Rimrunners

Simulations. Engineering sims. It didn't help her stomach at all.

A close brush with Orsini, Hughes and his friends were damn sure going to be smarter coming at her now, Musa thought she was a fool, NG was ready to kill her, and Bernie wanted an unlicensed machinist ru

Sure.

She went and started the electronics job, flipped through the manual and found out it was out of the helm-engineering interface.

God.

Do-it-in-your-sleep stuff—if you didn't know where it was going back to. She triple-checked everything, went to Bernie to ask if there was an install or if she just left it, and he said, "That's the backup to the backup now, but there's some reason it blew. Mainday's still looking for it."

Makes you real confident.

Damn ship's falling apart.

NG still wasn't speaking much by shift-change—as if every word cost him money—

but he was civil, at least, and subdued—the NG who sat the boards, mostly, just business.

"You got to help me some more," she said to him, "with this stuff with the boards.

Bernie's on me about it."

And he just nodded, nothing really engaged and nothing really to fight with, not actually looking at her.

She was sure Musa read him just fine, she was sure Musa was mad about NG's acting up, but NG wasn't going to give either one of them a handle to grab, just a not-there, don't-care, do-what-you-like.

It made you want to back him up against a wall, that was what it did; but you couldn't, NG would do about what he'd done with Hughes and his friends, she reckoned.

So he just wandered on around the rim on his own with them behind him, and he walked up on the end of the supper-line in rec and didn't speak to anybody, didn't look at anybody, even when people looked at him to see what kind of mind he was in.

And she and Musa got in line behind him and he didn't turn around, didn't come alive at all.

Damn him.

What in hell d'you do with him?

Knock him across the deck if he was on Africa, damn right somebody would.

But he wouldn't've lived, there.

She remembered the flash, the shock, the smell of burned flesh. And the skut with the grenade.

Remembered guys that just stopped ducking.

Man's bent on suicide. Not even that. He's just left, just gone away. Won't fight. Won't fight till somebody pushes him.

Dangerous as hell is what he is.

At the boards.

Or anywhere else critical.

"What're they having?" she asked NG. Elbowed him in the back when he ignored her, and was ready to duck. "Huh?"

He didn't react at first. Then he said, calmly, "Think it's meatloaf."

"Meat, hell," Musa said, "it's got fins."

NG sort of looked at him, she said: "We got to be close to port, it's getting worse," and NG halfway woke up a little—just was thereagain.

"Haven't got to the stew yet," he said, "that's the worst."

Like, God help them, NG was trying.

"Stew or that egg-and-ham stuff," Musa said. "Let me tell you, I remember pork that was a pig."

Sheremembered, once in her life—eating what used to be warmblooded and walking around, instead of tank-stuff. She wrinkled her nose, a little queasy. "Had it once. Flavor's fine. Du

They moved up in line.

"Where'd you get it?" Musa asked. Not suspicious-like. Interested.

"Crewmate got it off this dark-point trade," she said.

That was where Africahad got it, all right, except they hadn't paid for it, out in the dark between the stars—where ships met in realspace and the carriers had taken what they wanted.

Blood all over a wall. AP's didn't leave much of a man's middle. First time she'd been with the boarding-team.

Pork that night. Galley did it up in little pieces for the whole ship's company. Except you could bet your ass the bridge crew got slices.

The line moved up. "Fish," Musa was saying. "Told you it was fishcake."

NG shrugged. He stood there ahead of her with his hands in his pockets, looking down again at the floor like he was going away again and she just reached out and tweaked his sleeve.

"You all right?"

He looked at her very odd for a moment—scared, maybe, worried, but there, thank God.

"Don't slip on me," she said.

He didn't say anything. He just stared until the line moved and Musa bumped both of them and got them to close it up.

NG looked back at her a second time, like he was trying to figure something just outside his reach.

"Hey," she said, "I ain'tthe enemy, you know."

And that came out fu

"Go on," somebody yelled from behind, "do it in the locker."

Their turn. They got the meatloaf. Musa did. It was pale, pale gray and it smelled fishy right past the flavor-stuff and the sauces cookie put on it, it crunched with bones you tried not to notice.

Tried not to notice the way people kind of looked toward them while they were eating either, how heads got together and voices were quiet and Hughes was at the other side of the rec-benches, down at the opposite end—Hughes with a patched-up mess in the middle of his forehead and a lot of looks their direction. Hughes and his two mates; and Mel Jason sitting with Kate and a couple of the other women, all of them with their heads together—

There was a kind of a gap between her and NG and Musa and everybody else—not a big one, but they were a three-set, no mistaking it, on the end of the bench—until McKenzie and Park and Figi got through the line and took that spot. Deliberately.

Man, she thought, looking at McKenzie, I do owe you.

"Hughes isn't happy," McKenzie said for openers, and took a big drink of his beer.

"Pity," Musa said.

NG was wound tight as a spring. She felt that. "What's he saying?" she asked Gabe McKenzie.

"Says he'll settle accounts," McKenzie said.

"You're taking a chance, then."

"Yeah," McKenzie said.

She thought about that, thought about what she owed and where, and how NG was likely to react to company, damn him anyway; but she was about to take the chance when Musa said, "Got to arrange a get-together, you and us."

Musa having ma

"Might," McKenzie said.

"Yeah," she said, and nudged NG with her knee. "All right?"

NG nodded and mumbled, "Fine."

So they got a card-game together at McKenzie's and Park's bunk, the two being next to each other. They did a little drinking, a little talking—NG and Park being about equally conversational, but Figi was a card-artist, no question, the moment you saw him shuffle, and Figi gave a kind of shy grin and proved there was a real brain in there, the kind that could remember what had turned up in a deck.

NG wasn't bad at it either, come to find out; and Musa was sharp as you'd expect when a guy had spent long, long realspace voyages with very little rec aboard.

"You can get ski

"That's how he got so healthy," McKenzie said. "All those beers."

Figi just gri

About which time the vid died and the lights came up full in the quarters, bright as morning, and a voice yelled out, via the intercom:

"Inspection!"

"Good God," McKenzie said in a