Nowadays it was illegal to keep your sector charts once you’d docked: Mama’s agents came aboard and wiped your mag storage, customs could strip-search you for contraband datacards if it took the notion, and you didn’t get any choice about the sector you drew when you went out again, either—’drivers moved, by the nature of what they were, you had mandated heavy time, no exceptions, and Mama didn’t send you to anything near the same area. It was illegal to hail a neighbor on a run. You spent three months breathing each other’s sweat, two guys in a crew space five meters long and three meters at the widest, so tight and so lonely you could hear each other’s thoughts echo off the walls, but if one freerunner tried to call another a sector away from him, he and his partner went up on Illegal Trading charges faster than he could think about it, it being illegal now to trade tips even with no money or equipment changing hands: the company reserved the right to that information, claiming miners had sold it that data and it had a proprietary right to assign it to interests of its own—meaning the company-owned miners: to no one’s great surprise the courts had sided with the company. So it was also, by the company’s interpretation of that ruling, illegal to hail another ship and share a bottle or trade foodstuffs or any of the other friendly deals the Nouri crackdown had put a stop to.
So when they’d advised Base they wanted to move out of their assigned sector on a possible ship in distress, Mama had taken a nervous long time about giving them that permission. BM—Belt Management—was a sullen bitch at best, and you nevertried to tell Mama you were doing something purely Al-truistic. Mama didn’t, in principle, believe that, no’m. Mama was suspicious and Mama took time to check the records of one Morris Bird and Benjamin Pollard and the miner ship Trinidadto find out if Trinidador either of her present crew had demonstrated any odd behaviors or made any odd investments in the recent past.
They could use their radio meanwhile to talk to the beep. Mama would permit that.
And evidently Mama finally believed what they heard—a ‘driver ship fire-path crossed the charts she sent, which might well explain an accident out there, and thatcould make a body a little less anxious to go chasing that signal, but it seemed a little late now to beg off: they had the charts, they’d seen the situation, they couldn’t back down with lives at stake, and Mama had set all the machinery in motion to have them check It out.
Right.
Mama couldn’t do a thing for them if it did turn out to be some kind of trouble. Mama had indicated she had no information to give them on anybody overdue or off course, and that was damned odd. The natural next thought was the military—they asked Mama about that, but Mama just said Negative from Fleet Command.
Meanwhile that beep went on.
So Mama redirected a beam off the R2-8 relay, boosted them up along what Mama’s charts assured them was a good safe course, and they chased the signal with the new charts Mama fed them, using the ‘scope on all sides for rocks or non-rocks along the way—there was a good reward if you could prove a flaw in Mama’s charts; if you had the charts legally, then you could work on them: that was the Rule.
At this speed you just prayed God the flaw didn’t turn up directly in your path.
But as sectors went it was the Big Empty out here, nothing but a couple of company tags and one freerunner’s for a long, long trip. Mama’s charts were stultifyingly accurate… except the source of the beep, which seemed to be a weak signal. That was Mama’s considered current opinion.
Meaning it was close.
Fourteen nervous days of this, all the while knowing you could make a big, bright fireball with depressingly little warning.
Naturally in the middle of supper/breakfast and shift change, the radar finally went blip! on something not on its chart, and Bird scalded himself with coffee.
The blip, when they saw it on the scope, did match the signal source.
“Advise Mama?” Ben said.
Bird bit his lip, thinking about lives, Mama’s notoriously slow decisions, and mulling over the regulations that might apply. “Let’s just get the optics fined down. No, we got no real news yet. We’re doing what Mama told us to do. Looks like we can brake without her help. No great differential. And I seriously don’twant Mama’s advice while we’re working that mother. That’s going to be a bitch as is.”
“You got it,” Ben said with a nervous little exhalation. Ben set his fingers on the keys and started figuring.
“Looks like it caught a rock,” Bird said, pointing out that deep shadow in the middle of what ought to be the number one external tank.
“Looks.” Ben had been cheerful ever since optics had confirmed the shape as a miner craft. “Sure doesn’t look healthy.”
“It sure doesn’t look good. Let’s try for another still, see if we can process up a serial number on that poor sod.”
“You got it,” Ben said.
They crept up on it. They put a steady hail on ship-to-ship—having that permission—and kept getting nothing but that tumble-modulated beep.
It was no pretty picture when they finally had it lit up in their spots.
“One hell of an impact,” Ben muttered. “Maybe a high- vrock.”
“Could be. God, both tanks are blown, right there, see? That one’s got it right along the side.”
“Those guys had no luck.”
“Sudden. Bad angle. Lot of g‘s.”
“Bash on one side. Explosion on the other. Maybe it threw them into a rock.”
“Dunno. Either one alone—God help ‘em—maybe 10 real sudden g‘s.”
“Real sudden acquaintance with the bulkhead. Rearrange your face real good.”
“Wouldn’t know what hit ‘em.”
“Suppose that ‘driver did bump a pebble out?”
“Could be. Cosmic bad luck, in all this empty. Talk about having your name on it. What do they say the odds are?”
“Hundred percent for these guys.”
Another image capture. White glared across the cameras, a blur of reflected light, painted serial designation.
“Shit, that’s a One’er number! One’er Eighty-four Zebra…”
Not from their Base. Outside their zone. Strangers from across the line.
The tumble carried the lock access toward their lights. Bird said, “Hatch looks all right.”
“You got no notion to be going in there.”
“Yep.”
“Bird, love of God, there’s no answer.”
“Maybe their receiver’s out. Maybe they lost their radio altogether. Maybe they’re too banged up to answer.”
“Maybe they’re dead. You don’t need to go in there!”
“Yep. But I’m going to.”
“I’m not.”
“Salvage rights, Ben-me-lad. I thought we were partners.”
“Shit.”
It was a routine operation for a miner to stop a spin: and most rocks did tumble—but the tumble of a spindle-shaped object their own size and, except the ruptured tanks, their own mass, was one real touchy bitch.
It was out with the arm and the brusher, and just keep contacting the thing til you got one and the other motion off it, while the gyros handled the yaw and the pitch—bleeding money with every burst of the jets. But you did this uncounted times for thirty-odd years, and you learned a certain touch. A trailing cable whacked them and scared Ben to hell, and it was a long sweaty time later before they had the motion off the thing, a longer time yet til they had the white bullseye beside the stranger’s hatch centered in their docking sight.
But after all the difficulty before, it was a gentle touch.
Grapples clicked and banged.
“That’s it,” Bird said. “That’s got it.”