Godspeed (31 page)

He halted, and inspected me carefully from head to foot. "You've changed, Jay. You look different, and you sound different."

"Never mind that. I haven't had any chance at all to talk privately to Doctor Eileen, and I've got a lot of things I must pass on to her. Will you do it for me?"

"Sure. When I get back up there—as soon as we finish playing around with the drive. What's going on, Jay? Keep it short, I'm expected down below in a few minutes."

Keep it short! I had so much to tell, I hardly knew where to begin. I gabbled at him. Everything. What I had overheard on the
Cuchulain
about the crew's plans, Walter Hamilton's murder on
Paddy's Fortune,
my flight from Sean Wilgus, finding Mel Fury—or being found by her—the interior of
Paddy's Fortune
and the new navigation aid, Mel's arrival on board the
Cuchulain
—

He stopped me at that point. "You mean she's
here.
On board the ship right now?"

"Yes. Nobody knows. I mean, Captain Shaker knows, but no one else. But listen, that's not the main thing. You have to tell Doctor Eileen what Shaker's like—what the whole crew's like. They can't be trusted."

"But you're one of them yourself. You
joined
the crew. Why do that, if they're as bad as you say?"

"I didn't have any choice."

Duncan nodded. "I see."

But he didn't. I could see the doubt on his face. How could anyone be
forced
to work with someone they said was a murderer, and worse? He hadn't heard the crew talking about women, didn't know the threat to Mel.

"I'll tell Doctor Eileen," he said, "everything you've told me. I promise. But I have to be honest with you, Jay. If she were to ask me what she ought to do about it, I wouldn't know what to suggest." In other words, he didn't believe me. He started to move along the stairwell in the direction of the cargo hold. "Now I have to hurry," he said over his shoulder, "before Pat O'Rourke does too much of his 'repair work' without me. The only tool he understands is a hammer. See you down there in a little bit."

He disappeared around the curve of the staircase, with the odd irregular clattering of feet against floor and walls that signaled movement in free-fall.

I stayed where I was, crushed and despondent. The opportunity that I had sought for days had come. And gone. If Duncan West reacted like that to what had happened to me, was Doctor Eileen likely to be any different? It was all very well for Duncan to say that I had changed, but he didn't really think so. He still treated me like a child.

After half a minute I heard the clatter of his footsteps again, and was filled with a new hope. He must have been thinking over what I told him, and decided it was important enough for him to come back and get the details.

The person producing the footsteps came into view, and I had another disappointment. It was not Duncan at all. It was Joe Munroe.

He came steadily up the staircase, and I moved to one side to let him pass. I was too full of my own thoughts to do much more than notice his presence, and I certainly felt no alarm—until he came level with me, grabbed my neck and shoulder, and swung me around hard so that the side of my head smashed against the solid steps.

I was dazed, but I didn't lose consciousness. I heard every word when he said, "Couldn't be better. The perfect time, and the perfect place. Now we can have that bit of a talk I've been wanting."

He was twice my mass, and hardly seemed to notice my struggle to get free. But I must have given him at least a bit of trouble, because he went on, "Not feeling cooperative, eh? Well we can't have that, can we. See if this helps."

I felt myself being swung around in the air again, faster than ever. This time I don't know what piece of the
Cuchulain
tested its strength on my skull, and if Joe Munroe said anything to me, I can't report it.

I vanished into space. I didn't see even a single star.

* * *

It was a point of pride with me that I had never thrown up in free-fall. But I came close to it when I swam back to consciousness.

It was my head that
hurt,
dull throbbing pressure all around my skull. Yet it was rolling nausea in my stomach that caused me the most distress. I knew that any movement at all would finish me off and I hung motionless with my eyes closed, feeling thoroughly sorry for myself.

Joe Munroe didn't offer a scrap of sympathy. I can't have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, and he still had me by the neck. He gave a vicious squeeze, and I gasped.

"That's better," he said. "Don't pretend you're not awake. Now, if you know what's good for you, you're going to answer a few questions. Don't move, either, or I'll whack you a good one next time." He shook me, as though I was a child's doll. "Let's talk about
Paddy's Fortune.
You found things there, didn't you, and never told us?"

