But Potter hadn't meant the crew of the Fast Eddie. He had read the discovery team's preliminaries on the moon of the Byers' Star gas giant, and he had been thinking about the people who would someday have to live there.
Now the Fast Eddie had arrived; the crew began the long preparations that would culminate, however reluctantly, with the first extended visit of men to her surface, and Potter's mood shifted into the low gear of indigestion.
"Pack your long underwear, boys," Owens pronounced, and transferred the last of the orbital survey data to the Fast Eddie's shuttle computers. He turned at a chuckle from Connolly. "What?"
"Oh, just thinking about all the things people have said wouldn't happen 'til hell froze over." The Officer pointed to a screen rippling with ground images and overlaid with environmental data. "They're all down there waiting for us right now."
"Cheery thought."
"All right, knock it off," Potter's admonition was quiet, almost weary; but not without a tinge of sincerity. Cat's Eye's moon was a NEW PLACE, words that filled the captain's mind in large block letters, black as death. Too many names were entered in Wayforth's Mariner's Hall as having never returned from NEW PLACES, and Potter had no intention of adding any more familiar names to that list, least of all his own. His temper was short, anyway; it was no longer possible to avoid going and speaking to Miller.
The eighth man of the Fast Eddie's complement was not, strictly speaking, a crew member. Robert Miller was listed on the Fast Eddie's first-ever passenger manifest as a "CoDominium Xeno-Geologist. While not welcomed by anyone since the day Hogan had forced him upon the Fast Eddie's crew, Miller had made himself as unobtrusive as possible during the long flight from Wayforth, earning a grudging acceptance from the others that was best described as belligerent neutrality. Besides a gift for chess, he contributed nothing to the ship's activities and took what Potter considered to be more than his share of food and oxygen; Miller was an irredeemable athlete, given to spending eight hours or more in the Fast Eddie's centrifuge ring and eating like a horse afterward.
Half a G seemed never to be enough for Miller, and Potter had three times found the rotation setting increased beyond its long-term design limits. He'd finally ordered Liu to program a lock-out on the ring's controls, and Miller had sullenly acquiesced.
Gripping the handholds above his seat, Potter pulled himself up and kicked off in the direction of the bridge door, continuing the zero-G acrobatics as he proceeded down the corridor to the living quarters module of the Fast Eddie. At the last door he floated to a stop and tapped the button.
"Yes." The voice from within was no less flat for being filtered through a wall speaker.
Don't say "come in" or anything civil, Potter thought. Asshole. "We're taking the shuttle down in about an hour. Bring your gear and come to the launch bay when you're rea-
Potter was cut off by the rapidly opened hatch, revealing in all his glory Robert Miller, Company Man. Miller was already wearing E-Suit underwear and had a golfbagsized canvas carry-all slung over his shoulder. "Excuse me," he said as he moved past Potter into the corridor.
Potter noticed the slippery grace with which the man moved as he insinuated himself into the gangway and moved off in the direction of the launch bay. "Insinuated" himself, Potter thought. That's a good word for it, that's what he's done since the first day we laid eyes on him.
"He's a part of your contract." Hogan was adamant.
"Then the contract's broken; no non-union, non-essential civilian personnel on Survey vessels, for their own safety and that of the crew." Potter felt his blood pressure rising; he was doing all of Farrow's fighting for him again, and it always gave him a migraine.
"You'll bear no responsibility for him."
"Damn right, 'cause he's not going to be aboard."
Hogan sighed deeply. "Potter, there are Company operatives aboard every ship in the Survey Fleet. You and I both know that, so let's cut the bull, shall we? At least this way you know who yours is. Miller goes with you."
"What the hell for, Hogan? We're a Survey vessel, we can't file any claims if something valuable is found anyway."
"You're forgetting the most important thing about the Byers' Star moon. Its value as a dumping ground for undesirables. What happens if those undesirables turn over a rock one day and find a vein of gold?"
"You've got a lot of rich undesirables, so what?"
"Money is commerce, and commerce means representation in the CoDominium Senate."
