Heavy Time by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

this guy with no good reason; and he decided maybe Bird taking care of Dekker himself wasn’t a good idea at all. He said, quickly, quietly, “It’s the bank I’m worried about. And this guy’s intentions. He’s not in his right zone. He’s a long way from it. We don’t know him. Maybe he was thrown here, maybe he wasn’t. We don’t know what he is. He could be some drop-off from the rebels—”
    “There aren’t any jackers, Ben. And he isn’t any rebel. What’s he going to spy on? A ship you can see from deep out with any decent optics? You’ve heard too many stories.”
    “All right, all right, he’s one of the good guys. You want him tucked in safe and sound, you want a dose of broad-spectrum stuff and maybe some vitamins in him, I’ll take care of it. You set up the burn.”
    “You’re already running on it.”
    “I said I’ll take care of him!”
    Ben kited off toward the med cabinet, and Bird’s first thought was, So maybe I talked some human sense into him. And then, cynically: Maybe at least he figures he’s precarious with me right now, and covering his ass is all he’s doing. You don’t change a man that fast.
    Then he saw Ben fill a hypo and thought, God, he wouldn’t!
    Bird kicked off from the touch strip and sailed up beside Ben. “I’ll do it.”
    “I’ll take care of it.”
    Bird snatched at the bottle. It floated free. It turned label-side toward him as he caught it and it was antibiotic Ben had been loading.
    Ben scowled at him. “You’re acting crazy, Bird. You’re acting seriously crazy, you know that?”
    “I’ll handle it,” Bird said. “Just wait on that burn a few minutes.”
    Ben scowled at him, shoved off from the cabinet and sailed backward toward the workstation. Offended, Bird thought, with a twinge of irritation and of conscience at once—not sure what Ben really had intended. Ben had no patience or sympathy for Dekker or anyone else—so he’d thought.
    Or was it just plain jealousy Ben was showing?
    Ben belted back in at his keyboard. Ben was not looking at him, pointedly not looking at him.
    Bird kicked off to the side, drifted up to Dekker—Dekker looked to be asleep, Bird hoped that was all. At least he’d given up asking what time it was. Bird popped him on the arm with the back of one hand.
    Dekker waked with a start and an outcry.
    “Polybact,” Bird said, showing him the needle. “You got any allergies?”
    Dekker shook his head muzzily. Bird gave him the shot, snagged the Citrisal pack out of the pipes where air currents had sent it, uncapped the stem and put it in Dekker’s mouth.
    Dekker took a sip or two. Turned his head. “That’s all.”
    “We’re going to do a test burn. After that we’ll be doing a 140, going to catch a beam home. Has to be our Base, understand, unless we get other instructions. We’re out of R2.”
    Dekker looked at him hazily. “No. No hospital. 79, 709, 12. That’s where we were. We had a find—big find. Big find. I’ll sign it to you. Just go there. Pick my partner up.”
    “Your partner was outside when the accident happened?”
    Dekker nodded.
    “What happened? Catch a rock?” It happened. Usually to new crews.
    Another nod. Dekker’s eyes were having trouble tracking. “Kilometer wide. Iron content.”
    Freerunning miners didn’t find nickel-iron rocks that big. Rocks that big had been mapped by optics: those rocks all had long-standing numbers, they belonged to the company, and if they were rich, they got ’drivers assigned to them, they got chewed in pieces, and they streamed to the recovery zone at the Well by bucketloads. But Bird didn’t argue that point: Dekker didn’t seem highly reasonable at the moment, and he only said, “A whole k wide. You’re sure of that.”
    “It’s the truth,” Dekker said. “We got a tag on it. Uncharted rock. You can have it, if you’ll go back there and find her.”
    “Cory’s a her.”

    “Cory. Yes.” He was going out again. “God, go back. Go