Drifter's Run

by William C. Dietz

  Where were his arms? His lungs? His heart?

  Reaching out to hold someone else's wife? Breathing life into someone else's dreams? Pumping blood to someone else's brain?

  Oh, God! It would be so easy to stop, so easy to turn off the air that pushed him through space, so easy to settle into Durna's warm embrace.

  "Cy?" The sound of Melissa's voice jerked him back. There was a multifreq comset built into his electronics. He saw Claudia's lock just ahead.

  "Yes?"

  "Would they have any ice cream? We're all out."

  Cy smiled deep within himself. "Come to think of it, I'll bet they do."

  "Could you bring me some?"

  The lock opened and Cy squirted himself inside. "Work comes first, but if everything goes well, I'll see what I can do."

  "Thanks, Cy! I love you!" and Melissa was gone.

  Neubeck sipped her latest cup of black coffee and grimaced at the bitter taste. She was determined to stay on her diet. At least that was something she could control.

  Neubeck had just completed a tour of the ship and found morale was slipping. The costume ball had been a great success, but there was no hiding the desperate situation, and voices were getting shrill. Rubashkin had been waiting for her return.

  "All right, Andre, give me the bad news."

  Rubashkin was tired and looked it. His voice sounded slightly hoarse. "We have one, maybe two hours. After that things get ugly. If we wait too long the lifeboats won't have enough power to blast clear. Those little in-system drives weren't designed for this sort of thing."

  "We can put some of our passengers aboard the tug."

  Rubashkin nodded. "True, but not enough."

  "What's the latest on drive two?"

  Rubashkin gave a characteristic shrug. "It's down to the wire. Someone's got to enter the reaction chamber and hand align the flux rods. Whoever goes stands a good chance of radiation poisoning."

  Neubeck winced. Flux rod alignment was normally carried out by robots. The kind you can find in any good-sized yard but not aboard ship. "Any volunteers?"

  "Yeah, the borg's going in."

  "The tug's chief engineer?"

  "That's right."

  "Damn."

  "Yeah, damn is right, he's one helluva man."

  Neubeck gave it some thought and decided Rubashkin was right. Cy Borg was one helluva man. She sipped cold coffee.

  "I guess we'd better get everyone onto the boat deck. Load but don't launch."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And, Andre…"

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "If you know any good prayers, say 'em now."

  "What's happening now?" Dee was standing behind Lando and looking over his right shoulder while Melissa peeked over his left. The picture quality was extremely poor, and not knowing much about ships, Dee had a hard time understanding what Cy was up to.

  "Cy's going in. You see that weird-looking thing they draped over him? Well, that's some makeshift radiation armor. It might protect his brain."

  "Might?"

  "No one knows. We hope so."

  "It will," Melissa said fiercely. "Cy knows what he's doing".

  Dee put a hand on Melissa's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "What's the long skinny thing?"

  "A flux rod from drive one. One of the rods in drive two is badly bent and Cy's got to replace it. Once that's accomplished he'll make sure the rest of the rods are in alignment, seal the reaction chamber, and restart the drive."

  "Yeah," Melissa agreed, "then we have ice cream."

  The minutes seemed to crawl by with agonizing slowness as Cy carefully removed the bent flux rod, installed the new one, and began to align the rest. It was a painstaking process full of starts and stops. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the task was over.

  They saw a fuzzy image of Cy leaving the reactor, of it being resealed, of technicians clearing away tools and parts.

  Cy disappeared, then reappeared via cleaner video. The awkward shielding was gone, and except for the cable connecting him to a DC power outlet, Cy looked his normal self. He aimed a vid pickup toward the com screen. There was something formal about the way he said it.

  "Captain Neubeck, Captain Sorenson, it's now or never."

  Neubeck clapped her hands. "Excellent work, Chief! You're incredible!"

  Lando looked around. Cap was nowhere in sight. He turned back to the com screen.

  "We read you, Cy… we're standing by."

