Took a moment for the senator to Figure what that meant. Then an angry frown. “So you’re blaming an AI breakdown?”

“No, sir. Everything from the AI’s viewpoint was coming optimal. A human with a clear head couldn’t have outraced the AI in targeting calculations or in bringing the ship stable enough to get a window. A human might have skipped the math and discharged the chaff gun and the missiles in hope of destroying the object by sheer blind luck, but the AI had an absolute interdiction against certain vectors. It didn’t even consider that it could violate that— that range safety could have taken care of the problem if it arose. Somebody decided that option shouldn’t be in its memory, and this being a densely populated system maybe it shouldn’t have been. But that ship was effectively lost from the moment the pilot reacted to his crew’s apprehension. That communications problem was the direct cause of the accident—”

Bonner said, “Excuse me, senator. The lieutenant is speculating, now, far outside his expertise. May I remind him to confine himself to what he was in a position to witness or to obtain from records?”

He didn’t look at Bonner. “A communications problem set up by a last-minute substitution of pilots.”

The committee hadn’t heard that. No. Not all of them had, at least. And from Shepherds he knew were back there in the room, there was not a breath, not an outcry, just a general muttering, and he couldn’t turn his head to see expressions.

The senator said: “What substitution, lieutenant?”

“The crew trained as a team. The Fleet pilot was replaced at the last moment by a UDC backup pilot the colonel lifted out of his own crew and subbed in on Fleet personnel. The Fleet captain in command objected in an immediate memo to Col. Tanzer’s office—”

Bonner said, “Lieutenant, you’re out of line. Confine yourself to factual answers.”

“Sir. That is a fact upheld by ECS8 log records.”

Somebody yelled from the back, “Do they show the Fleet laid those targets and set that random ordnance interval?” Several voices seconded, and somebody else yelled, “You’re full of it, Jennings, you don’t break an ops team! You never sub personnel! Tanzer killed those guys sure as a shot to the head!”

The gavel came down.

Somebody shouted, over the banging, “The Fleet set up the course. Check the records! The Fleet had orders to set the targets closer together to screw the test!”

And from nearer the front, as the MP’s and Fleet Security moved in, “Wilhelmsen screwed the test—those targets were all right! He lost it, that’s all!”

Bonner was on his feet shouting, “Clear the room. Clear the room. Sergeant!”

Institution green. Ben had seen green. Had eaten real lettuce, drunk lime (orange juice was better) and had real margaritas the way they could make them on Sol One, but he still wasn’t sure why inner system liked that color that mimicked old Trinidad’s shower paneling, whether that shade was what Earth really favored. He sincerely hoped not. He honestly hoped not. But if Earth was that color wall to wall he’d take it over B Dock hospital corridors and vending machine suppers.

Dekker was still hyperbolic—swung on an intern, threatened the nurses, called the CO a psychopathic control junkie—

“How many fingers?” the intern had asked, holding up two, and Dekker had held up his own, singular—which was Dekker, all right, but it hadn’t won him points. The intern had checked his pulse, said it was elevated—

Damned right it was elevated. “You’re being a fool,” Ben said, while they were waiting for the orderly with the trank. He grabbed Dekker by the arm and shook him, but Dekker wasn’t resisting. “You know that, Dek-boy? Use your head. Shit, get us out of this place!”

“Sorry,” Dekker said listlessly, “sorry.” And stared off into space until Ben shook him again and said, “You want to spend your life in here? You want a permanent home here?”

Dekker looked at him. But the orderly came in and gave him the shot. Dekker didn’t fight it. And after the orderly went away Dekker just lay there and stared past him.

“Dek,” Ben said, “count their fingers. Walk their damn line. Remember how you got in that damn sim. Maybe the lieutenant can get you out of here. Just play their game, that’s all.”

And Dekker said, while Dekker’s eyes were glazing, “What’s the use, Ben? What’s the use anymore?”

That wasn’t like Dekker. Wasn’t like him at all. But Dekker was out men, or so far under as made no difference. They said people drugged out could hear you, and that under some kinds of trank maybe you didn’t have the same resistance to suggestion: Ben squeezed Dekker’s arm hard and whispered, right in his ear, “You’re going to do what they say and get yourself out of here. Hear it?”

Dekker didn’t give any sign he did. So it was out to the hall again, 1805h, and no likelihood Dekker was going to come around again this evening.

He might lie to the doctors, Ben thought, he might tell them Dekker had remembered, make something up—prime Dekker with it and hope Dekker had enough of his pieces screwed together to remember it. If he could figure out what they wanted to hear. Say it was Wilhelmsen’s crew that attacked him, that was the signal he was picking up. That was what the Fleet wanted.

But not what the UDC wanted. And what the Fleet wanted wasn’t any ticket to Stockholm, no.

Damn, damn, and damn.

Meanwhile Dekker got crazier, no knowing what drug they were filling him full of or what it was doing, and if he could get hold of Graff he’d tell him check the damn medication for side effects, it wasn’t helping, it was making Dekker worse; he’d stopped trusting Higgins, and Evans hadn’t been available since yesterday—

He’d seen this before, damn if he hadn’t when an organization got ready to throw a man out with the garbage—some skuz in power had taken a position and bet his ass on it, and now the skuz in power had stopped wanting the truth, since it didn’t agree with the positions he’d taken—

So you trashed the guy who knew what was going on; you pinned the blame on him as far as you could; you shunted out anybody who might be sympathetic—Evans’ departure from the scene—and from where Ben Pollard was standing it didn’t look as if Graff or the Fleet had any serious influence left in the hospital—not enough at least for Graff to get his ass in here and ask Dekker himself, which signal he should have picked up from the beginning if he’d had any antennae up.

Not enough to do a thing about the stuff they were shooting into Dekker, who, if the Fleet knew it, wasn’t outstandingly sane to start with.

Triple damn.

“Good night,” some nurse said to him. “G’night,” Ben muttered, half looking around. Good night was what Earthers said to each other. Good night was where this guy had come from. The place of green and snow and rain. Tides and beaches.

He’d seen growing plants. Been into the herbarium on Sol One. Amazing sight. Guided tours, once a week. Keep to the walkway, don’t pick the leaves. But the Guides demonstrated how some of them smelled. Flowers would take your head off. Leaves smelled strange. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Grease and cold metal smelled one way, and that was home. This hadn’t been, hadn’t smelled quite edible, not quite offensive, not at all smell like anything he’d known. The ocean was what he wanted, not any damn woods full of stinking plants: snow that was water freezing, not methane, or the scary stuff you got when a seal was chancy.

Snow was the result of weather, which was the result of Coriolis forces, which he understood, and atmospheric rollover, which he theoretically understood—he thought about that, pushing the button for another damned cheese sandwich, he thought about a city that was like helldeck without an overhead, with the tides coming and going against its edges and snow happening—that was what he thought about for company on the walk home.