“He turned his head toward her. I can’t say he looked at her, because his eyes had been burned out. They were just black pits in his head. He had no nose.
“ ‘Thanks, Marlene,’ he said. I’m Trustrum Keck, chief mining engineer of CM-31.’ He sounded absolutely calm and rational. They say that bad burns leave you like that, in shock but not in pain. ‘Before you knock me out,’ he said, ‘how about a little damage assessment?’
“She looked at me, as if she wished I wasn’t there, then she said, ‘We met once before, when I was piloting the Vanity. It’s not good, Rusty. Your eyes have gone, and most of your face.’
“ ‘I guessed that,’ he said. ‘And there’s more, isn’t there.’
“ ‘Yes. You’ve lost the flesh of your legs, and your penis and testicles. And most of your right hand.’
“ ‘I noticed,’ he said, ‘when it happened. It doesn’t feel so bad now.’ He was quiet for about half a minute, then he said, ‘No chance of real repairs. I don’t like the look of the future, Marlene. I want to exercise my option.’
“It was her turn to go quiet, but eventually she said, ‘You’re in deep shock, Rusty. This is no time to make that decision.’
“But he just gave a sort of coughing laugh and said, ‘Tell me a better time. You’ve seen me,’ and after a minute she nodded.
“ ‘Hold on a little,’ she said. Til give you a shot, but I’ve got a young apprentice with me. She happened to be on the Vantage when we picked up your Mayday.’ Then she turned to me, and said, ‘Step out for a few minutes. Into the corridor.’
“I did. I was totally confused, but it was an order. After about ten minutes she came out again. She had taken off her suit helmet, and her face was dead white. She told me it was all right, I could come back in. I did. He was lying there. He was dead. When I asked what had happened she just shook her head. Rick, she killed him. I know she did. She murdered him.”
“No.” Rick was suddenly very thankful for the conversation he had had with Jigger Tait, back in the shielded radiation chamber on CM-2. “You can’t look at it that way, Deedee. Would you want to live with no eyes and legs? No genitals, no right hand.”
She flinched against his arm. “I couldn’t bear to!”
“Nor could I. And nor could he. You heard him say it, he wanted to exercise his option—his right to die.”
“But that’s murder!”
“Back on Earth it is. Out here, it’s a fundamental right. Mine, yours, Barney French’s. Nobody can take it away from us. And Marlene Kotite couldn’t take it away from Rusty Keck. She just did what he wanted, and helped him along a little. Wouldn’t you do as much for me, in the same situation?”
“Oh, Rick, don’t say that. Please, don’t ever say that.” Then Deedee was silent for a long time, so long that Rick thought she must be angry. Finally she patted the arm that he had placed around her, and said, “God rest his soul. Thanks, Rick. Thanks an awful lot. I owe you a big one. But I knew I could count on you. I always can.”
She left. Rick lay again on his bunk. He was very glad that he had bitten back what he had wanted to say when she first came in: “Chick Teazle is the one you’re screwing, not me. If you want to talk to somebody, why don’t you go and find him?”
Rick didn’t know the answer to his own question. But he offered up a prayer that he had not asked it.
The final arrival at CM-26, their original target, was a big letdown. It took a while to realize why.
The first few hours were the enjoyable confusion of a new home. The apprentices were assigned living quarters—huge, after the cramped cabins of the Vantage—then left free to roam the interior, alone or in groups, and get used to the layout.
Rick was on the same corridor as Gladys de Witt, Lafe Eklund, Polly Quint, and Goggles Landau. He was annoyed that he had not been placed with people he knew well, until he realized that was surely intentional. Turkey Gossage and Barney French had one thing in common: they both insisted that you had to be able to get along with absolutely anyone and learn to work together.
The five apprentices set out as a group to ramble the corridors and tunnels of the mining facility. Rick noted where Alice’s cabin was located, though it was probably useless information; she always insisted that she come to him. She was right next door to Deedee Mao, which made Rick feel a bit uncomfortable.
The corridors that led deeper into the interior all ended with flashing lights and warning signs: DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT. MINING OPERATIONS IN PROGRESS.
The five retreated, somewhat irritated. “I thought mining operations were specifically what we were here to learn,” Polly Quint grumbled. She was a tall, graceful seventeen-year-old, with an oddly large vocabulary and a flashing smile that at the moment was noticeably absent. “And what type of mining operations are being denied to us, anyway?”
They could hear along the forbidden tunnel the near-continuous rumble of explosions.
“Not what we saw on CM-31, that’s for sure,” said Gladys de Witt. “There’s something odd going on here.”
Rick agreed. During their approach to CM-26 he had caught a glimpse of an irregular chunk of rock, with beside it the familiar gleam of a cylinder big enough to enclose it.
But what they had just seen—or rather heard—suggested a traditional mine using ore blasting and excavation equipment.
The mystery remained as they headed in the opposite direction, up toward the outer layers of the mining station. It was compounded when they came to the topmost level and looked out through the transparent bubble of an observation port.
“It’s tiny,” Goggles Landau protested. “Look at the ship next to it!”
They again had a view of the asteroid and cylinder that Rick had seen during final approach. At that time there was no way of judging size, and Rick had assumed that he was looking at something on the same massive scale as the ruined facility of CM-31. Now a maintenance module was floating in space next to the cylinder, and Rick could see that Goggles was right. Instead of the kilometer-plus length and width of CM-31, this cylinder was no more than forty meters in any dimension. The rock next to it was smaller yet, more like a large boulder than a substantial planetoid.
“That’s not a mining facility,” said Lafe Eklund at last. He was one of the quiet apprentices who rarely said anything, but now he sounded exasperated. “Look at that thing! It’s nothing but a toy. ”
No one disagreed. Perplexed, they made their way back to the general living accommodation and ran into two other exploring parties. They had all experienced similar frustrations, of regions denied to them without explanation or mining facilities scaled down to the point where they appeared ludicrous. Without anyone suggesting it, they found themselves moving together to the main dining area.
Chick Teazle, as usual, took the lead. “I think we can all guess what’s happening,” he said. “So far as they are concerned, it’s business as usual. We’re back in the playpen, and we’ll get pushed through the next stage of training as though we’re still babies. But we’re not.”
There was a mutter of agreement.
“What happened at CM-31 changed everything,” Chick continued. “They still want to treat us as Level Three apprentices, but we showed that we are ready to operate at Level Five—the highest level. We’ve grown up faster than anyone expected. They need to recognize that fact.”
“How do we make them?” Alice Klein had been in a fourth group that had just entered the dining area and added itself to the discussion. “It’s easy to say how Vanguard ought to think of us, but how do you persuade them?”
As usual, Alice had quietly placed her finger on the key question. There was a long pause, while everyone stared around at everyone else. Rick tried to catch Alice’s eye, but she looked right through him.