There had been, since the original com announcement, no further word from the screen on the forward wall. No discussion was allowed after the initial murmur of dismay at the news. Josh kept his eyes averted from the screen, and from the station policeman at the door. He was more than three hours past his shift’s quitting time. They should all have been dismissed, all those on partial. Other workers should have arrived. He had been here over six hours. There was no provision for meals here. The supervisor had finally sent out for sandwiches and drinks for them. There was still a cup of ice on the bench in front of him. He did not touch it, wishing to seem completely busy.
The supervisor stopped a moment behind him. He did not react, did not break the rhythm of his actions. He heard the supervisor move on, and did not look to see.
They did not treat him differently from the others here. It was his own troubled mind, he persuaded himself, which made him suspect they might be watching him in particular. They were all closely supervised. The girl by him, a solemn, slow-moving child and ever so careful, was doing the most complex job of which she was capable, and nature had cheated her of much capacity. Many here in the salvage center were of that category. There were some who entered here young, perhaps to seek a track up through the job classifications, to gain elementary mechanical skills and to go higher, into technical positions or manufacture. And there were some whose nervous behavior indicated other reasons for being here, anxious, obsessive concentration… strange to observe the symptoms in others.
Only he had never been a criminal as they might have been, and perhaps they trusted him less for that. He cherished his job here, which kept his mind busy, which gave him independence… quite as the sober girl beside him cherished her place, he thought. At first, in his zeal for demonstrating his skill, he had worked with feverish quickness; and then he saw that it upset the child beside him, and that distressed him, because she could not do more, could never do more. He compromised then, and did not make his efficiency obvious. It was enough to survive. It had looked to be enough for a long time.
Only now he felt sick to his stomach and wished he had not eaten all his sandwich, but even in that matter he had not wanted to seem different from those about him.
The war had gotten to Pell. Mazianni. The Fleet was at hand.
He did not think some thoughts. When the dark crowded him, he worked the harder and blinked the memories away. Only…
It was not possible. It could not happen.
Mazian’s Fleet. Martial law.
He might break, if he was not careful; the balance of his mind was delicate and he knew it. Perhaps to have asked for this oblivion was in itself insane, and Adjustment had made him no more unbalanced than he had ever been. He suspected every emotion he felt, and therefore tried to feel as few as possible.
“Rest,” the supervisor said. “Ten-minute break.”
He kept working, as he had through previous rest periods. So did the girl beside him.
ii
“We hold Pell,” Signy told her crew and the troops, those present with her on the bridge and those scattered throughout the ship. “Our decision — Mazian’s, mine, the other captains — is to hold Pell. Company agents have signed a treaty with Union… handed them everything in the Beyond and called for us to stand aside while they do it; they turned our contact code over to Union.
She waited for some, although she knew her people like family… for some might have other opinions, might have second thoughts about this. There was reason they should.
A sudden cheer erupted off the troop decks, found echo, all channels open. People on the bridge were hugging one another and grinning. Graff embraced her; armscomper Tiho did; and others of her officers of many years. Some were crying. There were tears in Graff’s eyes. None in her own; might have been, but that she felt guilt… still, irrationally, the habit of an outworn loyalty. She embraced Graff a second time, pushed back, looked around her. “Get all of us ready,” she said. It was going all over the ship, open com. “We’re moving in to take station central before they know what’s hit them. Di, hurry it.”
Graff started giving orders. She heard Di doing so, down in the troop corridors, distinctive echo. The bridge moved into activity, techs jostling one another in the narrow aisles getting to posts. “Ten minutes,” she shouted, “full armament, all available troops arm and out.”
There was shouting elsewhere, the com giving evidence of troops rushing to suit even before the orders were officially passed. The commands began echoing through the corridors. Signy walked back to her small office/quarters and took the precaution of helmet and body armor, none for her limbs, trading risk for freedom of motion. Five minutes. She heard Di counting over the open com, with outright chaos feeding out from various command stations. No matter. This crew and the troops knew their business in the dark and upside down. All family here. The incompatible met early accidents and those left were close as brothers, as children, as lovers.
She headed out, slipping her pistol openly into the armor-holster, rode the lift down; armored troops pouring down the corridor at a rattling run hit the wall to give her room the instant they recognized her coming through, so that she could run to the fore, where she belonged.
“Signy!” they cried after her, jubilant. “Bravo,
They were alive again, and felt it.
iii
“No,” Angelo said at once. “No, don’t try to stop them. Pull back. Pull back our forces immediately.”
Station command acknowledged and turned to its business. Screens in the council chamber began to reflect new orders; the muffled voice of security command gave reports. Angelo sank back in his chair, at the table in the center of council, amid the partially filled tiers, the soft murmurings of panic among those who had contrived to get back here through the halls. He propped his mouth against his steepled hands and sat studying the incoming reports which cut across the screens in rapid sequence, views of the docks, where armored troops boiled out. Some of the council had waited too long, could not get out of the sections where they worked or where they had taken up an emergency post. Damon and Elene came in together, for refuge, out of breath, hesitated at the door. Angelo beckoned his son and daughter-in-law in on personal privilege, and they approached at his urging and settled at two of the vacant places at the table. “Had to leave dock office in a hurry,” Damon said quietly. “Took the lift up.” Hard behind them came Jon Lukas and his clutch of friends to seat themselves, the friends in the tiers and Jon at the table. Two of the Jacobys made it, hair disheveled and faces glistening with sweat. It was not council; it was a sanctuary from what was happening outside.
On the screens matters were worsening, the troops headed in toward the heart of the station, security trying to keep up with the situation by remote, switching from one camera to the next in haste, a rapid flickering of images.
“Staff wants to know if we lock the control-center doors,” a councillor said from the doorway.
“Against rifles?” Angelo moistened his lips, slowly shook his head, staring at the flick of images from camera to camera to camera.
“Call Mazian,” Dee said, a new arrival. “Protest this.”
“I have, sir. I have no answer. I reckon he’s with them.”
“Sir,” a call broke through the message. “They’re mobbing the doors in Q, trying to batter them down. Shall we shoot?”
“Don’t open,” Angelo said, his heart pounding at the acceleration of insanity where there had been order. “Negative, don’t fire unless the doors are breached. What do you want — to let them loose?”
“No, sir.”
“Then don’t.” The contact went dead. He wiped his face, feeling ill.
“I’ll get down that way,” Damon offered, half out of his chair.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Angelo said. “I don’t want you gathered up in any military sweep.”
“Sir,” an urgent voice came at his elbow, a presence which had come down from the tiers. “Sir — ”
Kressich.
“
“Q com is down,” security command advised. “They’ve got it out again. We can splice something in. They can’t have reached the dock speakers.”
Angelo looked at the man Kressich, a haggard, grayed individual, who had gotten more so in the passing months. “Hear that?”
“They’re afraid,” Kressich said, “that you’re going to leave here and let the Fleet leave them for Union.”
