Pardell closed his eyes and let the emptiness seep into his bones, resting his head against the frigid, damp wall until the part of his scalp in contact grew numb and ached with cold. The isolation soothed him; a shame he couldn’t savor it long. Others used this passageway, always hurrying, usually in pairs or groups. Pardell didn’t need to remember Malley’s warnings to know: blend into the mass, stay inconspicuous.
He finished suiting up, maybe slow by Earther standards, he told himself, but one of them would never get this suit to hold air. One by one, Pardell snapped an assortment of small bags to their rings, having retrieved them from their hiding places. He tested each with a sharp tug. A loose fastener had cost him an irreplaceable set of readers once, the bag floating out of reach to join the other such orphans forming a tenuous band in the vicinity of Thromberg Station. Station Admin routinely sent out barges to sweep clear the approach lanes to the stern ring. No one bothered back here.
Check done, Pardell switched off his light, listening to his own breathing, feeling the soft press of the frigid darkness on his lips and eyelids. He tapped his helmet gently against his right leg, a child’s habit, counting out the seconds ... five ... fifteen . . . one hundred and one . . . still no lights, no other sounds. He was alone. The habit answered to caution as well as courtesy: caution, in case he was this even-cycle day’s target for menaces ranging from the authorities sending down an engineer to a crazy after a ’tastic fix; courtesy, because manually cycling the ’lock was hard enough for one, so most of the older ’siders needed someone with stronger arms to help them through. If you saw or heard them struggling to catch up, you waited.
Anger rushed back, making Pardell’s hands fumble at the helmet fastener, anger at the Earthers whose elderly didn’t suit up in the dark, but, even more, anger at one Earther in particular: the woman who had walked into Sammie’s and stolen his peace.
Pardell cued on the helmet’s reddish interior illumination with his chin in order to see the gauges lined up below his jaw; all that remained of the suit’s fancy remote display pads were sealed-over stitch marks on each wrist. Only low-maintenance gear had endured decades of use—that, or what new devices clever, desperate hands could cobble together. He made himself continue the checks, fighting the emotional overload. Malley’d talked some sense, he had to admit it now, if he couldn’t to Malley’s face—not right away, at least. No one would give him up; he had the choice of tailing it and keeping out of sight until the Earther ship left, or of attempting that long, impossible walk to the docks.
Smith hadn’t realized what she’d asked of him, or if she had, she played some game he was safer clear of—Malley had the truth of that as well. How’d she think a ’sider could make it to the stern docking ring—the living, breathing heaven to the hell he crouched in now? Was she Earther-blind to the difference when she’d been escorted down to Sammie’s? Surely she’d noticed how the press of people in the corridors increased with every level. Hadn’t she seen for herself the change to a population whose reflex was to crouch to one side to allow others through, and whose eyes never met in more than a courteous slide past, granting one another the only room they could?
Not the Earther, Pardell thought bitterly. Not with her troops and her Station puppet to clear the way down.
And without that kind of escort, no way up. No way for him to cross the checkpoints without being counted and discovered. No hidden shortcuts or byways that hadn’t been found and welded shut by now. Station Admin tolerated his kind only as long as they stayed invisible.
He didn’t have the air to waste debating the extent of Smith’s craziness with himself, Pardell judged, tipping his head to view the display within his helmet. Turning his wrist light back on, he followed its thin wispy beam, playing it over iced black walls until it reflected from faded lettering. Air lock S17. Pardell gave the inner door a gentle pull to test for vacuum. When it shifted grudgingly in his hands, he swung it wide with a practiced heave. There had been an entire series of ’locks in this section, a set for each docked ship: passenger hookups, emerg ’locks, service gates, the huge cargo passages. Since the destruction, they were all supposedly inoperable, either damaged so they couldn’t open—as children, Pardell and his friends used to scare one another with made-up stories about ghosts, trapped inside—or sealed when the ring was abandoned, to protect station integrity.
