In the Company of Others (64 page)

The FDs could have kept them imprisoned simply by locking the access doors to the waist.
This
, Gail hoped,
gave them another option.

Mind you, she hadn't realized how far the tether could stretch between the two spheres of the ship.
Or that it would look so insubstantial against the night side of Pardell's World. The command sphere was so distant, she couldn't make out any detail beyond its round glow.

She tried to imagine it looked welcoming.

“We're going to take over the ship?” Aaron asked, paying her the compliment of not making that sound as silly as it could have. “We could use Malley.”

Gail looked at the stationer's suit, hanging on the wall. He'd made it into the 'lock with their gear—something she hadn't dared doubt. “Nothing that dramatic. This is a kidnapping.”

“Which of us is the kidnapper?” he asked, logically enough.

“Both. Neither. Can you do it?” Gail was feeling less sure of this plan every second they stood looking out.

Instead of a reassuring answer, Aaron bent down and switched on his mags before unclipping himself from the door ring. “Wait here,” he said, then walked out and over the edge of the air lock.

Gail held on to the ring with one hand as well as the tether, feeling as though she'd fall out if she didn't despite the gravity of the air lock floor. After what seemed too long, Aaron's gloved hands overlapped the door's edge and he flipped himself back inside, catching the door ring with one hand. “No problem.”

No problem
, Gail repeated to herself.

Aaron unclipped her tether from the door ring and attached it to his own belt, then pulled out the clamps he used for sliding and leaned out, as if judging distance. When she went to switch on her mags in order to walk on the outer hull, he stopped her. “You won't need those.” He hit the automatic lock, and the air lock's outer door began closing.

“I won't?” Before Gail could more than ask, Aaron pulled them both out into space, pushing off with an unusual twist to his body that belied the awkward mass of the suit, sending them flying.

Gail gasped and fought against vertigo as their momentum changed in an instant and they began whirling around a center point.

“Look at me. Not the cable. Gail! Look at me.”

She forced open her eyes, finding herself helmet to helmet with Aaron. His face, lit from below, was concerned but calm, as if her reaction mattered more than this lazy spiraling into the void. “We're going to die,” she said firmly, in case he'd missed the point.

“Not at the moment,” he countered. “Relax and enjoy the ride—it's not going to be long. This cable's pretty taut.”

Ride?
She cautiously looked away from him, at where they were going.

True, they were spinning around, but centered around the clamp in Aaron's right hand, that clamp wrapped around a wrist-thick cable—all that remained of the waist. She was looking where they'd been, the science sphere glowing in its own lights.

They'd jumped to bypass the waist's conveyer system, she realized, seeing the folded mass retracted against the smooth hull. She looked back at his face. “Nice catch,” she said, pleased her voice didn't break over the words.

Hard to tell through the helmet, but she thought Aaron looked sheepish. “You said time was an issue. Climbing over the collar—it would have taken a while.”

“And it was more fun leaping out into space.”

“There's that.” His smile was pure, heart-stopping mischief. “You sound like a 'sider.”

“I don't spend all my time in the lab,” she responded. Perhaps it was the sensation of spinning, holding on to one another, that made everything else fall away, leaving them in this comforting intimacy. It was as real as it was temporary. “How do we land?”

“Stay with me,” he said, sounding supremely confident.

That's the plan
, Gail said to herself.

She'd find out soon enough what Aaron thought of it.

WHEN Malley didn't know what to think about something—or someone—he took the ambivalence as a personal affront. He liked things clear, logical, and slotted into categories.
Probably why he'd lasted so long on the recycling floor.

Gail Smith stubbornly refused to fit.

Each time he had her figured out, she'd change.
The only thing consistent about the damned woman.

“Stationer.”

Malley rolled his eyes up. He'd noticed Sazaad easing in his direction through the small groups dotting the dining lounge. Until the all-clear came from the lab, there wasn't much for anyone but the biohaz team to do. Most of the science staff had succumbed to exhaustion and gone to their quarters, but there were always those who had to talk their way past an emergency. Some, like Malley, were more interested in a meal that wasn't prewrapped.

He wasn't interested in the obnoxious Earther. “I'm busy.”

Sazaad smiled as if he'd expected nothing better, but prudently lowered himself to the end of the curved bench farthest from Malley. “Obviously. But if you could fit me into your schedule, it would be of advantage to your friend.”

“The dead one,” Malley said.

Sazaad raised an elegant brow. “I stand by my findings of the time. However, if I'd pursued the course suggested by our delectable Dr. Smith sooner, my machine would have doubtless confirmed what you—believed.” His lips curled over the last word, as if it was something Sazaad found reprehensible.

Malley leaned back, pushing aside the table so he could bring one foot up on the bench between them, resting his forearm on the knee. He stared at Sazaad across this barrier. The man looked insufferably proud of himself.
More insufferably proud than usual.

“Do you have anything to say I'm going to care about, Earther?” he asked, keeping it polite—marginally.

“I am, of course, limited to what you can comprehend and I can say in a public place,” the other said with an equal effort. Malley was quite sure the man remembered—and didn't forgive—being manhandled in the lab. He was also sure the failure of the cog screen device rankled even more.

“That should make it nice and short,” Malley returned, reaching for his glass. They didn't—or wouldn't—serve alcohol in this lounge, but he'd found Scotch dissolved invisibly in orange juice. It didn't taste any worse than Sammie's brew. Which wasn't saying much.

“Here.” Sazaad produced a silvered flask from an inside pocket. “We can be enemies tomorrow, Malley.” He took a swallow from the flask, then passed it to the stationer. Malley waited long enough for Sazaad's face to grow clouded, then put down his glass and took the flask.

