Chapter  3

MR. Graff, urgent word with you. Down the hall. Sir. Please.” 0645 and the breakfast line in the green room was backed up to the door. Hardly time for coffee in the fifteen minutes before he was due in Tanzer’s office and Jurgen Albrecht Graff punched white coffee instead of Mack for his stomach’s sake. “Can it wait?” he asked without looking at Mitch, and caught the cup that tilted sideways and straightened it in time. Held it while it filled. “No, sir. A number of us want to talk, sir.  Urgent business.”

Spit and polish. From Mitch. There was no one else in the rec nook of the mess hall and no reasonable chance of being overheard in the clatter of trays. “Tanzer wants to talk, too. I have an appointment in fifteen.”

“Hell.” Mitch was Shepherd, aggressively Shepherd, shaved up the sides, couple of earrings. Bracelet. “I swore you’d be there. Sir.”

Graff lifted out the cup, said, “All right, five,” and stole ‘        -07- a sip as he walked with Mitch out the main door and down the hall to the conference rooms. Door to 6a was open. Mitch’s tech crew was there, Pauli and Jacoby, Jamil and his long scanner, Trace. Graff recognized a delegation when he saw it. Tanzer had said, Don’t discuss the hearings. Patently that was not the intention here.

Mitch shut the door. “Sir. We’re asking you to get one of us in front of the committee.”

“Won’t happen,” Graff said. “No chance. You want to get a haircut, Mitch?”

“Hell if.”

“That’s an Earth committee. Blue-sky as they come. They won’t communicate.”

“Yeah,” Jacoby said. “Is that why Tanzer killed Pete and Elly? Couldn’t let a Belter pull it off?”

“Ease off, Jacoby.”

“They won’t let us in hospital. You seen Dekker? You seen him, lieutenant?”

Pauli muttered: “Wouldn’t be surprised if Tanzer ordered him put in that machine. Didn’t want him at the hearings.”

“Shut that down,” Graff said. “Right now.”

Mitch folded his arms, set a foot on a chair, and said, “Somebody better hear it. They didn’t want any Belter son of a bitch in front of the cameras. Dekker couldn’t fly it? Then why didn’t they sub the crew, ask them that!”

“Mitch, I hope somebody does have the brains to ask it. But there’s nothing I can do. They’re not going to ask me that.”

“Hell if, sir! Tanzer’s pets are killing us. You want me to shave up like a—“ Mitch looked at him—him and his regulation trim, and shut the epithet off unsaid. “You get me in front of that hearing and I’ll look like a UDC accountant.”

“Mitch, I’m in a position.”

“You’re in a position. You’re running safe behind shields— sir. We’re the ones with our ass on the line.”

Pauli said: “And they can’t automate these sumbitches any further. Why don’t they ask somebody who knows?”

‘•The designers will. Staatentek’s here. They’ll ask. That much I’ll get a chance to tell them.”

“Ask ‘em about the sim!”

Female voice: Trace. “They’re not interested. This is going to be a whitewash start to finish.”

“The designers have to talk to us, Trace. We’ll get our word in.”

Mitch said: “The engineers have to talk to us. The execs and the politicrats won’t and they have the say.”

“Mitch, I can’t listen to this.”

“Tanzer is a hidebound blue-skyer son of a bitch who thinks because he grew up with a rulebook up his ass is a reason to try to tell any spacer his business or to think that the salute-the-logo dumbasses they’ve pulled in off the Guard and the system test programs could do the job with these ships—“

“They can fly, Mitch.”

“Yeah, they can fly. Like Wilhelmsen.”

“Nothing wrong with Wilhelmsen. Listen to me— Shut it down, and listen: if we have a technical at work, we want to find it, we don’t want to whitewash that either. We have something more at issue here than Wilhelmsen.”

“Yeah,” Pauli muttered. “Tanzer.”

Mitch said, “Nothing wrong with that ship. Everything wrong with the pilot. And they aren’t going to find the solution to what happened to Wilhelmsen in Tanzer’s fuckin’ rulebook. Sir.”

“Let’s just find out, shall we?”

“Just make the point with them, lieutenant: Wilhelmsen wasn’t set with the crew. Wilhelmsen should have said not ready, he was the pilot, he had the final say-so, demo be damned. It was his responsibility to do mat.”

“Yes,  it was his responsibility, but it wasn’t in his judgment to do it, or he would have done it—the guy’s dead. He got it the same as the rest, Mitch. Let’s give the experts a chance to figure out what.”

