Rimrunners

Chance of arranging that, a little sabotage—

You could get spaced for thinking about it.

And to do that without blowing yourself to glory, you had to know more than she knew about ship systems.

She looked back at NG, saw him sitting there at the console, mop of black hair, always a brooding look, like he was never happy, like he expected nothing good out of anyone or anything.

Crazy man, she thought. Maybe no fault of his how he'd gotten there, and he might be a damn good lover as far as that went, but a man that nervous could go crazy someday, it had happened a couple of times on Africa, even to seasoned troops, and you could tell the look, day by day, just quieter and crazier. One had got hold of an AP, shot right down the main downside corridor, blew six skuts to hell before somebody got him; one ten year vet had just spattered pieces of herself all over barracks three one main-night when she was sleeping just four spots over—nobody could account for how she'd gotten the grenade.

NG wasn't damn happy on this ship, with this crew.

And NG—the thought gave her a queasy stomach—was in Engineering.

CHAPTER 10

SHE GOT settled in—she figured who the skuz was who had complained, figured it for one Mel Jason, who had the bunk next, and whose stuff was all over the walls, pictures of flowers and souvenirs of bars and stations and pictures of naked, nice-looking men, all of which told you not much about Mel Jason except you supposed by that, that Mel Jason was a she.

As for the other, the downside ladder was down-ring from her, Jason was up-ring from her, she had no neighbor on the left, and the plastic privacy sheet and all prevented most neighbors seeingthat she hadn't put a sheet down last night, except one up-ring that might be passing by the foot of the bed headed for the ladder—always possible it was somebody else, but the one next was the likeliest, the way she figured it.

So she put one Mel Jason on her tentative shit-list, and still made up her mind not to be too mad, all things considered: nicequarters on this ship, she thought, with the privacy screens and all, real fine airy feeling and safe at the same time, with the safety net there to prevent anybody going flying onto the downside skuts in any sudden maneuver.

Best of all, in her figuring, you got your own rack to yourself, and your own storage underneath for all your stuff: the ship wasn't crewed even half to quarters capacity and you didn't have to share with mainday.

So, seeing how clean things were and how people expected to live, she didn't much blame Jason, if it had been Jason who had complained, although Jason had been a little quick on the trigger. Africahad had standards, crowded as they had been, and if she'd gotten some skuz neo moved in next to her who broke the sanitation regs, she'd have bitched too.

Life had just made her a little more willing to give a body room, that was what she detected in herself.

So she was pleasant to Jason, walked around the privacy screen, and said; "Sorry about last night. No excuses; but it's not habitual."

Jason looked around from her sewing, bit off a thread, nodded then, once and definitely. That was all the comment Jason was going to make, Jason didn't even ask what she was talking about, and that was all the answer she wanted out of Jason right now. She figured time would kill or cure, and she went on down to supper.

NG was there. NG gave her hardly more than a look, and she didn't walk past empty spots to sit with him, considering he'd warned her keep clear of him in public, for what might be good reasons of not wanting a ruckus. So she just sat down at the first convenient vacant place on the bench and paid all her attention to her food. He left. She didn't know where.

But afterward, when a lot of the crew gathered back in the darkened quarters to watch a very tired pre-War vid, a man came up close beside her at the back of the crowd, while she was standing with her arms folded and thinking she'd seen this one twenty times at least.

The man touched her shoulder, made a nod toward the door, and said: "Yeager?"

Not NG. She'd thought that it was at first.

But it was an approach, she knew the dance. His name was Gabe, he said, he wanted to buy her a beer, he was polite and interested, and he wanted to sit and talk a while, with intentions for the rest of the night by no means hard to figure.

She wasn't altogether enthusiastic about the invitation, she'd been looking for NG with the hope of straightening some signals out with him, but if NG had been in the quarters she couldn't spot him and if he'd gone off somewhere else he damn well hadn't signaled her a come-ahead. So she found no immediate excuse, she had the beer, she had two, and Gabe—the name on his pocket was McKenzie—asked her questions she told the usual lies to: merchanter swept up in the Pan-paris route, dumped at Thule, desperate—what about himself?

McKenzie was sympathetic. McKenzie said he was ten years on Loki, McKenzie was clearly more interested in making his move than in answering detailed questions. Then another couple of crew came wandering up from down-ring, both male, friends of McKenzie's, just to look over the neo, do a little safe shopping and neo-baiting—get her rattled if they could, have a little fun if they couldn't. An all-right couple of guys, she decided: Park and Figi. They didn't sit down, they just hovered, asking how was it going, checking out her disposition toward McKenzie with an eye to a more personal check-out later if she was amenable.

—McKenzie, Park, Figi, obviously a buddy-system, all three of them scan-techs, McKenzie the good-looking one, Park and Figi a little shyer, a little less comfortable with a stranger, under the smartass facade.

You could bet who ran that trio, she thought, and she laughed at their fun-poking. It was kind of cute, actually, that McKenzie actually blushed—they nailed him with a tag about getting wrong bunks in the dark and he told them go away.

But McKenzie was just trying to get friendly again when another couple of male crew showed up in the rec area, and theyhad to walk over and introduce themselves—Rossi and Wilson, by the tags, Dan and Meech, by name; not bad, either, certainly Rossi wasn't, but you didn't get picky when you were new: not good business, and you didn't start with one man and go off with another either, not unless you wanted a rep as a trouble-maker.

"Hey," McKenzie said, finally, slipping a protective arm around her, "it's my beer. Get out of here.—Kate, getthese guys."—to a woman getting herself a beer.

"Do I get a favor-point?" Kate yelled back, which got a friendly rec-riot started, just comfortable stuff over at the counter between Kate and Rossi and Wilson: McKenzie took his chance to get familiar, a little squeeze. "Don't take 'em serious. How're you doing? Quarters is pretty private right now, everybody's watching the vid. I got a private bottle. What do you think?"

"Fine," she said.

Except when she got up to go with McKenzie, she saw NG over against the wall by the quarters, just standing there looking at them.

Her gut tightened up. She remembered about that rec-time promise she'd tossed off to him this afternoon, and he'd tossed it off the other way, a kind of a don't-bother she'd decided was his opinion on the matter.

But that look he was giving her didn't say don't-bother. Her heart started pounding and she didn't want eye-contact with him, but it happened, once, fast, direct, while she was walking toward the door.

Then he turned his face the other direction, just leaned there with his hands in his pockets while she walked through the door and into the quarters with McKenzie.