Drifter's Run (18 page)

No answer.

Lando flipped end for end and activated the electromagnets in his boots. They hit the cylindrical hull with enough force to bend his knees.

Now that he was right on top of it Lando saw that the habitat was pretty beat-up. It looked as though a ship, or something heavy, had hit one of the cylinders about halfway up. Someone had repaired the gash with a patchwork quilt of roughly joined scrap metal.

There was other damage as well, signs that someone had stripped the hull of external fittings, and been less than gentle in the process.

Lando walked across the hull, grabbed the all-purpose tool from his belt, and rapped on the habitat's lock. He couldn't hear but the people inside the hull could.

No response.

Lando sighed. He chinned the radio on. "Okay, be stubborn I'll cut my way in."

Lando released the tool and felt the lanyard pull it in. Grabbing the cutting laser that hung at his side, Lando checked to make sure the power pak was fully charged, and flicked it on. The hull metal glowed cherry-red where the beam cut into it.

He felt like the big bad wolf huffing and puffing and blowing the house in.

"All right, all right!" the voice said. "I'll open the lock. Turn that damned thing off. There's enough holes in this pile of junk already."

Lando did as he was told and the lock cycled open. The second he stepped inside it closed behind him as if to keep any others out. Time passed until his external indicator read "Pressure normal, atmosphere breathable." The inner hatch irised open.

Satisfied that they hadn't tried to flood the lock with toxic gas, Lando broke the seals on his suit and pushed his helmet back over his shoulders. The air tasted like the usual recycled stuff. Killing the power to his boots Lando launched himself toward the hatch. Arriving outside he expected the voice would be there to greet him. Outside of a beat-up old space suit on a rack, and a net full of salvaged junk, there was no sign of another human being.

Lando pulled himself through a hatch and into a long corridor. In spite of the cracked and dirty paint, he could make out the words "Crew Quarters" stenciled on the bulkhead, along with a faded green arrow.

Using conveniently placed handholds to pull himself along, Lando saw that the floor of the tunnel was almost as good as new. Without argrav nobody had ever used it. Of course "floor" was a somewhat relative term in zero G but it seemed to fit because the path in question was free of conduit and equipped with a plastic mat.

Now a solid bulkhead blocked Lando's way. It had a hatch but that had been welded shut. The faded sign said "Crew Quarters" but a crudely drawn arrow pointed toward the left.

Lando opened a small access door and followed, realizing that he was inside a maintenance tunnel, and moving from one cylinder to the next. The passageway was dark but Lando saw light up ahead.

A few moments later he swam out and into a relatively large compartment. It had once served the lab as both cafeteria and lounge. Now it looked like a somewhat messy apartment. There was stuff all over the place, most of it secured by nets, but some floating free.

And there right in the middle of the room was an old man, and behind him in some sort of hammock affair was an elderly woman. Lando couldn't be sure what with the blankets and so forth but it looked as though her body was twisted by some sort of terrible disease. The hammock made a sort of free-floating nest in which she could rest pressure-free.

She looked like a fragile bird, with small features and a nose just a shade too large for her face. There was something in her eyes though, a brightness, which made her beautiful. In spite of Lando's uninvited status she smiled and the pilot found himself smiling back.

The man was thin, with a halo of white hair around an otherwise bald head, and deep circles under his eyes. As Lando approached, he moved to place himself in front of the woman. The man was scared but determined. The blaster shook slightly in his hand. "That's far enough! Now, what do you want?"

Lando smiled disarmingly. "Hi, my name's Pik Lando. I work aboard a salvage tug, and we…"

"I already told the first guy no," the old man said, "we aren't leaving the lab. My wife's sick and if I take her dirtside she'll die. We can't afford a zero-G hospital so I brought her here. It took all our savings just to make the habitat livable. So do your worst."

"Now, Herbert…" the woman started.

"No, Edith, I mean it," Herbert replied sternly. "We've been through this a dozen times. This is our home now. It's as good a place as any to die."

Lando sighed. He'd been royally had. Cap had been here, found himself unable to evict the elderly squatters, and sent someone else to do his dirty work. Well, it wasn't going to happen. He forced a smile.