“What chance have they got, if they’re not getting the information? Their experts are blue-sky as Tanzer is!”

Jacoby said: “It’s the At-ti-tude in the UDC brass. They murdered Wilhelmsen and Wilhelmsen murdered that crew, that’s what they need to hear!”

“All right! All right! But there’s nothing I can do to get you in there right now, and if you act the fools and screw this, they’ll pull those design changes and you’ll be flying targets. Now leave it! Get off my tail! Give me a chance! That’s the order. I’ve got a meeting.”

There was quiet. It wasn’t a happy quiet. Graff handed the coffee to Mitch. “You drink it.” He started for the door in a dead silence and looked back. “It’s my life too, guys. You shit me, a carrier’s gone. Program’s gone. You understand that?”

They weren’t used to hearing Helm Two talk, like that. Not at all. There were sober faces.

Mitch said, “No offense, lieutenant.”

Graff passed a hand over his close-cropped hair. Said, “Hey, I have to deal with ‘em, guys,” and ducked out, with an uncomfortable feeling of being square in the middle— merchanter and neither Shepherd nor regular UDC. Not part of the rab the EC had exiled to the Belt, not part of the EC, either, in the sense the rab had resisted it—didn’t even understand the politics in the ‘15, but he was getting to.

Fast.

They’d hauled the Shepherd pilots into the Program for their expertise. They weren’t eighteen-year-olds, and they damned sure weren’t anybody’s boys. You didn’t use that word with them. Didn’t lead them, no way in hell. You fed them the situation and showed them where it was different from what they knew. You showed them the feel of it, and let it sink into their bones and they showed the interactive systems new ways to conceptualize. They designed a whole new set of controls around the Shepherds, and software to display what they saw in their insystem-trained heads.

Explain that to Col. Glenn Evan Tanzer, of UDC R&D. God, he wished the captain were back here, that one of the captains would turn up; Kreshov hadn’t shown insystem for weeks; and exactly how it happened that one of the captains wasn’t here at B Dock, at the same time a stray investigative subcommittee had outflanked Keu at Sol and gotten here unchecked—he didn’t know. He couldn’t even swear FteetCom was secure from the UDC code experts. Shepherds thought so, but he wouldn’t commit any more to it man he had.

Not now. Not lately, in Sol System, where the enemy was mindsets that wouldn’t understand the realities in the Beyond. The Belt was closer to The Beyond than it was to Earth.

And closer to it than Tanzer by a far shot. Always Tanzer—who’d been sitting here in R&D so long they dusted him.

0657. By the clock on the wall. He walked down the ^corridor, he walked into Tanzer’s office, and Tanzer’s aide said, “Go right in.”

He did mat. He saluted, by the book. Tanzer saluted, they stared at each other, and Tanzer said, “Lt. Benjamin J. Pollard. Does that name evoke memory?”

Shot across the bow. Graff kept all expression off his face. “Yes, sir. Friend of Dekker’s. Listed next-of-kin on his card.”

“Is that your justification for releasing those records to Sol?”

“Captain Keu’s orders, sir. He sees all the accident reports.”

“Is this your justification for issuing a travel voucher?”

“I didn’t issue the travel voucher. Mr. Pollard’s presence here isn’t at my request.”

“Lt. Graff, you’re a hair-splitting liar, you’re a trouble-t. maker and I resent your attitude.”

 “On the record,  sir,  I hardly think I can be held ‘•r. accountable—“

“That’s what you think. You’re sabotaging us, you’re playing politics with my boys’ lives, and you have no authorization to bring in any outsider or to be passing unauthorized messages outside this facility to other commands.”

“That is my chain of command, sir. Dekker is my personnel, and Keu is my commanding officer. Sir. I notify him on all the casualties. What Captain Keu does is not in my control. And if the question arises, I will testify that in my opinion Dekker was not in that simulator by choice. Sir.”

Tanzer’s fist came down on the desk. “I’m in command of this facility, Lt. Graff. The fact that your commander saw fit to leave a junior lieutenant in command of the rider trainees and the carrier does not give you authority over any aspect of this operation, and it does not give you authority to issue passes or to take communications to anyone outside of BaseCom, do you understand me?”

“Where it regards your command, yes, colonel. But I’m responsible to Captain Keu for the communications he directly ordered me to make and which I will continue to make, on FleetCom. Lt, Pollard is here on humanitarian leave in connection with Fleet personnel. He’s Prioritied elsewhere. He’s here temporarily and he has adequate Security clearance to be here.”