  It took a good fifteen minutes to bring drive two from zero to fifty percent power. With both ships slipping toward the sun time was of the essence, but so was safety, and the last thing Cy wanted was an accident. If a flux rod was misaligned and they applied power too quickly, the drive could blow up.

  But it didn't. Bit by bit the power came up until Neubeck was grinning from ear to ear and Lando was itching to try it.

  "Okay," Cy said carefully, "let's give it a whirl. Captain Neubeck… ask your pilot to apply power. Gently now… let's minimize the stress as much as we can.

  "Pik, just keep it steady, and watch those tractor beams. This would be a bad time to lose them."

  Pik looked around. Cap was still missing. He had a sudden premonition and punched up the intercom in Cap's cabin. The vid pickup was positioned to cover the desk but he could see the foot of the other man's bunk in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. There was no mistaking Cap's boots.

  Damn! Sometime during the last hour or so the worthless bastard had consumed enough booze to pass out. Now he was gone. Out from under the pressure, the tension, and the possibility of failure.

  Della and Melissa had taken Cap's place. Melissa knew, Lando could tell from the tight expression on her face, and he felt sorry for her.

  As if reading his thoughts Della looked up and smiled. "Don't worry, Pik, we've got it covered, don't we, honey?"

  Melissa nodded, and even though she didn't say anything, Lando thought he saw the trace of a smile. Maybe she'd accept Della after all.

  And then, slowly but surely, both ships began to move. Even though they weren't getting more than half power from drive two, it was enough to make the critical difference, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

  About an hour later they were out of Durna's gravity well and headed for the Imperial navy yard on a planetoid designated as IW-72.

  By now the passengers had been sent back to their staterooms to dress for dinner, the other tugs had been sent back home, and Cy had returned to Junk.

  Neubeck had insisted on sending Cy home in her gig. Lando had to stay on the bridge, but Melissa and Dee were in the tug's launching bay when the hatch opened and Cy floated out.

  It was only after the cyborg had received a shower of congratulations and hugs that Melissa noticed the man and woman. They wore identical uniforms and carried a large metal canister between them. The woman smiled. "Don't tell me, let me guess, this is for you."

  Melissa's eyes got big. "For me? What is it?"

  Cy bobbed up and down. "What do you mean 'what is it?' It's your ice cream."

  Melissa grabbed Cy's casing and gave him a big hug. "Thank you, Cy! But it's so big!"

  Cy chuckled. "Captain Neubeck does things in a big way. Speaking of which I'll bet she'd like her crew back. Now, if you and Della will take the ice cream, these two can return."

  Taking the ice cream between them, they thanked the man and woman, and stepped into the lock. As the hatch sealed behind them a sad expression came onto Melissa's face.

  Cy saw it and said, "That's a sad expression. What's the matter, hon?"

  "I just realized how selfish I am. You're the one who fixed everything and I got the reward."

  Cy wished he could pick her up and hold her but settled for touching her shoulder with a mechanical pincer. "That's not true, Melissa. The truth is that you fixed me so I could fix them."

  Melissa smiled in an automatic sort of way, not understanding, but content to let it go.

  But Della looked Cy right in th
e vid pickup, and although she didn't know exactly what had happened, the softness in her eyes said she cared. Cy felt warm inside. It was something nobody could take away.

  16

  The inside of the museum was pleasantly cool. It was quiet, like the inside of a church, and refreshing after the hustle and bustle of the streets outside. It was the middle of the week, and outside of a few maintenance bots, Dee had the place to herself. She took a moment to enjoy it.

  The museum and the things in it represented a whole universe of knowledge and experience denied Dee due to her childhood. Someday she'd have the time and money to learn. But not now. Now there were other things to do.

  The better part of a week had passed since they had delivered the Princess Claudia to the Imperial navy yard on IW-72 and made their way to Pylax.

  After refueling Junk and performing some much-needed maintenance, the crew went dirtside for a hero's welcome. Everyone except Lando, who remained behind to keep an eye on the ship and avoid bounty hunters.