"Sorry to impose on you folks. I'll be on my way."

Lando was just about to enter the maintenance tunnel when Herbert stopped him. "Wait a minute, young man… what are you going to do?"

Lando looked around. "Beats me, Herbert. But whatever it is won't hurt you or Edith."

The blaster wavered and dropped. "I'm sorry about the threats. We were scared."

Lando nodded soberly. "That's quite all right. You take care. I'll see you later."

"We'll be here." Herbert put his arm around Edith's shoulders and she smiled.

The image of Edith's loving face and Herbert's fierce determination was still clear in Lando's mind when he reached
Junk.

He headed straight for Cap's cabin and didn't knock when he entered. Cap looked up from his com screen. "Well? Did you kick 'em out?"

Lando was angry. "No, I didn't 'kick them out.' And neither did you!"

Cap shrugged. "I don't have to. I have you to do those things for me. You know the score. Either we move 'em or we don't get paid."

Lando was just about to speak, to tell Cap what a worthless lowlife he was, when something clicked. "What did you say?"

Cap raised an eyebrow. "I said, 'You know the score… either we move 'em or we don't get paid.' You're starting to slip, Lando. Maybe that pressor beam scrambled your brains.”

Lando ignored the insult. "Move 'em! That's the answer!"

Cap leaned back and shook his head. "'Fraid not. I thought of that one too. Use
Junk
to tow 'em into a different orbit. Nice thought but it won't work. We agreed to clean things up, not just move them from one orbit to another."

Lando shook his head. "That's not what I meant. We've got some portable thrusters right? The heavy-duty jobs you sometimes mount on big tows? We could strap a few of those on the lab!"

Cap frowned. "So what good would that do? It's like I told you. Moving the lab isn't enough."

"No," Lando said impatiently, "you don't understand. Think about it. What's the difference between a habitat and a ship?"

Cap looked thoughtful. "Well, a habitat stays in orbit and a ship has the capability to"—the older man's face lit up with sudden understanding—"travel from place to place! That's great!" Then his face fell. "Damn."

"What?"

"It won't work, Lando. Sure, the thrusters might get them to another planet, but they might not too. All kinds of things could go wrong. Chances are we'd send them to their deaths."

Lando smiled. "Wrong, Cap, you still don't get it. Like you said, a ship has the
capability
to travel, and that means that it falls outside the authority of the Commission. They can levy a parking fee but that's it."

Cap nodded slowly. "I'll have to check but I think you're right. But what about the cost? Those thrusters are worth a thousand credits apiece, and how 'bout the parking fees?"

Lando paused in the doorway and smiled. "Think about it, Cap. Which would you rather have? The money or a clear conscience?"

Cap scowled. "The money."

But he didn't mean it, and three rotations later it was he who poured champagne on the lab's durasteel deck, and named her after a flightless bird. And light sparkled off mismatched solar panels as the good ship
Penguin
circled the planet Pylax.

13

"You can't be serious!" Everyone was there, Lando, Cap, Melissa, Cy, and Dee. Cap had summoned them to the bridge for a 'crew meeting' but it sounded like an announcement. Lando was on his feet, hands clenched at his side.

Cap looked straight ahead. His features were rigid. Light from the vid screens gave his skin a greenish pallor. "Yes I can! Try to get this through your head, Lando, this is more than a place for you to hide, it's a
business.
And unless this business brings in some money, and damned soon.
Junk
goes on the auction block."

"But, Daddy," Melissa objected, climbing onto a power supply console, "Jord Willer hates you! He tried to kill Pik! You shouldn't trust him!"

"I don't trust him," her father replied grimly. "And how many times have I asked you to get off that console?"

Sorenson turned toward Lando. "The simple fact is that we need the money. This is the best tow we've had in a long time and I think it's safe. Willer works for Stellar Tug & Salvage and they're hiring us. It seems all of their other tugs are busy. There's two barges, more than the
Hercules
can handle alone, so Willer needs our help. If he hurts us, he hurts himself."

"Maybe," Lando said doubtfully, "but you're acting as though Willer's a rational being. What if he freaks out?"