“He’s also UDC personnel.”

“He’s under interservice assignment. On leave. And not available to R&D.”

“A friend of Dekker’s. Let me tell you, I’ve had a bellyful of your recruits, and I’m sick and tired of the miner riffraff and psychological misfits washing up on the shores of this program. Your own captain’s interference with design has given this program a piece of junk that can’t be flown—“

“Not true.”

“—a piece of junk that works in the sims and not in the field, lieutenant, because it doesn’t take into account human

realities. That firepower can’t be turned over to adrenaline-high games-playing freaks, Mr. Graff, and that machine can’t rely on the 50%’ers on the sims—how many ships are you going to lose on that 50%? Four billion dollars per ship and the time to train the crew and you’re going to gamble that on 50% of the time the pilot’s nerves hold out for the time required? We’re pushing human beings over their design limits, and they’re dying, Mr. Graff, they’re ending up in hospital wards.”

“Wilhelmsen didn’t the of fatigue, colonel, he died of communications failure, he died of not working with his own crew. He schitzed—for one nanosecond he schitzed and forgot where in hell he was in his sequence. There’s an interdict on mat move—it’s supposed to be in the pilot’s head, and it failed, colonel, he failed, that’s the bottom line. Dekker—“

“Dekker ran that same flight on sim and he’s lying delirious in hospital. Don’t let me hear you use that word schitz again, lieutenant, except you apply it to your boy. There’s the problem in that crew. There’s the troublemaker that had to prove his point, had to shoot his mouth off—“

“Dekker didn’t run that sim. And the word is concussion, colonel. From the impact of an unsecured body in that pod. He didn’t forget to belt in.”

“He was suited up.”

“The flightsuits keep your feet from swelling, colonel: Dekker’s been exposed to prolonged zero g. The other crews say—“

“He was up there on drugs, lieutenant! Read the medical report! He was high on trank, he was in possession of a tape be had no business with, and he and his attitude got in that pod together, let’s admit what happened up there and quit trying to put Dekker’s smartass maneuver off on any outside agency. There wasn’t one.”

“I intend to find out what did happen.” ^      “Do you? Do you? Let me lay this word in your lap: U either you come up with proof that’ll stand up in court martial, or this investigation is closed. Dekker climbed into that pod on drugs, because he has an Attitude the same as all the other misfits this facility’s been loaded with, he believes he’s cornered the market on right, he’s a smartass who thinks his reflexes make up for his lack of discipline, and if you drop that chaff in the hearing you won’t like the result. If you want this program to fly, and I assume you do, then you’d better reflect very soberly what effect your appearance and your testimony this afternoon is going to have on your captain’s credibility—on the credibility of your service and the judgment of its personnel. Don’t speculate. Keep to the facts.”

“The facts are, Dekker saw what was happening, he called the right moves. It’s on the mission control tape.. ..”

“You’re so damned cocksure what your boys can do, mister, but it’s easy to call the right moves when you’re not the one in the pilot’s seat. You won’t sit those controls. You won’t fly those ships. Will you?”

Fair question, except they’d been over that track before. “That’s exactly the point. I’m not synched to a rider crew. Cross-training would risk both ships.”

“The truth is, lieutenant, your Fleet doesn’t want its precious essential personnel flying a suicide ship, your Fleet won’t let go of its hare-brained concept before it stinks. Your Conrad Mazian isn’t a ship designer, he isn’t an engineer, he’s a merchant captain in a ragtag militia trying to prove it’s qualified for strategic decisions. This ship needs interdicts on a pilot that’s stressing out.”

“That ship needs its combat edge, colonel. If Wilhelmsen had had an AI breathing down his neck he’d have had one more thing on his mind: Is the damned thing going to take my advice or not? At what mission-critical split second that I happen to be right is it going to cut me out of the loop? You can’t cripple a ship with a damned know-it-all robot snatching control away because the pilot pushed the lb’s for a reason that, yes, might be knowingly suicidal, for a reason that wasn’t in the mission profile. Besides which, longscan’s after you, and what are you going to do, give a Union longscanner a hundred percent certainty an AI’s going to interdict certain moves? If he knows your cutoffs, he knows your blind spots. If he knows you can’t push it and he can, what’s he going to do, colonel?”

“When the physiological signs are there, you’re going to lose that ship, that’s a hundred percent certainty, and nobody else is going to be exceeding that limit.”

