Rimrunners

So she snubbed the safety-tie of her duffle to a temp-ring by the door, and they went out to crew rec, up by the galley: he logged himself a double tag on the keyboard there on the counter, drew a couple beers from the tap, and handed her one.

"How d'you earn extras?" she asked.

"You get fifteen cred a week, shipboard," he said. "Use 'em on beer, use 'em on food, save 'em for liberty, they don't care."

"Thanks, then," she said, figuring to buy him one on her tab, if she liked him, which looked likely, except she still couldn't figure him. He put his hand on her back. She twitched it off, because it was bad business if any mofs walked through here and caught you hands-on. She stood there like a kid with her first boy-interest and drank her beer while he drank his.

"You're Engineering," she commented, for an opener.

He nodded.

"Guess you know that's my assignment."

Another nod.

Spooky man, she thought. Talks about as much as everybody else on this ship.

So she tried again, on something you couldn't answer without talking.,"How long've you been on this ship?"

"Three years."

"You mind to say where from?"

"Hire-on. General. What about you?"

Not a question shewanted, that one. She shrugged. "Same thing. Last hire was Ernestine."

"Kato," he said.

She nodded. But she didn't want to talk down that line either.

"Bernstein easy to-work for?" she asked.

"He's all right."

"Fitch?"

"Bastard."

"Guessed that," she said, and saw him toss off the rest of his beer.

"Come on," he said.

Nervous man. Real nervous. Steps were echoing in the corridor, somebody walking in from down-ring. "I du

"Come on."

"Hell. You can wait a damn minute!"

The steps got closer. It was Muller—who gave them both a frown, a halfway pleasant nod to her, and a second frown at her company while he logged himself a beer.

"'Evening, NG," Muller said.

She took another look at the man she was with.

"'Evening," her company said, not friendly, and laid a hand on her shoulder to steer her out.

NG. The one Bernstein had included on his watch-it list.

"I'm not through yet," she said, with a swallow left in the bottom of her cup, and NG

dropped his hand.

"You been introduced?" Muller asked, and NG said: "Shut up, Gypsy."

"No, I haven't," Bet said. "Man introduced himself."

Muller gave her a thinking-look. NG stood there outside her vision, a shadow whose reactions she couldn't see.

"You watch this one," Muller said, dead grim, and turned to the counter again, got a cup and drew his beer.

Trouble. She felt her heart thumping, instinctively backed up a step between her company and this Gypsy, touched NG's arm to distract him and saw very clearly nobody was joking.

"Come on," she said, and he came away with her, put an arm around her and she let him for a few steps, no matter it could get them on report.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

She stopped a step. "No way," she said. What he wanted was trouble, damn sure. You didn't need long on a ship with Fitch on it to figure that out.

He stopped. He shoved her hard. "Hell with you," he said, and walked off, just headed down-ring and kept going.

Something in his voice that wasn't right, she thought, with her shoulder still stinging and her knees a little wobbly-tired. Hellwith you!

"Yeager," Muller said from behind her, not hostile, not trouble, himself. She looked back at him. "Yeager, let that go."

She wasn't sure she liked advice from Muller. She wasn't sure what it was worth or whether it was right or whether it was friendly to her.

"What in hell was that?"

Muller shrugged. "A lot of trouble. Not my business, understand, but I figured you might not know about him."

"What about him?"

"Name's NG. Ramey, sometimes. Mostly NG. Crew gave him that name, you figure it? Short for No Damn Good."

NDG. Like you painted on something you were going to junk. Like with a spoiled can, a piece too skuz even for the cyclers.

She looked around where NG had headed. She looked back at Muller.

"What'd he do?"

Muller made a face, shook his head.

"What'd he do?"

"Question is, what he hasn't. Man's a foul-up. Damngood at what he does, or Fitch'd have spaced him, twice, three times over. You let him alone, you let him do what he does, you don't have anything to do with NG you can help. Man's got a way of paying back every favor you try to do him."

She didn't get the feeling Muller was anything but serious. She didn't particularly get the feeling Muller was actively after NG's hide. It was more a set-up for an eventual I-told-you-so.

But something upset her stomach and put a twitch between her shoulders.

"Muller," she said, polite, very polite, "Muller, I got to thank you for fair warning: may be so and I'm not doubting it, but I got a problem not at least asking the other side of it."

"You got the right," Muller said. "I don't say it's not smart, on principle. But you got a rep to make in this crew. Don'tstart it with him. More'n one in this crew's got station-problems, a few've got other-ship problems, but NG's in a whole different class."

"I take everything you say," she said. "Thanks. But I got to make up my own mind on a man. Maybe you're right. But I'm just that way."

Muller nodded, not offended, not offensive, just an I-did-my-best.

So she wiped her aching hands on her pockets and she walked off, wobbly-tired as she was, because, dammit, she'd gotten into the middle of something and it bothered her, it bothered her a whole lot the way the man had been, the on-the-edge way he acted. That made her think Muller might be right.

But most, it bothered her that a whole crew hung a tag on a man like that, just wrote him off like he was garbage.

Maybe he was. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe it was because she was more than a little strung-out that she even gave a damn. She hurt, she was staggering-tired, she could do a lot more for herself, just to go find some vacant bunk and fall in it and let a grown man handle whatever problems he'd made for himself.

But she thought she knew where to find him.

CHAPTER 9

RAMEY?" She let the door shut. Shop area wasn't a place she felt secure wandering around, a real warren of a machine-shop, a narrow aisle, the lights down to a dim glow, place cold as hell. She left the lights alone. She stayed where she was, not precisely scared, just careful. "You here, man?"

Silence. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was a fool talking to an empty room.

Maybe somebody on mainday shift was going to walk out of Engineering next door and find her here off-shift and she was going to catch hell.

"Ramey?"

A slight movement, from back in the aisles of drills and lifts and presses.

He was there, all right. It occurred to her that he could be crazy—but that wasn't what Muller had said, precisely.

But he wasn't being cooperative, either.

"All right," she said, "all right, I can take a hint. I'm going to bed, I've had better times, Ramey, but thanks for the beer."