He just couldn’t figure where Marie was, or what might be happening out there.
Mischa talking sense to Austin Bowe, if he had his choice. Maybe offering a pledge not to get either of them involved in station law. No ship wanted that kind of entanglement. We get our lunatic off the docks, you give her her boy back, and neither of us files station charges…
“Have fun,” Christian said, evidently deciding the amusement value was nil here, and shoved away from the bars.
“You want to release that cable?”
“Please?”
“Please. Politely.”
Christian flipped some sort of switch beside the door. He tugged at the cable and it ran free, take-up gear disengaged. He went as far as the grid and tried to see where Christian went, but it was around the corner of the block where the cell was—tried to see the control panel for the cable, and it was out of reach, and no damn good, since the only thing you could do with it was free the gear or take the cable up, and he didn’t want to turn the winch on.
Nothing like this on Sprite.
Nothing like this on any honest ship. It wasn’t lower-main corridor, at least: off the axis but not much off, you could feel the slant in the deck. It was for keeping someone locked up while the ship was docked: half the heated, pressurized deck space a ship owned became vertical while the ring was de-spun and locked to some station’s orientation. You didn’t give up a centimeter of downside deck space to a facility that wasn’t manned during dock, and that meant this was one important facility to Corinthian, and prisoners weren’t unusual—or let off to station jurisdiction, where you’d think a hired-crew ship would be glad to dump its problems for good and all.
You did get the skuz of the spacer trade among hire-ons, they had that universal reputation. A Family ship very rarely took one or accepted a passenger, and that only after careful background checks and an oath from God that the individual was trustworthy. But this… this place, occupying valuable dock-positive space, was built to contain people the ship didn’t intend to turn over to station authorities, people who could try to break out and take over the ship. The cable arrangement meant you couldn’t get further across the cell than they wanted you to go. The bracelet had a kind of lock he’d never seen before, a lever that shut, that had no wobble in it, no hint of how it opened.
He went back and sat down on the bunk, and worked and worked at the lock in frightened silence.
There wasn’t anything else to do. Wasn’t any other hope. He didn’t know if they’d caught Marie or if they were still looking for her. If he was held hostage—that was a joke.
He wasn’t sure at this point that Marie wanted him back.
Justifiably.
—ii—
THE LOADING OPERATION WAS A steady flow of data on Austin’s office monitor, a steady stream of canisters thumping through the cargo access port, contiguous at the moment with the passenger ring, so it sounded through Corinthian’s ring structure like some monstrous heartbeat.
Machine parts was the principal load they were taking; also radioactives, medical and industrial, transshipped; chemicals, organic and otherwise; minicans of rejuv, lately legal, tapes, transshipped; minicans of personal goods and small commercial freight, transshipped and some originated at Viking—no mail: they hadn’t a bond for that, and he didn’t want the background check. But this was the payout cargo, this was the one where Miller bought on spec and they rebought, and sold at their destination; this was the one that paid the bills and kept them running. It was an eclectic load, and a few minicans went up the lift and into the ring, where they’d jury-rigged passenger accommodations into warm-cargo space.
The further you got from Earth the pricier Earth goods got, simple proposition, but the further you got from civilization, the pricier, too, the sweet taste of the motherworld. And pay they would, in credit and in various ways.
If—
Com beeped. “Excuse me, sir,” the voice said, from the bridge. “Marie Hawkins. On the com. For you. Do you want to take the call?”