eased his letter from underneath and laid it gingerly to the side, in Jackson’s view, where the United Defense Command logo showed. “This is from HQ Geneva. It says I’m a military priority.”

“This one’s from Captain Keu, in this office. On a classified priority. You’re going.”

“Dekker isn’t a friend of mine!”

“He’s listed you as next-of-kin.”

“We’re not related! God, —he’s got a mother right here on the station, Astrid, Ingrid, something like that. Talk to her!”

“He’s in a classified program. Only certain people are approved for contact in a next-of-kin emergency. You’re it. You’re not to call anyone. You’re not to talk to anyone. Your CO will be advised simply that you’re on humanitarian leave—”

“I’m UDC essential personnel!”

“Show me an assignment.”

Shit!

“So you’re going.”

“What about my interview?”

“That’s not my information flow. I’ll log it as a query.”

“Look, this is important. If I miss this slot I could wait six months!”

Jackson shrugged. “We all have our hardships, lieutenant.”

“Look, this is a screw-up. It’s an absolute screw-up. God, Dekker and I don’t even like each other.”

Cold as a rock. “I don’t have that information. Transport will pick up your baggage at your quarters. Just leave it. Report to the shuttleport by 1145.”

“It’s near 1030 right now. It’s twenty minutes to quarters—”

“I’d be on that shuttle, Lt. Pollard. When you get to B • dock, report directly to the FleetOps office on the dock, give them this pass and they’ll see you get straight to the hospital. Don’t mistake that instruction.”

“Listen, —sir, you know what happened—Dekker wrote me in as a joke. He never thought they’d be using that information. It’s a damn joke!”

“If it is, I’m sure they’ll straighten it out at the other end. I’d be moving, lieutenant.” Jackson stood up and handed him the two envelopes as he rose. “Good luck.”

“Yes sir,” Ben said, took his papers and his orders, saluted the son of a bitch and left.

Collected his reader from the front desk, and made a fast, desperate consultation of the trans schedule while he was walking to the doors.

Twenty minutes to his apartment, thirty to the shuttle dock, ten to pack. If he risked a phone call to Weiter to request a rescue, it was a 90% certainty that Weiter couldn’t do a damned thing against FSO before 1145 or later and he’d be screwed with Weiter for putting him in a Position. You didn’t crack a security screen. Not if you hoped to keep your clearance in UDC computer tech.

They’d get him back in maybe six days?

Hell. Six days too late if he was on humanitarian leave on B dock when the UDC filled the Stockholm post. He’d get the scraps, the cold left-overs after Meeker got posted; and Hamid; and Pannelli— The next best choice he had was to appeal to Weiter when he got back and hang on as staff til something else came through, oh, six months, seven, eight months on, who knew?

Dekker had screwed up, the Fleet was evidently about to lose its investment in him—and, not in his most copacetic state, Dekker had asked for him?

Ben thought, with every thump of the trans on its homebound course: I’ll kill him when I get my hands on him, I’ll fuckin’ kill him.

CHAPTER 2

BEN hated institutions, hated hospital smells and institution colors and most of all he didn’t look forward to this, in his first hour on B dock. He felt like hell, he’d slept in a damn cubbyhole of a berth hardly larger than a miner-ship spinner, his feet had swelled, he’d had sinus all the way: he’d spent too long in the null-g hi his life and his body had a spiteful overreaction to the condition. They didn’t issue pills and stimsuits for a three-day shuttle trip, no, that prescription’s not on your records, lieutenant, sorry... If you’d just checked with medical—

It was damned well going to be on the record when he left Sol Two. Talk to the doctors in this hospital, get some damn good out of this end of the trip... because he meant to be on that shuttle on its turnaround tonight. Six hours was plenty of time to see Dekker, and get out of here after three days of floating in a three-berth passenger module on a cargo shuttle, ahead of a load of sanitation chemicals and spare parts. He’d had no one to talk to but a couple of machinists who were into some vegetarian religion and hooked on some damn VR game they wanted to explain to him; and he had had ample time to drift weightless in the dark and think—too much time to imagine this meeting, and what kind of damage a pilot could take in an accident. Missing limbs. Blood. He hated blood. He really got sick at his stomach if there was blood...

They’d had some sort of missile test that had gone bad out here. Nobody said what. There’d been a lot of long faces in Technical. A lot of emergency meetings last week. Dekker couldn’t have been involved in any missile test. A pilot trainee didn’t have anything to do with missile tests. Did he?

Jackson had done the talking. But why in hell did a Fleet captain sign the order and bust him out here? What was Dekker that the Fleet cared? The Fleet was fighting for its life in the Appropriations Committee. Dumbass pilot cracked up and UDC Priorities got overridden—for humanitarian reasons?

Not in the military he knew. That was the tag end that had disturbed his sleep and his thinking moments all the way out here. Their high-level interest in this affair was what had his stomach upset, as much as the stink of disinfectant and pain and helplessness in this place. He didn’t like this. God, he didn’t like this, and if Dekker wasn’t dead he was going to strangle him bare-handed for writing him into that damned blank.

God, he was.

Reception desk. He presented his orders to the clerk and got a: “Lt. Pollard. Yes, sir,” that did nothing for his stomach or his pulse rate. The receptionist got him a nurse, a doctor, and Dekker’s attending physician, all in increasingly short succession. “How is he?” Ben asked the last, bypassing long introductions. “What happened to him?” and the doctor said, starting off down the hall:

“No change.”

“So when did this happen?”

“That’s classified.”

More white coats. More people leaning into his face. They wanted him to open his eyes, but Dekker knew the game. They wanted answers to fill the blanks they had on their slates, but they wanted their own answers, the way they wanted the case to be.

Company doctors. He’d been here before. And they wouldn’t listen. He asked, “Where’s Cory?” because sometimes he couldn’t remember what had happened, or he did, but it was all a dizzy blur of black and tights. The ship was spinning. He fought to get to the controls, because he had to stop that spin, with the blood filling his nose and choking his breath, and his hand dragging away with the spin, his grip going—

“Cory? You damned bastard, stop!”

But sometimes he came loose from that time and he was in hospital, or he was going to be, scon as Ben and Bird got him there, and they would lie to him and tell him there never had been a ‘driver ship and he never had had a partner named Cory.

The Company had lied to him. They said he was hallucinating, but it was all lies. And sometimes he thought the hospital was the hallucination, that it was all something his conscience had conjured to punish him for losing his grip on the counter and for losing the ship.

For losing Cory.

And Bird.

Sometimes he was back in the shower, and sometimes tied to the pipes, because he was crazy, and he couldn’t figure out how the ship had come to the hospital.

Thirty days hath September, March eleventh, and November. ...

There were green coats now. Interns. He hoped for Tommy. But Tommy wasn’t with them. “Where’s Tommy?” he asked. “Why isn’t Tommy on duty? —God, it’s afire, isn’t it? Meg? Meg, wake up, God, don’t the on me—”