thing was lost forever. All we need to know is that the goddamn thing is gone!” He wrenched loose a piece of metal and hurled it. She watched its slow, graceful arc outward and down beyond the rim of the hole.
She bit her lip, feeling her own emotions stretched beyond the limits of control, beginning to break loose and recoil. “But the rest of the factory is still here!” She threw that undeniable fact in the face of her faltering courage. “There must be other things worth salvaging, that some factory could use—”
Chaim turned back to her; she searched behind his faceplate glass. She heard the long, slow intake of his breath. “Maybe there is. The exterior waldoes we saw as we came across the field; they looked intact. The factory I told you about—its waldoes were damaged. If we can get these clear, we just might be able to sell them for our own ransom. Nobody else's got replacement parts to offer.”
“I do.” A third voice, a stranger's, filled the captive space of their helmets.
Mythili shook her head in disbelief; she saw the perplexed look that Chaim gave back to her. Together they turned, found a third figure standing, impossibly, behind them. A shudder crawled up her spine as she imagined that she saw a specter from the dead past, a ghostly guardian seeking vengeance on the violators of a tomb.
“What the hell.…” Chaim whispered. “Who—?”
“Don't tell me you've forgotten me, Chaim. It wasn't so long ago we met, back on Mecca. I'm your father's friend, and yours, boy.”
“Fitch!” Chaim shook his head, uncomprehending. “What in the name of God? How—what the hell are you doing here?”
“Following you. You don't think this was a coincidence, do you?”
“You tracked us all this way.” Mythili was already sure of the answer, sure there could be no other explanation. “How? The signal separater you gave us back at Mecca wasn't bugged, I know it wasn't!”
Fitch came toward them, his face still invisible to her. “You're a bright girl,” he said mildly. “But not bright enough.… How's Lucky doing? And did you ever take a good look at his cage? That's where the transmitter was hidden.” He laughed. “You must've paid a fortune for those damned crickets!”
She felt her face flush. “You bastard—” she murmured, hearing Chaim's curse echo her own. She cursed herself, silently; knowing she should have realized that power leak meant something.
As Fitch approached, she saw that he carried something massive at his side, something she couldn't identify. She felt herself beginning to sweat.
“What were you following us for?” Chaim asked, although the answer was as clear to her as the answer to
“I told you before, Chaim: I knew your father. I knew he was smart—I knew he'd leave you something, a key, a clue. I knew you weren't going out on this survey without a real goal in mind.” She could see his face now, familiar, shining with sweat like her own. “That was smart of you, trying to throw anybody who suspected off by spending so much time in the Main Belt. I almost had to give up on you, I didn't know if my ship could take it; it'll never make the trip back to the Demarchy from here. But I didn't give up. And now after all this time, it's finally paid off … I'm going to be a rich man.” He pulled the thing he carried forward.
“Look,” Chaim said shortly, and she heard an edge of nervous fear in his truculence, “I told you I'm not taking on more partners. Just because you followed us to this claim doesn't mean we're going to cut you in on it.”
“I didn't figure you would.” He brought the thing up in front of him; Mythili recognized it at last as a portable laser cutting torch. Her lungs were suddenly tight and aching.
“Fitch—” Chaim raised his hands, placating, surrendering.
“Don't bother with it, Dartagnan. I saw your testimony against Siamang; I know you'd promise me anything now, and try to turn me in later. I'm not giving you the chance to do that to me.”
“What does that mean?” Chaim said, knowing what it meant.
“It means he's going to kill us, and pirate our claim.” Mythili moved forward a little, painfully aware of the uncertain footing and the pit behind them. “Fitch, listen,
Fitch laughed once; there was something in the sound as desperate as their own terror, and as unable to believe that he was actually doing this to them. But he shook his head at her, and the quiet torch in his hands did not waver. “We weren't close. Besides, I think he'd understand. He'd understand that a man who's spent his life in space gets old before his time. And when you're getting too old and your ship is, too; when in all your life you've never made a find that's done more than just keep you alive to go on searching; when you know you're born unlucky, you'll die old and poor and alone … when you know all that, and you see two healthy young kids get handed a ship and go out to make a rich strike—”
“—you go a little crazy,” Chaim finished softly. “No!” Fitch said. “You finally get sane. You realize the truth, that you're the one you have to look out for. I lived inside the rules all my life, and what did it get me? Nothing! Now I make my own rules. Nothing else matters—you don't. Don't waste my time with talk,” as Mythili tried to speak, “just start backing up.” He gestured with the laser.
She glanced over her shoulder. They were less than two meters from the edge of the gaping reactor hole, its lips bearded with overhanging rubble. They would fall into the pit, not a fatal fall, but the rubble coming down on top of them would bury them forever. Her eyes leaped from a piece of twisted metal to a chunk of concrete, searching for a weapon—all the while knowing that there was nothing she could do quickly enough to save herself or Chaim from Fitch's torch.
Chaim moved abruptly beside her, not moving back but toward Fitch, his hands still outstretched. She wondered with sudden disgust whether he was about to beg for his life. But before she could even finish the thought he stumbled, sank to his knees in the broken masonry.
Fitch swore, and the nose of his laser torch dropped slightly, following Chaim down. “Get up.” His attention flickered between them.
Chaim thrashed awkwardly, starting a slow cloud of debris. Mythili wondered at his inability to get his equilibrium back, wondered if he was that frightened. But then in the space of a heartbeat he was up and moving —on a collision course with the weapon in Fitch's grasp. “Mythili, get out!” The shout spilled over into movement, impact, a chaos of input, a crack of lightning. She threw herself backwards as the laser flew off-track, firing, slashing through the space where she had been and dazzling her eyes to tears. She heard more grunts and cries; blinked furiously, trying to force sight back into the dark-bright mottled space inside her head as she groped in the debris for a metal bar. She pulled one free at last, pushing herself upward. The periphery of her wounded vision showed her the two men struggling to keep from being overbalanced in the soft sea of rubble. The intermittent, bloody streak of the laser's beam lashed the darkness. Fitch's knee caught Chaim in the stomach, thrusting him backwards, tearing his hands loose from the torch.
As Fitch recoiled from his own thrust, rising in the air, he brought the torch's beam back into line. Mythili hurled the bar, her body's reaction to the movement distorting her aim. But still the bar struck the torch, knocking it out of Fitch's hands, and sent it spiraling lazily into the air. The red beam roved, pointing like the finger of God, and she realized that the dead-man switch had jammed. “Look out, look out—!” She threw her hands up, pressing her helmet glass … watched helplessly as Fitch tried to maneuver himself out of its path, and failed. Still in mid-fall, with nothing to give his frantically twisting body support for a counter-motion, he cried out as he saw his own weapon turn against him.
The stream of intensified light stroked down across him in an idle caress, laying open his suit, searing the cloth and flesh beneath it; releasing the captive oxygen, the artificial ecosystem that kept him separate from the vacuum outside. She heard his scream start, lost it in the rush of escaping air that saved her from hearing its end.
Chaim pushed off as the falling finger of light reached out for him in turn, rebounded sideways before it found him—kept on tumbling, as the debris shifted under him, spilling him toward the pit.
“Chaim!” She screamed this time, screamed his name as she saw him slide toward the edge. He clambered over the shifting face of the rubble, a grotesque slow-motion pantomime of a man trying to walk on water. A chunk of cement struck him in the chest, canceling his frantic upward momentum, throwing him back.
She bounded forward as she saw him fall, doubled her own momentum as she landed at the shifting lip of the pit and plunged recklessly out and down. She matched Chaim's free fall, catching frantically at his leg as she
