Iris

fittings, and the thing was free. 'OK,' he said,

'pull it out.'

Tem eased the reactor away from the ship and then swung the whole crane about, intent on getting pointed in the right direction . . . but large, dense objects have correspondingly high masses, masses which steadfastly obey the simple, easily forgettable laws of mechanics; laws which begin, 'An object in motion . . .'

Two of the crane arms snapped simultaneously, and the astrodyne went sailing majestically away, apparently undisturbed. One of the flailing booms caught Demogorgon a glancing bow, and he went off into the dark sky, screaming.

'Holy shit!' Krzakwa was frozen for a moment. He spatthe cigar butt out, gunned the crane's engines, and went lumbering off after the flying reactor.

Sealock routed himself through Shipnet to the CM's teleoptic system and accessed a monitor grid array showing the object's motion dynamics as a simple trajectory. 'No sweat,' he said. 'Plenty of time.' He fed the now generated capture data to Krzakwa. 'Shut up, Tabari, you're in a worksuit. Turn on the control-moment gyros and you'll come down on your feet someday.'

Demogorgon stopped screaming and looked around. He realized that he was still flying upward and that the ship was far away. After a while he began to enjoy the view.

The crane quickly caught up with the astrodyne, though there seemed to be little time to spare. Krzakwa wrapped the remaining arms around the reactor, then set the treads to 'freewheel' and slowly applied the brakes. The crane shuddered, vibrating, the pressure of fricative surfaces transmitted to their ears by the various sound- shorts of the vehicle's structure as a high-pitched vibrato squeal. When the kinetic energy had been spent they came to a stop. He carefully drove over to the reactor base, now close, and set his charge down. He looked at Sealock.

The man had an odd look, almost smiling. 'Well,' he said.

'Yeah. What do you suppose would've happened if it'd crashed?'

'I don't know. There's not too much in there to break. . . . It's a tough machine, but if the cable had come off, Deepstar would've shut down . . .'

'. . . and then the ion fuel would've exploded.' He looked pale. 'Maybe we'd better be a little more careful, huh?'

Sealock wiped the cold sweat from his upper lip and nodded. 'Yeah.'

The colonists ate supper in a subdued silence. No one was talking much, though the engineers tried to make light of their near disaster. Afterward, while the others sat around to chat and plan, Sealock rose and went to his private compartment, where he shut himself in. He toyed with some electronic components he'd been working on, trying to concentrate, to regulate his ideas, then sighed and, stringing up a hammock that he particularly liked, lay down. That was one of the good things about getting gravity back. He'd never liked em-beds, no matter how popular they were, and useful for sex. There was something about the sway of a hammock, especially in low g . . .

Personal lapses of judgment, especially ones that he might consider his own, put him in a bad mood. If they'd still been on Earth, he'd've gone to the gym, found an unsuspecting sparring partner, and beaten the hell out of him. That form of release was not available to him here. He lay there for a while, feeling restless to no effect, then the door chirped at him. 'Who is it?' he snarled.

'Thy aziz , O fated one.' The voice was pitched soft and high.

'Go away.'

'Please, Brendan.'

He clenched his jaws momentarily, considering an array of possible angry responses, then said, 'All right. Come in.'

The door quarter-paneled open and Demogorgon slid through. He walked lightly across to Sealock and looked down at him, putting one tapering fingered hand on his broad, ridged chest. He smiled and started to slide his hand downward, but Brendan shook him off angrily. 'No. Get out.' The Arab looked pained. 'I want to help. I know something's wrong. . . .'

'Nothing's wrong,' he snapped in exasperation. In truth, it was such a small thing . . . but how could he have forgotten the basic laws of motion? It wasn't just Krzakwa's lapse, stupidity was to be expected from other people, even the best of them, but he'd forgotten as well.

'Look,' Demogorgon was saying. 'I've seen you get into these moods before.' He put his hand on the other man again. 'I can fix you right up.'

Sealock laughed harshly. 'Wrong mood, asshole. Go away.'