Orbital Decay by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online Page B

considered them to be the most straightforward and sincere people around. He was therefore willing to do anything his Chinese-American supervisor told him to do, and in fact regarded Dave Chang as his best friend on Olympus Station.
    Chang, on the other hand, had long since grown tired of Harris’ puppyish devotion, considered him a putz and thought he should be abused at any opportunity. He just smiled and nodded toward the hatch leading to the Docks.
    “Sure thing, Dave,” Harris said, returning the smile. He unbuckled his chair’s belt, floated upward and grabbed a pair of handholds, then began pulling himself toward the hatch. Chang settled into the chair and watched as Harris waited for the lights above the hatch to indicate that the MTDA had been pressurized. When the lights flashed green and a bell chimed, Harris un-dogged the hatch and pulled it open.
    Once Harris had floated into the chamber, Chang pushed himself toward the hatch, pushed it shut, and turned the locking wheel. After all, he mused, the orders had been not to let the beamjack out until Mr. Big and Dr. Feelgood arrived. He then went back to the console to watch the show on the TV monitor.
    The Docks was a narrow compartment about the size of one of the rim modules. There were five docking bays there, equilaterally separated by handrails and storage compartments. It was forever cold in the compartment, exposed as often as it was to vacuum. Only a few minutes earlier a ferry taking beamjacks out to the construction shack had departed from Olympus, so the heater had yet to take the edge off the chill.
    Puffing little clouds, Harris made his way to the third airlock; he could see the locking wheel turning as the pod pilot began to let himself out.
    He coasted in front of the hatch and grabbed hold of a rail overhead, hovering in front of the airlock as it swung open. As it did, he said cheerily, “Hi. Can I help you…?”
    A fabric snoopy helmet was flung through the open hatch with such force that it smacked into Harris’ chest. The young crewman, who had played a lot of basketball, instinctively made to grab it with both hands. His letting go of the rail and the impact of the helmet was enough to send him sailing into the bulkhead wall behind him. Fortunately he had developed enough zero g reflexes to grab another handrail before he bounced into another hard surface.
    With the rail gripped in one hand and the snoopy helmet—which, he now noticed, was trailing loose wires—clutched under his arm, he stared at the open airlock and watched the pod pilot clamber out.
    The man who emerged was small, even by the standards of beamjacks, who never reached a height of over six feet. Five-five, probably the shortest admissible height for a Skycorp employee, but an awfully mean-looking five-five. With thin black hair combed straight back and a spade beard covering most of his lean face, the space worker would have looked filthy stepping out of a shower and ravenous coming away from a four-course meal.
    He pushed himself through the airlock with the practiced ease of a long-timer. Eyes as black as his hair fixed on Harris, and his gaze made the kid think of rattlesnakes he had seen in zoos.
    “Yeah, you can help me,” the pod pilot said, in a voice that was surprisingly soft. Floating in the middle of the compartment, he began to climb out of his spacesuit, releasing the top and bottom halves and pushing himself out of them. “You can help me by getting Cap’n Wallace’s ass down here so I can chew it off, you dig?”
    “Cap’n W-Wallace?” Harris stammered.
    “Y-yeah, Ca-Cap’n Wa-Wallace,” he mimicked with a sneer. He discarded his spacesuit carelessly, leaving it hanging in the air like a discarded carapace, unbelted his urine collection cup, and began to unzip his long underwear. Underneath he wore a black T-shirt and a pair of nylon gym shorts. “And if I don’t get him, I guess I’m just going to have to chew your ass