It's easy to talk about being brave, and a lot harder to do it. "Yes," I whispered. I didn't want him to hit me again.

"And this is one of the things you found, right? Come on, open your eyes and look.
Right now.
Unless you want me to pop your eyeballs out of your skull and make you swallow them."

I blinked my eyes open. My dizziness increased. The stairway swam around me, and I had trouble focusing. Joe Munroe held me easily in one huge hand. In the other he had something, a hazy pink outline. It gradually became clearer.

"Yes." The grip on my neck was so tight I could hardly work my vocal cords. "That's—that's it."

Joe Munroe was holding Mel's strange flashlight, the one that produced a beam from its empty middle.

"I knew it!" he snorted. " 'Crew member' be damned. You might have Shaker taken in, he's going soft. But you don't fool Joe Munroe. It's the way I said it would be. Treasure finds, and you tried to keep them for yourself." He shook me again, and new pain jolted through my head. "Well, you're going to lose the lot. Come on. Before you're done you're going to show me where you've hid every blessed one of 'em."

He didn't ask me to walk, but towed me along behind him. My elbows and knees banged painfully against the sides of the stairway and the corridor. In my general misery it was a while before I realized where he was taking me.

To my own quarters. To where Mel was hidden. He was going—with my forced assistance—to search the whole place for objects taken from
Paddy's Fortune.

I couldn't let that happen. I clenched my teeth, closed my eyes, and thrust my hand into my right-hand pocket. Walter Hamilton's gun was there, as it should be. Loaded.

I knew what had to be done. I had to bring the pistol out, thumb away the safety guard, and shoot.

I couldn't miss. The gun was fully charged, it could rapid-fire over a hundred super-dense pellets, each smaller than a pea. They would expand and explode on impact, any one of them enough to kill.

I tried to bring my hand out of my pocket. And couldn't do it. I had never fired a gun in my life, but that wasn't the problem. I was too afraid of Joe Munroe, too afraid of what he would do to me if I tried to hurt him—and failed.

And then my best chance was gone. We had reached the door of my quarters. Munroe changed his grip, twisting my arm so it came out of my pocket and went up behind my back. He forced it higher, until I thought my shoulder would rip out of its socket.

"Unlock it." His breath was wheezing at the back of my neck. "Quick."

"My arm . . ."

"You've got two." He gave another jerk and twist. "Use the other one. Do it!"

I pawed at the combination left-handed, the ciphers blurring in front of my eyes. As I was working, Munroe every second or two lifted my pinned arm an agonizing fraction of an inch higher. When the door finally opened, I felt more relief than worry. Mel might be waiting inside, but at least he was easing his grip.

She wasn't there. The living-room was empty. I had a sudden wild hope that she had done what she wasn't supposed to do—gone roaming.

Joe Munroe didn't waste time. He slammed the door shut, took one quick look at the room's simple layout, and swung me around to face him. "All right. Where's the stuff?"

"There isn't any." My voice cracked in mid-phrase when I saw his glaring eyes. But before that I must have glanced over to the door of the bedroom, because he grunted and gave me a backhand swat across the side of the head. It was hard enough to send me face-first into the metal frame of a swivel chair.

"There better had be. Or you'll breathe vacuum." He went to the inner door and yanked it open.

I could hardly bear to watch. Even if Mel crouched down by the bunks there was no way to hide from a searcher for more than a few seconds.

She didn't even try. Whatever Joe Munroe was expecting, it wasn't what he got. Mel must have realized there was big trouble on the way when she heard his voice. She came diving out of the door as it opened, and her head rammed Munroe square in the belly. He gave a
whoosh
and doubled over. Mel followed it up with both fists swung hard into his face.

She was doing a hell of a lot better than I had, but it wasn't enough. Munroe was three times her mass, as tough as all the spacers seemed to be, and used to both free-fall and rough-housing.

