Rimrunners

My God.

She hit the buttons, heart pounding.

"Got that," Bernstein said, "got it. She does that."

Sweat poured. She slumped, feeling the flutter in her muscles head to foot.

NG said: "Doing all right, Bet. Little slippage in one of the arms."

She felt like fainting. Breath came short for a little and she felt a cramp in her gut she hadn't felt in years, like maybe the treatment was wearing off.

Or it was advancing age, maybe.

V-dump, then. She felt the pulse through the ebbing trank, felt them come down again.

She fumbled after the c-pack, kept her eye on the screens while she pulled the tube out and got a sip.

Second dump, hard, God—hardc

The numbers—

"We got that drift again!" She had the button punched.

"Got it, got it," Musa said.

God!

She wiped sweat and took another sip, reminded herself they were used to doing this with one fewer. Old game of Scare the neo. Never a time that they weren't onto that system. But, damn! it was all tekkie problems, it was all garble, she didn't know what damn arm NG was talking about or what it had to do with the magnetics or what in hell somebody was doing just then that pulled the numbers back to safety.

The ship just worked, dammit, tekkies made it work, you never thought about the ship just blowing up or losing its braking because of some damn numbers on a screen.

She was shaking. She wanted a drink. She wanted a shower. She wanted to get to the head. She sat there watching numbers till her eyes ached. And NG just talked back and forth with Musa and Bernstein, calm and cold, until Bernstein said, "Bridge is giving us an all-clear to unbelt. Yeager, you want to take a five minute break?"

"Yessir." She had to pry herself out of the chair. She headed straight for the outside and the E-section head, between Engineering and the purser's office, not half scared about the ship changing its mind and moving, and making a Yeager-shaped dent in the paneling—not half the scare those damn numbers put in her, flowing away like the ship was bleeding to death right through her fingers and she didn't have a patch for it.

Damn, damn, if everybody else could sit there like that, so cold, if NGcould sit there like that, just pick up and go on working with the shakes and all—

Damned if she couldn't.

Thirty-seven years old and starting over as a neo. So she got the shakes.

That was just adrenaline you didn't know what to do with. But you learned, damned if you didn't, you learned what to do with that charge-up nature gave you, and you got your head to working and you just did it, that was all, whatever it was. Bernstein wasn't going to hand her a damn thing real without checking her on it, and at least nobody was shooting at her while she was learning it.

Please God he wasn't going to hand her anything real and on her own.

What do I say if he does? I don't know what the hell you're talking about?

Questions about her papers, all the way to the captain's office, that was what honesty got her. They might forgive her being stupid, might just put her on plain scutwork; but then Bernstein could tell the captain she was too damn good at some things and too damn stupid at others and things didn't add up right, that was where it could go once the questions started.

You learned, was all you could do, and you said nowhen you had to, and you never agreed to anything you couldn't fix.

"Shakes?" Bernstein asked her, stopping by.

"Nossir," she said.

He patted the top of the chair. "Did all right. We just got a little play in a servo, always wanders a little when we drop out. You know why?"

She gave him a desperate look.

"Nossir."

"Suggest you ask somebody real soon, Yeager."

"Yessir," she said. "Thank you, sir."

Bernstein patted the chair back again and walked off on his business, and she just sat there a second. While her heart settled.

CHAPTER 16

QUIET EVENING in rec, vid going in the quarters, a lot of the shift just collapsed in their bunks.

There was a large run on beers in rec, but just quiet drinking: lot of headaches for tomorrow.

And their own little group of three collected at the end of the bench next the galley, nobody bothering them, while two good Systems engineers drew diagrams on a slate and tried to get what they knew through a dumb skut's head.

It made half sense. "Why's it do that?" she asked.

"God does it," NG said, exasperated. "Just believe it happens."

"No, no," Musa said, "fair answer, now."

NG erased the slate and started re-drawing his schematic of little labeled circles, patiently, meticulously.

"Boy's damn smart," Musa said, hunkering closer. "Never did get this part myself."

"The hell," NG muttered, giving Musa a dirty look, and went through it again, how and why the flare-off worked when a ship dumped V.

It made her sick at her stomach when she started figuring it in terms of what could go wrong. Or of what that number-drain was and what could happen if things just failed to go right.

"Well, are we going to fixthat damn thing?"

"First chance we get."

"We got to put in for a fill soon," she said.

"Where we put in," Musa said, "they got no facilities. And we can't afford the sit."

"We can't afford to lose the—"

Musa shushed her. "Business, business don't go in rec. Drink your beer."

She took a sip. NG took a big one.

And seeing the look on NG's face she wished she hadn't said that about losing the ship in hyperspace.

Seeing the look on his face—

And beyond it, where Lindy Hughes and his couple of friends were sitting, talking, momentarily staring this way.

"Hughes is down there," she said with a second cold chill in her stomach.

"Hughes is on this shift," Musa said. "He's got a right."

"He's shit." She picked up the slate, she cleared it off and she gave it to Musa, thinking that if it wasn't so traceable and so likely to land on NG, a simple accident could account for Lindy Hughes.

"He's damn stupid," Musa said. "Bernstein's over all the techs. Man's got a real problem. If he's real damn smart he'll transfer."

NG just sat there.

"Going to take this man to bed," she said to Musa, putting her hand on NG's knee.

"No," NG said, and got up and went and threw his cup in the bin.

And went to the quarters by himself, past Hughes' stare.

"Man's upset," she said.

"Yeah," Musa said.

"I got to see to him," she said, worried about NG, worried about Musa—damn, she'd had enough crazy men. But Musa turned his callused hand up and took hers, and squeezed it.

"You be careful of Hughes. Hear? Some things I can't pull you out of."

"Yeah."

"Get."

She got. She tossed the cup, walked back to the dim quarters, heard a little catcall from Hughes' company, and found herself face to face with McKenzie in the doorway.

Shit! she thought, and flinched when McKenzie grabbed her arm, pulled her inside, and said he had to talk to her.

"I got business."

"You got trouble," McKenzie said, and his hand hurt her arm. "You got major trouble." He shoved her over against the first privacy screen, right by the door. "Listen here."