“Wilhelmsen was leaning hard on the Assists. He could have declined that one target, that’s inside the parameters, that’s a judgment a rider’s going to have to make. But he’d have looked bad for the senators. He wanted that target. That’s an Attitude. There’s a use for that in combat. Not for a damned exhibition.”

“Wilhelmsen was saving the program, lieutenant, saving your damned budget appropriation, in equipment that’s got six men in the hospital and seventeen dead. You don’t push machines or human beings past the destruct limit, and you don’t put equipment out there that self-destructs on a muscle-twitch. The pilot was showing symptoms. The AI should have kicked him out of the loop right then, but it can’t do that, you say he can’t have it breathing down his neck—a four-billion-dollar missile with a deadman’s switch, that’s what you’ve got—it needs an integrative AI in there—“

“Watch the pilots cut it off. Which you can’t do with that damned tetralogic system you’re talking about, it’s got to be in the loop talking to the interactives constantly, and no matter the input it got after, its logic systems are exactly the same as the next one’s, same as the ships are. The only wildcard you’ve got is the humans, the only thing that keeps the enemy longscanners guessing. The best machine you’ve got can’t outguess the human longscanner—why should you assume they’re going to outperform the pilot?”

“Because the longscanner can’t kill the crew.”

“The hell he can’t!”

“Not in that sense.”

“Your tests don’t simulate combat. That’s what we’ve been telling you—you keep concentrating on the fire rate, always the damned fire rate and you’re not dealing with the reason we recruited these particular crews. Nobody at Lendler Corp has been in combat, none of your pilots have been, the UDC hasn’t been, since it was founded—your tests are set up wrong!”

Not saying Tanzer himself hadn’t been in combat. Red in the face, Tanzer got a breath. “Let’s talk about exceeding human limits, lieutenant: what happened out there was exactly why we’ve got men in hospital over there who can’t walk a level floor without staggering, it’s why we’ve had cardiac symptoms in men under thirty, and those aren’t from four-hour runs.” A jab of the finger in his direction. “Let me tell you, lieutenant, I’ve met the kind of attitude your command is fostering among the trainees. Show-outs and ego-freaks. And I wish them out of my command. You may have toddled down a deck in your diapers, and so may Mazian’s ragtag enlistees out of the Belt, but how are you going to teach them anything when they already know it all and you acquired your know-how by superior genes? You can’t lose 50% of your ships and crews at every pass. 96% retrievability, wasn’t that the original design criterion? Or isn’t that retrievability word going to be in the manual when we put this ship on the line?”

“If a Union armscomper gets your numbers you have zero retrievability, colonel, that’s my point. You have to exceed your own numbers, you have to surprise your own interfaces in order to surprise that other ship’s computers and mat means being at the top of the architecture of your Adaptive Assists. The enemy knows your name out there. Union says, That’s Victoria, that’s Btzroy or Graff at Helm, because Victoria wouldn’t go in with Helm Three. They know you and they know your style, and it’s in their double A’s, but you innovate and they innovate. One AI sitting on top of the human and his interfaces is like any other damn AI sitting on top of the interfaces—there aren’t mat many models, the enemy knows them all, and the second its logic signature develops in the enemy’s intelligence about you, hell, they’ll have a fire-track lying in wait for you.”

“Then you’d better damn well improve your security, hadn’t you?”

“Colonel, there are four manufacturers in friendly space for this tetralogic equipment and we can’t swear there’s not an Eye sitting right outside the system right now. Any merchanter who ever came into system could have dropped one, before the embargo, and it’s next to impossible to find it. Merchanters are your friends and your enemies: that’s the war the Company made, and that’s what’s going on out there—they don’t all declare their loyalties and a lot of them haven’t got any, not them and not us. They’ll find out the names. They’ll find out the manufacturers and the software designers. They’ll learn us. That’s a top priority—who’s at Helm and who’s in command, and if it’s even one in four brands of tetralogic—“

“All the more reason for interchangeable personnel.”

“It’s doesn’t work that way! You don’t go into an engagement with anybody who just happens to be on watch. You try to get your best online. No question. You don’t trade personnel and you don’t trade equipment. You haven’t time at .5 light coming down off jump to think about what ship you’re in or what crew you’re with. I’m telling you, colonel, my captain has no wish to raise the substitution as an issue against your decisions, but on his orders, as judiciously as I can, I am going to make the point that it was a critical factor. We cannot integrate a computerized ship into our operations. In that condition it is no better than a missile.”

