“I’m busy, Gulliver—”
“I’ve had training in emergency hookups,” Linda interrupted. “I’d like to go back and help.”
“Beats sitting here,” came from Pavel. Linda felt more than saw Lili join them.
Pettersen turned. His battered helmet was lit a garish red from within, turning his face to that of some demigod. “Can you take orders from us, Earther?” he challenged.
“Mr. Leland said you were the experts in dealing with disaster, sir,” Linda refused to back down. “Looks to be what we have here.”
A noise from Leland, loud and rude, filled their helmets. “Got you there, Torbjxrn. Go ahead, girl. If your captain has no objection.”
“I object to everything except heading back to Thromberg,” Captain Maazel muttered darkly. “Gulliver—take these two and see if you can lend a hand.”
Earthers had helped. Side by side in the holds; out there, on the hulls of ship and station, drilling in feeds to tap air, power, and water from Hamilton’s mains. Dave didn’t know what to make of it. It was happening on the other shuttles as well, reports said. It took exhausting hours, but eventually the ships were declared snug and secure. For now.
“Guess that makes us all ’siders,” Annette had joked. They’d already begun thinking of themselves as stationers, not immies, acknowledging their futures would be on a station, not a world. Dave wasn’t quite ready to be a ’sider, and had told her so, but he did appreciate their skills.
And the Earthers’.
He’d hoped for repercussions. Everyone hoped for a reaction from Hamilton Station to their assault on her hull. The com tech maintained a vigil. Nothing.
Meanwhile, the ’siders, ever practical, made those who’d waited inside the shuttle take off their suits, move around, and insisted they eat. Everyone tucked some of their rations into pockets. The Earther, Linda, had watched this, then done the same.
Sensible woman, Dave decided. Annette must have agreed. She’d made conversation with the Earther, exchanged drink tubes in a gesture of acceptance as old as Thromberg, or perhaps older. Whether the Earther knew it or not, she’d be watched over as if one of their own.
Linda rubbed sleep from her eyes as she went forward, contemplating using one of the two boost shots in her suit, then decided to save them for—what? She refused to speculate. The corridor lights were dimmed; only the glows above each door showed her where Pavel and Lili, along with the shuttle pilots, Steve and Marcus, were snoring in a discordant harmony in the cots—strapped in place, still in suits, helmets hanging from tethers. Not routine, she’d heard the stationers whisper to one another, as though it was a warning. Appropriate.
Linda moved quietly past the others, tired enough to sleep without drugs, but unwilling to seek oblivion of any type until she knew and approved what was happening next. Not the best attitude for a humble shuttle attendant, she chided herself even as she slipped through the door to the bridge.
Pettersen had stretched out on the crew bench, eyes closed and one leg with its taped-on mag boot on the floor. Linda doubted he truly slept. The captain and Leland were out of their suits, slumped but alert in the pilots’ chairs. The com tech huddled over her console, eyes half-lidded as she monitored something only she could hear.
“Hear you made yourself useful,” Leland said by way of greeting.
“Learned some things,” Linda replied. “Most not reg’.” The stationer’s unexpected smile was lopsided, exposing gaps in his discolored teeth; it warmed her anyway.
The captain’s voice was worn as thin as her face. “Sit,” she ordered, waving at the abandoned nav chair. “You look worse than I feel.”
Linda didn’t deny it. She sat, her helmet in her lap, and wrapped her mind around what these two might need to know. “Ship’s secured, sir. Solid feeds. Which means the station is powered up and airtight. Everyone’s calm. Almost. The ’siders insisted on having people outside, on the hull.” She raised her eyebrow at Leland, making that a question.
“Old habit,” the stationer grunted. “After everyone grabs a bit of sleep, we’ll crack the port seal. Hope you’re game for that too, Earther.”
Earther suits were designed so a child could use them, Dave reminded himself, tempted to take a swallow from the tube near his lips, stopped by the strangeness of drinking alone. A child. Children. He fastened on that, happier imagining an incredible future than the next few minutes, when he and Annette would walk out of the ship into the expanse of space.
Walk? He managed not to shudder. While in the shuttle’s air lock, Dave and rest of the space novices would have bags put over their helmets and be towed along with the rest of the gear to the station’s emergency access port. ’Siders weren’t inclined to avoidable risk.
Stationers weren’t inclined to avoidable trust either. Dave knew he wasn’t the only one calculating the wisdom of putting his life into the hands of those who’d been forced to be virtually invisible during the blockade. ’Siders had survived because they were too stubborn to die, not because of station charity.
Of course, they had the Quill—and the Earthers—to thank for all of that.
“Ready to check out the new place?” Annette’s voice rang in his ears, brittle but determined. She nudged him from behind. “Remember. We want something in the inward levels—a good location, with room for our repair shop. You know what Sammie told us—we need to establish an economy here, get things running so smooth there’ll be no excuses for Earth to interfere.”
She wasn’t being callous, Dave knew. It was better to think of Hamilton Station as empty, as space ready to occupy, than dwell on what might be waiting. “Ready as you are, darl’n,” Dave said as confidently as possible.
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Linda left them alone in her lap, concentrating on the light, chest-only breaths she was taking, counting those.
“All that saved us was those codes,” Pavel said. She wasn’t sure to whom or how often he’d repeated it. There were so many of them crowded together here, the blending of Earther and stationer made complete by the suits and the horror of their welcome, that Linda no longer tried to identify individuals.
“Sammie must have been here before,” a woman answered. “Surprised he remembered them. Sure glad he did.” This brought a laugh from some.
Linda swallowed bile. She’d seen what the stationers had not, by virtue of being familiar with work in zero-g and to a horizon defined by a distant arc of sun-torched white.
Leland had been right. The ports had been traps. If they had tried to use the ship auto-dock system to attach themselves, the ports would have released their contents and destroyed them all. If they had tried to force entry? Same result. Destruction.
And if she’d stayed in Sol System, working a freighter, she’d never have had to see air locks crammed tight with explosives and the dead to carry them.
Leland had been the unlikely hero. He’d gone first, ponderously graceful, disguised as handsome in his Earther suit, and had punched in codes for the emergency hatch as well as the larger cargo doors. Codes only those on Hamilton Station would know. Codes a Thromberg Station bartender shouldn’t have known.
Why him? Why here?
They’d waited for Leland’s signal, Earthers and ’siders securing their cabled-together bags of gear and helpless, blinded passengers. Credit to the stationers—none had panicked, none had vomited until safely inside the station, helmets off. That had been the greatest risk for those who could see, who had to clear the contents of at least one air lock immediately to get the helpless inside.
Linda wasn’t sure if it been courage or disbelief that allowed her to keep going. She’d been humbly grateful to the ’siders who took what she passed outward with the presence of mind to tie everything together so nothing would float free and endanger the shuttle, only steps away.
So this was Hamilton Station. Linda couldn’t have told where she was now from the docking ring on Thromberg, save for a different, fresher taste to the air—and the silence.
She hadn’t realized how noisy the throngs packing the other, living station had been, how comforting the background drone of thousands could be. Until she’d come here, where fifty-or-so huddled close, to make themselves feel like more.
Hamilton was messier. The stationers talked about this between themselves, uneasy.
Linda remembered Thromberg as having a broken-in look—everything possible being used and reused.