Potter rubbed his eyes in weariness. "Rich undesirables who vote, right, I get it. Can't be having that, now, can we?"
Hogan shook his head and pressed a button on his desk. "I'm glad we understand each other. Eve, send in Mister Miller."
When Miller entered, Hogan had introduced him to Potter and Farrow, each man had nodded, and none of them had spoken another word to each other. With few exceptions, their first meeting with Miller that day had set the tone for all Potter's future conversations with the man. Which, he considered, watching Miller's back receding down the corridor, was just the way he liked it.
Potter returned to the bridge, allowing First Officer Connolly and Navigator Owens to head for the shuttle bay to make the pre-flight check.
He sat down with a surly grunt as they left, thinking how glad he would be when this was all over.
"Shuttle One to Bridge."
Potter acknowledged. From the shuttle bay, Connolly and Owens began calling off the pre-launch checklist in bored tones that belied their interest in the shuttle's operating status.
Alone among Fast Eddie's accouterments, at least one of her two shuttles was always kept in perfect working order. They had to be: Fast Eddie might not be much, but it was the only way home, and getting back to the lumbering Survey ship waiting in orbit was only slightly less important than landing in one piece after leaving her.
Giving them the final green light, Potter threw the switches which detached the shuttle from its umbilicals. The squat, ungainly form drop away slowly from Fast Eddie's forward ventral bay, dwindling in the dark distance, finally backlit by the bright flare of its engines as it moved into its descent pattern.
"God speed," Captain Potter said quietly. But for himself, the bridge was empty now, and lonely. Along with the First Officer and Navigator, the shuttle carried Ike, several hundred pounds of survey equipment, and Miller himself, stuffed unceremoniously and uncomplaining into an emergency deceleration hammock. Potter found himself envying the Company man even that. It would have been reckless to leave Farrow to oversee the operations of the vessel, and Chief Engineer Liu had enough to keep him and his remaining engineering lackey busy for months.
Potter sat back in the command seat, considering how much he hated being left behind, and how lonely the long trip home would be if anything went wrong down there.
The idea of things going wrong inevitably brought Potter's thoughts back to Miller.
The man was no more than a Company spy, Hogan had admitted as much; had admitted too that Miller's job was to be sure that Byers' Star's moon had nothing of sufficient value to prevent its designation as a relocation site for BuReloc.
Potter rubbed his chin. All debts forgiven and a free ride for the Fast Eddie; if Hogan's on the level, then BuReloc is putting an awful lot of effort into getting a man out here just to verify that a place is worthless to the CoDominium government.
"Right," Potter grunted. But in the last year, he'd had many opportunities to go over the available data on the moon, and there was nothing there to imply that it was anything more than an interesting exception in the Biosphere Rulebook.
Still. .
He was nervously chewing the inside of one cheek when the shuttle crashed.
"Fast Eddie, this is Shuttle One down, mayday."
"Give it a rest for a moment, won't you?" Connolly's voice was weary as he massaged his temples, eyes closed.
Owens stared at his screens in tightly controlled terror. "Fast Eddie's probably in farside orbit f
rom us right now; goddammit, I must've told Potter a hundred times to recheck those relay satellites."
"Well, he didn't, we don't have them, so if Fast Eddie's in farside orbit right now, we can't talk to them." Connolly opened a panel on his own console and distractedly pushed a few buttons.
"It's dead, for chrissakes," Owens surrendered in disgust. "Leave it alone." His own board confirmed his judgment that all the shuttle's port side controls were inoperative. They'd landed very hard and with a lot of noise, and every screen monitoring the port systems had gone dark the same moment that the shuttle had developed an ominous, sickly list to that side.
Ike arrived with the results of his inboard systems inspection; the shuttle was small, and it hadn't taken him long to ascertain that an outside inspection was necessary.
"Christ on a crutch." Owens' voice tightened by the minute as he struggled out of his seat against the unfamiliar gravity. "Well, that should make Miller happy."
"Miller?" Connolly frowned. "We've an emergency here, Owens; we can't have him toddling outside on a whim while we're trying to perform damage assessments."