Air lock S17 showed traces of its seal: shiny, congealed lumps the cutting torch had failed to melt free clung to the doorframe here and there, looking like some blighted growth on the metal. It was, naturally enough, a capital crime to be caught breaking a station engineer’s seal. Naturally enough, no one bothered to check down here as long as the ring stayed airtight and powered down. S17 had been an emerg ’lock; as such, it was barely large enough to hold three in suits. Cramped quarters, but with a bonus: emerg ’locks had dual systems designed to keep them functional in power failures.
Or in a failure to provide power, Pardell grumbled to himself, stepping over the sill and reaching back for the inner door. From this side, the door’s scars and blisters were ample evidence entry had been forced from outside the station, not in. Before his time. The mechanism hadn’t been harmed, and he braced both feet against the sill to use his body’s mass to haul the door shut. The oversized mags didn’t help. It took three tries this time, and Pardell felt himself heating up, a maddening bead of moisture winding its slow path down the side of his face. The suit’s faltering conditioning system had the contrary habit of allowing his toes to approach frostbite when he needed warmth, then, without warning, kicking in to hoard every iota of his body heat so sweat floated around in his helmet, beads stinging when they collided with his eyes.
He dogged closed the inner door and wasted no more time, sliding the panel over the station air vent, then cranking the hydraulic-assisted hand pump to evacuate the chamber until the sensors would allow the outer door to be opened manually. It took fifty-three full pumps.
Pardell shone his light over the outer door. It glinted from a misshapen ring of steel clipped to a chain, in turn spot-welded to the doorframe. The assembly was crude, but strong. A similar one hung outside, in vacuum.
He slipped his gloved hand inside the ring, drawing it close to his side. Jase Cohn claimed the ring was from the neck seal of a ’suit worn by a stationer who’d tried to keep out his family. It wasn’t the right size or shape, but the notion pleased some. Ring in hand, Pardell leaned his helmet against the outer door and listened. Nothing. He brought the steel ring up and thumped it, five times, in a specific rhythm. The vibration reverberated through his helmet, like some muted bell. He listened again. Nothing.
Habit again, Pardell thought, but he wouldn’t volunteer to be the first to break this one. Not so long ago, there’d been an armed guard leaning outside at all times, ready to slice the suit of anyone exiting the air lock without the code. Or the code would be answered by another, perhaps a warning to be weapons-ready, or demanding information. There hadn’t been a guard since Rashid had died at the post, victim of either old age or a too-old suit—or both. It didn’t mean, Pardell reminded himself, there might not be one this time. It would only take a change in the situation to restore the self-preserving instincts of the ’siders. A change like Earthers on-station, naming names.
Safe for the moment from defenders and their ghosts, Pardell stepped out of air lock S17 and into a scene of brilliant confusion, squinting at metal fired by the noonday sun.
The builders of Thromberg Station had perhaps fancied it a planet, setting it in close enough orbit to a white dwarf to make daytime on the station’s surface a contrast between blinding glare and utterly black shadow, its light a rich feast at any hour for the mammoth collectors isolated from the station’s spin. The sky was starkly black as well, except sunward, where the station’s orbit paralleled a sparkling belt of ice-rich cometary debris, raw material for its industry and the sole reason life lingered in Thromberg’s giant belly.
The station ha
d been built to process a steady stream of immigrants on their way to the six terraformed worlds within its reach, capable of comfortably—albeit temporarily—housing thousands; providing air, water, and food; complete with immense luggage and freight handling capability; and hosting the bureaucracy, human and machine, to speed people to their futures. There had been lounges to entertain those waiting their turn on the transports, and customs stations aplenty to catch those planning to take advantage of their futures in ways Earth didn’t condone.
Today, the luggage and freight areas still echoed with work crews, but their arms loaded and harvested transparent pipes packed with fungus and other simple organisms, the stuff of life rather than personal belongings or mail. If the exodus and riots hadn’t killed so many, even that harvest might not have been enough. The customs stations were rumored to be jails. The lounges, Pardell had heard, were hospitals now, places where those who’d lost all hope could quietly apply for sterilization and so qualify for permanent station citizenship. Their rations, despite all talk of equality with immies, were supposedly somewhat better. Maybe on the inward levels, Pardell thought wryly. His stationer friends seemed to eat what he did. They drank the same swill, for sure.
