“What’s she into you for?” called O’Donnell.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You remember the bartender at the Cape,” said O’Donnell. “He said Carla Sue belonged to Jaeckle.”
“She does not.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” said O’Donnell. “But he made sense when he said to keep away from Carla Sue.”
“She’s okay,” Lance said.
“If she’s so okay, why did you chase her out of here?”
“Orders.”
“Orders my ass. If I had someone like her puckering those lips at me, I’d forget orders pretty damn quick,” said O’Donnell. He paused to let the words sink in. “Unless of course I thought she was using me too.”
“She’s not using me,” said Lance.
“I guess you’d know,” O’Donnell said with a smile.
Lance suddenly flew at him. He crashed into O’Donnell’s chest with his shoulder, then grabbed two wads of O’Donnell’s shirt.
“You think it’s funny, huh?” he yelled. “You think it’s funny she used me!”
Lance braced himself on the floor and punched O’Donnell squarely in the stomach. O’Donnell’s head snapped forward. A gasp of saliva shot out of his mouth and the top of the helmet banged against Lance’s cheek and jaw, opening a large red gash.
“Son of a bitch!” screamed Lance.
O’Donnell felt Lance’s knee explode into his groin. Stars obliterated his vision, and he sagged away from the bulkhead as far as the tethers would allow. A hand grabbed his chin as if lining up his head for a haymaker.
“Lance!”
Through his blurry vision, O’Donnell saw Dan and Freddy hurtling toward them. They pulled Lance away.
“What the hell is going on here, Muncie?” Dan barked.
Lance sniffed back a wad of snot and tamped his sleeve against the gash on his face.
“He suckered me, sir. Said he couldn’t breathe and wanted me to loosen the tape a little. When I tried to, he butted me with his head.”
O’Donnell was gasping desperately, eyes rolling with pain. Could he be that crazy? Dan asked himself. Start a fight with his hands tied? Can drugs scramble your brain that badly?
“You damn fool,” Dan said to Muncie. “Go get cleaned up.”
By midafternoon, the people on Trikon Station had returned to a semblance of their normal daily routines. Stanley relieved Freddy, who had relieved Lance, and accomplished the tricky maneuver of feeding O’Donnell from a collection of squeeze bottles. O’Donnell, still smarting from Lance’s attack, meekly cooperated.
At 1500 hours, Dan called Lance and Freddy to his office. He had attended several meetings, both in person and over his comm link Earthside, since the discovery of Weiss’s body early that morning. He hoped that this one would be the last.
“Keeping O’Donnell in the rumpus room is causing logistical problems,” he said. “And some of the scientists are concerned for their own safety.”
“Like who?” Freddy asked.
“Jaeckle, for one.”
“Wimp,” said Freddy. He looked at Lance and nodded.
“Maybe he has a valid point for a change,” said Dan. “Anyway, I’ve decided it’s best to move O’Donnell.”
“Where to?” said Freddy.
“The observatory.”
“Ain’t that going a little too far?”
“Not after this latest incident,” Dan said. “Putting him in the observatory poses the fewest logistical problems and requires the least manpower,”
“Hokay,” said Freddy. It was obvious he disagreed with the decision, but it was just as obvious that Dan would not be swayed. “Who gonna move him?”
“I don’t want to leave the station and Stanley’s had some EVA problems lately. That leaves you two.” Dan leveled his steel-eyed gaze at Lance. “There will be no repeat performance, right?”
Lance stared at the floor.
“There will be no repeat performance even if O’Donnell provokes you. Correct, Mr. Muncie?”
“Correct, Commander,” said Lance without raising his eyes.
“Get going,” said Dan.
Freddy dispatched Lance to the wardroom to assemble a four-day supply of food and water. Meanwhile, he toted an EMU into the rumpus room and started to prepare O’Donnell for transfer.
“I gonna release you,” said Freddy as he snipped the duct tape with a pocket scissors. “You fuck aroun’ and what Lance did to you feel like a massage. Right?”
“Sure, Freddy, no fucking around,” said O’Donnell. He watched the suit tumbling slowly in the air behind Freddy, like the victim of an ax murderer: disembodied head, legless torso, disconnected legs. “Where are we going?”