"Oh? Why the hell not? He's going to be useless as tits on a bull, and it'll keep him out of the way while we work."
Owens was at the door when Connolly added: "Look, Owens, I can't say I've much use for the fellow myself; but we can't spare anyone to buddy with him; what happens if he wanders off and gets lost, or hurt?"
"Who cares?" Owens mumbled without turning around.
Thomas Farrow, Owner and Master Aboard of the Fast Eddie, stared at the screens with great, sad owl eyes. He'd posted himself to the bridge immediately upon hearing of the shuttle crash.
Pausing only long enough to drop three tabs of Hangover-Be-Gone, Potter uncharitably thought.
Potter had found his temper shortening with every discovery of a new dimension of his own impotence to affect the crisis. He had just learned that the second shuttle was inoperative; there could be no rescue from that quarter. Farrow had neglected to schedule its hundred-hour check, and Potter had found a dozen problems that were sufficient to ground it for full overhaul. He sighed again. But it wasn't Farrow's fault that they had no relay satellites; Potter had made the mistake of trusting Hogan's word on that one, and his ulcer was exacting payment for that folly, now.
Shuttle One was out of contact every ninety minutes for an equal amount of time as the Fast Eddie's painfully slow orbit carried her around the far side of the Byers' Star moon. Even when directly the landing zone-Potter had forced the words "crash site" back from his mind so many times he'd lost count-the static generated by the gas giant, Cat's Eye, was enough to make an unholy mess out of communications.
"We're coming over the horizon again," Farrow said in a low voice.
Potter grunted acknowledgment. He had a feeling that Owens and Connolly were tiring of his demand for updates every hour and a half.
Too bad. He began calling for the shuttle.
"It's just great, that's all," Owens' voice was borne on a wave of interference, but the communications filters were doing their job well enough. "This place is a regular garden spot. Two hours outside in thin air with thin coats, and what's waiting inside but thin coffee. Anyway. it looks like we put down over a frost heave covered by snow; solid ground beneath one leg and lots of air three feet under the surface beneath the other. This whole area is a swamp marsh frozen solid for the winter. The landing leg collapsed and the whole weight of the shuttle came down on the port lift thrusters. They're half-buried, so I'd guess they're shot. Ike shakes his head a lot when I ask him how we can repair them, then he makes lifting gestures and shrugs."
"I've got Liu working on the other shuttle," Potter said. "Can't say for sure what we can accomplish, but we'll keep you posted."
"Yeah, right. Listen, Connolly wants to talk to you."
"Put him on."
"Emmett? It's about Miller."
Potter heard Owens bitching in the background at the mention of the BuReloc man's name. "What is it? What's he done now?"
"Well, the damn fool's gone off and started his bloody survey on his own. So far he's stayed in sight of the shuttle, but that's not the point."
Potter shook his head. Miller was utterly inconsequential, now, but he wanted to give Connolly and Owens something to take their minds off the strong likelihood that they would become the moon's first permanent human residents. "Is he any use to you there?" Potter asked. "In the repairs, I mean?"
He heard Owens shout "No!" in the background.
"No," Connolly admitted, "but it's damned dangerous. It's cold as a witch's tit out there, with snow to boot. If he falls and kills himself, we'll have to answer to the Bureau of Relocation for it."
"To hell with the Bureau right now, Brian," Potter said. "And to hell with Miller. Let him play with his drills and ore samples. We'll need all that data anyway, once we get you fellas orbit-capable again and ready to come home."
And if we don't get you orbit-capable, you won't be coming home, so it won't matter then, either.
There was a long silence. "Right," Connolly said finally. "Got it, Emmett. See if you can't-" Connolly's voice faded out.
"Orbital path," Farrow said. "We're losing them again."
Potter boosted the signal. "Passing on, guys. Talk to you again in an hour and a half. Edward V out."
He leaned back against the chair's zero-G harness and tapped the console distractedly, looking out at the surreal patterns of the Cat's-Eye gas giant. "Tom, what's the latest on that storm front?"
