Besides, not seeing Janda off was best for her. If she did love him, then his abandoning her at her departure would only make it easier for her to forget him. He would be doing her a favor. Then again, Janda knew Victor. She might suspect that he hadn’t come for that very reason, and therefore the plan would backfire. Instead of stamping out their love, it would only endear him more to her.
Or, she might jump to the wrong conclusion entirely. She might think that he had not come because now that true feelings were laid bare, he found her revolting. She might think: He hates me now. He despises me. I’m the one who looked at him with love in my eyes. I’m the one who touched his arm. And now that he knows what my feelings were, he thinks me vile and repulsive.
This thought nearly sent Victor flying from the room and rushing to the airlock to tell Janda that no, he didn’t think any less of her. He never could.
But he did no such thing. He remained exactly where he was.
Concepcion said, “The members of the Council will be perfectly discreet on this matter. Not a hint of gossip will escape any of our lips. As far as we are concerned, we didn’t even meet on the subject.”
She was trying to reassure him, but hearing her stress the confidentiality of the situation only stoked Victor’s shame. It meant that they were so disgusted by him and Janda, so repulsed by it all, that they were going to pretend that nothing had ever happened. They were going to go about their business as if the memory had been wiped from their minds. Which of course was impossible. No one could forget this. They could pretend to have forgotten, yes. They could smile at him and go on as if nothing had ever happened, but their faces would only be masks.
There was nothing else to say. Victor thanked Concepcion and excused himself from her office. The hall that led to the airlock was just ahead, but Victor turned his back to it. He needed to work. He needed to occupy his mind, build something, fix something, disassemble something. He took his handheld from his hip and checked the day’s repair docket. There was a long list of minor repairs that needed his attention, but none of them were a screaming emergency. He could get to them soon enough. A better use of his time might be installing the drill stabilizer he had built recently. He would need permission from the miners before touching the drill, but he might get that if he asked today. The Italians hadn’t pulled out yet, so the miners wouldn’t be ready for the drill for another hour at least. Victor switched screens on his handheld and pulled up the locator. It showed that Mono was down in the workshop.
Victor hit the call button. “Mono, it’s Victor.”
A young boy’s voice answered. “Epale, pana cambur. What’s shaking, Vico?”
“Can you meet me in the cargo bay with the pieces for the drill stabilizer?”
Mono sounded excited. “Are we going outside to install it?”
“If the miners let us. I’m heading there now.”
Mono whistled and hooted.
Victor clicked off, smiling. He could always count on Mono’s enthusiasm to lift his spirits.
At nine years old, Mono was the youngest apprentice on the ship, though he had been following Victor around and watching him make repairs for several years now. Six months ago the Council had agreed that an interest as keen as Mono’s should be encouraged not ignored, and they had made his apprenticeship official. Mono had called it the happiest day of his life.
Mono’s real name was Jose Manuel like his father, Victor’s uncle. But when Mono was a toddler, he had learned to climb up the furniture and cabinets in the nursery before he had learned to walk, and his mother had called him her little mono-“monkey” in Spanish. The name had stuck.
Victor flew down the various corridors and shafts to the cargo bay, launching himself straight as an arrow down every passageway, moving quickly in zero gravity. He passed lots of people. Now that the Italians were pulling out, and the trading and festivities were over, it was back to life as usual, with everyone taking up his or her assigned responsibility. Miners, cooks, laundry workers, machine operators, navigators, all the duties that kept the family operation running smoothly in the Kuiper Belt.
Victor reached the entrance to the cargo bay and found Mono waiting for him, a large satchel floating in the air behind him.
“You got everything?” asked Victor. “All three pieces?”
“Check, check, and check,” said Mono, giving a thumbs-up.
They floated through the hatch into the cargo bay and then over to the equipment lockers, where the miners were busy gathering and preparing their gear for the day’s dig. The ship was currently anchored to an asteroid, but drilling had stopped ever since the Italians had arrived. Now the miners looked eager to get back to work.
Victor scanned the crowd and noticed that many of the men were over forty, which meant they were members of the Council and therefore knew the real reason why Janda was leaving. Victor wondered if they would avert their eyes when they saw him, but none of them did. They were all so busy making their preparations that no one even seemed to notice that he and Mono were there.
Victor found his uncle Marco, the dig-team leader, over by the air compressor, checking the lifeline hoses for any leaks. Miners were extremely protective of their gear, but no piece of equipment was given more care and inspection than the lifeline. The long tube connected into the back of every miner’s spacesuit and served two purposes: It was the miner’s anchor to the ship-operating like a safety cable. And it was the miner’s source of fresh air, power, and heat. As the sign above the lockers read: CUIDA TU MANGUERA. TU MANGUERA ES TU VIDA. “Take care of your line. Your line is your life.”
“Epale, Marco,” said Victor.
“Epa, Vico,” said Marco, looking up from his work and smiling.
He was a member of the Council, but he showed no sign of hiding anything. He appeared to be his normal, happy self. Victor pushed the thought away. He couldn’t live like this, constantly questioning the thoughts of every person over forty on the ship.
“Nice work with that heater doodad you made for the Italians,” said Marco. “We got some good equipment out of that trade.” He gestured to a large metal cage anchored to the floor, filled with slightly used pressure suits, helmets, mineral readers, and other essential equipment. Most of it looked newer than anything miners on El Cavador had ever used, which might work to Victor’s favor-he was about to ask permission to access the drill, and it would help to be in the miners’ good graces.
“What time are you going out this morning?” asked Victor.
Marco raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ve been working on something,” said Victor, “an enhancement for one of the drills. It’s still a prototype, but I’d like to test it. And since you can’t fire up the drill until the Italians pull out, I thought maybe I could install it before your guys get out there and start digging.”
Marco eyed the satchel.
“It’s a stabilizer for the drill,” said Victor, “for whenever we hit ice pockets. It’s a way to keep the ship from pitching forward and the drill steady.”
Victor could see Marco’s curiosity nibbling at the bait. “Ice pockets, huh?”
Nothing was more annoying to a miner in the Kuiper Belt than ice pockets. Asteroids this far from the sun were dirty snowballs, masses of rock laced with an occasional pocket of frozen water, methane, or ammonia. The laser drill could bore through it all, but it produced a rocketlike reaction. Unless the ship was moored to the rock with the retrorockets firing as a counterforce, the laser would simply knock the asteroid away from the ship.
So as long as the laser was digging through rock-for which all of the retrorockets had been calibrated-the ship held steady and the dig went smoothly. But the moment the laser hit a pocket of ice, the laser would burn right through it, losing the ship’s upward force. The retrorockets were still firing, however, so the whole ship would pitch forward, causing chaos inside for the crew. People fell over, babies couldn’t sleep.
Then, after the laser had seared through the ice and hit rock again, the upward force would return, the two forces would then equalize, and the ship would pitch back again. Everyone called it the ice pocket rodeo.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Victor. “The drill is working. What if my ‘improvement’ damages the drill?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” said Marco. “I don’t like anyone touching the drills unless absolutely necessary.”
“You can watch everything I do,” said Victor. “Step by step. But in truth, the installation isn’t that invasive. The main sensor goes up by the retrorockets. Another piece is wireless and goes down by the blast site on the
