The cannibal. Damn, his suspicions had been right. Suddenly the knot in his stomach was back in force. He didn’t care how reformed the man was. “I’m not—” Dolph began.
McCarthy grinned now. “Young man, the look on your face! That’s got to be the oldest yarn in the Belt, and I’m the one that would know. I invented it so people wouldn’t take him for a wimp!”
His breath left him at a rate just short of explosive decompression. He’d just bought the ghost station-got taken big. Tension started to drain out of him. Yes, the whole thing was a damn conspiracy, but a benign one. And it looked like, for once in his life, he was being given the opportunity to become one of the conspirators. At least believing that might get him through the next year. He nodded and smiled, but suppressed the beginnings of a laugh. That, perhaps, could come later. When the work was done.
“I think boarding Tina with Eileen would be an excellent idea,” Sasha broke in. “Once she gets used to Eileen a little more, it will be safer for her and us. But why?”
“Sasha,” McCarthy answered, “I missed my chance at being a grandmother over half a century ago, when my son and his wife lost their lives in an eminently survivable equipment failure. Their own fault, and mine. They built poorly, but I didn’t instill the proper standards—” the old woman’s face fell “—in them.”
“I’m sorry—” Sasha began.
Eileen McCarthy held up her hand. “Too long ago for tears. But I’ve always wondered what being a grandmother would be like. This could be a, well, useful opportunity to find out. There are hints from the Interstellar Project’s biology group that any of us that can hang on for a just few more years could get a second chance.”
This was the same Inspector McCarthy, physically. But now, somehow, Dolph could take the pounds and the years off with his mind’s eye and see that someone had once loved her, and might again. But, despite his feeling that he could trust people again—at least some people—something in Dolph still couldn’t believe his luck had changed. Something had to be wrong. The habitat was in too big of a mess.
“I’m grateful for your help, Inspector, but I need to be prepared for the worst. How can the bank, or the IPA, accept an approval, even yours, when the habitat is in worse shape than when you got here?”
“It’s not. You’ve done a lot and the vacuum damage is only superficial. Inspectors have discretion, ypu know, and as far as the provisional approval is concerned, I am the IPA. Our objective is to have people be self-sufficient out here, to be as independent as possible of our rather sparse emergency services.”
OK, Dolph thought. Back to work. “What’s the final class one fix-it item, Inspector—the remove and dispose?” There were some old oxygen tanks that might eventually burst, but they were at the south pole, a class two item.
She smiled gently at him, looking like anyone’s grandmother. “You’ve shown some insights, learned how to do a number of things right, and had a lesson that is often obtained at much higher expense. I suspect that someday you’ll be able to pass that on to someone else. It would be a shame to waste all this experience by sending you home, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure, but—”
“That last item on the list, the thing that needed to be tom out of here and pushed away on a fast trajectory to the Oort cloud, was that chip on your shoulder. But I think I see that heading out past Jupiter, now.” She nodded judiciously. “So I’ll pull it from the list. You’re starting fresh here, son. Make the most of it. That habitat,” she concluded, “was not the only object of this inspection.”