The mouthful was cold, sweet, and thick—with a promising burn down the throat. Malley passed it back. “Fine. Enemies tomorrow. So what advantage are you talking about?”

“Your friend will want to hear this. Where is he?” the Earther asked slyly. “And our good Doctor Smith?”

“Catching up on some sleep or working on the Quill—how should I know? Grant's people don't exactly keep me briefed, you may have noticed.”

“I don't doubt you know more than the rest of us, Stationer,” Sazaad laughed, offering the flask again. Malley refused. “Keep your secrets, then. What I have to tell you—” he took another, deeper drag on the flask, “—you don't want anyone else to learn first.”

Malley took a casual look around. They were tucked into one of several alcoves within the lounge. The room seemed designed to encourage quiet conversations, although from what Aisha had told him, those conversations weren't to be considered private.

The Earthers allowed an obscene amount of interference in their lives
, Malley decided.

“Let's take a walk.”

Sazaad had been right. This wasn't something Malley wanted anyone else to know—not before Aaron, at least. Unfortunately, thanks to Gail, he didn't know where they were. He assumed they hadn't stayed inside the air lock, but that didn't worry him. Outside was Aaron's turf.

Sazaad's machine's failure—might as well call it a personal failure, because that was how the man had taken it—had driven him to work nonstop on the problem Gail had posed to him. He wouldn't say if she'd given him the blueprint or simply shown him a possible direction, but it didn't matter.

Their walk had taken them to Sazaad's own quarters—a choice Malley approved when he discovered they did have something in common: a loathing of being watched. While Sazaad swept the room for what he called “Grant's toys,” Malley had amused himself by going through the man's vid collection. No surprises, there. Gail's estimation of the scientist's personal preoccupation was accurate.

Her estimation of his genius was equally so. Sazaad had literally rebuilt his apparatus to do something totally new, testing it by running through data obtained from the week of testing on Aaron. It no longer measured cognitive function through the electrical activity of various parts of the brain.

Now it measured something much less tangible. Emotion.

Back in his own quarters, Malley looked at his hand, examining the network of blood vessels where it slipped close to the skin to bypass barriers of ligament and bone. According to Sazaad, Aaron's skin wore a network of detectors, similar to those now in his machine, that picked up and amplified the emotions of anyone who touched him. The amplification went in all directions, a clue to why Aaron reacted at the same instant as the person touching him.

The Quill Effect. Muted, limited by being woven into human flesh.

Sazaad's new machine couldn't detect which emotion was being transferred. He planned to test it on Petra, the woman whose meditation technique had somehow controlled the emotional feedback from her contact with Aaron, if not helping Aaron at all. The Earther was full of ideas, from using his new gadget to monitor the Quill to predictably bizarre commercial applications.

Around that point, Malley had stopped listening and left, Sazaad looking astonished—pesumably that anyone wouldn't be interested in all he had to say.

The stationer tensed his hand into a fist, watching how bone bleached the skin over each scabbed and scarred knuckle, how the veins between stayed blue.

So.
Aaron
knew
things about others—things people weren't supposed to know about one another.

He spied on feelings the way the Earthers spied on one another.

An unkind comparison. Worse, a dangerous one. But Malley couldn't avoid it. He had a lot of questions piling up for his absent friend . . . starting with why Aaron hadn't told him.

And definitely including what Aaron had felt on the planet's surface.

FEELINGS. Trust.
Nebulous figments of imagination.
Until Gail had come to Thromberg Station, she'd relied on her skill and wits, confident no one else could—or would—help her succeed without coercion, self-interest, or a common goal.

She stood on the faintly scarred curve of a starship, held from drifting into her own fatal orbit around the planet below by the grip of two boots and a slip of string, depending on feelings and trust alone.

Not hard at all.
She stood there, listening to the soothing background sounds of her suit as it fought the sun's radiation to keep her cool, gazing at the tiny craters pebbling the hull of the command sphere. No sign of a 'bot yet—if Grant wanted to deploy his remote spies, someone would have to walk to one of the hangared drop pods, pull out a 'bot, then change its housing to space capable. It could be done fairly quickly if ordered; she trusted—that word again—Grant to not act in haste.

There were vids on the hull, but clustered to view critical areas. Most near the waist should be fixed on the retracted collar, so the crew could ensure it was whole and ready to reattach. That process would require both time and several experienced crew working outside. If Grant wanted access to the science sphere, he'd have crew already in the air locks. If he preferred to keep the
Seeker
's command sphere ready to fly independently—

Well, that was something else she had to trust him not to do.
Where would he go anyway? The command sphere was atmosphere-capable. That didn't mean they could land on Pardell's World. Only the suits—so far—had proved any protection from the Quill Effect.

Trust aside, Gail knew they had no time of their own to waste. Aaron had gone to locate the air lock into the hangar. When he'd heard who was waiting to admit them—the
Seeker
being a ship whose ports stayed safely locked unless authorized personnel were outside—he'd laughed and said he'd know the code to use. Gail, at that moment, hadn't been in any shape to go along, mutely grateful to feel something solid grabbed by her boots. Aaron's notion of how best to dismount from the ship's tether had been a little more exciting than she'd anticipated.

A gloved thumb appeared in front of her helmet, the agreed signal. It was too risky to use their comms here. Her companion reattached the cable from her belt to his. Gail was somewhat amused by this sign that Aaron, who'd recently and casually risked both their lives, didn't take avoidable chances.

She followed the 'sider around to the side of the
Seeker
facing the planet, resolutely avoiding the temptation to look up and lose herself in the beautiful distraction of the coming sunrise. The hangar wasn't far—the smaller inset door of its air lock was already open, a black pit in the side of the ship.