“Why you come to this ship?”
“Well, the fellas and I heard tell theah was some gals, and we—”
The man waved the gun impatiently and pressed a button near the inner hatch. A red indicator light went on.
“Yes?” A woman’s voice, rather hoarse. Lije’s chest heaved with sudden emotion, and his sigh came out a bleat…
The man spoke in a flood of French. The woman did not reply at once. Lije noticed the movement of a viewing lens beside the hatch; it was scanning him from head to toe.
The woman’s voice shifted to an intimate contralto. “OK, dearie, you come right in here where it’s nice and warm.”
The inner hatch slid open. It took Lije a few seconds to realize that she had been talking to him. She stood there smiling at him like a middle-aged schoolmarm. “Why don’t you come on in and meet the girls?” Eyes popping, Lije Henderson stumbled inside.
He was gone a long time.
When he finally came out, the men in Novotny’s runabout took turns cursing at him over the suit frequency. “Fa chrissake, Henderson, we’ve been sitting here using up oxy for over an hour while you been horsing around…” They waited for him with the runabout, cabin depressurized.
Lije was panting wildly as he ran toward them. “Lissen to the bahstud giggle,” Bama said disgustedly.
“Y’all juss don’ know, y’all juss don’ KNOW!” Lije was chanting between pants.
“Get in here, you damn traitor!”
“Hones’, I couldn’ help myself. I juss couldn’.”
“Well, do the rest of us get aboard her, or not?” Joe snapped.
“Hell, go ahead, man! It’s wide open. Evahthing’s wide open.”
“Girls?” Relke grunted.
“Girls, God yes! Girls.”
“You coming with us?” Joe asked.
Lije shook his head and fell back on the seat, still panting. “Lawd, no! I couldn’t stand it. I juss want to lie heah and look up at ole Mamma Earth and feel like a human again.” He grinned beatifically. “Y’all go on.”
Braxton was staring at his crony with curious suspicion.
“Man, those must be some entuhtainuhs! Whass the mattah with you, Lije?”
Henderson whooped and pounded his leg. “Woo hoo! Hooeee! You mean y’all still don’ know what that ship is?”
They had already climbed out of the tractor. Novotny glared back in at Lije. “We’ve been waiting to hear it from you, Henderson,” he snapped.
Lije sat up grinning. “That’s no stage show troupe! That ship, so help me Hannah, is a—hoo hoo hooee—is a goddam flyin’ HO-house.” He rolled over on the seat and surrendered to laughter.
Novotny looked around for his men and found himself standing alone. Braxton was already on the ladder, and Relke was just starting up behind.
“Hey, you guys come back here!”
“Drop dead, Joe.”
Novotny stared after them until they disappeared through the lock. He glanced back at Lije. Henderson was in a grinning beatific trance. The pusher shrugged and left him lying there, still wearing his pressure suit in the open cabin. The pusher trotted after his men toward the ship.
Before he was halfway there, a voice broke into his headsets. “Where the devil are you going, Novotny? I want a talk with you!”
He stopped to glance back. The voice belonged to Brodanovitch, and it sounded sore. The engineer’s runabout had nosed in beside Novotny’s; Suds sat in the cab and beckoned at him angrily. Joe trudged on back and climbed in through the vehicle’s coffin-sized airlock. Brodanovitch glared at him while the pusher removed his helmet.
“What the devil’s going on over there?”
“At the ship?” Joe paused. Suds was livid. “I don’t know exactly.”
“I’ve been calling Safety and Rescue for an hour and a half. Where are they?”
“In the ship, I guess.”
“You guess!”
“Hell, chief, take it easy. We just got here. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Where are your men?”
Novotny jerked his thumb at the other runabout. “Henderson’s in there. Relke and Brax went to the ship.”
“And that’s where you were going just now, I take it,” Suds snarled.
“Take that tone of voice and shove it, Suds! You, know where you told me to go. I went. Now I’m off. We’re on our own time unless you tell us different.”
The engineer spent a few seconds swallowing his fury. “All right,” he grunted. “But every man on that rescue squad is going to face a Space Court, and if I have any say about it, they’ll get decomped.”
Novotny’s jaw dropped. “Slow down, Suds. Explosive decompression is for mutiny or murder. What’re you talking about?”
“Murder.”
“Wha-a-at?”
“That’s what I call it. A demolition man—Hardin, it was—had a blowout. With only one man standing by on the rescue gear.”
“Meteor dust?”
“Yeah.”
“Would it have made any difference if Safety and Rescue had been on the job?”
Suds glowered. “Maybe, maybe not. An inspector might have spotted the bulge in his suit before it blew.” He shook an angry finger toward the abandoned Safety & Rescue vehicles. “Those men are going to stand trial for negligent homicide. It’s the principle, damn it!”
“Sure, Suds. I guess you’re right. I’ll be right back.”
Henderson was sleeping in his pressure suit when Novotny climbed back into his own runabout. The cab was still a vacuum. He got the hatch closed, turned on the air pumps, then woke Henderson.
“Lije, you been with a woman?”
“Nnnnnngg-nnnng! I hope to tell!” He shot a quick glance toward the rocket as if to reassure himself as to its reality. “And man, was she a little—”
Joe shook him again. “Listen. Brodanovitch is in the next car. Bull mad. I’ll ask you again. You been with a woman?”
“Woman? You muss of lost yoah mine, Joe. Lass time I saw a woman was up at Atlanta.” He rolled his eyes up toward the Earth crescent in the heavens. “Sure been a long ole time. Atlanta… man!”
“That’s better.”
Lije jerked his head toward Brodanovitch’s jeep. “What’s ole wet blanket gonna do? Chase those gals out of here, I ’spect?”
“I don’t know. That’s not what he’s frothing about, Lije. Hardin got killed while the S&R boys were shacking up over there. Suds doesn’t even know what’s in that ship. He acts like he’s got about a dozen troubles running loose at once, and he doesn’t know which way to grab.”
“He don’t even know? How we evah gonna keep him from findin’ out?” Lije shot another glance at the ship and jumped. “Uh-oh! Looka theah! Yonder they come. Clamberin’ down the ladies’ ladduh. Theah’s Joyce and Lander and Petzel—other one looks like Crump. Half the Safety team, Joe. Hoo-eee! They got that freshly bred look. You can evum tell it from heah. Uh-oh!”
Brodanovitch had climbed out of his runabout. Bellowing at his mic, he charged toward the ship. The S&R men took a few lopes toward their vehicles, saw Brodanovitch, and stopped. One man turned tail and bolted for the ladder again. Gesturing furiously, the engineer bore down on them.
“Leave the radio off, Joe. Sure glad we don’ have to listen to that bull bellow.”
They sat watching the safety men, who managed some-how to look stark naked despite their bulgey pressure suits. Suds stalked toward them like an amok runner, beating a gloved fist into his palm and working his jaw at them.