Bird shook his head.
“Bird, for God’s sake.”
“Ben,” he said firmly.
Ben did not understand. He flatly did not understand.
“Just go easy on him,” Bird said.
“So what’s he to us?”
“A human being.”
“That’s no damn recommendation,” Ben muttered. But it was definitely a mistake to argue with Bird in his present mood: Bird owned the ship. Ben shook his head. “I’ll just get the pictures.”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
“Understand what?”
“What if it was you out there?”
“I wouldn’t be in that damn mess, Bird! You wouldn’t be.”
“You’re that sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Ben, you mind my asking—what ever happened to your folks?”
“What’s that to do with it?”
“Did theyever make a mistake?”
“My mama wasn’t the pilot.—That ship’s not going to be book mass, with that tank rupture. Center of mass is going to be off, too. Need to do a test burn in a little while, all right? I don’t want to leave anything to guesswork.”
“Yeah. Fine. Nothing rough. Remember we have a passenger.”
Ben frowned at him, and kept his mouth shut.
Bird said, pulling closer, “I got to tell you, Ben, right up front, we’re not robbing this poor sod. He’s got enough troubles. Hear me? Don’t you even be thinking about it.”
“It’s not robbing. It’s perfectly legal. It’s your rights, Bird, same as he has his. The same as he’d take his, if things were the other way around. That’s the way the system is set up to work.”
“There’s rights, and there’s what is right.”
“He’s not your friend! He’s not even anybody’s friend you know. Bird, for God’s sake, you got a major break here. Breaks like this don’t just fall into your lap, and they’re nothing if you don’t make them work for you. That’s why there’s laws—to even it up so you can work with people the way they are, Bird, not the way you want them to be.”
“You still have to look in mirrors.”
“What’s mirrors to do with anything?”
“If we’re due anything, we’re due the expenses.”
“Expenses, hell! We’re due haulage, medical stuff, chemkit, and a fat salvage fee at minim, we’re due that whole damn ship, is what we’re due, Bird.”
“It won’t work.”
“Hell if it won’t work, Bird! I’ll show it to you in the code. You want me to show it to you in the code?”
Bird looked put out with him. Bird said, with a sigh, “I know the rules.”
Bird had him completely puzzled. He took a chance, asked: “Bird,—have I done something wrong?”
“No. Just give me warning on that burn. I’m going to shoot some antibiotics into our passenger, get him a little more comfortable.”
Ben said, vexed, figuring to argue it later, “Better keep a running tab on the stuff, if that’s the way you’re playing it.”
“There isn’t any damn tab, Ben! Quit thinking like a computer. The guy can have kidney and liver damage, he can have fractures, he can be concussed. You can calc a nice gentle burn while you’re at it. We’re not doing any sudden moves with him.”
“All right. Fine. Slow and easy.” Ben tapped the stylus at the keys, with temper boiling up in him as Bird left—downright hurt, when it came to it. He tapped it several times on the side of the board, shoved away from the toehold and caught up with Bird’s retreat. “Bird, dammit, what in hell have I done?”
Bird looked at him as if he were adding things in his head.
Maybe, Ben thought, maybe Bird just didn’t like to be argued with. Or maybe it was that pretty-boy face of Dekker’s. Dekker was a type he thoroughly detested, because for some people there didn’t need to be any sane reason to do them favors, didn’t matter they were dumb as shit or that they’d cut your throat for their advantage, people believed them because they looked good and they talked smooth. It suddenly dawned on him that Bird was acting soft-headed about this guy with no good reason; and he decided maybe Bird taking care of Dekker himself wasn’t a good idea at all. He said, quickly, quietly, “It’s the bank I’m worried about. And this guy’s intentions. He’s not in his right zone. He’s a long way from it. We don’t know him. Maybe he was thrown here, maybe he wasn’t. We don’t know what he is. He could be some drop-off from the rebels—”
“There aren’t any jackers, Ben. And he isn’t any rebel. What’s he going to spy on? A ship you can see from deep out with any decent optics? You’ve heard too many stories.”
“All right, all right, he’s one of the good guys. You want him tucked in safe and sound, you want a dose of broad-spectrum stuff and maybe some vitamins in him, I’ll take care of it. You set up the burn.”
“You’re already running on it.”
“I said I’ll take care of him!”
Ben kited off toward the med cabinet, and Bird’s first thought was, So maybe I talked some human sense into him. And then, cynically: Maybe at least he figures he’s precarious with me right now, and covering his ass is all he’s doing. You don’t change a man that fast.
Then he saw Ben fill a hypo and thought, God, he wouldn’t!
Bird kicked off from the touch strip and sailed up beside Ben. “I’ll do it.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Bird snatched at the bottle. It floated free. It turned label-side toward him as he caught it and it was antibiotic Ben had been loading.
Ben scowled at him. “You’re acting crazy, Bird. You’re acting seriously crazy, you know that?”
“I’ll handle it,” Bird said. “Just wait on that burn a few minutes.”
Ben scowled at him, shoved off from the cabinet and sailed backward toward the workstation. Offended, Bird thought, with a twinge of irritation and of conscience at once—not sure what Ben really had intended. Ben had no patience or sympathy for Dekker or anyone else—so he’d thought.
Or was it just plain jealousy Ben was showing?
Ben belted back in at his keyboard. Ben was not looking at him, pointedly not looking at him.
Bird kicked off to the side, drifted up to Dekker—Dekker looked to be asleep, Bird hoped that was all. At least he’d given up asking what time it was. Bird popped him on the arm with the back of one hand.
Dekker waked with a start and an outcry.
“Polybact,” Bird said, showing him the needle. “You got any allergies?”
Dekker shook his head muzzily. Bird gave him the shot, snagged the Citrisal pack out of the pipes where air currents had sent it, uncapped the stem and put it in Dekker’s mouth.
Dekker took a sip or two. Turned his head. “That’s all.”
“We’re going to do a test burn. After that we’ll be doing a 140, going to catch a beam home. Has to be our Base, understand, unless we get other instructions. We’re out of R2.”
Dekker looked at him hazily. “No. No hospital. 79, 709, 12. That’s where we were. We had a find—big find. Big find. I’ll sign it to you. Just go there. Pick my partner up.”
“Your partner was outside when the accident happened?”
Dekker nodded.
“What happened? Catch a rock?” It happened. Usually to new crews.
Another nod. Dekker’s eyes were having trouble tracking. “Kilometer wide. Iron content.”
Freerunning miners didn’t findnickel-iron rocks that big. Rocks that big had been mapped by optics: those rocks all had long-standing numbers, they belonged to the company, and if they were rich, they got ‘drivers assigned to them, they got chewed in pieces, and they streamed to the recovery zone at the Well by bucketloads. But Bird didn’t argue that point: Dekker didn’t seem highly reasonable at the moment, and he only said, “A whole k wide. You’re sure of that.”