“You haven’t the credentials to say what it is and isn’t, lieutenant. You’re not a psychiatrist and you’re not a computer specialist.”

“I am a combat pilot. One of two at this base.”

A cold, dark silence. “I’ll tell you—if you want to raise issues this afternoon, I’m perfectly willing to make clear to the committee that you’re a composite, lieutenant, a shell steered by non-command personnel and an absentee captain, and you clearly don’t have the administrative experience to handle your own security, much less speak with expert knowledge on systems you’ve never seen. I’ve held this office for thirty years, I’ve seen all sorts of games, and your commanding officer’s leaving that carrier to subordinates and your own abuse of your commanding officer’s communications privileges is an official report in my chain of command. This is not the frontier, this is not a bare-based militia operation, and if your service ever hopes to turn these trainees into competent military personnel you can start by setting a personal example. Clean up your own command and stop fomenting dissension in this facility!”

“I do not accept that assessment.”

“Then you can leave this office. And if you are called on to testify, you’ll be there as one of the pilots personally involved in the accident, not as a systems expert. You’d be very unwise to push past mat position—or you’ll find questions raised that could be damned embarrassing to your absentee superior and your entire service. I’m talking about adverse publicity, if you give grounds to any of these senators or to the high command. Do you understand that? Because 1 won’t pull any punches. And the one security no one can guarantee is a senator’s personal staff.”

“Are you attempting to dictate my testimony, colonel? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“In no wise. Give my regards to your captain. Good day, lieutenant.”

Something had come loose. Banging. The tumble did that. Dekker reached after the cabinet, tried to get to the com.

Hand caught his arm. Something shoved him back and he hit pillows.

Bang from elsewhere.

“Hey, Dek. You want eggs or pancakes?”

He couldn’t figure how Ben had gotten onto the ship. Ben had rescued him. But he didn’t remember that.

“Eggs or pancakes?”

“Eggs aren’t real,” he said. “Awful stuff.”

“They’re real, Dek-boy. Not to my taste, living things, but they’re real enough to upset my stomach. Eggs, you want? Orange juice?”

He tried to move. Usually he couldn’t. But his arms were free. He stuffed pillows under his head and Ben did something that propped the head up. Ben went out in-the hall and came back and set a tray down on the table, swung it over him.

“Eat it. That’s an order, Dek-boy.”

He picked up a fork. It seemed foreign, difficult to balance in .9 g. His head kept going around. His arm weighed more than he remembered and it was hard to keep his head up. But he stabbed a bit of scrambled egg and got a bite down. Another. He reached for the orange juice but Ben did it for him, took a sip himself beforehand and said, “We got better at Sol One.”

Maybe it was. Maybe he was supposed to know that. Ben held the cup to his lips and he sipped a little of it. It stung cuts in his mouth and it hit his stomach with a sugar impact.

“Keep it up, Dek-boy, and they’ll take that tube out.”

He didn’t know there was a tube. Didn’t know how Ben had gotten here. Or where they were now. Didn’t look like the Hole at all. Didn’t look like R2 hospital. He reached after the fork, took another tentative nibble at the eggs. God, he was weak.

“Where’s Bird?” he asked.

“What year is it, Dek-boy? I warned you there’d be a test this morning.”

He shut his eyes. Opened them and Ben was still there. In this room. He recalled something like that. Ben was going to beat hell out of him if he missed.

“2324.”

“Good boy. Have some more oj.”

“Can’t.” His stomach suddenly felt queasy, when he thought about that number. Number had to be wrong. He waved the cup away and watched Ben drink it.

Ben, in a UDC uniform.

He was going crazy. It was 2324. Ben didn’t belong here.

Ben said, “You remember Meg and Sal?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Meg writes to you, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“Real love affair,”

“We’re friends.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “You looked it when you said goodbye. Remember saying goodbye?” He took an envelope out of his pocket. Held up a handful of cards and pictures. “Remember these?”

He’d seen them before. They’d lied to him, the doctors had. They made all these things up. They told him they were his, he’d thrown them across the room.

Now Ben had them. Ben held up a picture of him with people he didn’t remember and he couldn’t look at.

“What are their names?”

He shook his head.

“Woman’s Elly?”

The name jolted. Elly was dead. Pete and Falcone.

“Pete?”