Cap shrugged. "Then we'll deal with it. Meanwhile we take the tow. The course is in the NAVCOMP. Get us there." And with that Sorenson walked off the bridge.

All of them watched him go, then turned to look at each other. All except for Melissa who did her best to ignore Della Dee and looked at Lando instead. "Daddy hasn't been sick in a long time."

"Yeah," Lando agreed, "he's doing very well. Would you fetch me a cup of coffee from the galley?"

Melissa jumped down from the power supply console. "You want me to leave so you can talk grown-up stuff," she said wisely. "Why didn't you just say so?" and skipped off toward the starboard lift tube.

Lando looked at the other two. "So what do you think?"

Cy bobbed gently as the recycler came on and blew air at him from a nearby vent. "Maybe Cap's right. It's a big tow. Maybe Willer
will
put grudges aside and concentrate on the task at hand."

"And maybe the Emp will name you his ambassador to New Britain," Dee scoffed. "I saw the bastard from the wrong end of a shotgun. He's crazy, and that's all there is to it."

Lando nodded his agreement. "I think Della's right, and even if she isn't, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. Let's make a plan."

It took another day and a half to reach the pickup point. Like most utility worlds IW-67 was something less than pretty. First there was a soupy atmosphere made mostly of pollutants. Then came a scabrous surface pitted with strip mines. The older ones had become lakes of semisolid waste, open sores from which deathly brown rivers flowed, slowly oozing toward seas of undulating black goo.

Seas that were home to bottom-dwelling robo-miners, vast crawlers that inched their way across the ocean floors and ate everything of value.

In essence the world was a corpse full of mechanical maggots. Each day the maggots ate their fill, gave birth to even more maggots, and expelled tons of poisonous waste. Eventually, when the corpse had nothing left to give, it would be abandoned and the maggots would move elsewhere.

No one objected, no one cared, because outside of a thousand or so contract workers no one lived on IW-67. What little native life there was had been sampled, declared useless, and allowed to die.

Could some of it have evolved? Grown to sentience? Launched spacecraft and traveled to distant stars? No one would ever know.

Such were the ways of the huge mega-corporations that made the things people wanted to have.

It reminded Lando of Angel, the planet on which he and others had battled one such corporation, and won. But not IW-67. Its death was already certain and it was his job to help strip the corpse.

Lando saw two barges and a tug with his sensors long before he saw them with his eyes.

The barges were huge, twice as big as a battleship, and shaped more like cylindrical tanks than rectangular "barges."

Both were loaded with chlorine that had been manufactured on IW-67's surface and boosted into orbit with a nuclear catapult.

The catapult consisted of a half-mile deep hole, a pulsing reactor, and a supply of reinforced containers. Shove the containers down the hole, set off the nuclear explosion, and, presto, about twenty thousand miles later the cargo was in orbit. Crude, but effective, and perfect for a world where no one cared about radiation.

Once in orbit the chlorine was transferred from the launch modules to the huge gas barges. And since the tankers had no propulsion systems of their own, they must be towed to their final destination. That was
Junk
's
task.

Lando triggered the intercom. "Barges in sight. Prepare ship for maneuvers and tow."

"Roger," Cy replied from
Junk
's
engineering section. "All systems are in the green."

"Coming," Cap grunted from his stateroom. "I'll be on the bridge five from now."

"No problems here," Melissa said cheerfully. "Lunch will consist of gucky green nutra-paste on gray crackers with dried fruit on the side."

"Sounds tempting," Lando replied, "I can hardly wait."

Melissa giggled while he scanned the screens. The cylinders were larger now, each showing up as a three-dimensional cigar and emitting its own unique radio signal.

And then there was Jord Willer's ship
Hercules,
an arrow-shaped chunk of red, surrounded by a yellow-orange heat blob, and emanating a rainbow of color-coded signals. Just looking at it scared the daylights out of him.

Lando touched a button. "Della?"

"Yeah?"

"We're coming up on
Hercules.
Time to step outside."

"I read you," Dee answered. "E-lock four cycling now."

Emergency-lock four had been chosen with great care. For one thing it was located on the side of the hull away from
Hercules
and prying eyes. In spite of that however Della's mission could still be extremely dangerous. Lando was worried.