  Dee looked around the cavernous lobby and wondered if Lando liked museums. Somehow she thought he would. This one had high-vaulted ceilings. There was no ornamentation, no fixtures, nothing.

  The chem-painted walls produced a soft white light that seemed to come from everywhere at the same time. It oozed from ceiling and walls to balance itself out and erase shadows. In this museum every painting, every sculpture, would receive equal treatment, and leave nothing in dark corners.

  Dee's boots made a clacking sound on the marbled floor as she approached the floating sculpture. Although it seemed real, the art was purely electronic, and would vanish at the touch of a button.

  Manifesting itself as a silver ball the electro-sculpture was pierced here and there by irregular holes. Dee looked through them and saw herself peering back.

  She looked around for the vid cams that must be there but couldn't see them.

  The sculpture reminded her of Cy. Thanks to unending praise from Captain Neubeck and his status as a cyborg, the engineer had been the very center of all the press attention. The near calamity was a big story and was making its way through the empire just as fast as the newscorp message torps could carry it.

  So Cy was a hero, a situation that he found to be more than a little amusing, and tended to play down. But modest or not there was no escaping the press and at this very moment the engineer was attending a luncheon in his honor.

  Cap would be there too, along with Melissa, and together the three of them would receive a really huge salvage check from the Empire Line. All had expected a lengthy wait before seeing the money. But thanks to the press attention and Captain Neubeck's urging, the company had settled right away.

  It was not Dee's kind of affair, and thanks to her secondary role, she'd been able to beg off. And since she couldn't return to Junk until the others were done, the art museum made a wonderful sanctuary.

  Dee had always enjoyed sculpture, especially the kind you could see with your hands as well as your eyes, and was soon lost in a room full of abstract shapes.

  The sculptures came in a wonderful variety of materials, ranging from native stone, to wood, to metal and fused glass. Many were imbued with mechanical motion, or stood on rotating platforms, twirling for her inspection.

  Maybe that's why she missed the gleam of light on chrome, the surreptitious movement, and the faint whine of servos.

  Whatever the reason Dee was completely unprepared when Jord Willer stepped out from between two sculptures and pointed the automatic shotgun her way.

  She turned and looked for a way out but found there were two people behind her. One was a hard-looking woman dressed in slug-proof monster skins from the planet Swamp. Her body seemed to shimmer as the skins tried to match the background. At times it looked as though her head was floating in midair.

  But there was no mistaking the blaster or the skillful way she held it.

  Her companion was different. A tall, slender man in a black frock coat. He was armed but with what? There was no way to tell. The man had hooded hawk eyes, a predatory nose, and a smile that held little humor.

  Turning back toward the cyborg Dee prepared to die. After all she'd blinded Willer's ship and humiliated him. It was part of her profession, part of the unwritten code, kill or be killed.

  Dee had lived with the code for years now and felt little more than a sense of mild regret. She'd never know where things might have gone with Lando, never know if another life was possible, never know what could've been.

  Then those thoughts were gone, replaced by a computerlike analysis of movements and trajectories. Yes, there were three of them, enough to kill her, but they'd pay a price. One, maybe two, would die with her. The first would be Willer.

  "Ah yes," Willer said sarcastically. "The bounty hunter figures the odds, and prepares to take someone with her. Me perhaps? Yes, of course. But wait… perhaps she should think… consider the fact that my finger is already on the trigger. Better yet, maybe she should listen, and see if death is the only choice."

  Dee felt her heartbeat slow just a hair. The borg wanted to talk, some sort of a deal perhaps, more time in any case. She forced a grin.

  "It seems you have my full attention. What's on your mind?"

  The shotgun dropped a little but still pointed in her general direction. Willer smiled. "Don't get the wrong idea, I do want to kill you, but I want something else even more."

  "The Star of Empire"

  "You're very perceptive. If it still exists, I want the Star of Empire just as much as Sorenson does, but for different reasons. What he lost was a reputation he didn't deserve, and a job he hadn't done for years.

