The Aftermath

“None that I know of.”

“Then what’s a body doing out here?”

He shook his head slowly. “Maybe we’ll find some evidence on the corpse to tell us what happened to it.”

“Can we get close enough?” she asked.

Dorn got up from the command chair. “I’ll get into a suit and go outside for him. You take the con.”

She nodded as she slid into the chair, warm from his body. “Couldn’t we use the grapples? Then you wouldn’t have to go outside.”

“That would be tricky,” Dorn replied. “I can try, but I’d still better be suited up, so I can go out if I have to.”

Elverda understood that standard safety procedures called for her to suit up, too, so she could serve as a backup, if necessary. But she knew she’d be no good at it: too old, too slow, too tired to be of any use. Dorn didn’t mention the subject and neither did she.

* * *

Pauline went with Valker down the tube tunnel to the ship’s zero-g hub, where the scavengers had set up the flexible connector to link Syracuse with Vogeltod.

“I mean it about Ceres,” Valker said, his face utterly serious. “I want to start a new life with you.”

She nodded. “As long as you protect my daughter.”

“Of course,” he said. Then he grasped her by the shoulders and kissed her, hard.

Taken by surprise, Pauline closed her eyes as he pressed against her lips. Then he let her go, grinned, and headed lightly along the spongy tube. At the hatch on the Vogeltod end he turned and waved, beaming a bright smile. Pauline made herself smile back at him.

As soon as the hatch at the far end of the tube closed behind Valker, Pauline slammed shut the hatch on Syracuse and punched the intercom console on the bulkhead alongside it.

“Angela!” she said sharply. “Angela!”

“Mom?”

Pauline felt a grateful sigh gust out of her. For once the intercom was working.

“Get out of there and meet me at the hub. Right away. It’s urgent.”

“But Theo said—”

“Never mind what Theo said! Get here at once, do you hear me?”

“Yes. I’m coming.”

“Quickly!”

* * *

Elverda wished she were a better pilot. Dorn had set up a rendezvous plot on the navigation program, but a really sharp pilot would be able to edge Hunter much closer to the body that was spinning out there.

They were close enough to use the cameras now, in addition to the radar. The image on her main screen was clear and sharp: a human body encased in one of the old-fashioned hard-shell space suits.

Best not to touch anything, she told herself as she scanned the control board. We won’t get close enough to use the grapples; he’ll have to go out and retrieve the corpse. He’s done it before, hundreds of times. He knows what he’s doing.

Still, she wished she could help, wished he didn’t have to leave the ship.

Then she sat up straight in the command chair. “It moved!” Elverda said aloud. It moved both its arms!

“Dorn!” she called into the intercom. “I think it’s alive.”

For a moment he didn’t answer. Then, “Alive? How can that be?”

“It moved its arms.”

“I don’t believe—”

“There! The arms moved again!” She pointed to the image on the main screen.

“That’s impossible,” said Dorn.

“It’s not a dead body,” Elverda insisted. “At least, it’s not dead yet.”

* * *

At first Theo thought he was hallucinating. Oxygen deprivation, he told himself. The brain’s starting to break down. He seemed to see a ship spiraling out there, a big wheel-shaped vessel. And it was drawing closer to him. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, took a deep breath of what precious little was left of his oxygen. When he opened his eyes again the ship was still there, swinging around against the background of stars as he pinwheeled. Could it be real?

“Hey!” he yelled. “I’m here! Come and get me!” Then he realized how foolish it was. Kirk had ripped the radio out of his backpack. Theo began to wave at the oncoming ship, swinging both his arms frantically.

* * *

Pauline hovered in the zero-g hub of Syracuse, alongside the closed hatch of the connector tube. Valker could come back through that hatch at any second, she knew. Where is Angie? Why is she taking so long to—

“Mom! Here I come!”

Angie’s voice! Pauline pushed herself to the opening of the tube tunnel that led from the storm cellar and saw Angie diving toward her headfirst, arms flat by her sides, hurtling like a sleek dark-haired torpedo.

“Look out, Mom!” Angie yelled, reaching out to the ladder rungs set into the tube’s sides.

Pauline watched aghast as Angela neatly slowed her rush, tucked into a compact ball, and landed lightly on her softbooted feet at her side.

“You told me to be quick,” she said before Pauline could open her mouth to speak.

“You… you could have broken every bone in your body,” Pauline said, once she found her voice.

Angie laughed lightly. “Tunnel diving. Theo showed me how to do it. It’s easy when you’re going upwards, weightless. Gets trickier when you’re going downhill, down to the rim.”

Pauline nudged her daughter toward the tube that led to the backup command pod. “Come along, we don’t have any time to lose.”

Grabbing one of the tunnel’s projecting rungs, Angie pulled herself lightly along. “Where’s that Captain Valker? And the other men? Where’s Theo?”

Following behind her daughter, Pauline said, “Theo’s dead. Valker’s men killed him.”

“Dead?” Angie’s wail echoed off the tube walls. “Theo’s dead?”

Pauline swatted her daughter’s behind lightly. “Keep moving. We’ll be dead too if we don’t get to the pod before those murderers get back here.”

“But what happened?” Angie asked as she resumed clambering along the rungs. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to do just what your father did,” Pauline said grimly. “We’re going into the pod and blast ourselves out of here before Valker and his crew can get their hands on us.”

CAPTURE

“She’s veered off,” said Nicco, scowling at the main screen on Vogeltod’s bridge.

“I can see that,” Valker snapped from the command chair.