No guns, damned sure, nothing to do with guns. He’d made sure of mat.
And here he was busted to a pilot trainee rating? It was crazed. It was absolutely insane. It was going to get fixed. Get to Weiter—somehow. Get to somebody up in HQ. In Stockholm. Fast.
He located A-10, at the corner of the hall, opened the door—
And found his lost luggage in the middle of the darkened room.
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!”
The shuttle was in Servicing, the politicians, the engineers, the corporate execs and the general were tanking up in Departures, and now reality came due. Now it was back to dealing with Tanzer on a daily, post-hearing basis, and the Fleet’s independence notwithstanding, when the UDC CO sent a See Me at OSOOh, the Fleet Acting Commander had to show up.
“He’s expecting you,” the aide said. Graff said a terse Thank you, opened the door and walked into the fire zone.
“Lt. Graff,” Tanzer said.
“Colonel,” Graff said and stood there neither at ease nor at attention while Tanzer stared at him.
Tanzer rocked his chair back abruptly and said, “I expect cooperation.”
“Yes, colonel.”
“ ‘Yes, colonel,’ what?”
“Whatever’s good for the program, colonel.”
“And what do you think that is, now, would you say?”
“Colonel, you know my opinion.”
The chair banged level. “Damn your opinion! What are you trying to do to this program?”
“Trying not to lose a carrier, when its riders fail, I’ll be in it. You won’t, colonel.”
“I won’t, will I? I’m on the line here, you sonuvabiteh.”
“Not for the same stakes, colonel, forgive me.”
“You son of a bitch.”
After a sleep-short night mat opening was extremely welcome. Tanzer was angry. Tanzer wasn’t satisfied with what had gone down. That could be good news—if it wasn’t the demise of the program Tanzer was foreseeing.
Tanzer said, with a curl of his lip, “Two more of your recruits are in from the Belt, I’m sure you’ll be delighted with that. And Lendler Corp is recommending the Fleet change its security regulations with the sim tapes. And who in hell transferred Pollard into your command?”
“My command?”
“Your command, your captain’s command, your navigator’s command for all I know, who knows who’s in charge in your office? You have a UDC trainee in your program, Mr. Graff, do you want to tell me just how that happened?”
He wasn’t sure whether Tanzer was in his right mind. Or what in hell was going on. He said, “I don’t know. I’ll look into it.”
“I’m already looking into it, I’m looking into it all the way to TI and Geneva. What do you say to that, Mr. Graff?”
“I don’t know either, colonel. I’ll find out.”
Tanzer gave him a cold, silent stare. Then: “You find out and you come tell me. It’s one of those things I like to keep up with, who’s where on this station. Just a habit of mine. I think you can understand that. Hearing’s over. I’d like to clear the record, just get everything back in appropriate boxes. I think you can understand that too, can’t you, lieutenant?”
The passenger shuttle was going out, that was the maddening thing. But there was absolutely no question of Ben Pollard getting to it: it was ferrying the brass out from the hearing, the hearing was evidently over, Dekker hadn’t remembered a thing he could take to Graff and get out of here, so evidently that wasn’t his ticket out—and, dammit! he wanted to talk to Graff, wanted to ask Graff to his face what kind of a double-cross had caught him in this damned illicit transfer. But Graff had been ‘unavailable’ during the hearing, Graff’s aides had only cared to ask if he had any report yet. Of course he’d had to say no; so Lt. Graff hadn’t seen fit to return his calls yesterday; Lt. Graff wasn’t in his office this morning—
While the transfer orders he’d gotten said, Outside contact specifically denied.
So what was Outside? Sol One FSO? Sol One UDC? —Graff’s office?
In a moment of wild fantasy he thought of risking his clearance, his career and a term in the brig, getting to the Departure lounge by hook or by crook, snagging some UDC officer bound out of this station and protesting he’d been kidnapped: contact Weiter on Sol One.