Potter returned to the bridge, allowing First Officer Connolly and Navigator Owens to head for the shuttle bay to make the pre-flight check.
He sat down with a surly grunt as they left, thinking how glad he would be when this was all over.
"Shuttle One to Bridge."
Potter acknowledged. From the shuttle bay, Connolly and Owens began calling off the pre-launch checklist in bored tones that belied their interest in the shuttle's operating status.
Alone among Fast Eddie's accouterments, at least one of her two shuttles was always kept in perfect working order. They had to be: Fast Eddie might not be much, but it was the only way home, and getting back to the lumbering Survey ship waiting in orbit was only slightly less important than landing in one piece after leaving her.
Giving them the final green light, Potter threw the switches which detached the shuttle from its umbilicals. The squat, ungainly form drop away slowly from Fast Eddie's forward ventral bay, dwindling in the dark distance, finally backlit by the bright flare of its engines as it moved into its descent pattern.
"God speed," Captain Potter said quietly. But for himself, the bridge was empty now, and lonely. Along with the First Officer and Navigator, the shuttle carried Ike, several hundred pounds of survey equipment, and Miller himself, stuffed unceremoniously and uncomplaining into an emergency deceleration hammock. Potter found himself envying the Company man even that. It would have been reckless to leave Farrow to oversee the operations of the vessel, and Chief Engineer Liu had enough to keep him and his remaining engineering lackey busy for months.
Potter sat back in the command seat, considering how much he hated being left behind, and how lonely the long trip home would be if anything went wrong down there.
The idea of things going wrong inevitably brought Potter's thoughts back to Miller.
The man was no more than a Company spy, Hogan had admitted as much; had admitted too that Miller's job was to be sure that Byers' Star's moon had nothing of sufficient value to prevent its designation as a relocation site for BuReloc.
Potter rubbed his chin. All debts forgiven and a free ride for the Fast Eddie; if Hogan's on the level, then BuReloc is putting an awful lot of effort into getting a man out here just to verify that a place is worthless to the CoDominium government.
"Right," Potter grunted. But in the last year, he'd had many opportunities to go over the available data on the moon, and there was nothing there to imply that it was anything more than an interesting exception in the Biosphere Rulebook.
Still . . .
He was nervously chewing the inside of one cheek when the shuttle crashed.
"Fast Eddie, this is Shuttle One down, mayday."
"Give it a rest for a moment, won't you?" Connolly's voice was weary as he massaged his temples, eyes closed.
Owens stared at his screens in tightly controlled terror. "Fast Eddie's probably in farside orbit from us right now; goddammit, I must've told Potter a hundred times to recheck those relay satellites."
"Well, he didn't, we don't have them, so if Fast Eddie's in farside orbit right now, we can't talk to them." Connolly opened a panel on his own console and distractedly pushed a few buttons.
"It's dead, for chrissakes," Owens surrendered in disgust. "Leave it alone." His own board confirmed his judgment that all the shuttle's port side controls were inoperative. They'd landed very hard and with a lot of noise, and every screen monitoring the port systems had gone dark the same moment that the shuttle had developed an ominous, sickly list to that side.
Ike arrived with the results of his inboard systems inspection; the shuttle was small, and it hadn't taken him long to ascertain that an outside inspection was necessary.
"Christ on a crutch." Owens' voice tightened by the minute as he struggled out of his seat against the unfamiliar gravity. "Well, that should make Miller happy."
"Miller?" Connolly frowned. "We've an emergency here, Owens; we can't have him toddling outside on a whim while we're trying to perform damage assessments."
"Oh? Why the hell not? He's going to be useless as tits on a bull, and it'll keep him out of the way while we work."
Owens was at the door when Connolly added: "Look, Owens, I can't say I've much use for the fellow myself; but we can't spare anyone to buddy with him; what happens if he wanders off and gets lost, or hurt?"
"Who cares?" Owens mumbled without turning around.
Thomas Farrow, Owner and Master Aboard of the Fast Eddie, stared at the screens with great, sad owl eyes. He'd posted himself to the bridge immediately upon hearing of the shuttle crash.
Pausing only long enough to drop three tabs of Hangover-Be-Gone, Potter uncharitably thought.
Potter had found his temper shortening with every discovery of a new dimension of his own impotence to affect the crisis. He had just learned that the second shuttle was inoperative; there could be no rescue from that quarter. Farrow had neglected to schedule its hundred-hour check, and Potter had found a dozen problems that were sufficient to ground it for full overhaul. He sighed again. But it wasn't Farrow's fault that they had no relay satellites; Potter had made the mistake of trusting Hogan's word on that one, and his ulcer was exacting payment for that folly, now.
Shuttle One was out of contact every ninety minutes for an equal amount of time as the Fast Eddie's painfully slow orbit carried her around the far side of the Byers' Star moon. Even when directly the landing zone-Potter had forced the words "crash site" back from his mind so many times he'd lost count-the static generated by the gas giant, Cat's Eye, was enough to make an unholy mess out of communications.
"We're coming over the horizon again," Farrow said in a low voice.
Potter grunted acknowledgment. He had a feeling that Owens and Connolly were tiring of his demand for updates every hour and a half.
Too bad. He began calling for the shuttle.
"It's just great, that's all," Owens' voice was borne on a wave of interference, but the communications filters were doing their job well enough. "This place is a regular garden spot. Two hours outside in thin air with thin coats, and what's waiting inside but thin coffee. Anyway. it looks like we put down over a frost heave covered by snow; solid ground beneath one leg and lots of air three feet under the surface beneath the other. This whole area is a swamp marsh frozen solid for the winter. The landing leg collapsed and the whole weight of the shuttle came down on the port lift thrusters. They're half-buried, so I'd guess they're shot. Ike shakes his head a lot when I ask him how we can repair them, then he makes lifting gestures and shrugs."
"I've got Liu working on the other shuttle," Potter said. "Can't say for sure what we can accomplish, but we'll keep you posted."
"Yeah, right. Listen, Connolly wants to talk to you."
"Put him on."
"Emmett? It's about Miller."
Potter heard Owens bitching in the background at the mention of the BuReloc man's name. "What is it? What's he done now?"
"Well, the damn fool's gone off and started his bloody survey on his own. So far he's stayed in sight of the shuttle, but that's not the point."
Potter shook his head. Miller was utterly inconsequential, now, but he wanted to give Connolly and Owens something to take their minds off the strong likelihood that they would become the moon's first permanent human residents. "Is he any use to you there?" Potter asked. "In the repairs, I mean?"
He heard Owens shout "No!" in the background.
"No," Connolly admitted, "but it's damned dangerous. It's cold as a witch's tit out there, with snow to boot. If he falls and kills himself, we'll have to answer to the Bureau of Relocation for it."