  "What I lost was a good deal more. I lost my body, my center of being, my image of myself.

  "Do you know what that's like? To lose the picture you have of yourself?" Willer shook his head.

  "No, of course you don't. It's something only cyborgs understand.

  "Well, Sorenson took it from me. He took my life, my future, and my dreams. So I want the Star. I want her for the money, for the pleasure of having her, and to keep her out of Sorenson's drunken hands."

  Willer stared into Dee's eyes as if trying to impress his thoughts on her by force of will. "I'll tell you something, bounty hunter, something I've never shared with another living soul. I'm convinced that somehow, some way, Sorenson knows where the Star is located. Weird, huh? But I feel it and know it's true."

  Dee swallowed hard. On the one hand it seemed as if Willer was more than a few planets short of a full system. On the other hand there was the matter of Sorenson's coordinates. What if they were real? She played along.

  "So? Where do I come in?"

  "You have an opportunity," Willer answered softly. "An opportunity to live and profit in the process. Thanks to the salvage Sorenson has more money than ever before. He'll use it to resume the search. Soon, within days, he'll head for the asteroid belt. You'll go with him. My crew and I will follow. Then, when the critical moment arrives, you'll strike from within."

  Dee considered the cyborg's proposal. What he wanted her to do was no worse than many things she'd done in the past. Still, the thought of Lando, of Melissa, even of Cap hardened her resolve. She would not betray her friends.

  Fine, but should she lie? Tell him what he wanted to hear? Buy time? No, something about him, something about his expression, demanded the truth. Dee got ready to pull her gun. She gestured with her left hand to pull his attention away from her right.

  "Thanks, but no thanks, I'll take my chances right here."

  Time stretched thin. Dee waited for the cyborg to move, waited for the slug between the shoulder blades, waited to give and receive death. It never came. Willer allowed the barrel of his shotgun to fall toward the floor.

  "You gave the correct answer, bounty hunter. I place no value on words said under duress. But I believe in you. I believe in your hunger, your need for more, your predatory instincts.

  "So I make you this offer: When the time comes,
take my part, and I'll give you ten percent of whatever's realized.

  "Right now you say no, but during the coming days you'll think about it, dream about it, and want it. In the end you'll make the right decision."

  Dee looked over her shoulder at the man and woman, then back to Willer. "Am I free to go?"

  Light rippled off the cyborg's upper torso. For one brief moment he looked like one of the sculptures that surrounded him. Then he spoke. "No, there's one more thing."

  Strong arms grabbed Dee from behind. She struggled but it was too late. The man and woman had her.

  Willer approached until his Adonis-like features were only a foot away. His words came out like the hiss of a snake. "Even though I desire your cooperation I cannot allow your actions to go unpunished."

  He gave a twisted smile. "It would set a bad example for the others."

  The cyborg held up a hand. There in his huge palm Dee saw a small disk. It was secured to his middle finger by a ring.

  "You know what this is?"

  Dee felt something heavy fall into her gut. "A neuro-stim."

  "That's right. A little reminder of what happens to those who cross me."

  Willer placed both hands on either side of her head much like a parent preparing to kiss a small child. Dee felt the disk free itself from the ring and bond to her skin.

  Willer stepped back. "Until we meet again."

  The pain came like a white-hot spear. It filled her brain with fire and ran like molten metal through every nerve. Her body jerked and spasmed. She staggered around in circles, bumped into a large sculpture, and sent it crashing to the floor. With darkness came relief.

  When Dee awoke it was to the feeling of movement and cold stone under her cheek. Something had her by one foot and was dragging her across the floor.

  Sitting up she saw that a medium-sized maintenance bot had spotted her, taken her for a drunk, and was dragging her toward the door.

  "Hey! Stop that! Let go!"

  The sound of her voice made Dee's head throb but had the desired effect. The maintenance bot dropped her foot and whirred away. A couple of other robots were struggling to right a fallen statue. There was no sign of Willer or his crew.