Rimrunners Read Online Free PDF

something up."
    "No meds. Please. Please, ma'am."
    "Stay here."
    Nan left. Bet sat and sipped the coca. It hurt her cut mouth; the sugar made a
    loose tooth ache. She held the cup in both hands, trying not to panic, watching
    toward the glass-walled corridor where the back offices were, trying not to
    think about phones and security and the restroom last night.
    But her heart was beating in hard, painful beats, enough to make her dizzy when
    Ely came back with Nan and looked down at her. "Wall, huh? You look like hell,
    Yeager."
    "Yes, sir."
    He looked at her a long while. Arms folded. He said, "I want to talk to you in
    my office."
    "Yes, sir," she said. She put the cup down on the counter. "Thank you," she said
    to Nan, but, "Bring it," Ely said. So she did, as she followed him down the
    corridor and into his office.
    He sat. She sat, the cup warming her hands.
    "You all right?" he asked.
    She nodded.
    "You report it?"
    She shook her head.
    "You get robbed?"
    "Nothing to steal," she said.
    "Are you all right?" he asked again, which she guessed finally in a stationer's
    delicate way meant had she been raped.
    "I'm fine," she said. "Just a disagreement. Damn drunk and I crossed paths."
    God, if he or Nan put it together with the morning news—"I just wasn't walking
    very steady last night. He shoved me. I cussed him. I hit the wall. I went out.
    He apologized. Bought me breakfast."
    Ely looked as if he doubted her. He looked at her a long time. Then: "Where are
    you staying?"
    She thought, desperately. A year since anyone had asked that. She remembered the
    name of the bar. "Rico's. Good an address as any."
    "You staying there?"
    "I get my mail there."
    "Who writes to you?"
    She shrugged. The heartbeat was doing doubletime. But Ely didn't have to help.
    Ely didn't have to hand out a cred-chit to a down-and-gone spacer. He didn't
    have to call a woman friend in when he talked to her, all proper, so she could
    read his signals, that it wasn't her he was after, that he was trying to do a
    good deed. That kind was scarce on station docks. "Nobody," she said. "But if
    someone did, it'd be there. If something came in."
    He just looked at her. Finally: "You do the trash-sorts. You run errands. You
    sign in every morning and you make sure you look like a client otherwise, if
    somebody's here besides Nan and me. I don't want Personnel to see you. If
    somebody comes in and you get caught in the back hall, just make like you were
    going to the restroom."
    She nodded. She sat back in the back room and sorted the trash for recycling.
    She weighed it out and she noted the weight on each bundle because sometimes the
    cyclers cheated you. She'd heard that about Thule the first day she was
    onstation.
    Mainday noon she got her cred-chit from Ely and she went to a sit-down
    restaurant and had another bowl of soup.
    That night she went back to Rico's and Terry, his last name was Ritterman,
    bought her a beer and a cup of chowder.
    He took her into the back then. She undressed, she said she had to wash her
    clothes, so he got her a bucket and she scrubbed her jumpsuit and her underwear
    and hung them to dry over the heat-vent. He came up behind her while she was
    doing that and put his hands on her. Without saying anything. She let him. She
    let him pull her down on the floor and he still wanted to touch her, that was
    all, while she shut her eyes or stared at the ceiling, and finally somebody came
    in out front, so he swore and went out to see about that.
    She turned over and wrapped up in the rug and went to sleep for a while before
    he came back and woke her up, turning her over again and starting in.
    Customers came in. He was gone a while. He came back and he got down again and
    she thought he must've been a long time without, he'd wear out finally and maybe
    go to sleep or let her sleep the rest of the night. But he never did.
    She got dressed in the morning, he bought her breakfast. He wanted her to come
    to his apartment. "I got to