As her fists came away from his face he grabbed her wrists, crushing both of them in his left hand. She gasped in pain, raised her legs, and bent her back. Then she used the extra leverage of his grip to straighten and kick him in the belly. He didn't make a sound—maybe he had no air left in him—but he let go of her wrists. As she tried to pull away his right hand snapped forward to fix on her shoulder, turning her so she could not kick again.

Mel twisted. Cloth ripped. She broke free, leaving part of her shirt in Joe Munroe's paw. The force of her movement carried her back against the wall.

There was a long, still moment. Mel was panting. Munroe was doubled over in the middle of the room, hands across his belly. I crouched useless by the door, just as I had been since they began to fight. After a moment Munroe grunted, straightened, and glared across at Mel.

He seemed ready to come at her again when his face changed. I could see why. With a shirt on and her cropped hair, Mel might pass for a boy. But with arms, shoulder, and one budding breast laid bare, deception was impossible.

"Well, now," Joe Munroe said in a stupefied voice. He was staring at Mel's pink nipple, oblivious to everything else. "Well, now. Here's a surprise. Black Paddy was right after all."

He was easing forward toward Mel, wary of any sign of attack from her. Mel didn't try to fight. I couldn't see his expression, but she crouched with her back to the wall and crossed her arms over her body. Munroe reached out, snagged the top of her pants with two thick fingers, and ripped them down. He reached out to grab Mel.

And I, finally, was able to move. I reached into my pocket and dragged out Walter Hamilton's gun. My fingers trembled as I brought my other hand across and thumbed away the safety guard.

I could not shoot—not with Joe Munroe and Mel right in line with each other. I pushed myself off to one side and braced against the door. She was out of the line of fire and I had a clear view of his left side and chest.

And then, I guess—though I don't remember doing it—I fired.

I had the gun on single clip. A stream of eight pellets released one after another but so closely spaced that they sounded like one shot, hit Munroe. They expanded on impact and left coin-sized round holes in his shoulder, arm, and back.

The momentum pushed him back. He turned around and stared at me, a strange expression of surprise in his eyes. I thought for a moment that he was going to come at me, because he didn't crumple or drop. Then I realized that he wouldn't, not in free-fall. And a moment later I knew that Joe Munroe was dead or dying. He was drifting gaping-mouthed off the floor while drops of his blood floated around the cabin, marking whatever they touched.

That was when I ruined the free-fall record of which I had been so proud. With Mel looking on wide-eyed and panting, and Joe Munroe's body no more than a few feet away, I curled up in midair. I closed my eyes. And I vomited every scrap of food that lay within my uneasy stomach.

CHAPTER 24

"Call me in an emergency," Doctor Eileen had said.

This was an emergency if anything ever could be. I sent a
Priority Service
message to the cleaning system and hit the line to Level One. She was, thank Heaven, in her quarters.

"It's me," I blurted out when she answered. "I've killed Joseph Munroe." Compared with that, nothing else was important.

"Jay?" Eileen Xavier's voice was sharp. "No good going into hysterics. Calm down."

"I can't. Can you come?"

"I'm on my way. Right now."

The line went dead. I wondered if Danny Shaker, busy with the drive unit at the other end of the ship, was monitoring calls from me to Doctor Eileen. It didn't much matter, because there was no way to keep from him what had happened. I might claim self-defense, but Joe Munroe hadn't been attacking me when I shot him. And I couldn't say I had been defending Mel, because if I did the crew would learn that I had been hiding her.

Considering her narrow escape, the latest arrival on the
Cuchulain
was far calmer than me. Mel had put her torn clothing back into place as best she could, and now she was studying the little cleaning machines as they flew about the cabin, pursuing and absorbing horrible globs of blood and vomit.

"How do they know?" she said. "I mean, how do they know to clean up the mess, but they don't clean up
him?
" She pointed to Joe Munroe's body.

I stared at her in disbelief. Mel must have understood what Joe Munroe planned to do to her, and my performance before I shot him can't have given her much confidence that I'd have been any help at all. But she showed no signs of fear—and not even of disgust.

"Same way they don't try to clean
us
up," I said. It was good to think about something abstract. "Template matching. Shape recognition programs. Thermal signatures. They have programs for those."