Devil to the Belt (v1.1) Read Online Free PDF

tell the company sorry, they hadn’t been able to help that.
    Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe he shouldn’t care any longer. He was tired, he hurt, body and soul, and living took more work than he was sure he wanted to spend again on anything. He had no idea how long and how far a run was still in front of him getting home. He didn’t think he could stand being treated like this all the way. Everything smelled of disinfectant, and sometimes it was his ship and sometimes it was theirs.
    But Cory never answered him wherever he was, and at times he knew she wouldn’t.
    The old man drifted up into his sight again, put a straw in his mouth and told him to drink. He did. It tasted of copper. The old man asked him what had happened to his partner. Then he remembered—how could he have forgotten?—that she was out there and that ship was, he could see it coming—
    “No!” he cried, and winced when it hit, he knew it was going to hit, the collision alert was screaming. He yelled into the mike, “My partner’s out there!” because it was the last thing he could think of to tell them.
    “Your partner’s dead!” somebody yelled at him, and another voice, angry, yelled, “Shut up, dammit, Ben! You got no damn feelings, give the guy a chance. God!”
    He was still alive and he did not understand how he had survived. He hauled himself to the radio, he held on against the spin as long as he had strength. “Cory,” he called on the suit-com frequency, over and over again, while the ship tumbled. Maybe she answered. His ears rang so he couldn’t hear the fans or the pumps. But he kept calling her name, so she would know he was alive and looking for her, that he’d get help to her somehow…
    As soon as he could get the damned engines to fire.
    Or as soon as he could get hold of Base and make that ship out there answer him…
    Ben said, “We’re
due
salvage rights, whether he’s company or a freerunner, no legal difference. It’s right in the company rules, I’ll show you—”
    Bird said, carefully, because he wanted Ben to understand him: “We’ll get compensated.”
    “Maritime law since—”
    “There’s the law and there’s what’s right, Ben.”
    “
Right
is, we own that ship, Bird. He wasn’t in control of it, that’s what
right
says.”
    Ben was short of breath. He was yelling. Bird said, calmly, sanely, “I’m trying to tell you, there’s a lot of complications here. Let’s just calm down. We’ve got weeks yet back to Base, plenty of time to figure this out, and we’ll talk about it. But we’re not getting any damn where if we don’t get our figures in and tell Mama to get us the hell home. Fast.”
    “So how much are you going to spend on this guy?. A month’s worth of food? Medical supplies? We’re going to bust our ass and risk our rigging for this guy?”
    Bird had no answer. He couldn’t think of one to cut this off.
    “This is my money too, Bird. It’s my money you’re spending. Maybe you own this ship, maybe I’m just a part-share partner, but I have some say here.” Ben flung a gesture toward Dekker, aft. “That guy’s going to live or he’s going to die. In either case he’s going to do it before the month is up. Much as I want to be rid of him, there’s no need busting our tails—we have double mass to move, Bird, and hell if I’m dumping the sling—”
    “All right, we’re not dumping the sling. Not ours, not his either, if we can avoid it.”
    “And we’re not putting any hard push on the rigging. There’s no point in risking our necks. Or putting wear on the pins and the lines. We don’t call this a life-and-death. We can’t cut that much time off. And hell if I want to meet a rock the way this guy did.”
    It made better sense than a lot else Ben had been saying. Bird took that for hopeful and nodded. “I’ll go with you on that. A hard push could do more harm than good for him, too.”
    “Guy’s going to die anyway.”
    “He’s not going to die,” Bird