Farrow turned to another screen. "Weather patterns on this rock are pretty strange, Emmett. Looks like they're tied in closely with the long full-night cycle, when one half of the moon is without light from either the system primary or the gas giant. The valley they're in is due for that night in about ten standard days."
Potter stared at the sepia-toned mass of gaseous soup outside, the horizon of the satellite a gray crescent along the top of the port. The moon's proximity to its parent world allowed enough radiant heat to compensate for its distance from the system primary, but the heavy gravity of the gas giant denied the Fast Eddie any chance of making geosynchronous orbit over her downed shuttle. They could only circle helplessly, and wait.
"Sit and spin," Potter said.
And pray.
A clipboard floated through the bridge hatch, followed by the clambering form of Chief Engineer Liu. "Emmett, we might have a solution to our problem."
"Well, amen, Chief."
"Huh?"
"Nothing, go ahead."
"Okay, here's a list of what's wrong with Shuttle Two, and here's what I can reasonably expect to fix in the next eight days."
Potter scrolled through the datapad screens, grunting occasionally as he passed items of interest. "That's great, Chief, but these are all quick fixes, and none of them bring the shuttle up to full spec."
"Well, no. But all together, they'll get Shuttle Two down in one piece, guaranteed."
"Well, hell, Chief, we've got one shuttle down there, practically in one piece; our problem is how to get that one back up."
"Relax, Emmett. The idea is we take the second shuttle down filled with as much repair equipment as it will carry, land it near Shuttle One, and then cannibalize the second shuttle for parts to fix the first. Ditch Shuttle One's ground car to save the weight of the extra crewmen and-" Liu wafted a hand toward the ceiling-"bring our boys home before the snow falls."
Potter looked at the Engineer for a moment, then went back to the datapad. "Nice work, Bill," he finally said in a small voice. He turned to Farrow. "Tom? You're Master Aboard, and we are talking about throwing away several hundred thousand New Dollars' worth of equipment."
Farrow shook his head in dismissal. "Don't be ridiculous. Those are our men down there." He gave a faint smile. "Besides, the CoDominium is picking up the bill, right? Let's think of this as an opportunity to stick them for all the taxes they've gouged us for over the years. Go ahead, Chief Engineer Liu. A
nd don't spare the horses."
Robert Miller snatched at his flapping face mask, catching it before the wind could make off with it. He refastened it beneath his hood, and gave Ike a thumbs-up, after which both men returned to the task of lowering the shuttle's bay ramp into the thin snow covering the alien ground.
The shuttle had come down in the plains in the northeastern corner of a great equatorial valley. Surrounded for thousands of miles by soaring mountains, the resulting large, enclosed land mass was about the size of Earth's continental United States, and enjoyed the highest air pressure on the moon; close to that of Earth at fourteen thousand feet above sea level. Which made it just about tolerable if you were a mountain climber.
Which Miller was. He'd been on climbs on a dozen worlds, mostly on BuReloc business, but frequently for sport. That expertise had been the major reason for his assignment as the CoDominium's man on this survey mission. Thin air was not usually a problem for him, nor cold, but he most definitely did not wish to stay on this moon any longer than necessary; certainly not for the rest of his life. The shuttle crash had inspired his mind into a protective overdrive, and he'd thrown himself into his work with a fierce abandon.
Still, he'd learned all he could from his samples here on the plains. He needed to get to the foothills to look for exposed ore, and that meant he needed the ground car. Owens and Connolly had shown no interest whatsoever in anything he did, and that was fine with him. This Ike fellow was less obnoxious, and had readily agreed to help him with this much, at least.
Miller had noticed that Ike was largely unaffected by the thin air, and the cold as well. Obviously the fellow was of terrestrial mountain stock, but Miller had very little to do with anyone on the trip out here, and still less with Ike or Mike. He'd guessed Greece, or perhaps Turkey, but unlike the rest of the crew, Miller had made the connection between minor ship malfunctions and implications of Spanish ancestry for Ike and Mike. He might guess at their background, but he said nothing. He wondered if this Ike was the Company man aboard the Fast Eddie; his control officer had warned him there was certain to be one, despite BuReloc's efforts to get him out here on a "clean" ship.
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