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"Mike, Bill, help me get him into a couch." Potter knew that after extended months with no more gravity than the Fast Eddie's centrifuge, it would take all three of them to lift the First Officer, and maybe Farrow besides. "And somebody close that pneumonia hole before we all wind up like Co
Potter's examination told them what they all knew already. "Exposure, of course. Frostbite on all his toes and all but two fingers. I'm no doctor, but I can see those'll have to come off." Potter lightly touched the blackened digits. "Hell, he's going to lose this whole foot." He stood and shook his head, helplessly. "I don't think we can save him," he said quietly, as if to himself.
"If he warms up enough to get circulation in his limbs, he's likely to get blood poisoning," Liu warned.
Potter nodded. "Keep the temperature down in here," he said. A boyhood survivor of Atlantic winters in lobster boats on Earth's Narragansett Bay, Potter had seen plenty of frostbite. "If he does start getting circulation into those fingers and feet, the pain alone will kill him."
Potter crouched beside his frozen shipmate, trying to get something out of him. "Co
Co
Potter rose and went to the locker, removing apair of comically thick insulated mittens with a single index-finger sewn in. He pulled a rifle out as well, a flat-sided accelerator model with rocket shell projectiles for vacuum or zero-G environments.
"Bill," Potter said, "take another rifle. Mike, Mister Farrow, stay with Co
Potter and Liu left the second shuttle and crossed the landing zone toward the first. Byers' Star had slipped behind the Cat's Eye gas giant, and this side of the Cat's Eye moon was turning away from its parent world. Night was coming to their hemisphere, truenight, and the temperature was dropping to welcome it.
"Emmett, this guy is BuReloc." Liu was trying to reason with Potter, but still matching his stride.
"I don't give a rip."
They closed with the shuttle, its port list exposing the belly to them. Beyond the body of the craft they could see a man's legs moving about, and some kind of pole pacing them.
Too angry at the man's cheek to give any thought of ambush, Potter walked around the nose of the shuttle, and everything seemed to happen at once.
Miller was there, with something in his hands and a pile of broken, frozen dirt on the ground nearby. There were two graves, each marked with crosses. It was all Potter saw before Miller turned toward them, the long black cylinder pivoting before him.
Potter heard Liu say: "He has a gun." The Chief Engineer didn't shout, but simply raised his own accelerator rifle to his shoulder and fired in one smooth, practiced motion. Miller spun about and went down, and it was only then that Potter realized he had struck Liu's weapon down with his hand.
Liu snapped the weapon away and back-stepped. "Are you tying to get us killed?" Liu was almost snarling, but he recovered his composure instantly. "I-I'm sorry, Emmett; but he was-"
But Potter was going to the felled BuReloc agent. The 9mm rocket shell had hit him in the groin; Potter didn't need a great deal of imagination to think that Liu had been aiming for Miller's head until his blow had dropped the weapon's aim point. A little lower and to the left, Potter mused, and live or die, my friend, the Miller line would have ended with you.
Miller's teeth were squared in a rictus of agony, but Potter wasn't feeling especially charitable toward the man just now, and anyway he was curious about something. He turned Miller over, eliciting a gasp of pain from the victim, and lifted the cylinder Miller had been holding when he turned toward them. There was a foot-square metal plate at one end, and Potter held it up for Liu's inspection.
It was a shovel.
Miller sipped cautiously at the tea. His beard stubble was blue-black, and together with the dark circles under his eyes and sallowness of his skin, made him look as bad in shock as Co
"He wouldn't come inside," the BuReloc man said. "He seemed to think that I'd gone out and deliberately opened the bay door to the wind, to kill Owens."
"And did you?"
Miller sighed and lowered his head. "Christ, Potter, look at where my sleeping bag is; I'd have to crawl right over Co
Potter said nothing for a time, looking out the shuttle's forward window. "You buried Owens and Ike?"
Miller nodded. "Co
Potter turned at that. "Maybe not. But plain markers, or none at all, might make me believe that. Crosses don't."
"That was kind of you," Farrow said quietly from the back. Miller shrugged, wincing at the pain any movement caused him.
Potter sighed. "Right." He turned to Farrow. "Tom, would you look after Brian and Mister Miller? We're going to see about getting Shuttle One flight ready."
Farrow moved to comply as Potter, Liu and Mike left the Shuttle once more.
"I'm telling you, Emmett," Liu began when they'd left Shuttle Two. "This BuReloc bastard is going to be the death of us all."
Potter said nothing except: "Wait and see."
Placing lifting jacks beneath the hull and leveling it off, they found that Shuttle One looked far worse off than it really was. The collapse of the landing leg into the sinkhole had severed half a dozen cables, but caused very little actual damage. Liu shook his head at the irony.
"If they'd had jacks and an arc welder, they'd have been back a week ago."
Shuttle One was operational and flight-ready in twenty hours, which suited Potter just fine, as the truenight of this hemisphere of the moon was now less than twelve hours away. During his watch, he made a cup of tea and sat beside the sleeping Miller, watching him.
"I think you're awake," Potter said quietly.
Miller opened his eyes. "What is it?"
Potter pursed his lips and studied the blank wall opposite. "Oh, many things. Like why was Ike up there in the hills with you at all?"
"He invited himself. I assumed he was told to keep an eye on me. Anyway, I didn't object to him coming along; traveling alone in these circumstances is idiotic."
"Yup. It's illegal, too."
"Right." Miller sneered.
Potter sipped his tea. "What did this predator look like?"