Drifter's Run

by William C. Dietz

  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, a
nd 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.

  "Della?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You be careful out there."

  "I will… you too."

  The words left a lot unsaid. Thanks to a hardy constitution and the attentions of the robot doctor, Dee's wounds were completely healed. So, while she was free to go, the bounty hunter had chosen to stay aboard. She was short of funds, that's true, but there was something else too, something she and Lando were just starting to explore.

  Both were loners by inclination and necessity, slow to enter new relationships, but willing to consider all the possibilities. If asked, both would deny special affection for the other, but the feelings were there, and clear for others to see. Especially Melissa, who felt Dee was taking increasing amounts of Lando's attention, and had few qualms about making her resentment known.

  So while Dee continued to refer to Lando as "money in the bank," and he to her as "an Imperial vulture," neither did anything to change the way things were.

  As a result Dee had become a de facto member of the crew, earning wages, and waiting to see what would happen.

  Having no real ship-related skills, and being a bounty hunter, Dee was the logical choice for her current assignment and had volunteered. Besides, given the fact that they couldn't tell Cap what she was up to, Dee was the only person available.

  A buzzer buzzed and an indicator light came on. Dee was outside the ship and climbing aboard her sled. It was loaded with extra fuel and oxygen. Enough to last days if necessary. Her suit would provide everything else.

  The comset beeped and a screen came to life. Lando looked up into the perfect features of Jord Willer.

  Dee forced herself to wait. Lando had stressed the importance of that. He would pass as close to Hercules as he could. Then, for one brief moment the heat and electromagnetic activity generated by both ships would be all jumbled together, and Dee would make her move.

  Standing up to peer over the dark curvature of Junk's hull she could see the other tug hurtling toward her. Although neither ship was movinfast their combined speeds amounted to more than a thousand miles an hour.

  The space suit felt awkward and heavy as Dee sat down and released the sled's magnetic locks. It smelled funny too, like someone she didn't know, and didn't want to.

  The sled was little more than a metal framework with some thrusters, two seats, and room for cargo in the back. All the comforts of home.

  Junk seemed to leap out from under her as the sled floated free. Dee fought to orient herself as IW-6
7 filled her vision with reflected light. Where was Hercules? The damned thing had disappeared. No, wait a minute, there it was. Almost here!

  Light winked off the ship's bow as it blocked part of the planet below. She had to leave now while the jumble of heat and electronic emissions would cover her movements.

  Dee fired her thrusters and aimed her tiny craft at the ship's broad back. It came up fast, a virtual forest of weapons blisters, beam projectors, and other installations each waiting to rip her apart.

  Killing thrust, Dee fired the sled's retros and grit her teeth. Maybe Pik could put the sled down wherever he wanted to but in her case it would be pure luck. Rather than admit her lack of expertise Dee had allowed him to assume more experience than she actually had.

  There… if she could only land in that clear space just aft of the central cooling fin… The sled hit with a solid thump that bounced her head off the padding inside her helmet. Damn! The landing must have made a god-awful clang inside the tug's hull. Had anyone heard?

  "So," Willer said, "we meet again."

  Once again Lando was struck by the cyborg's unnatural beauty. The blond hair, the flawless features, the perfectly modulated voice. He forced a smile.

  "Hi, Willer. I guess some things never change. You still look ugly as hell."

  "And that's enough of that," Cap said sternly as he dropped into the chair on Lando's right. "Hello, Jord. I apologize for my pilot."

  Willer smiled. "Hello, Captain. Apology accepted. One of these days your pilot and I will settle our differences. This is neither the time nor the place. There's a job to do and I suggest we do it."

  Cap gave Lando a look that had "I told you so" written all over it, and turned back to the screen.

  "I agree. The contract puts you in command. How can we help?"

  Lando thought he saw a glint of satisfaction deep in the cyborg's eyes but he could've been wrong. Perhaps it was light reflecting off his artificial pupils.

  "Our first task is to join the barges together. It's been my experience that one tow is easier to deal with than two."