Guy on the right. Big grin. Pete smiled like that. Pete had his arm over the shoulder. But he couldn’t remember the photo.

“Which one’s Pete?”

“I don’t know.” But it was a lie. Ben just didn’t belong with them. Everything was scrambled. Gory and Ben and Bird. He was afraid Meg was going to be in that picture if he went on looking at it.

Blood. Exploding everywhere. Beads floating, fine mist.

He squeezed his eyes shut. The eggs didn’t sit well at his stomach. Everyone in that picture was dead. He was in mere too.

“Who’s the other guy?”

“Falcone.”

“Said not to worry about him. Didn’t he? Left you a note? You remember?”

He shook his head. He shoved the table away, tried to get up. Ben pushed him back against the pillows and a stabbing pain went through his skull.

He grayed out for a moment. When he came back Ben was quietly finishing his toast. Ben said, “You ready to talk now?”

The cup hit the grid. Sideways. Two out of five. Graff lifted the cover up and righted it before the coffee hit, collected his overdue morning caffeine and turned in the general noise of the end of breakfast, straight into Villy’s intercept.

UDC Flight Chief. Captain Alexandra Villanueva—senior test pilot for the UDC, who said, all friendly, “Hear you and the old man went one this morning.”

Fast. Must have ricocheted off Tanzer’s wall, Graff thought, and shrugged in mid-sip while Villanueva stuck his card in the slot and punched up a coffee. He said, “We differed.”

Villanueva rescued his cup. “Damn thing.”

“Ever since they changed the cups.”

Villanueva took the coffee out and let the cover drop, said, quietly, “You know, back when we were doing the A-89, we had one of these runs of trouble. Lost twelve guys in six months. The old man just sat in that office and filled out the reports: you never saw him crack—but it broke him up. Same now. He wants to pull this program out. But we’ve got to come out of this with an answer. A right answer.”

“Redesign isn’t it.” He got on well enough with Villanueva. Villanueva had started out calling him son—never did think he’d quite gotten the man out of the mindset. Gray hair on Captain Villy, legitimately come by, rumor had it: handful of crack-ups and a few pieces of luck—if dealing with Tanzer daily didn’t do it. They kept trying to promote him to a desk, God only wish he’d get Tanzer’s post and run the whole program, not just test ops—but Villy kept on making test runs himself, one of the UDC pilots who had real respect among the Shepherds.

“Graff,” Villanueva said, “dammit, we’re vulnerable on this project, we’re real vulnerable. Politicians are gathering like sharks. I know the old man’s hard to deal with. But let’s not hang the differences out in plain sight today.”

He thought about Mitch. About the frustration among the Shepherds, who wanted to fight Tanzer. And that did no good. “They won’t likely ask me anything but where I was, where the targets were. That’s all in the electronic record. Cut and dried, isn’t that the expression for it?”

Villanueva stood there a moment. Just looking at him. He expected Villanueva to say something in answer, but instead Villanueva walked off with his coffee and didn’t look back.

Maybe he should have given more back. Used a different expression. Read the signals otherwise. He didn’t dislike the man, God knew he didn’t dislike him. The man had been trying to say something, but somehow in the inevitable screw-ups between blue-skyer and spacer—he had the feeling the signals had gotten fuzzed.

Villanueva went over to a table with his own men. Sat down. Graff walked over to the other side, where a couple of the Fleet’s own gray heads inclined together. Demas and Saito. Nav One and Com One—no credence at all to the Equivalencies that the Fleet had had settled on them. Commdr. Demas, as happened. But Nav One meant it was Demas did the major share of the course plots, with the backing of eighteen techs interfacing with scan and longscan at any given instant, which meant that a prototype carrier on a test run knew so precisely where it was and where everything else was that a Lt. j-g at Helm couldn’t screw up if he worked at it.

Except with a wrong word to the UDC R&D chief.

“Think I just picked a wrong word with Villy. Does ‘cut and dried’ describe what they’re going to ask at the hearings?”

Com One said, her almond eyes half-lidded, “Probably. ‘Rigged’ might too. On, is the man?”

Demas said, “A lot On. Deep in. Drink your coffee, Helm. Present for you.” Demas laid a bolt on the table. Fat one.

Damn. “What is that?”

“That, J-G, is a bolt. It was lying next the wall in a dark little recess in the carrier’s main corridor. Where the construction crew just installed the number eighteen pressure seal.”

Thing was good as a bullet lying there. “I want to see the count sheet. I want the last crew that worked in there. Damn those fools!”