If only by coincidence, the builders of Thromberg had planned well for the crisis caused by the Quill. But they could never have imagined what would happen to their station’s smooth, polished exterior.
Pardell shut the air lock’s outer door, relieved to find himself alone, and surveyed the part of Thromberg Station that no one acknowledged and no one dared touch.
Closest to him in the glittering metal forest was the Endeavour , her asteroid grapples biting deep into the multilayered skin of Thromberg like the jaws of a bloodsucking insect. Welds, some old and some fresher, made sure those grapples wouldn’t come free again. There were welds and repairs on her hull as well. Endeavor had been a battle zone, once, and bore her scars of melted metal proudly.
It was still a battle, merely frozen in time, Pardell thought. He could count—and name—dozens of other starships from here; they continued beyond the long curve of the station, a crust thinning only where too close to the inhabited sections within. Shuttle or transport, freighter or private yacht: each was locked in its death’s grip with the station, driving in pipes to siphon off air and water, many tapping station power lines. All had sacrificed moving among the stars so those they carried could live, forming a city out of their now-lifeless shells.
A city stretching in all directions, bordered by vacuum and held intact by a bloody determination to survive. Station Admin had tried to stop them, rejecting any responsibility for the ships who’d ripped Thromberg apart in their flight to Earth, only to be forced back by Sol System’s killing zone. The ships had ignored all warnings, knowing the station had no warships or weapons, that it was a terminal designed to welcome voyagers, not protect itself. So the authorities had turned turtle, closing the docking rings and sealing air locks, refusing to expose themselves even to service the dying ships.
Pardell’s lips pulled back over his teeth as he looked for, and found, the Haida V. She was an old freighter, a piece of junk that should have been out of service and scrapped, but the kind of ship a bit of coaxing and a lot of luck kept running. She’d arrived at Thromberg with the rest, her holds jammed with survivors from another ship crippled when her Captain hadn’t believed Earth would fire on her own. The Haida had been almost out of fuel and her Captain well out of patience with panic-stricken fools. After a standoff lasting three days and two deaths, she’d ignored both hysterical warnings and normal docking protocols, ramming the dust-pocked nose of her ancient ship into the station with force enough to fuse them together. Then she sent two groups of space-suited volunteers outside. One group stood armed and ready, while the other drilled into the station and connected the ship’s systems to Thromberg’s own lifelines.
Station Admin hesitated—stunned perhaps by the audacity of the attack, despite it doing little more than lodging the nose of the Haida deep into Thromberg’s whipple shield, that layer of metal and composites ready to be sacrificed as it absorbed energy from the unavoidable rain of micrometeors and other debris. Or perhaps there had been agonized debates on how to help or who to blame. Maybe, Pardell sometimes thought wistfully, someone had pleaded, “Look the other way.”
Meanwhile, other ships, many as close to failing as the Haida V, made their own decisions. Like a drift of pollen landing on the mirrored surface of a lake, they matched velocity with the slower aft ring and touched down as if by plan, choosing their times by when the station’s spin shadowed her wounded side, as if that kept what they were doing a secret.
It wasn’t a secret, of course, nor was it truly meant to be. By crippling their ships and welding them to the station’s plates, those returning from their attempt to reach Earth threw themselves on Thromberg’s mercy instead, waiting to see if the air lock doors would finally open and grant them the only home humanity had left.
Pardell’s eyes followed the feathered melt-lines along the Endeavour ’s hull. It could have happened like that, he sighed to himself, straightening up and testing the hold of his mags on the station’s pitted shield plates before letting go of the door handle. But the stationers had been caught reeling from the damage caused by the exodus; parts of the station were uninhabitable; and calm reason still couldn’t refute the dread of the deadly Quill somehow arriving here next. Rumors burned through the station like so many wildfires: maybe the Quill had contaminated the ships limpeted to the station like so many parasites; maybe that was why Sol System had fired on their own instead of letting them come home.
