Explorer

Becker looked green.

“None of the rest of you, though.” Bren said “Which I wouldn’t like, if they were doing it to me, especially if I didn’t know, as I gather you didn’t. Privacy. I can’t figure how you’d do without that. But I suppose it’s your job. I guess they think they need to keep an eye on you that way.”

“Why don’t you shut up?” Esan said. They’d stopped eating. Polano and Kaplan had suspended breakfast, too, wary and on guard, and the crewmen sat still, awaiting trouble.

“No,” Becker said easily, “if he wants to talk, he can talk.” Becker dug in with a spoon, bravely savored a bite. “Not bad stuff.”

“Smart man,” Bren said, with a level look at Becker.

Esan stood up, hand on the bars. “Who are you? Who are you?”

“Not galley staff,” Bren said mildly. Level approach deserved level approach. “You want the plain truth? You sent Phoenix out to see how things were at Alpha. Well, I’m from there.”

That got attention.

“So you come back to see things here?” Becker asked.

“I’ve seen. And things there are a whole lot better than here. This crew knew. This crew, after it got the ship refueled, after it made its agreements with Alpha—” That covered an immense tract of secrets. “—decided you people back at Reunion deserve rescue. So here we are. Some welcome we get.”

“You come in messing with a dangerous situation, mister.”

“That ship out there? We’ve had more cooperation out of it than we have from Guild admin.”

“The hell you say.”

“Your station, whatever Guild management says, is in somewhat serious trouble with it, don’t you think?”

“Not our business.”

“What—to think?”

“What has Alpha to do with it? Who gave a bunch of jumped-up colonials the say?”

“Jumped-up colonials. You’re not a colony?”

“We’re not a colony. We’re admin.”

“Sure looks like a colony to me. This is the ship , Mr. Becker. This is the only ship there is, the only ship there ever was, and without it, you look pretty much like a colony, to another colonist.”

Clearly Becker wasn’t interested in circular argument. He had his mouth full. “Not our business to say.”

“It ought to be your business, don’t you think? The ship’s crew thinks you deserve a say. They think the i

That got interest. “What are you talking about?” Becker asked.

“That ship out there,” Bren said. “Don’t you think you need rescue? Certainly looks like it to me.”

A shrug. The ship was, apparently, an old threat. A pattern on the wallpaper of the world, not even in consciousness. “We don’t make decisions. We take orders.”

“Do your families? Take orders, that is? You’re content they should die to support Mr. Braddock’s notions?”

These men didn’t come out of a vacuum. They surely had relatives. At least mothers. And all four paid slight and hostile attention.

“Your parents,” Bren said, “your cousins, your wives and children don’t deserve the result of Braddock’s decisions. But trust us. We’ll get them aboard.”

“Not likely,” Becker said.

“I assure you, you’ll like Alpha. Better food. Nice apartments. Much better neighbors.” He hit somewhere close to the right buttons. He saw troubled looks, and for the last several moments, a decided lack of interest in the food containers.

“Not our business to make policy,” Becker said, and took a cracker. “We just report. And the last our people heard from us is its officers being attacked. Is that smart policy, mister spy?”

“The ship is being stood off. Told she can’t refuel. If that’s the way the local Guild wants to do business…”

“This interview is over.”

“Are you somehow under control of that ship out there?”

When the quarry retreats, throw out a lure.

“It’s a robot.”

“Afraid not. We talked to it. It says it put a probe out and got attacked. It’s not happy about that. It’s got you under observation. This may be the only ship humanity owns, but I’d say that’s not likely the only ship the aliens have. Point blank, gentlemen, you’re under someone’s gun, and since we showed up, the reply clock is ru

He’d hit a nerve.

“Maybe,” Becker said. “Maybe not.”

“They say you killed one of their people. They want the body back. What’s the story from your side?”

“I said this interview was over.”

“Well,” Bren said with a dismissive shrug. “Well, it’s a curious point, isn’t it? A hole gets put into your station and what, nobody mentions it? You do all this mining since the attack, and nobody cares there’s a ship out there, even a robot, which it isn’t? We came out here to rescue you. But maybe there’s no fuel for us, and we can’t do a thing about your situation: we’ll just go off to the alternate base and refuel out there, and leave you to your problem.”

“There’s fuel.”

“You think.”

“We have our mining operations.”

“Current?”

“Intermittent.”

“Intermittent,” Bren echoed him.

“They’re not operating at the moment.”

“Like since the last six years?”

A shrug from Becker. A little shift among the others.

“Not talking,” Becker said.

“Well,” Bren said, “dishes, gentlemen.” He held out his hand for the few containers that had gone behind the grid, and the detainees reluctantly got up and surrendered them one at a time—there not being a real opportunity, through the grid, for them to make a grab at his hand, and no real chance of their success with Kaplan and Polano and the other guards there, either.

“One thing I think has puzzled everyone,” Bren said, then, pausing in his packing. “Why did the aliens blow up the station ten years ago?”

“Ask Ramirez,” Becker said harshly.

“Ramirez, unfortunately, can’t answer that, being dead. And the answer doesn’t appear in the ship’s log, not that I hear. So maybe it’s not the ship’s fault shooting started. Or do your leaders tell you it was?”

“Not our business.”

“So you think. But I wonder what truth is deep in station records, and whether the whole history of humanity out here is going to end, all because your leadership took a shot at an inquiring ship.”

“No.”

“It approached too close and you got nervous.”

“Go to hell,” Becker said.

“You know, you’ve had a stable situation, that watcher out there, and you, all alone. Now that we’ve come in, the situation’s changed, and they’re demanding to have the body from their second attempt to contact you. You haven’t done that well, you stationers. You know that?”

“Not ours to say.”

“Mr. Becker, with that great hole in your station, I’d think you’d suspect they could blow a second one if they were ready to. They’ve sat out there trying to come up with another solution, by what I see. Maybe just waiting for us to come back, so they could figure where we come from. We’re not happy about that, let me say. And you’re going to go on telling me your station’s just getting along splendidly. It’s a damned wreck, Mr. Becker, and the neighbors are a

Becker stood fast. The rest weren’t so sure, and darted little glances toward Becker. He could order Becker separated out to solitary confinement, which would only harden the resolve of the rest, if they were worth their salt—which they probably were: he’d had no indication to the contrary. And being worth their salt, they might, given a chance, apply moral suasion to their own leader.