“Station labor. Gravitied brains. What do you ask?”

Ben said, “You remember Graff?”

“Yeah,” Dekker said.

“What do you remember?”

“The trip out from the Belt. Here.”

“Good boy. Where are we?”

“Sol Two,” he said. Ben told him so. He had to believe what Ben told him: Ben was the check he had asked for. Ben was what he got and he had to believe everything Ben told him—he told himself that, this morning. Ben showed him pictures and showed him letters in the reader, that he remembered reading. The ones from Meg, the note from Falcone, the morning—

The morning they pulled him off the demo and put somebody else in.

Nothing you can do, Falcone had written. Left the note on the system. Came back like a ghost—after the accident. After—

“You remember where the sims are?”

“Which ones?”

“You tell me.”

He felt tired, wrung out. He lay back in the pillows and said, “Couple downside. They’re all the procedurals.” Tried to think of exact words and remembered Ben was a licensed pilot too. “Ops stuff—stuff you need your reflexes for—it’s in the core.”

“Null-g stuff.”

“Null-g and high-g.” His eyes wanted to drift shut. His mind went around that place as if it were a pit. He could see the chamber in the null-g core, the sims like so many eggs on mag-lev tracks, blurring in motion. Lot of g’s when they were working. . ..

“When’s the last time you remember using the sims in the core?”

Difficult question for a moment. Then not so hard. “Watch before the test. Wilhelmsen and I—“

“Wilhelmsen.”

“He was my backup.”

“friend of yours?”

Difficult to say. “Chad...”

“Wilhelmsen?”

He nodded, eyes shut. “Son of a bitch, but he was all right. Didn’t dislike him. We got along.”

“So they subbed him in. You watch the test?”

He didn’t know. Completely numb now. But the monitor on the shelf was showing higher points to the green line.

“You went into shock. They put you in hospital.”

Wasn’t the way he remembered. Wasn’t sure what he did remember, but not that shock was the reason. No. He hadn’t seen it.

“They give you drugs in the hospital?”

He nodded. He was relatively sure of that.

“Give you a prescription when you left?”

“Dunno.”

“They say they did.”

“Then I guess they did.”

“You guess. Were you still high when you left the hospital? Did you have drugs with you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What time of day was it?”

“Don’t remember, Ben, I don’t remember.” But something was there, God, a flare on the vid, a light the cameras couldn’t handle. Plasma. Bright as the sun. Pete and Elly, and Falcone and the ship.

“You all right?” The monitor was beeping. “—No! Let him alone. It’s all right! Leave him the hell alone.”

Orderly was trying to intervene. He opened his eyes and looked toward the door, trying to calm his pulse rate, and Ben leaned over and put his hand on his shoulder. Squeezed hard.

“You get in that sim by yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody put you there?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Ben. I just can’t remember.”

“Come on, Dek, think about it. You got into the core. You remember that? You had to get that far. What happened then?”

He shook his head. He kept seeing dark. Hashing lights. Green lines and gold. Heard Cory saying, Nothing you can do, Dek, nothing you can do...

They were back in The Hole. In his room behind the bar. Had a drawerful of pills....

He put a hand over his eyes, men stared at the ceiling and looked over at Ben again to be sure where he was and when he was. But the black kept trying to come back and the lines twisted and moved.

‘Driver ship, a k long. Loads of rock going to the Well at tremendous v.

Cory was dead. Dead a long time. So was Bird. He thought that Bird was dead. Fewer and fewer things were coming loose and drifting.

He pressed his hands over his eyes until it made sparks of color in the dark of virtual space. Red. Phosphenes. Was that what they said the lights were?

Spinning, of a sudden. He grabbed the bed. Ben said, “God, watch it!”

Something was beeping. Ben said, to someone at the door, “He had a dream, that’s all.”

“Want you there this afternoon,” Graff said to his Nav One; and to Saito. Saito said,

“This won’t be like our procedures. An answer-what’s-asked. This is Earth. Don’t mistake it.”

Graff took a sip of cooling coffee. “I couldn’t. The old man hasn’t sent us a hint, except Pollard, and Pollard doesn’t know anything. I don’t know if that’s a signal to raise that issue or not—but I can’t understand the silence. Unless the captain’s leaving me to take the grenade. Which I’d do. Little they could do anyway but transfer me back. But he should tell me.”

“No grenades,” Demas said. “—No chance of Dekker talking?”