That had to be the reason.
Fear spread, and what could have been the brightest day in Thromberg’s history turned into its darkest. Desperate spacers burned their way through the station’s ’locks and waged war in a maze of darkened corridors; equally desperate stationers suited up and attacked the ships on the surface, many dying simply from underestimating the passionless constraints of vacuum and gravity.
Too many died in places and ways they’d never imagined.
It was hard to say, later, if they fought each other or, on some deep, terrified level both sides thought they were striking back at the Quill. Regardless, it might have continued until all were trapped or dead, but abruptly all hostilities ceased. A deal had been struck, though neither side ever admitted it. Instead, the spacers retreated to their ships, posting guards on key air locks to watch the stationers retreat in turn. Station Admin quietly ceased any restoration of the sections directly below the ships, except those repairs necessary to keep air and water flowing through the systems.
Soon, faces once familiar, now haggard and drawn into those of strangers, began showing up in the ration lines, sometimes doing occasional work that didn’t require an immigrant registration number or station ident. They didn’t have quarters or assignments; it seemed poor manners to ask about either, when it was common enough knowledge where they lived. It was a tenuous tolerance from the beginning. During the Ration Riots, the Outsiders, as they came to be known, were the first and easiest targets. Most learned to stay away from large gatherings.
Old news, Pardell reminded himself, tilting back to judge the angle of the cable he wanted, almost unconsciously listening for the reassuring whine of the suit’s conditioning system as it dumped heat. Today, ’siders had more in common with the virtually imprisoned immigrants who’d never fled the station, and some immies frankly admired what appeared to be ’sider freedom. As if these ships could ever fly again. To Pardell’s knowledge, few could boast real crews anymore, those with skills finding work inside the station. The ships themselves? Most had been gutted for any parts worth trading. The station looked the other way when ’siders lined up for rations, but it took something solid in hand to gain medical care, clothing, or simply a pocketful of negotiable dibs for beer.
The haphazard arrangement of ships, combined with their tangled roots into heaved and buckled station
plates, made moving around on the surface tedious at best. Pardell glanced up, checking for traffic on the cable system. Clear. One break today, he told himself, inclined to feel morose.
The cables tethering the largest ships to one another had originally provided private comm feed between their Captains but, as ship systems failed and died—or were scavenged—the cables had become playgrounds and passageways for ’sider children. When those children grew up, they threaded more cable from ship to ship until the black sky loomed behind a web of glittering steel. Along that web, one could slide from one end of the docking ring to the other.
It wasn’t for the faint of heart. Pardell switched off the mag under his left boot, careful not to disturb the placement of that foot against the plate beneath him. There were two large homemade clips on his belt, each attached by its own coil of fine wire to a reinforced loop. Taking one clip in his gloved hand, Pardell opened it so he held a hook, before reaching down to very gently switch off the mag under his right foot. His position had to be just so, his body perfectly symmetrical—
He pushed off gently but firmly, arms outstretched, hook in his left hand, aiming for the uppermost of the set of three cables catching sunlight in fiery streaks overhead. Passed the first. Missed the next by a slim margin; like most of his generation, he was prone to showing off even when alone. There! The hook snapped closed around the third cable.
Pardell’s body kept heading out into the void until stopped by his grip. He used the change in momentum to start his spiraling slide along the cable, heading away from the air lock. The tops of starships swept by beneath him, like the jagged rocks of a dry river. Plenty of ways to die out here without snagging your suit fabric on a rust bucket, Pardell remembered Raner’s lectures, but his awareness of the hazard posed by the ships was at best subconscious; he was too busy watching for the glint of anyone else sliding in his path. Right-of-way mattered, when you were using inertia for propulsion. There were several other space-suited figures in sight, but all were specks beading distant threads.
In the Company of Others Page 5