“Pollard’s honestly trying. All I know.”

“You sure he’s the captain’s? He could be Tanzer’s.”

Graff remembered something he’d forgotten to say, gave a short laugh. “Pollard’s a native Belter.”

“You’re serious. Tanzer knows it?”

“Knows he’s a friend of Dekker’s. That has him the devil in Tanzer’s book. What’s more, this Belter claims he’s a Priority 10 tracked for Geneva.”

Demas’ brows went up.

Graff said, “Bright. Very bright. Computers. Top security computers.”

“Tanzer can’t snag a Priority like that.”

Saito said, “Not without an authorization. I doubt Tanzer can even access that security level to realize what he is.”

“The captain set up Pollard with a room in the hospital. I told him to stay to it and Dekker’s room and keep his head down. With a security clearance like that, he understands what quiet means, I think. He’s got an appointment waiting for him—if he can get out of here before he becomes a priority to Tanzer.”

“You signal him?”

“Every word I could prudently use. There were some I didn’t. Maybe I should have. But he’s UDC. You don’t know where it’ll go, ultimately.”

“No remote chance on Dekker?”

“No chance on this one. Too much to ask. They’ve requested the log. They’re going to ask questions on the carrier—they’ll want to ask questions about the trainees. But they won’t talk to them. They’re not scheduled. Trainees don’t talk to the EC. Trainees they’re designing those ships around don’t talk to the committee because the committee is only interested in finding a way that doesn’t admit we’re right. Another schitzy AI. Another budget fight.”

“The Earth Company makes a lot of money on shipbuilding,” Demas said. “Does that thought ever trouble your sleep?”

“It’s beginning to.”

The captain wanted to bust Demas up to a captaincy. Demas insisted he was staying with Keu. The argument was still going on. The fact was Demas hated administration and claimed he was a tactician, not a strategist, but Demas saw things. Good instincts, the man had.

Saito said, quietly: “Committee will be predominantly male, predominantly over fifty, and they won’t understand why the captain didn’t leave Fitz in charge and take me and Demas with him. That’s what you’re dealing with.’’

Fitzroy, Helm One, was answering questions for the committee at Sol One. Graff said, glumly: “Tanzer’s threatening to make an issue out of their command rules.’’

Demas shook his head. “Let him make it. That’ll get me to the stand surer than the nav stats would. And I don’t think he wants that.”

One could wish. But one couldn’t get technical with the legislative types. With the engineers, yes. “They’d talk to Demas. But the engineers couldn’t talk policy to the legislators. Couldn’t get through their own management.”

“I keep having this feeling they’re going to blindside us.”

“You’ll handle it. No question. Easy done.”

Keu’s silence was overall the most troublesome thing. Graff finished off his coffee, took the bolt and pocketed it. “Paperweight. Every paperpusher should have one. —Tell the construction boss I want to talk to him, in my office, right now.”

“Ought to give him the thing at max v,” Demas said.

“When we find the foreman who faked the parts count— I’d be willing.” Graff headed for the door, tossed his cup in the collection bin.

Ben was back. Ben had been in the hall a while. Ben sat down with his chair close to the bed, put his hand on his shoulder.

“How’re you doing, Dek?”

“All right.”

“You were remembering, you know that? Pete and Elly? You remember that?”

Ben scared him. “I was dreaming. Sorry, Ben.” If he was dreaming he could be in the Belt. Or the ship. But Ben shook at his shoulder and said,

“Dek, how did you get in the sim? What were you doing in there? I got to get out of here. I got twelve hours, Dek.”

Sim chamber. Pods spinning around and around. Racket. Echoes. Everything tried to echo. And Ben said he had twelve hours. He didn’t want Ben to leave. Ben came and Ben went, but as long as he knew there was a chance of Ben being there he knew what he was waking up to.

He said, “It’s June 20^th, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Ben?”

Ben took a fistful of hospital gown, under his chin, and said, “Dekker, remember what fucking happened. I got to be on that shuttle. It’s my life at stake, you copy?”

He tried. Ben let him go, smoothed the covers, patted his

shoulder. Didn’t ask him anything for a moment. Ben was upset and he earnestly tried to pull the sim chamber out of the dark for Ben. But it wasn’t there.

Just that fireball. Second sun. They said it wasn’t Wilhelmsen’s fault. Maybe it wasn’t. You died when you overran your limits.

“Target,” he said. Ben said, “What?”

He said, “Target. Missed one....”